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

Like a drooling dog, I followed the scent of bacon to the diner across the street.

***

The Chuck Wagon was the kind of ‘50s diner that people in LA buy to renovate into authentic ‘50s diners.

You lose the real place, with history you can read in the sedimentary layers of grease on the walls, and end up with Johnny Rockets or the Denny’s in Camarillo, full of sparkling chrome and shiny, colored tile and a jukebox playing Chuck Berry songs. You end up with a diner the way people think they should have looked, not the way they actually did.

There was nothing shiny about the Chuck Wagon and there was no jukebox. The red-vinyl upholstery in the booths was torn. The linoleum counters and floors were scuffed and chipped. The wood-paneled walls were yellowed by sunlight and steam. There were store-bought bottles of catsup and jars of mustard at every table. The windows had ratty drapes and the ceiling fan twirled lazily.

It was my kind of place.

The Chuck Wagon was about half-full, and just about all the customers were deeply-tanned men wearing faded jeans, faded shirts, and sweat-stained baseball caps that advertised outboard motors or farm equipment. The Evinrudes and Chris Crafts and John Deeres looked at me in my new shirt, new jacket, and new slacks as if I were some kind of alien being the likes of which they hadn’t seen since the supermarket landed from outer space in 1962.

I smiled feebly and took a seat at the counter. I snatched the one-page, laminated menu from the napkin holder and gave it a quick look.

There were less than a dozen items on the menu: combinations of eggs, pancakes, hamburgers, and steaks. On the back there was a list of four homemade pies (apple, pecan, chocolate, and banana cream) and two kinds of ice cream, chocolate or vanilla, to choose from. The prices were covered with white tape and written over by hand in ballpoint pen. There wasn’t anything over six bucks. I wanted to try everything.

“What’ll it be, sir?” the waitress asked wearily.

I looked up and saw a tired woman in her forties, stuffed into a too-tight, stained white uniform, her hair pinned into a bun. She wore a bra that made her breasts look like airplane engines, her name stitched in script across one of them.

I ordered the Rancher’s Breakfast of eggs, steak, bacon, pancakes, and hash browns, and asked Georgette for an extra-thick chocolate shake to wash it down with.

While I waited for my meal, I watched the short-order cook move piles of hash browns and stacks of bacon strips around the grill, making room for the eggs and pancakes and steaks he was preparing. In between all that, he ladled oil onto the grill and used an ice cream scooper to dig butter out of a bucket, dropping the gobs into his frying pans. It was excruciating, gastronomical foreplay.

By the time Georgette set my plate down in front of me, I was so hungry I was nearly slobbering. I wolfed the hot meal down in about ten minutes and immediately ordered another shake.

It may have been the best breakfast I ever had in my life.

When she brought me the shake, with a dollop of whipped cream sprayed on top, I was sated and finally ready to get to work.

“Excuse me,” I said, stifling a burp. “Have you seen Arlo around?”

She looked like I’d slapped her, but she recovered quickly. I guess she was used to being slapped.

“Who?” she asked unconvincingly.

“Arlo Pelz,” I replied, and took a big slurp of the shake to drown out another burp. “You know Arlo, don’t you Georgette?”

I was aware that everybody in the restaurant had stopped talking. They were all listening, which was fine with me. The more people who heard, the better. I wasn’t all that great at detecting, so I figured it would be a lot easier to let him find me.

“I haven’t seen him,” she said. “You a friend of his?”

“You could say that.” I smiled and leaned over, plucked a pen from her apron pocket, and started scrawling a note on my napkin. “If he stops by, maybe you could give him this for me.”

I wrote: Jolene is really into her TV. She asked me to thank you. Your pal from the Sno-Inn.

I read it out-loud in case she lost it, and so everybody else got my message. I wrapped the napkin around a ten-dollar bill and put it, and the pen, back in her apron pocket.

“I appreciate it,” I said, flashing her another insincere smile.

She dropped my breakfast check on the counter and walked away without bothering to ask me first if maybe I wanted a slice of pie or something.

I took the hint, though I would have liked to try a slice. I gulped down the last of my shake, dropped another ten on the counter, and walked out.

I visited the barbershop, the beauty salon, and the drugstore, and left pretty much the same message at each place. In the post office, I asked the aged clerk behind the counter if he knew where the Pelz family lived.

“There isn’t any family left here except for little Billy,” the clerk said. “Still lives at their place on A street. Sixteen A Street.”

“What about Arlo,” I asked. “Seen him around?”

The old man narrowed his eyes at me. “Once, right after he got out of prison. You a friend of his?”

“Not really,” I said. “How about you?”

The clerk just turned and walked away, disappearing into the back of the post office.

I walked out and went next door to the tackle shop. They sold fishing poles, reels, lures, hooks, and all kinds of worms, crickets, and maggots. A man sat at the counter stringing a fly. As I got closer, I realized if you drew a line connecting the five moles on his cheek, you could make a lopsided star. I wondered if he knew that.

He looked up at me as I approached the counter. “Can I help you?”

“I’m up here doing some fishing,” I said.

“Whatcha interested in catching?” he asked. “Salmon, trout, perch, bass, mackinaw?”

“Arlo Pelz.”

I felt really cool saying that. I don’t think Mannix could have delivered it any better.

“I understand he’s a bottom-feeder native to these parts,” I said.

He stopped working on his lure, stood up, and gave me a hard look. “Are you a cop of some kind?”

I smiled thinly. “Of some kind.”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Where do you suppose he’d be likely to go, if he came back for a visit?”

He thought for a minute. He wasn’t searching for the answer, he was trying to decide if the answer might get him hurt.

“You could check out his place on A Street,” the man replied. “Of course, you’d have to get past Little Billy first.”

I shrugged as if getting past anyone was easy for me. “Anyplace else?”

“Maybe the woods around the lake,” he said. “He used to hang out there a lot when he was a kid.”

“Why was that?”

“Same reason kids still do,” he replied. “To drink and fuck. He also liked to hide there.”

“What was he hiding from?”

“Everybody,” he replied. “He used to work in the marina, fixing outboards, before he gave that up to break into homes on the lake. Vacation places, empty most of the time. It’d be months before anyone realized they’d been robbed.”

“Where can I find the lake?” I asked.

“It’s about ten miles farther up the highway,” the man said. “Can’t miss it. Big Rock Lake.”

I got that chill of creepy realization up my back, only I was missing out on the realization part. I didn’t know why the name of the lake sounded strangely familiar to me.

“They got some place to stay the night up there besides the woods?” I asked.

“You can rent a cabin at the Big Rock Lake Resort.”

I got that chill again and it bugged me. I thanked the man for his help and left, thinking maybe the fresh air would clear my head.

It wasn’t until I’d crossed the street and was halfway to my car that I remembered where I’d heard the name of the lake before.

Actually, I didn’t remembering hearing it, I remembered seeing it. On the peeling, faded sign that hung above Cyril Parkus’ fireplace. The sign that said Big Rock Lake Resort.