"Hiaasen, Christopher - The Real Cool Killers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hiaasen Carl)

His two friends, Rubberlips Wilson and Lowtop Brown, looked at him in pop-eyed amazement. But before either could restrain him, Sonny advanced on the white man, walking on the balls of his feet.
"You there!" he shouted. "You the man what's been messing around with my wife."
The big white man jerked his head about and saw a pistol. His eyes stretched and the blood drained from his sallow face.
"My God, wait a minute!" he cried. "You're making a mistake. All of you folks are confusing me with someone else."
"Ain't going to be no waiting now," Sonny said and pulled the trigger.
Orange flame lanced toward the big white man's chest. Sound shattered the night.
Sonny and the white man leapt simultaneously straight up into the air. Both began running before their feet touched the ground. Both ran straight ahead. They ran head on into one another at full speed. The white man's superior weight knocked Sonny down and he ran over him.
He plowed through the crowd of colored spectators, scattering them like ninepins, and cut across the street through the traffic, running in front of cars as though he didn't see them.
Sonny jumped up to his feet and took out after him. He ran over the people the big white man had knocked down. Muscles rolled on bones beneath his feet. He staggered drunkenly. Screams followed him and car lights came down on him like shooting stars.
The big white man was moving between parked cars across the Street when Sonny shot at him again. He gained the sidewalk safely and began running south along the inner edge.
Sonny followed between the cars and kept after him.
People in the line of fire did acrobatic dives for safety. People up ahead crowded into the doorways to see what was happening. They saw a big white man with wild blue eyes and a stubble of red tie which made him look as though his throat were cut, being chased by a slim black man with a big blue pistol. They drew back out of range.
But the people behind, who were safely out of range, joined the chase.
The white man was in front. Sonny was next. Rubberlips and Lowtop were running at Sonny's heels. Behind them the spectators stretched out in a ragged line.
The white man ran past a group of eight Arabs at the corner of 127th Street. All of the Arabs had heavy, grizzly black beards. All wore bright green turbans, smoke-colored glasses, and ankle-length white robes. Their complexions ranged from stovepipe black to mustard. They were jabbering and gesticulating like a frenzied group of caged monkeys. The air was redolent with the pungent scent of marijuana.
"An infidel!" one yelled.
The jabbering stopped abruptly. They wheeled in a group after the white man.
The white man heard the shout. He saw the sudden movement through the corners of his eyes. He leaped forward from the curb.
A car coming fast down 127th Street burnt rubber in an ear-splitting shriek to keep from running him down.
Seen in the car's headlights, his sweating face was bright red and muscle-ridged; his blue eyes black with panic; his gray-shot hair in wild disorder.
Instinctively he leaped high and sideways, away from the oncoming car. His arms and legs flew out in grotesque silhouette.
At that instant Sonny came abreast of the Arabs and shot at the leaping white man while he was still in the air.
The orange blast lit up Sonny's distorted face and the roar of the gunshot sounded like a fusillade.
The big white man shuddered and came down limp. He landed face down and in a spread-eagled posture. He didn't getup.
Sonny ran up to him with the smoking pistol dangling from his hand. He was starkly spotlighted by the car's headlights. He looked at the white man lying face down in the middle of the street and started laughing. He doubled over laughing, his arms jerking and his body rocking.
Lowtop and Rubberlips caught up. The eight Arabs joined them in the beams of light.
"Man, what happened?" Lowtop asked.
The Arabs looked at him and began to laugh.
Rubberlips began to laugh too, then Lowtop.
All of them stood in the stark white light, swaying and rocking and doubling up with laughter.
Sonny was trying to say something but he was laughing so hard he couldn't get it out.
A police siren sounded nearby.


2

The telephone rang in the captain's office at the 126th Street precinct station. The uniformed officer behind the desk reached for the outside phone without looking up from behind the record sheet he was filling out.
"Harlem precinct, Lieutenant Anderson," he said.
A high-pitched correct voice said, "Are you the man in charge?"
"Yes, lady," Lieutenant Anderson said patiently and went on writing with his free hand.
"I want to report that a white man is being chased down Lenox Avenue by a colored man with a gun," the voice said with the smug sanctimoniousness of a saved sister.
Lieutenant Anderson pushed aside the record sheet and pulled forward a report pad.
When he'd finished taking down the essential details of her incoherent account, he said, "Thank you, Mrs. Collins," hung up and reached for the closed line to central police on Centre Street.
"Give me the radio dispatcher," he said.


Two colored men were driving east on 135th Street in the wake of a crosstown bus. Shapeless dark hats sat squarely on their clipped kinky hair and their big frames filled up the front seat of a small, battered black sedan.
Static crackled from the shortwave radio and a metallic voice said: "Calling all cars. Riot threatens in Harlem. White man running south on Lenox Avenue at 128th Street. Chased by drunken Negro with gun. Danger of murder."
"Better goose it," the one on the inside said in a grating voice.
"I reckon so," the driver replied laconically.