"Joe Haldeman - Roadkill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

sixty and seventy-mile rides tire him out so much he sleeps whenever he's
not riding.

Daytona has a bad crime rate, and so Ron carries the .45, not in a
conspicuous holster, but in an innocuous zipper bag in his front basket.
The two big rear baskets, he fills up with aluminum cans that people have
tossed from cars. It amuses him to help beautify the environment while
making nearly enough to pay for the day's lunch break.

But it's the rusty bike full of aluminum cans, old clothes, and a couple of
days' worth of bread that puts him on a path toward Hunter.

A Daytona cop busts him for vagrancy and finds the .45, and, of course,
it was on a day when Ron had left his wallet home. No money and no
permit. There's a reporter at the station when he tells his story, though,
and after the police have verified that he is who he is, the reporter asks if
he'd trade an interview for a steak. Ron figures a human interest story
couldn't hurt business, so he goes along with it.

He doesn't think the story that appears on Sunday is very good; it
makes him look kind of pathetic. But it does produce a client. A man
makes a phone call, no details, and an hour later shows up at the little
office in a new Jaguar convertible.

The man's in his sixties: lean, athletic, gruff. He gets right to the point:

Gerald Kellerman's son was a victim of Hunter. All they ever found were
his entrails and genitals. And his bicycle. He had just started a
coast-to-coast bicycle trek. It ended in a lonely swamp north of
Tallahassee.

It's been two years, and the cops have gotten nowhere. Kellerman wants
to hire Ron, who is about his son's age and build, to get on his bicycle and
act as a decoy. And when the bastard shows up, use the .45 on him.

It doesn't sound too appealing. It's unlikely that Ron will run into the
monster, since he's ranged all over the south, victims in Louisiana and
Alabama, as well as Florida, and even if he did, Ron couldn't imagine a
scenario where the man revealed that he was Hunter under circumstances
where Ron could draw his weapon and plug him.

He explains this to Kellerman, who says yeah, he had that figured out
already, but here's the deal: I'll give you a hundred grand to do it for one
year. Ten percent up front as a retainer, plus a credit card to pick up all
your road expenses. You pedal along like a camper, but take it easy; eat in
restaurants, stay in motels. See the country, make a nest egg. Does it beat
pickin' up cans alongside the road? If you do catch the bastard, dead or
alive, it's another hundred grand.

Ron thinks the man is crazy, but then the government has certified him