"Clayton Emery - Tyger Blake - Totaled" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

......"What? Dinsmore Street."

......I laid a carburetor out neatly on the bench, flipped through the phone book with black fingers,
pushed blackened numbers. No, Mrs St. Amour certainly didn't want the damned car back. It had been
nothing but trouble since the day Chuckie got it. He'd paid twice for it with speeding tickets. I asked how
he was faring, and she sighed, wrung out. Chuckie had response in four toes, should be able to walk in
six months. How nice, I said, and hung up.

......"Where's the welding mask?"

......Manny's voice echoed under the car. "What are you welding?"

......"Cutting." I racked the cutting torch, tilted the oxygen bottles on their handcart, and wrestled the
whole magilla out of the shop. It was a bitch dragging it through the sandy dirt, but I got it propped up by
the Firebird.

......The baby powder I'd sprinkled on the car each evening was unmarked except for a raccoon's
footprints.

......I hooked on the mask, tugged on horsehide gloves, and sparked the torch. I wicked off the
passenger-side door and tossed it against the fence. I cut through the seat, making vinyl flare and smoke.
I cut through the dashboard, the plastic stinking. I sliced wires by the handful and yanked them out. I cut
out the heater core so it leaked green blood. I cut out floor panels. I licked through steel with a white
flame the way a dragon would dismember a knight.
......Chuck St. Amour took good care of his car. No potato chip bags, no beer cans, no cigarette butts.
Everything shiny and clean. Until he hit a tree.

......I cut to the firewall and kept going. I cut the last engine mount and the block dropped to the ground.
I stepped around and cut loose the hood and levered it aside. I cut through the air vents below the
missing windshield.

......And found something. A glint of silver, almost impossible to see through the black glass of the
welding mask, deep inside the air vent. I turned off the torch, dragged off a glove, tested the metal, fished
it out.

......It was a beaten silver earring like a lumpy dime on a silver loop. With a jot of brown inside the loop.

......I buttoned the earring in my shirt pocket. I tore the rest of the car apart, leaving no piece larger than a
toaster, but didn't find anything else.

......Manny wandered out, scratched his curly Amish beard, looked at the parts on the ground. "What's
this for?"

......"It's like a jigsaw puzzle, only in reverse."

......Manny sniffed and shook his head. "You leave any oxygen?"

......"Plenty."