"Shadow - 360215 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Hit The Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

staring with horror. And the native knife. She should have had that figured long
ago,
Tyson was the only studio employee with a key to the building where props
used in "The Voodoo Vow" had been stacked away. Nobody else could have
gotten at the bizarre weapons the killer had used-the machete and the blowgun.
Inside, the men were beginning to shovel the stones back into their square
black nest. Grace groped in the deep pocket of her Russian smock, fingers closing
over the steely coldness of the midget automatic she carried there. "That's two
narrow squeaks since this cursed picture crowd showed." Butch growled. "First
was Boyd, all but walkin' in on the gold plate Ty had stacked in a crate of plugs.
And him with Tyson's only keys, too!"
Jake, the fence, kept on pushing away the "hot ice."
"Seven years of breaks, you can't expect everything. With Tyson actin' any
part from a pushcart guy to a visiting duke, and Waxy fixin' up his pan according,
things ain't been too tough."
Butch started a reply, then his voice broke into a startled grunt. Grace,
automatic leveled to cover them, had eased the screen door open and started
forward with stern purpose in her eyes.
But that wasn't what warned Butch Pember. Behind the girl from Noonan's, a
voice yelled sharply.
"The dame! Watch her, boys!"
Arms flung about the agency detective's slim shoulders, knocking down her
gun hand with brute force. The automatic, springing from stunned fingers, leaped
away like a jackrabbit. Before she could twist to meet the unexpected rear attack,
she was pinioned helplessly in a grip of terrific power.
Waxy Lubin's distorted face leered over her shoulder as she tried to turn.
Panting, fighting like a hellcat, using sharp heels and writhing body, Grace
battled to break that grip.
But the malformed make-up man only croaked with malignant laughter. His
long, apelike arms imprisoned her as relentlessly as steel bands.
His subnormal height was the only weapon nature had handed her for a fight
that left every other trick in the monster's stack. They stood eye to eye. Eeling in
that wicked grip, Grace had twisted to partly face him. His hot breath blasted in
her face.
Her head thrust forward suddenly, like that of a striking snake. Small, strong
teeth pinioned Lubin's bulbous nose between white rows-and clamped. They
clamped hard.
With a shriek of anguished astonishment, the ape-man let his powerful hands
fly from their old grip to a belated defense. Grace whirled away from him.
Like a catapulted bullet, she dove across the room toward the little automatic
that glittered where it had fallen almost at Butch Pember's feet.
A huge paw smacked flat across her chin with the power of a driven pistol.
Butch had awakened from his amazement at Grace's attack.
Off balance, Grace struggled to ward off a second descending clout from
Pember's rock-ribbed fist. It landed Just where he'd planned it to. Her jaw
snapped back inches. Then she crumpled against him.
Vaguely, she knew that she was being carried across the room. Sudden
darkness enveloped her, and she heard a latch click. She was held erect by a
strength not in her battered body-by the narrow walls of the closet, so close
together that she couldn't fall.