"Barker, Clive - Books of Blood 06" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

she knew him for the paragon he was.
'-1 need your help, Mr D'Amour; very badly.'
'I'm busy on several cases at the moment,' he told her.
'Maybe you could come to the office?'
'I can't leave the house,' the woman informed him.
Til explain everything. Please come.'
He was sorely tempted. But there were several out-
standing cases, one of which, if not solved soon, might
end in fratricide. He suggested she try elsewhere.
'I can't go to just anybody,' the woman insisted.
'Why me?'
'I read about you. About what happened in Brooklyn.'
Making mention of his most conspicuous failure was
not the surest method of securing his services, Harry
thought, but it certainly got his attention. What had
happened in Wyckoff Street had begun innocently
enough, with a husband who'd employed him to spy
on his adulterous wife, and had ended on the top storey
of the Lomax house with the world he thought he'd
known turning inside out. When the body-count was
done, and the surviving priests dispatched, he was left
with a fear of stairs, and more questions than he'd ever
answer this side of the family plot. He took no pleasure
in being reminded of those terrors.
'I don't like to talk about Brooklyn,' he said.
'Forgive me,' the woman replied, 'but I need
somebody who has experience with . . . with the
occult.' She stopped speaking for a moment. He could
still hear her breath down the line: soft, but erratic.
'I need you,' she said. He had already decided, in that
pause when only her fear had been audible, what reply
he would make.
Til come.'
'I'm grateful to you,' she said. 'The house is on East
61st Street -' He scribbled down the details. Her last
words were, 'Please hurry.' Then she put down the
phone.
He made some calls, in the vain hope of placating two
of his more excitable clients, then pulled on his jacket,
locked the office, and started downstairs. The landing
and the lobby smelt pungent. As he reached the front
door he caught Chaplin, the janitor, emerging from the
basement.
'This place stinks,' he told the man.
'It's disinfectant.'
'It's cat's piss,' Harry said. 'Get something done about
it, will you? I've got a reputation to protect.'

7
He left the man laughing.