"deaths_option" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barton Gary)

figured I'd get the whole set-up when we reached Janet's.

It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't reach Janet's!

I leaned over to pull a pack of butts from my trousers pocket. I thought
the top of the cab had caved in; crashed down on my head! I slumped down
off the seat, grabbed for the coat that moved in the blur above me. I
yanked down with one hand; my other diving for my shoulder holster. It
never made it. Again something crashed over my skull, and my head seemed
to leave my shoulders. I don't remember anything after that; no shooting
stars--nothing. I just went out of this world!

Somebody seemed to be setting off little explosions inside my head. I was
sorry that I had regained consciousness. I was rolling. I wondered where.
I wondered how long I had been out. Then I remembered as my head began to
clear. I was in the bottom of the cab. I pulled myself up to the seat. We
were on the Henry Hudson Parkway.

"Where the hell are you going?" I shouted to the driver.

"Westchester," he called through the partition. "Your friend said you'd had
too many vanillas an' passed out. He said to-"

I didn't hear the rest. I swore my head off. I don't know whether the blue
smoke was wafted at the cabby or at Wayne Marsh. I didn't care. I only knew
that I was good and mad for the way I'd let Janet's brother hang one on me.
And once more I began to think about this "or else" business that Wayne had
put on his sister's producer. It was logical that he had put me temporarily
out of the way to give his sister a chance to get out of town; that he really
knew she had killed Goldswaite. It was also logical that he had done it to
put himself in the clear. I weighed the two. I didn't get an answer.

I started to tell the cabby to go back to the address Wayne had first given
him. Then I reflected that it had been phony. I ordered him to pull off the
Parkway and find a phone booth. I could call headquarters and have them put
out a quiet for Wayne, and at the same time have them get Janet's address
from Gracey. They should have Lana and Gracey pumped dry down there by now.

The heap wheeled into the curb in front of a drugstore up in the Marble Hill
section. I hopped out and went into the phone booth; got Haley at homicide.

"Well--if it isn't Philo Vance," the lieutenant snarled. "Listen, Kane--any
more boners like that one you pulled tonight, and you'll wind up back in a
blue serge suit."

"I don't get it," I started.

"Goldswaite wasn't murdered! The coroner's autopsy shows he died a natural
death. Ulcers! If those two witnesses you had us put the heat on ever squawk,
I'll get in the grease with the commissioner. And Lord help you if I do!"