Koko. Peter Straub
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Название: Koko
Автор: Peter Straub
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика
isbn: 9780007375516
isbn:
For a second he actually saw red – a vast sheet of blood washing over everything, carrying everything with it, houses and cows and the engines of trains, washing everything clean.
‘You know why I wanted you to bring copies of your articles?’
Ortiz shook his head.
Koko smiled. He reached out and picked the thick file of articles off the floor and opened it on his lap. ‘Here’s a good headline, Roberto. DID THIRTY CHILDREN DIE? I mean, is that yellow journalism, or what? You can really be proud of yourself Roberto. It’s right up there with BIGFOOT DEVOURS TIBETAN BABY. What’s your answer, anyhow? Did thirty children die?’
Ortiz did not move.
‘It’s cool if you don’t want to say. Satanic beings come in many forms, Roberto, in many, many forms.’ As he spoke, Koko took a pack of matches from his pocket and set the file alight. He fanned it in the air to keep the fire alive.
When the flames neared his fingers, Koko dropped the burning papers and kicked them apart. The small flames left greasy black scorches on the wooden floor.
‘I always liked the smell of fire,’ Koko said. ‘I always liked the smell of gunpowder. I always liked the smell of blood. They’re clean smells, you know?’
I always liked the smell of gunpowder.
I always liked the smell of blood.
He smiled at the little flames guttering out on the floor. ‘I like how you can even smell the dust burning.’ He turned his smile to Ortiz. ‘I wish my work was done. But at least I’ll have two pretty passports to use. And maybe when I’m done in the States, I’ll go to Honduras. That makes a lot of sense, I think. Maybe I’ll go there after I check out all these people I have to check out.’ He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth on the floor. ‘Work never leaves you alone, does it?’ He stopped rocking. ‘Would you like me to untie you now?’
Ortiz looked at him carefully, then nodded very slowly.
‘You’re so stupid,’ Koko said. He shook his head, smiling sadly, took up the automatic pistol, and pointed it at the middle of Roberto Ortiz’s chest. He looked directly into Ortiz’s eyes, then shook his head again, still smiling sadly, braced his wrist with his left hand, and fired.
Then he watched Roberto Ortiz die fighting and twitching and struggling to speak. Blood darkened the pretty blazer, ruined the pretty shirt and the luxurious necktie.
Eternity, jealous and alert, watched with Koko.
When it was done, Koko wrote his name on one of the Orchid Boy playing cards, grasped the cleaver, and pushed himself up off the floor to do the messy part of the job.
1
‘Just let me keep the books,’ Michael Poole said to the erect little woman, all black shining hair and deep dimples, beside him. Her name tag read PUN YIN. She tilted his carry-on bag toward him, and Poole took the copies of A Beast in View and The Divided Man from the open pouch on the side. The stewardess smiled and began making her way forward through the pediatricians.
The doctors had started to unwind as soon as the plane hit cruising level. On earth, visible to their patients and other laymen, Michael’s colleagues liked to appear knowing, circumspect, and only as juvenile as conventional American ethics permitted; aloft, they acted like fraternity boys. Pediatricians in playclothes, in terrycloth jogging suits and college sweaters, pediatricians in red blazers and plaid trousers roamed the aisles of the big airplane, glad-handing and bawling out bad jokes. Pun Yin got no more than halfway toward the front of the plane with Michael’s bag when a squat, flabby doctor with a leer like a Halloween pumpkin positioned himself before her and did an awkward bump and grind.
‘Hey!’ Beevers said. ‘We’re on our way!’
‘Give me an S,’ Conor said, and lifted his glass.
‘You remember to get the pictures? Or did your brain collapse again?’
‘They’re in my bag,’ Poole said. He had made fifty copies of the author’s photo on the back of Orchid Blood, Underhill’s last book.
All three men were watching the unknown doctor twitch around Pun Yin while a group of medical men yipped encouragement. The pretty stewardess patted the man on the shoulder and squeezed past him, interposing Michael’s bag between the doctor and herself.
‘We’re going to face the elephant,’ Beevers said. ‘Remember?’
‘Could I forget?’ Poole asked. During the Civil War, when their regiment had been founded, ‘facing the elephant’ had been slang for going into battle.
In a loud, blurry voice Conor asked, ‘What traits are embodied in the elephant?’
‘In time of peace or in time of war?’ Beevers asked.
‘Both. Let’s hear the whole shootin’ match.’
Beevers glanced at Poole. ‘The elephant embodies nobility, grace, gravity, patience, perseverance, power, and reserve in times of peace. The elephant embodies power and wrath in times of war.’
A few of the pediatricians nearest stared at him in affable confusion, trying to share the joke.
Beevers and Poole began to laugh.
‘Damn straight,’ Conor said. ‘That’s it, there it is.’
Pun Yin glimmered for a moment far away at the head of the cabin, then switched a curtain before her and was gone.
2
The airplane slowly digested the thousands of miles between Los Angeles and Singapore, where the corpses of Miss Balandran and Roberto Ortiz sat undiscovered in a bungalow on a leafy road; the doctors settled into their seats, overcome by alcohol and the exhaustion of travel. Bland food arrived, considerably less delicious than the smile with which Pun Yin placed it before the passengers. Eventually the stewardess removed their trays, poured out brandy, plumped up pillows for the long night.
‘I never told you what Underhill’s old agent told Tina Pumo,’ Poole said to Beevers across a dozing Conor Linklater.
Shafts of light pierced the long dark cabin of the 747. Soon Savannah Smiles would be shown, to be followed by a second movie which starred Karl Maiden and several Yugoslavians.
‘You mean you didn’t want to tell me,’ Beevers said. ‘It must be pretty good.’
‘Good enough,’ Poole СКАЧАТЬ