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

"The weaker sex," Colliard murmured.

"But then I asked myself, 'What about Wilson Colliard? How would he feel about a situation like this?' And that straightened me out, because I knew you'd killed women in your career, and I suppose what I told myself was that if it was all right for you to do, well, it was all right for me."

"And you went ahead and fulfilled the assignment."

"Yes."

"With no difficulty?"

"None." Michael Haig smiled, and Colliard felt there was pride in the smile. Proud as a puppy, he thought, and every bit as eager. "I killed her with a knife," he said. "Made it look like a burglary."

"And it felt no different than if she had been a man?"

"No different at all. There was that thrilling moment when I did it, that sensation that's always there, but it was no different from the way it always was."

Then a shadow flickered on the younger's man face, and Colliard, amused, left him wondering for a moment before rescuing him. "Yes," he said, "that little shiver of delight and triumph and something more. It's always there for me, too, Michael. In case you were wondering."

"I was, sir."

"The best people always get a thrill out of it, Michael. We don't do it for the thrill, of course. We do it for the money. But there's a touch of excitement in the act and it would be puerile to deny it. Don't bother worrying about it."

"I don't know that I was worried, exactly. But thank you, sir."

Colliard smiled. Now of whom did this young man remind him? The eagerness, the sincerity-God, the almost painful sincerity. It all held a sense of recognition, but recognition of whom? His own younger self? The son he had never sired? Those were the standard echoes one got, weren't they?

Yet he didn't really think he'd been very much like Michael Haig in his own younger days, not really. Had there been a veteran hand at the game whom he'd idolized? Certainly not. Could he ever, at his most callow, have been capable of playing the role Haig was playing in this conversation? No. God, no.

Nor would he have wanted a son like this youth, or indeed any sort of son at all. Women were a pleasure, certainly, like good food and good wine, like anything beautiful and luxurious and costly. But they were to be enjoyed and discarded. One didn't want to own one, and one surely wouldn't care to breed with them, to produce offspring, to litter the landscape with Xerox copies of oneself.

And yet he could not deny that he was enjoying this afternoon. The younger man's company was refreshing in its way, there was no denying that, and the idolatry he provided was pleasant food for the ego.

And it was not as if he had any pressing engagements.

"So you'd like to hear me talk about...what? My life and times? My distinguished career?"

"I'd like that very much."

"Anecdotes and bits of advice? The perspective gained through years at the top of this crazy business? All that sort of thing?"

"All of that. And anything else you'd care to tell me."

Wilson Colliard considered for a moment, then rose to his feet. "I'm going to smoke a cigar," he announced. I allow myself one or two a day. They're Havanas, not terribly hard to get if you know someone. I acquired a taste for them, oh, it must be twenty years ago. I did a job of work down there, you see. But I suppose you know the story."

"I don't, and I'd love to hear it."

"Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will, Michael. But first may I bring a cigar for you?"

Michael Haig accepted the cigar. Somehow this did not surprise Wilson Colliard in the least.