The Good Guy. Dean Koontz

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       One

      Sometimes a mayfly skates across a pond, leaving a brief wake as thin as spider silk, and by staying low avoids those birds and bats that feed in flight.

      At six feet three, weighing two hundred ten pounds, with big hands and bigger feet, Timothy Carrier could not maintain a profile as low as that of a skating mayfly, but he tried.

      Shod in heavy work boots, with a John Wayne walk that came naturally to him and that he could not change, he nevertheless entered the Lamplighter Tavern and proceeded to the farther end of the room without drawing attention to himself. None of the three men near the door, at the short length of the “L”-shaped bar, glanced at him. Neither did the couples in two of the booths.

      When he sat on the end stool, in shadows beyond the last of the downlights that polished the molasses-colored mahogany bar, he sighed with contentment. From the perspective of the front door, he was the smallest man in the room.

      If the forward end of the Lamplighter was the driver’s deck of the locomotive, this was the caboose. Those who chose to sit here on a slow Monday evening would most likely be quiet company.

      Liam Rooney—who was the owner and, tonight, the only barkeep—drew a draft beer from the tap and put it in front of Tim.

      “Some night you’ll walk in here with a date,” Rooney said, “and the shock will kill me.”

      “Why would I bring a date to this dump?”

      “What else do you know but this dump?”

      “I’ve also got a favorite doughnut shop.”

      “Yeah. СКАЧАТЬ