"Block, Lawrence - CMS - This Crazy Business of Ours" - читать интересную книгу автора (Block Lawrence)

"I agree."

"We could drink to reputations and to legends."

"Fine."

"Or we could just drink to the line of work we're in. It's a crazy business, Lord knows, but it has its points."

They raised their glasses and drank.

*******

"When I was young," Colliard was saying, "I drank whiskey on occasion. A highball or two in the evening, say. And I often had a martini before dinner. Not when I was working, of course. I've never had alcohol in any form when I was on a job. But between jobs I'd have spirits now and then. But I stopped that altogether."

"Why was that?"

"I decided that they are damaging. I'm not talking about what they might do to one's liver so much as what they do to one's brain. I think they dull one's edge like a file drawn across a knife blade. Wine's another matter entirely. In moderation, of course."

"Of course."

"But I'm rambling, Michael. You don't want to hear all of this. I've been talking for an hour now."

"And I've been hanging on every word, sir. This is the sort of thing I want to hear."

"You're just taking this all in and filing it all away, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am," Haig admitted. "Everything you can tell me about the way you operate and...and even the way you live, your whole style. If there were fan clubs in our profession I guess I'd be the president of yours."

"You flatter me."

"It's not flattery, sir. And it's not entirely unselfish, believe me." Haig lowered his eyes. He had long lashes, the older man noted, and his hands, one of them now in repose upon the little marble table, were possessed of a certain sensitivity. The fellow had no flair, but then he was young, unfinished. He himself had been relatively undefined at that age.

"I know I can learn from you," Michael Haig went on. "I've already learned a good deal from you, you know. Oh, it's hard to separate hard fact from legend, but I've picked up a lot from what I've heard about your career. Even though we've never met before, what I've known about you has helped form my whole attitude toward our profession."

"Really."

"Yes. Some months ago I had a problem, or at least it seemed like a problem to me. The, uh, the target was a woman."

"The client's wife?"

"Yes. You don't know the case?"

Colliard smiled, shook his head. "It's almost always the client's wife," he said. "But do continue. I gather this was the first time you had a woman for a target?"

"Yes, it was."

"And I gather further that it bothered you?"

Haig frowned at the question. "I think it bothered me," he said. "The idea of it seemed to bother me. I certainly wasn't afraid that I couldn't do it. If you pull a trigger, why should it matter to you what's standing in front of you? But, oh, I had difficulty with self-image, I guess you might say. It's one thing putting the touch to some powerful man who ought to be able to look out for himself and another thing entirely doing the same to a defenseless woman."