Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

I wondered why he was driving a brand new Ford Focus, which didn’t strike me as his kind of car, not that I knew him that well. I knew his foot pretty good, though, and it seemed like it belonged in a pickup truck or a used Firebird.

I wondered how he knew Lauren Parkus and what he could know about her that she was afraid of.

And I wondered how I would find him so I could do to him what he did to me.

By sunrise, I didn’t have any better understanding than I did before, but I promised myself that by the end of the day, I would.

It would require a radical change in approach. So far, all I’d been doing was following people. So I decided that today, on my day off, I would blaze a trail of my own.

***

“Jesus Christ, Harvey, you’re a security officer,” Sergeant Victor Banos said after I told him what I told Clay. “You should have been able to take the guy.”

“He caught me by surprise.”

“You still should have taken him,” Victor said. “I would have taken him. I know how to handle myself.”

“I bet you do,” I said. “Probably half a dozen times a day, too.”

“You’re a worthless piece of shit, Mapes. You don’t deserve to wear the badge.”

“It’s not a badge,” I said, “It’s a patch.”

“What’s the fucking difference?”

I walked out before he could humiliate me any further. I was almost at my car when Cyril Parkus drove out of the gate and came up beside me in his wife’s Range Rover.

“What happened to you, Harvey?” Parkus asked.

That question was becoming my theme song. It was a shame Sammy Davis, Jr. wasn’t around any more to do the vocals.

“I took the elevator when I should have taken the stairs,” I replied. “Look, Mr. Parkus, I don’t have anything to tell you right now.”

“What do you mean?” he snapped. “She did something yesterday, and I want to know what it was. That’s what I paid you for.”

“Your wife is being blackmailed,” I replied. “If you give me a few hours, I can tell you who’s doing it and maybe even why. Just stay close to her today; don’t let her leave the house alone. Then come up with an excuse to meet me at Denny’s around six.”

He studied me for a long moment. “I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing, Harvey.”

So did I. Because at that precise moment, watching him make a U-turn and drive back up to the house, I didn’t have the slightest idea how I was going to pull off what I’d just promised.

***

I rushed back to Thrifty in Northridge and went through the photos right there at the counter.

Even with Lauren’s eyes hidden by her sunglasses, her anger and her fear still came through, maybe even stronger than it did when I saw her on the Pier. Pictures are funny that way.

I pulled out my magnifying glass and studied the guy who kicked my ass, hoping to spot a tattoo or fraternal ring or something else I might use to find out who he was. No such luck.

I’d have to rely on the license plate and come up with some scam to get the DMV to spit out his name and address for me.

In theory, anyway, that was a good idea. What I really needed was a plugged-in techno-buddy who could hack into anything anywhere. Just about every private eye, secret agent, and suave adventurer has a buddy like that these days.

My buddy could have a name like Joe “Hard Drive” Hardigan.

But I didn’t have a buddy like that yet.

I also didn’t have a picture of the license plate. I had a picture of the back tires and a chunk of the car’s bumper.

There was something on the bumper, though, that caught my eye. I looked at it under the magnifying glass. It was a tiny green sticker, a stylish rendering of the letter “S” and a code number underneath: “UC2376.”

It looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. I figured it was a parking permit of some kind, but from where? The UC could stand for the University of California, and could come from any of their campuses statewide, though the guy who beat me up didn’t look like a student to me.

The sticker could also be a parking permit for a factory, an office building, a government office, or even a gated community like the one I guarded. The possibilities were endless.

As I walked outside to my car, it occurred to me again how unusual I thought it was for the blackmailer to be driving a new Ford Focus, a practical economy car. It’s the last car a guy like that would buy.

So I decided to assume that the car wasn’t his.

Which meant it could be stolen, though if you’re gonna steal a car, it would be something nicer than Ford Focus, even if all you were gonna to do with it was take a joyride. There’s no joy in riding in a Ford Focus, believe me.

If I assumed it wasn’t stolen, that he’d borrowed it, then maybe it belonged to his employer. Perhaps the sticker meant it was a fleet car of some kind.

And then it hit me, just as I reached my little Kia Sephia.

It was a rental car.

Right away, I knew my deduction was right. I knew it because it matched the evidence, it was logical, and it fit my astute observations of his character.

And I knew it because the tiny green sticker on his bumper was the same as the one on my car.

***

The lady behind the counter at the Swift Rent-A-Car office on Ventura Boulevard looked like she’d been manufactured at the same plant where they make stewardesses, bank tellers, telephone operators, and Barbie dolls.

She was blond, blue-eyed, and her body had all the right measurements so she could fit into her pre-tailored, green rent-a-car gal uniform. I was hoping she’d be just as robotic and predictable as her appearance promised.

“May I help you?” she chirped.

I strode up in a new polo shirt and khakis I bought at K-Mart.

“My name is John D. MacDonald, and I’m a best-selling author of mystery novels. I’m doing some research for my next book, and I was hoping you could help me with a technical question about the rental car industry.”

I said it all quickly, in a nervous blurt, just the way I’d memorized it. I also whipped out a new paperback reprint of Nightmare in Pink and held it in front of me like an ID.

“What does the D stand for?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

I wasn’t prepared for improvisation. I’d come up with a very detailed script, and already she was deviating from her part.

“The D,” she repeated. “People don’t usually mention their middle initial unless they are very proud of it.”

“What about Captain James T. Kirk? He tells everybody about his middle initial, even aliens who don’t understand English and certainly don’t give a damn.”

“Tiberius.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what his T stands for,” she explained. “Would you like to know what Doctor McCoy’s middle name was?”

“Actually, what I’d like to know is what this means.” I handed her the photo of the blackmailer’s bumper.

“What for?” she asked.

“My hero, Travis McGee, is tossed out of a car. And just before he passes out on the road, he sees that sticker with the logo and number. I was wondering what he could deduce from that clue.”

“He didn’t know the people in the car?”

“No,” I replied testily, “they were thugs.”

“What about the license plate?” she said. “Wouldn’t he look at that, instead of a tiny bumper sticker?”

“There are no plates.”

“Weren’t the thugs worried that by driving around without plates, a cop might pull them over while they’re holding McGee hostage?”

“They are on a rural country road where there are no cops.”

“They didn’t have to drive on other roads first to get to the rural road?”

“No.”

She shrugged. “I’d rethink the whole situation, if I were you. It doesn’t sound too plausible to me.”

“Could you please just tell me what the numbers on the sticker mean?”

“The first three characters identify the rental location,” she said. “The remaining numbers identify the vehicle.”