Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗
As I moved through the crowd, I kept my eye open for thugs from the Syndicate, European hitmen, and Ninja assassins, because that’s what Joe Mannix would do. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I spotted any of them, though, since, unlike Mannix, I don’t carry a gun and hadn’t been in a fistfight since the fourth grade. Luckily for me, they seemed to be busy elsewhere that day.
She took a seat at a table in front of a hot dog place. A moment later, a guy sat down across from her and she seemed to recoil. I couldn’t blame her.
He looked like the kind of character Martin Sheen used to play on “Cannon” and “Barnaby Jones” before he became the President of the United States on TV. The guy had a thick, bushy mustache on his thin face that hung over his leering grin and must’ve got stuck in everything he ate. His deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks made him look older than he probably was, which I pegged at around thirty-four. He let the stringy, black hair on the back of his head grow over his shoulders in a botched attempt to make you forget his receding hairline.
She wasn’t fucking this guy, I was certain of that. Her whole body screamed out her repulsion. He had this relaxed, cocky air about him. I wanted to beat the shit out of the guy and I didn’t even know him.
I snapped a bunch of pictures and, since I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I tried to read their expressions and body language instead. It was like watching one of those soap operas on the Spanish channel.
I could tell she was angry, but pleading at the same time. He was enjoying himself way too much. He liked looking at her, but he liked torturing her even more, which is why I knew even before she gave him the bulging envelope from her purse that this was about blackmail.
The package was a half-filled manila envelope folded over itself and taped together that I guessed held about thirty thousand dollars.
He stuck the money inside his shirt, said something, and grinned.
“You promised!” she yelled in fury, startling me.
But he didn’t even flinch. He kissed the air between them, stood up, and strode off, relaxed and happy with himself.
Lauren Parkus stayed there, staring at the space where he’d been, tears streaming from beneath her dark, impenetrable glasses.
Chapter Eight
I was right about food getting stuck in his mustache. From where I sat, a couple tables away from him in the food court of the Santa Monica Place mall, I could see the grains of fried rice getting trapped in the tangle above his lip as he stuffed himself with Chinese food.
Back on the pier, I had five seconds to choose between staying with Lauren or following her blackmailer. I figured since her business was done, I wouldn’t miss anything if I left her.
Lauren’s blackmailer strode up the pier to the mall, patting his stomach every so often to feel the thirty grand underneath his shirt. I’d probably have done the same thing, if I was him. As soon as he was in the mall, he went straight to the food court and got himself the three ninety-nine combo plate at the Wok Inn.
As long as I was there, I bought myself a slice of pizza and a Coke, got a table where I could see him, and thought about things. I wondered what he had on Lauren, and if there were pictures or recordings somewhere that Cyril Parkus might pay me to get back. And if I did get hired to do it, I wondered how the hell I’d pull it off.
Things were getting complicated and scary and exciting, words I never could have used before to describe my life. I liked it.
He finished his lunch and got up without bussing his table. I thought about snagging his fork for fingerprints, but I realized I didn’t have an irascible friend on The Force to run them for me. I made a mental note to myself: if I stayed in this business, I’d have to cultivate a love-hate relationship with a police officer right away.
The blackmailer crossed Broadway, then walked down to the corner of Second Street and disappeared. I waited a minute, shoved the camera in my pants pocket, then ran across the street. I hurried up to the corner and peered around the edge of the building, just in time to see him enter the municipal parking structure, where you get the first three hours free. This guy and I had at least one thing in common. If I had the choice, I would have saved the ten bucks and parked there, too, even if I knew I’d be coming back to the car with thirty thousand dollars.
I jogged up to the parking structure, and when I got there, he was just stepping into the elevator, leaving me with a split-second choice to make. I could either go in the elevator with him, or run up the stairs and somehow try to meet him at whatever floor he stopped at. It wasn’t that hard a choice to make.
I rushed into the elevator.
He grabbed me as I came in, threw me back against the wall, and slammed his fist into my stomach. I keeled over, grasping at his shirt as I went down, pulling it out of his pants. The packet of money hit the floor just before I did.
I ended up face-down on the floor, mouth open wide, unable to breathe, clutching my stomach, my body on top of his money. I was panicked. It wasn’t the pain as much as it was the shock and the inability to breathe.
That’s when he started kicking me in the ribs, again and again, screaming, “Get up! Get up you motherfucker!”
I wanted to say, “If you’ll stop kicking me, I will,” but I couldn’t breathe, much less form words. With each kick, I imagined bones shattering and internal organs bursting like water balloons. That’s what it felt like. He was killing me.
His foot must have finally got sore, or he got bored, because he stopped kicking me, grabbed me by my shirt, and rolled me over.
He hesitated for a moment, then picked up his money, scowling with disgust, holding it by its edges. The envelope was soiled with big, wet stains.
“Shit, you pissed all over my money!”
I wasn’t surprised. Somewhere between the punch and the third kick, I’d lost all control of my body. I was just a lump of pain and misery and I wanted to die.
“What the fuck’s the matter with you?” He kicked me sharply in the balls. I didn’t think I could hurt any more than I already did. I was wrong. It was a tsunami of pain that swamped my entire body, from my groin to the tips of the individual hairs on my head. “What am I supposed to do with money that smells like piss?”
I gagged and began to choke on my undigested pizza. I imagine Spenser would have had a wittier answer. He probably wouldn’t have started crying.
I did.
He glared at me with utter fury, breathing hard, his chin trembling. It’s hard work kicking a guy when he’s down.
“You can tell her this is what I’ll do to her face, if I ever see you or anybody else on my ass again.”
He lifted his foot back to give me a good kick in the face, one that would flatten my nose against the inside of my skull, and I closed my eyes, like that would actually give me any protection.
I heard a ding and felt nothing. I opened my eyes to blurrily see him shoving his way past a shocked family of six standing outside the elevator doors.
“The queer grabbed my balls,” he said by way of explanation.
“We’ll take the stairs, Martha,” the father told his family, hustling them away from me. I would have thanked them for their help if I’d been able to speak. Just by being there, they saved my face.
With the beating finished, I managed to suck in some air and cough out some puke. It cleared my vision enough for me to clearly see the number eight on a pillar outside, and to realize I was on the eighth floor. It would take the blackmailer some time to drive down to the street.
Now, this is when a very weird thing happened. My prehistoric monkey brain, the part of our minds that’s unchanged from the caveman days, must have been hardwired for detective work. I should have been curled up in a fetal position in my puddle of piss, puke, and tears, whimpering for help. Instead, I reached up and hit the button for the first floor, pain ricocheting around inside of me. The doors closed and my arm dropped. I felt the elevator descending. I willed myself to pull out my camera from my pocket and slid myself around to face the door.
