James White Cykl Szpital kosmiczny (02) Gwiezdny chirurg
James Alan Gardner [League Of Peoples 06] Trapped
James Alan Gardner [League Of Peoples 04] Hunted
James Axler Outlander 26 Sea of Plague
Fae Sutherland & Chelsea James His Every Breath (pdf)
James Axler Outlander 10 Outer Darkness
James Axler Deathlands 049 Shadow World
James Axler Deathlands 043 Dark Emblem
Curwood James Oliver Szara wilczyca
77.Fiolki sa niebieskie .JAMES PATTERSON
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Outside the window I could see a round blue place in the sky and birds trapped
inside it. Perry's secretary said he had not come to the office yet. I called
his number on Poinciana Island.
"Legion threatened Clete and Barbara?" I said.
"Yeah, on the phone, late last night. He threatened me, too. He thinks
I'm writing a book about him," he replied. I could hear him breathing into the
receiver.
"You told Barbara?"
"Yeah, she said she has a pistol and she's looking forward to parking one
in his buckwheats."
Page 167
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Did you warn Clete?" I asked.
"No."
"Why not?" I asked.
"I just didn't."
Because he's of no value to you, I thought.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"Nothing. You told the sheriff Legion wasn't human. What did you mean?"
His voice make an audible click in the phone.
"He can speak in what sounds like an ancient or dead language. He did it
last night," he said.
"It's probably just bad French," I said, and quietly hung up.
I looked at the phone, my ears popping, and wondered how Perry enjoyed
being lied to for a change, particularly when he was frightened to death.
I called Clete twice and got his answering machine. I left messages both
times. By late that afternoon Helen and I had a warrant to search Marvin
Oates's shotgun house on St. Peter Street. Marvin was not at home, but we
called the landlord and got him to open the house. It had stopped raining and
the sky overhead was blue and ribbed with pink clouds, but out over the Gulf
another storm was building and the thunder reverberated dully through Marvin's
tin roof as we dumped out all his drawers, pulled his clothes off hangers,
flipped his mattress upside down, raked all the cookware out of his kitchen
cabinets, and generally wreaked havoc on the inside of his house.
But we found nothing that was of any value to us.
Except five strips of pipe tape hanging loose from an empty niche in the
back of the dresser, tape that was strong enough to hold a handgun in place
against the wood.
"I bet that's where he hid the nine-millimeter he used to kill Frankie
Dogs," I said.
"It's still hard for me to make that guy for anything except a meltdown,
Dave," Helen said.
"I knew an old-time moonshiner who once told me the man who kills you
will be at your throat before you ever know it," I said.
"Yeah? I don't get it," she said.
"What kind of guy could get close enough to cap Frankie Dogs?" I said.
Before I went home that evening I drove to Clete's apartment, but his blinds
were closed and his car was gone. I slipped a note under his door, asking him
to call me.
When I got home, the sky was maroon-colored, full of birds, the
thunderheads over the Gulf banked in a long black line just above the horizon.
One of Alafair's friends was spending the night and had blocked the driveway
with her automobile, and I parked my truck by the boat ramp and walked up to
the house. A few minutes later I looked through the front window and saw my
friend, the ex-soldier, hosing down the truck, then scrubbing the camping
shell in back with a long-handled push broom.
I walked back down the slope.
"There's another storm coming. Maybe you should wait on washing the
truck," I said.
"That's okay. I just want to get the mud off. Then later I can just run
the hose over it," he said.
"How you getting along?" I asked.
"I had a little trouble sleeping. The sound of your refrigeration
equipment comes through the walls. When I put the pillow over my head, I
don't hear it so much."
"You want to join us for supper?"
"That's all right, Loot. I went into town with Batist and bought some
groceries," he said.
Page 168
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
I turned to walk back to the house.
"There was an old guy here in a red pickup truck," he said. "He asked if
somebody in a purple Cadillac convertible had been around. A guy named
Purcel."
"What'd this guy look like?" I asked.
"Tall, with deep lines in his face. I told him I didn't know anybody
named Purcel." The ex-soldier scratched his cheek and looked quizzically into
space.
"What is it?" I said.
"He told me to go inside and ask the nigger. That's the word he used,
just like everybody did. I told him he should watch what he called other
people. He didn't like it."
"His name is Legion Guidry, Doc. He's one of those we don't let get
behind us."
"Who is he?"
"I wish I knew, partner," I said.
After supper I walked out on the gallery and tried to read the newspaper, but
I couldn't concentrate. The sky began to darken, and a flock of egrets rose
out of the swamp and scattered like white rose petals over the top of my
house, then the wind kicked up again and I heard rain clicking in the trees. I
folded the newspaper and went back inside. Bootsie was reading a novel by
Steve Yarbrough under a floor lamp. She closed her book, using her thumb to
mark her place, her eyes veiled.
"Do you think your friend, the war vet out there, is a hundred percent?"
she said.
"Probably not. But he's harmless," I replied.
"How do you know?"
"Good people don't change. Sometimes bad ones do. But good people don't."
"You're incurably romantic, Dave."
"Think so?"
She laughed loudly, then went back to her book. I walked into the
kitchen, hoping she did not detect my real mood. Because the truth was my
skin was crawling with anxiety, the same kind I'd experienced during my
flirtation with amphetamines. But this time the cause wasn't the white worm;
it was an abiding sense that my loyal friend Clete Purcel was skating on the
edge of another calamity.
"Where you going?" Bootsie said.
"To Clete's. I'll be back in a few minutes," I said.
"You worried about him?"
"I've left him several messages. Clete always calls me as soon as he gets
the message."
"Maybe he's in New Orleans."
"Legion Guidry was at the bait shop today. He wanted to know if Clete had
been around."
Her book fell off her knee. Her reading glasses were full of light when
she looked at me.
I drove to his apartment on the Loreauville Road. The underwater lights were
on in the swimming pool, and the apartment manager, an elderly Jewish man who
had been a teenager in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, was stacking the
poolside furniture under a sheltered walkway.
"Have you seen Clete Purcel, Mr. Lemand?" I asked.
"Early this morning. He was putting his fishing things in the back of his
car. A young woman was with him," he replied.
"Did he say when he might be back?"
"No, he didn't. I'm sorry," Mr. Lemand said. He was a bald, wizened man,
with brown eyes and delicate hands. He always wore a tie and a starched shirt
Page 169
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
and was never seen at a dinner table without his coat on. "You're the second
person who asked me about Mr. Purcel today."
"Oh?"
"A man in a red truck was here. He sat for a long time in the parking
lot, under the trees, smoking cigarettes. Maybe because of your line of work
you know this man," Mr. Lemand said.
"How do you mean?"
He inverted a plastic chair and placed it on a table.
"In my childhood I saw eyes like his. That was in Germany, in times quite
different from our own. He wanted to know if Mr. Purcel was with Ms.
Shanahan.
You know, Ms. Shanahan, who works in the district attorney's office? I
didn't tell him."
"Good for you."
"Do you think he'll come back, this man in the truck?"
"Call me if he does. Here, I'll put my home number on the back of my
business card," I said, and handed it to him.
"This man had an odor. At first I thought I was imagining it. But I
wasn't. It was vile," he said.
His eyes searched my face for an explanation. But I had none to give him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
