Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗
Even so, I drove the car as fast as it would go, managing to nudge the speedometer all the way up to fifty-six miles per hour without the engine bursting into flames and covering the freeway with bits of charred hamster.
All in all, my first day doing detective work wasn’t quite what I’d hoped it would be. There was no glamour. There was no action. And the only nipples I saw were from a distance. It was a complete disaster. Even so, I was exhilarated in way I hadn’t been since, well, since ever.
I knew I wasn’t going to have time to go home before starting my shift, so I stopped at Target and reluctantly parted with fifty bucks. I bought a fresh shirt and pants, a battery-operated alarm clock, a bunch of snack food, and some personal hygiene stuff.
I stopped at a Chevron station and cleaned myself in the restroom. I shaved, brushed my teeth, and washed my hair in the corroded sink. I slathered Arid Extra Dry Ultra Fresh Gel under my arms, shook the broken glass off my uniform, and put it on, hoping no one would notice in the dark just how wrinkled and dirty it was.
Exuding ultra-freshness, I got back in my car and drove to Spanish Hills, parking down the block from Bel Vista Estates. I set the alarm clock for eleven fifty, put it on the dash, and closed my eyes.
***
The alarm rang on time. I swiped it off the dash and stuck it in the glove box, which I discovered was roomier than the trunk. I made a mental note to myself to scratch the Kia Sephia off my list of possible new cars.
Every part of my body ached from the accident and within seconds of waking up, my stomach started cramping with anxiety. I still had no idea what I was going to tell Cyril Parkus. I didn’t want him to find out I was incompetent, at least not until I got more of his money, which I needed more now than ever.
I got out of the car, told myself I was as ultra-fresh as I smelled, and walked up to the shack to relieve Clay Denbo, sort of a younger version of me, only black and two hundred pounds heavier. I weight one ninety, so you get the picture.
Clay worked part-time while going to community college in Moorpark, the way I did, only I went to Cal State Northridge, which is a better school.
He was thinking of either becoming a radio psychologist or a parking concepts engineer. Redesigning the layout of parking lots to add more spaces was kind of his hobby. He had a whole sketchpad of ideas he carried around with him and was always asking me to keep my eyes open for problem parking areas he could visit.
Clay was packing up his textbooks and sketchpad as I walked up. One of the books was called The History of Vehicle Parking in the Urban Landscape, a real grabber. He took one look at me and his mouth kind of hung open.
“Jesus Christ, Harvey, what happened to you?” he asked.
“A woman,” I replied. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but the implication was certainly dishonest.
Clay broke out in a big grin, and I realized he’d make a terrific black Santa Claus and, with the political correctness and diversity thing being trendy at the time, I thought it might even be a money-making idea for him. But I kept the idea to myself, not sure if it’d be taken as some kind of racist jab. You can’t be too sure these days.
“Hot damn,” Clay said. “Looks like she crawled all over you.”
“She really likes a man in uniform.” I smiled.
“Think she’d go for a lot more man in a lot more uniform?”
“I hope not.”
Clay gave me a jolly slap on the back as he stepped out of the shack. “See you tomorrow, stud.”
As soon as he was gone, the first thing I did was rewind the tapes from the gate’s surveillance cameras until I came across Lauren Parkus returning home.
I froze the tape on her Range Rover going through the gate. According to the time code, she drove in at four seventeen, not even an hour after I last saw her.
That meant she drove straight home. She couldn’t have stopped anywhere between Santa Barbara and the gate in that amount of time.
I fell into the chair and nearly cried with relief.
I had a second chance.
***
Cyril Parkus drove out of the community and up to the shack around seven thirty in the morning.
“So?” he asked.
I gave him my handwritten report. “She had coffee, took a walk on the beach, and came home.”
Parkus didn’t look up from the piece of notebook paper, as if staring at it real hard would reveal new details even I had missed.
“She didn’t see anybody all day?” he asked.
“Not unless you count the guy who served her coffee.”
“I see you noted the seven dollars you paid for parking,” he said. “That would be one of the expenses you were talking about.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The one hundred and fifty dollars a day doesn’t cover parking?”
I couldn’t tell if he was playing with me, or just being cheap. He didn’t wait for me to answer, he just handed the paper back to me.
“Thanks, Harvey,” he said. “Keep up the good work.”
And with that, Cyril Parkus drove off, the smell of leather upholstery lingering in his wake.
He didn’t even say anything about how lousy I looked. Maybe I really was ultra-fresh. Or maybe he just didn’t give a damn.
Sergeant Victor Banos showed up a few minutes later, and he made up for Parkus’ oversight regarding my appearance. I won’t share all the snide remarks he made, they really aren’t pertinent to the story. Needless to say, I got out of there as fast as I could, returned to my Sephia, and changed into my new clothes.
I’d just got my pants on when Lauren Parkus drove out of the gate. She was getting a very early start. I turned the key in the ignition, hit the gas pedal in my stocking feet, and followed after her.
Lauren didn’t make it difficult for me this time. She went right down to the freeway and headed south. We hit the tail end of rush hour traffic, so keeping up with her was easy, though my Sephia struggled mightily going up the Conejo Pass between Camarillo and Newbury Park. The car was such a little shitcan, I was afraid if a bug slammed into the windshield the car would be totaled.
She took me across the San Fernando Valley to Studio City, where she got off at Coldwater Canyon and headed south towards the Hollywood Hills.
I stayed one car behind her on Coldwater and tailgated the guy in front of me. I was afraid of another intersection mishap like the day before. If this guy raced into the intersection on a yellow, I was going too, hanging right onto his bumper. We crossed Ventura Boulevard without incident, but the guy in front of me got spooked and made a sharp, last-minute right turn onto a side street.
I bet the idiot thought I was following him.
She led me up Coldwater and I relaxed a bit because I had a general idea where we were headed. Coldwater weaves through the Hollywood Hills and is basically used as a shortcut between the Valley and Beverly Hills.
So I settled back and enjoyed the drive. We passed one big mansion after another. They aren’t so much homes as they are billboards. The only reason anybody that wealthy would want to live on a busy, narrow street like that is to show everybody how much money he has.
So for the opportunity to brag, these rich-ass people get to breathe exhaust fumes and listen to traffic going by all day.
In other words, they’re paying millions to experience what it’s like living in a cardboard box beside a freeway.
Just because the rich have money, it doesn’t mean they’ve got brains.
I followed Lauren Parkus across Sunset, where Coldwater becomes Beverly Boulevard and widens quite a bit. The houses are every bit as expensive and just as showy. You’ll also find a lot more of those mysterious stone lions.
She crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and entered the fancy shopping district known in all the tourist guides as the Golden Triangle, which sounds like a sleazy euphemism for a woman’s crotch. Based on the name, you’d expect to find topless bars and nudie shows instead of Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Tiffany’s. Then again, the most famous street in the area is Rodeo Drive, but you won’t find anything that even remotely has to do with rodeos, cattle, or cowboys. So right away you know nothing in Beverly Hills is what it says it is, or appears to be.
