The Killing Game. J. Kerley A.
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Название: The Killing Game
Автор: J. Kerley A.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Полицейские детективы
isbn: 9780007328260
isbn:
A big square black guy in a Hawaiian shirt had parked beside the air pump and was kneeling by the front tire of a dark sedan. He looked unsteady and kept dropping the air hose.
“Just some drunk putting air in his tires,” I said, slipping my truck key into the lock and jiggling. I moved my hand back like I’d locked the door. Then pulled it open. “It’s bent,” I said, making a big deal of wiggling the door. “Some old lady banged her car into the door last week.” I did the key-jiggle again. Opened the door.
“GET IT DONE!” the woman screamed.
I turned to Shotgun Man. “If we both pull from the inside I can slide the bolt.”
He set the sawn-off on the counter and came to stand beside me. He smelled like an outhouse.
Shotgun Man looked to the woman. “He makes one wrong move, blow out his brains.”
“On the count of three,” I said. “Pull hard and I’ll set the lock.”
Shotgun Man gripped the door handle. I slid my key into the lock and shot a glance at the drunk at the pump. He was leaning against his vehicle and scratching his belly, apparently exhausted by his labors.
“One!” I said, loudly, taking a deep breath.
“Two!”
On three, I dove to the floor as glass exploded everywhere. Shotgun Man seemed to pirouette in slow motion, then hit the ground beside me. A half-beat later the woman’s body slammed the floor as well, half her skull gone. There was nothing to be done for either of them, but if there had been, I probably wouldn’t have done it.
Two cop cruisers skidded into the lot. The black guy was standing beside the car with a gun in his hand, smoke drifting from the muzzle. He spoke into a small transceiver in his palm. “Looks like your clerking career is over, Carson,” the voice in my head said. “You OK?”
I waved, pulled the tiny WiFi speaker from my ear, and ran to check on Ham Neck.
The waitress brought Ema her breakfast and Gregory stared at the plate of unspeakable monstrosities. He hid his revulsion behind Happy #3 as the waitress smiled and backed away. Chewing food formed a bolus, a clot of spit and snot and food churned by the tongue and squeezed down the throat like a rat wriggling through a python. The bolus caused the stomach to squirm and convulse as chemicals reduced the lump to a suppurating goo. This reeking sludge was pumped past the pyloric valve and into the intestines, where it turned into unspeakable filth that decayed inside you for days.
“Are you all right, dear?” Ema asked as the server arrived with Gregory’s toast and salad. Grains and green vegetables were easiest to digest.
“Why?” he said.
Ema cocked her head, teased-out blonde curls bouncing on the shoulder of her pale and frilly summer frock.
“You looked deep in thought.”
Gregory pushed his plate of half-eaten toast aside. “Exactly, Ema, I was thinking. Until you interrupted.”
“I’m sorry,” Ema apologized. “Was it about work?”
“What else?” he lied. “I’ve put in forty hours already this week.” Another lie.
Ema forked up a gooey lump of poultry ovum. “I’m glad to see you so absorbed in life, dear. Plus you’re looking less thin and frail.”
Gregory’s eyes narrowed. Frail? I’ve never looked frail. Ema’s constant sniping about his pallor and thinness had driven Gregory to a health club membership four months back, but the stink of bodies turned his stomach and the music hurt his head. That’s when he’d invested in a top-of-the-line Bowflex home gym. He could run through a full workout in under a half hour and practice his faces at the same time.
He said, “I’ve been exercising.”
“Wonderful!” Ema chirped. “How often do you work out? Do you have a specific regimen?”
“Not really.”
“Do you exercise to a DVD or anything like that?”
“No.”
“You should drop in on Dr Szekely. She’d love to see how you—”
“Your nattering is driving me mad, Ema.”
Ema swallowed hard, looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “I only want for you to—”
“I’m teasing, dear,” Gregory said. “Can’t you tell by now when I’m teasing?”
“Sometimes you look, I don’t know … serious, I guess. Even when you’re teasing.”
“If you can’t tell whether I’m teasing, then I’m teasing.”
“I love you so much,” Ema said. “I want you to be healthy and strong.”
“I am healthy, Ema,” Gregory said. “I just said I’ve been working out. Didn’t you listen?”
Ema’s eyes fell to her lap, telling Gregory he’d failed to keep all the anger from his voice. He sighed internally and reached for his sister’s plump fingertips, feeling microbes crawl from her flesh to his. But the gesture – I Love You and I’m Sorry – was important. Gregory found his most sincere face – This is the Best Insurance You Can Buy – and looked Ema in her green eyes.
“I’m so glad I have you,” he said. “So very happy.” He followed with three beats of I Have a Powerful New Detergent.
A newly buoyant Ema carried the conversation for twenty minutes, Gregory’s contributions being murmurs of assent and smiling in all the right places. He averted his eyes when a fork moved toward Ema’s mouth, looking instead at the ubiquitous pendant hanging from her neck, a shimmering pearlescent orb the size of a robin’s egg, folk craft from Eastern Europe. She had other baubles on her wrists, jangly things. The woman spent her life watching shopping channels and soap operas and police shows. Gregory had started wishing she’d get a full-time job or some kind of hobby.
“How are the kitties?” Ema asked, returning to a recent topic, a population of stray cats in Gregory’s neighborhood.
“Still howling all night. It’s breeding season.”
Ema paused in chewing, the fork poised beside her mouth. “A friend of mine had a problem with stray cats. She caught them in what’s called a humane trap and—”
“What the hell is a humane trap?”
“It’s like a box made of wire mesh. The cat goes in and a door springs shut. Then off to the shelter.”
“I’ll consider it,” Gregory said, thinking a shotgun would be easier.
Ema’s СКАЧАТЬ