The Straw Men 3-Book Thriller Collection: The Straw Men, The Lonely Dead, Blood of Angels. Michael Marshall

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СКАЧАТЬ their minds about letting me know.’

      I realized that the woman might be watching out of the window, so I started the car up and pulled away.

      ‘I’m thinking that maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong directions. There are three chunks on that video. First one shows a place I could go find. The Halls. Last one tells me something I didn’t know. Middle section shows two places. First the house, where I’ve just been, thanks to you. Nothing there. The other was a bar. I don’t recognize it. It’s nowhere I’ve ever been.’

      ‘So?’ We were at a junction.

      ‘Bear with me,’ I said, and took a left. A turn that would eventually lead us, assuming it was still there, to a bar I used to go to.

Chapter 20

      It was never a place you’d go on purpose, unless chance had made it your habitual haunt. I was expecting it to have gone one of two ways: spruced up with an eating room addition and lots of perky waitresses in red-and-white, or bulldozed and under cheap housing where people shouted a lot after dark. In fact, progress seemed to have simply ignored Lazy Ed’s altogether: unlike genteel decay, which had settled into it like damp.

      The interior was empty and silent. The wood of the bar and the stools looked about as scuffed up as they always had. The pool table was still in place, along with most of the dust, some of it maybe even mine. There were a few additions here and there, high-water marks of progress. The neon MILLER sign had been replaced with one for Bud Lite, and the calendar on the wall showed young ladies closer to their natural state than it had in my day. Natural, at least, in their state of undress, if not in the shape or constitution of their breasts. Somewhere, probably hidden very well, would be a plaque warning pregnant women against drinking – though had such a person been coming here for her kicks the warning would likely be lost on her on account of her being blind or deranged. Women have higher standards. That’s why they’re a civilizing influence on young men. You have to find somewhere nice to get them drunk.

      Bobby leaned back against the pool table, gazing around. ‘Same as it ever was?’

      ‘Like I never went away.’

      I went up to the bar, feeling nervous. I used to just call out Ed’s name. That was twenty years ago, and doing it now would be like going back to school and expecting the teachers to recognize you. The last thing anyone needs is to learn that in the grand scheme of things they were always just ‘some kid’.

      A man emerged from out the back, wiping his hands on a cloth that could only be making them dirtier. He raised his chin in a greeting that was cordial but of limited enthusiasm. He was about my age, maybe a little older, fat, and already going bald. I love it when I see contemporaries losing their hair. It perks me right up.

      ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Was looking for Ed.’

      ‘Found him,’ he replied.

      ‘The one I had in mind would be about thirty years older.’

      ‘You mean Lazy. He ain’t here.’

      ‘You can’t be an Ed junior.’ Ed didn’t have any kids. He wasn’t even married.

      ‘Shit no,’ the man said, as if disquieted by the idea. ‘Just a coincidence. I’m the new owner. Have been since Ed retired.’

      I tried to hide my disappointment. ‘Retired.’ I didn’t want to seem too pushy.

      ‘Couple years. Still,’ the guy said. ‘Saved me having to make a new sign.’

      ‘Whole place looks the same, actually,’ I ventured.

      The man shook his head wearily. ‘Don’t I know it. When Lazy sold up he made a condition. Said he was selling a business, not his second home. Had to be left this way until he died.’

      ‘And you went for it?’

      ‘I got it very cheap. And Lazy is pretty old.’

      ‘How’s he going to know whether you kept the agreement?’

      ‘Still comes in. Most every day. You wait around, chances are you’ll see him.’ He must have seen me smile, and added: ‘One thing though. He may not be quite the way you remember him.’

      I started a tab, and went over to where Bobby was sitting. We drank beer and played pool for a while. Bobby won.

      We kept the beers coming, and after I’d lost interest in losing any more games Bobby spent an hour practising shots. My dad would have approved of his dedication. We had the bar to ourselves for a long while, and then a few people started to drift in. By the end of the afternoon Bobby and I still constituted about a third of the clientele. I’d lightly quizzed Ed on what time Lazy usually came by, but apparently it was completely unpredictable. I thought about asking for his address, but something told me the guy wouldn’t give it up and that the question would make him suspicious. Early evening there was a rush. A whole four people came in at once. None of them was Ed.

      Then at seven, something happened.

      Bobby and I were playing pool again by then. He wasn’t beating me so easily by this point. Somebody had put classic Springsteen on the jukebox and it felt weirdly as if I could have been playing twenty years ago, in the days of hair gel and pushed-up sleeves. I was getting drunk enough to be verging on nostalgic for the 1980s, which is never a good sign.

      Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door to the bar open. Still leaning over the table, I watched to see who’d come in. I got just a glimpse. A face, pretty old. Looking right at me. And then whoever it was turned tail and went.

      I shouted to Bobby, but he’d already seen. He ran straight across the floor and had crashed out the door before I’d even dropped my cue.

      Outside it was dark and a car was on the move and fast. A battered old Ford, spraying gravel as it fishtailed out of the lot. Bobby was swearing fit for competition standard and I quickly saw why: some asshole had blocked us in with a big red truck. He turned, saw me. ‘Why’d he run?’

      ‘No idea. You see which way he went?’

      ‘No.’ He turned and kicked the nearest truck.

      ‘Get the car started.’

      I ran back inside and straight up to the bar. ‘Whose is the truck?’

      A guy dressed in denim raised his hand.

      ‘Get it the fuck out of the way or we’re going to shove it clean off the lot.’

      He stared at me a moment, and then got up and went outside.

      I turned to Ed. ‘That was him, right? Guy who ran?’

      ‘Guess he didn’t want to talk to you after all.’

      ‘Well that’s a shame,’ I said. ‘Because it’s going to happen regardless. I need to talk with him about old times. I’m feeling so nostalgic I could just shit. So where does he live?’

      ‘I ain’t telling you that.’

      ‘Don’t СКАЧАТЬ