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

“Drop the knife,” I said.

“This is my special knife. I got it in ‘Nam.” He just stood there, smiling, as if I wouldn’t notice he was twenty years too young to have been in Vietnam. “What if I put it in my pocket and I just walk away, no harm done?”

“You could,” I said.

He retracted the blade and his hand started towards his pocket.

“But you’d better ask yourself a question first,” I said. “Do you feel lucky today?”

His smile began to waver and his hand, the one with the knife, stopped before reaching his pocket.

“Well, do you, punk?” I grinned.

I probably sounded more like Bart Simpson than Clint Eastwood, but the props and the atmosphere more than compensated for it. From the way he looked at me, I could tell he’d decided I was crazy. He dropped the knife.

“This was a setup,” he said. “You’re one of those psycho-assholes who goes looking for trouble.”

“What if I am?” I asked, motioning him towards me with my free hand. “Walk this way until I tell you to stop.”

As he came towards me, I moved off to one side, and we made a little circle, until I was near my car and he ended up where I’d been standing before.

“Stop right there and empty all your pockets,” I said, “then pull them out so I can see them.”

“Fuck you.”

“You want to make this hard?” I shrugged and aimed my gun at his groin. “Go ahead, make my day.”

He must have seen something in my eyes, because he quickly held up his hands in submission. “Okay, okay, I’ll empty them.”

He hesitated for a moment, then slowly reached into his jacket. First one wallet, and then another, and then another, hit the ground. Then watches, necklaces, and some car keys. Then he got to his pants; out came some condoms, some loose change, and another wallet, which I figured was his.

I shook my head at him. “You’ve been a bad boy.”

“No worse than you, motherfucker.”

I grinned again. I liked that he thought I was tough. But the truth was, if I didn’t have my fake gun, by now I probably would have given him my car keys, my wallet, and been sobbing for mercy while he butt-fucked me into the pavement.

As much as I was enjoying the moment, I didn’t want to press my luck. If I stayed much longer, I was afraid the guy would see my gun in the right light and realize it was a fake and kill me with his bare hands. Or somebody would drive in, see me with the gun, and think I was the criminal. And if I was really unlucky, that somebody would be a highway patrolman.

“I want you to crawl into the bathroom, then lie face down on the floor with your feet sticking out the door so I can see them.”

“No fucking way I’ll crawl for you or anybody else,” he said. “You’re gonna have to shoot me, asshole.”

I sighed. “Works for me.”

I aimed at his head.

He immediately dropped to his knees and glared at me. I grinned at him.

“A man’s got to know his limitations,” I said. “You can thank me for showing you yours. Start crawling.”

He turned around and began to crawl towards the bathrooms, his butt facing me. “You better hope I never see you again, motherfucker.”

I ran up and kicked him in the stomach, and when he hit the ground on his side, I kicked him twice in the head. He went limp and lolled on his back. I wasn’t sure if he was faking it until I heard his bladder empty against the inside of his pants. I was certain he was unconscious then. No one goes that far to be convincing.

I pushed him onto his stomach, rushed to my car, and got out the roll of duct tape. I hog-tied him with the tape, checked his pulse to make sure I hadn’t killed him (though I don’t know what I would have done if I had), and left him there with his stolen goods. If he didn’t get arrested, and somehow managed to get away, he would certainly think twice about robbing someone else at a deserted rest stop.

“You’ll rue the night you met Dirty Harvey,” I hissed at him. It was the first time I’d ever said rue to anybody, whether they were conscious to hear it or not.

I picked up his car keys and his knife and drove off in a hurry.

A half-mile away, I tossed his things out the window and smiled to myself, a smile that lasted for the next two hours.

I considered the experience at the rest stop good practice for the day I’d meet Arlo Pelz again, a day I hoped would come very soon.

***

I arrived in Spokane at daybreak. It didn’t impress me much as a city. If it was worth visiting, somebody would have set a TV series there by now.

It struck me as the kind of place where everybody drove a pickup with a camper shell and owned at least one pair of overalls. There were plenty of old buildings downtown, but I was never interested much in architecture.

I followed I-90 through the city and then drove up Division Street, a row of fast-food franchises that would become the northbound 395 and take me to Deerlick.

As I drove past Riverfront Park, I could see the skeletal remains of the big tent that was the centerpiece of the 1974 World’s Fair. It was certainly no Space Needle. That should tell you something about the city’s character.

I guess they built a big tent as their enduring landmark, instead of a huge camper shell, because they didn’t have the money to erect the giant Ford pickup to go with it.

I only had one set of clothes left after the fire, and I’d just spent the night in them. So I stopped at a Wal-Mart and bought a few shirts, some underwear and socks, and two pairs of pants. I also bought a denim, letterman-style jacket to hide my gun and holster, some toiletries, a nylon gym bag, and a fresh Ace bandage for my ribs.

After making my purchases, I stopped at a Shell station and used the restroom to clean up, put on my new bandages, and change my clothes. I dumped my old clothes and bandages in the trash bin and hit the road.

I felt like a new man.

In fact, I know that I was.

It didn’t take long to put Spokane behind me and find myself winding through big stretches of farmland under bright, morning sun. As I passed places like Denison and Clayton and Jump Off Joe, I discovered it didn’t require much in Washington State to declare a patch of dirt a town, just a couple gas pumps and a burger place.

By the time I got to Deerlick, I wasn’t expecting much and I wasn’t disappointed. The turn-off took me down a narrow road past a trailer park, a small cemetery, and an old brick schoolhouse.

The center of the town was dominated by a ‘60s-era supermarket that might once have been the wreckage of a flying saucer before somebody got the bright idea of building a parking lot around it and selling groceries. The original bright colors of the supermarket had long since faded into shades of gray, the big windows fogged by countless layers of transparent tape used to hang posters for the last forty years.

The supermarket was bordered by Main Street, A Street, and Broadway, which were lined with old storefronts, most of them empty. There was a diner, a beauty salon, a barber shop, a drugstore, a tackle shop, and a post office.

I kept driving down the street, past the town center. There were a few car and boat repair shops, a gas station, and a bar; then the road took you behind the trailer park and around to the highway again.

I made a U-turn and headed back into town, took a right on A Street, and found myself in the residential section. The houses were fifty or sixty years old, the kind with porches and basements and detached garages. Almost all of them had some kind of beaten-up boat on a trailer in the driveway. There were bicycles and kids’ toys on the lawns and GM cars parked on the street. I wondered what kind of people lived there and what they did for a living and what would happen to the first person on the block who bought a Japanese car.

I turned around, parked in front of the supermarket, and got out of the car. I was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of sizzling bacon. A hunger I didn’t know I had suddenly asserted itself big time.