Slaughter - Lutz John (читать книги без txt) 📗

“We’ve got everything but the criminal.”

“I wouldn’t express it that way to the media,” Quinn said.

“So can I tell the press predators what you just told me? When I step outta here, they’re gonna be on me like a pack of mad dogs.”

Quinn tried to imagine that but couldn’t. Renz would surely have even larger mad dogs protecting him.

“I would tell the media only what I wanted them to know, Harley. At this point, we’re using them instead of the other way around.”

Renz seemed to like that observation. Quinn wasn’t so sure it was true, but at least it gave the illusion of progress.

“We clear on everything?” Renz asked. “Or do you have any questions that won’t be wasting my time?”

Quinn said, “I didn’t know you had an ex-wife.”

Renz hung up.

38

The next morning Quinn slept in and Pearl left the brownstone around seven o’clock to open the Q&A offices. The team of Sal and Harold were coming in early to prepare for an interview with the SBL Properties crane operator. He’d given his statement half a dozen times. Another wouldn’t hurt.

So far there had been only the occasional small contradiction. The crane hadn’t responded as usual to its controls. Quinn had heard that the operator was a redheaded guy named Perry, who looked about fourteen until a second look revealed he was about forty. He was still jumpy, and blamed himself for the crashing and carnage.

Of course, unless he was connected in some way to the acid that had melted some of the crane’s cables, or to the shaped charge, he had no reason to feel guilt.

Quinn poured himself a cup of coffee and went out to the tiny secluded courtyard behind the brownstone. There was a small green metal table there, and three green metal chairs. They were rust-free and weatherproof as long as Quinn painted them every spring.

Randall, the bulldog that lived next door, began to bark up a storm, until he heard Quinn’s voice and decided to be quiet.

One of these days, Quinn thought, Randall would be correct in his desperate prognosis of a catastrophe. Those were the odds, anyway. This kind of dog couldn’t be wrong all the time.

After Quinn used a paper towel to wipe down the table and one of the chairs, he spread open the two newspapers

Pearl had left for him, the Times and the Post. Despite them being already read by Pearl, and maybe by Jody, they were folded in reasonably neat fashion. He used another paper towel, folded in quarters, as a makeshift coaster for his coffee cup.

It was a beautiful, clear morning, with only a breath of breeze. Quinn fired up one of his Cuban cigars. He hadn’t kept up on the Mickey Mouse ordinances he kept hearing about. Didn’t know if the Cubans had become legal yet or not. Whether and where in the city he could smoke any kind of cigar didn’t much concern him. People who robbed and killed and blew up other people concerned him. Not if or where someone somewhere else was lighting up some tobacco.

Scofflaw bastard.

He sipped, inhaled, read.

The press didn’t seem as interested in the particulars of fires or crashing cranes or elevators as they were in the two dead, beautiful dancers who had both been elevated by the media to the chorus line in Other People’s Honey. The producers of the play knew how to wring tears and publicity from their prospective audience. There were plenty of questions to be asked. Had the two dancers died at the same time? In the same way? What were their last words? Did they suffer? Have husbands? children? (Neither was married or a mother.) What other plays or movies had they appeared in? What other celebrities did they know? Who were their favorites, not just in plays or in front of the cameras, but as real and dedicated human beings? Who was going to replace them in their current roles? Was the play now cursed?

Quinn sipped, smoked, and mulled over some of those questions, but not all.

In another part of town, Jordan Kray was avidly reading the same papers, plus the Daily News.

He was famous, all right. Not as his real name, but that didn’t matter. He knew, in the heart and depths of his fear, that at some point his real name would be revealed. It would be engraved on his tombstone or plaque.

Not the brief stint he’d done in the military. That might never be known. Not for sure. He’d joined under another name, another age, another mission.

But he wouldn’t lose his professional name. The Gremlin. The ghost in the machine. He liked the ring of it. It was memorable. When he thought about it, the throbbing in his brain, the relentless thrashing sound, would usually subside.

People would visit his grave. The public would finally recognize the voracious fire of genuine greatness. And how it could consume the bearer of the gift.

They would know real fame, real celebrity, when they saw it, heard it, feared it. Right how it was merely a speck on the horizon, a red carpet unrolled.

Right now.

39

Missouri, 1999

Jordan Kray thought he’d be given a simple instruction by the farmer, whose name was Luther Farr: Get out.

But Luther apparently decided there might be too much risk involved. Things didn’t stop growing, or rotting, because the hired help was . . . precariously balanced. Jordan seemed all right physically. In fact, he was a good worker, and there was still a lot of work to be done around the farm.

Jordan understood that his days and nights at the farm were limited. There was no way the family or any of the other Freedom Farm workers would understand. He had dismembered the goat to investigate its bone structure, see the thickness of the bones and sinew that permitted such butting power in such a small animal. How could anyone not realize that nothing wrong had been done? The goat was one of those animals people relied upon. It was leather, it was insulation, it was meat.

It was also cuter than a cow, and possibly more intelligent. Closer to the human mind if not body of the cow or ox. Or even the horse. When you looked into goats’ eyes, they often looked back at you with a certain calculation. A message: We’re both smarter than the hens. We should be friends and partners.

But of course that wasn’t true. Not the last part, anyway.

You should be food. You should be sacrificial. Like in Sunday school.

What he didn’t know was that the goat was Jasmine’s favorite pet. And Jasmine was the farmer’s favorite daughter.

Jasmine was sixteen, but mature for her age. Jordan was fond of her, or at least saw her as a desirable object. She seemed to return his interest. In fact, he was sure she’d developed a crush on him.

That could be useful.

A few times, Luther Farr had caught his daughter smiling at Jordan in a way he didn’t like. But all that had happened so far were some cautionary, scathing looks. Still, Luther was planting the seed of fear in Jordan. And Luther was on the edge of understanding that a boy like Jordan wasn’t rich soil in which fear might thrive. Something quite different from fear had already taken root.

One evening, at Jordan’s request, he and Jasmine met secretly in a copse of elm trees. They were well beyond the farmhouse and its clapboard addition. The addition was where the help slept. Including Jordan.

There were half a dozen youths living and working at the farm. Jordan wasn’t the only one there who’d had minor brushes with the law. What did people expect, from someone usually alone and with practically no money? There was in the land a catalyst that not many people had to experience: Hunger. Usually it was hunger that drove Jordan to larceny. Hunger and cold sometimes teamed up to edge him toward more serious crimes.