"Ellison-SensibleCity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

HARLAN ELLISON

SENSIBLE CITY

DURING THE THIRD WEEK OF the trial, sworn under oath, one of the Internal
Affairs guys the DA's office had planted undercover in Gropp's facility
attempted to describe how terrifying Gropp's smile was. The IA guy stammered
some; and there seemed to be a singular absence of color in his face; but he
tried valiantly, not being a poet or one given to colorful speech. And after
some prodding by the Prosecutor, he said:

"You every' know, when you brush your teeth . . . how when you're done, and
you've spit out the toothpaste and the water, and you pull back your lips to
look at your teeth, to see if they're whiter, and like that . . . you know how
you tighten up your jaws real good, and make that kind of death-grin smile that
pulls your lips back, with your teeth lined up clenched in the front of your
mouth . . . you know what I mean . . . well . . ."

Sequestered that night in a downtown hotel, each of the twelve jurors stared
into a medicine cabinet mirror and skinned back a pair of lips, and tightened
neck muscles till the cords stood out, and clenched teeth, and stared at a face
grotesquely contorted. Twelve men and women then superimposed over the mirror
reflection the face of the Defendant they'd been staring at for three weeks, and
approximated the smile they had not seen on Gropp's face all that time.

And in that moment of phantom face over reflection face, Gropp was convicted.

Police Lieutenant W.R. Gropp. Rhymed with crop. The meat-man who ruled a civic
smudge called the Internment Facility when it was listed on the City Council's
budget every year. Internment Facility: dripping wet, cold iron, urine smell
mixed with sour liquor sweated through dirty skin, men and women crying in the
night. A stockade, a prison camp, stalag, ghetto, torture chamber, charnel
house, abattoir, duchy, fiefdom, Army co-op mess hall ruled by a neckless thug.

The last of the thirty-seven inmate alumni who had been subpoenaed to testify
recollected, "Gropp's favorite thing was to take some fool outta his cell, get
him nekkid to the skin, then do this rolling thing them."

When pressed, the former tenant of Gropp's hostelry -- not a felon, merely a
steamfitter who had a bit too much to drink and picked up for himself a ten-day
Internment Facility residency for D&D -- explained that this "rolling thing"
entailed, "Gropp wrappin' his big, hairy sausage arm aroun' the guy's neck, see,
and then he'droll him across the bars, real hard and fast. Bangin' the guy's
head like a roulette ball around the wheel. Clank clank, like that. Usual, it'd
knock the guy flat out cold, his head clankin' across the bars and spaces
between, wham wham wham like that. See his eyes go up outta sight, all white,
but Gropp, he'd hang on with that sausage aroun' the guy's neck, whammin' and
bangin' him and takin' some goddam kinda pleasure mentionin' how much bigger