"Dean Ing - Soft Targets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

took another mouthful of his monte cristo.
'Trnka' assembled a smile for the pilot. "I am merely combining business with pleasure,
McEvoy." He watched two people stroll toward the seaplane in the distance, spied the came
noted that the woman was stout, the man clum-sy. He continued talking with McEvoy, discus
fees and weather, increasingly sure that the pair at the slip were only tourists. The couple contin
their stroll and presently passed beyond the slips. Pressed for a time estimate by McEvoy, he s
"Wednesday or Thursday. We may pay you a visit before that." He left the buried implication
he would be somewhere in Toronto.
"Speaking of pay," McEvoy put in slyly. The little man's blue jacket yielded a slender enve
which McEvoy inspected. He withdrew the three hundred dollars, then absently stuffed the b
notes into his oil-stained leather jacket. "Half of that would've done it, Mr. Tee," he grinned. "
retainer just bought me a fathometer."
"And your silence," said the smaller man. "Film companies have their little secrets. There is
more thing ..."
"I thought there might be," McEvoy mumbled. He seemed ready to give back the retainer.
"You can stow some equipment for me un-til then. Just a piece of luggage; camera, film, cloth
But my car is very small and the suitcase is both a bother and a temptation to thieves." He saw s
lines disappearing from McEvoy's face and continued, "A pilot of your years must be a careful m
I think the cine camera equipment may be safer in your care than in mine. I have a tendency to fo
things." He delivered this last phrase sadly, tentatively, the confession of one ill-equipped to
with details.
McEvoy sealed his agreement by paying for lunch, then walked with his client to the Toyota. I
had any lingering worry, it evaporated when `Trnka' opened the suitcase, poked among the clot
and equipment. These were not the actions of a guy running heavy shit, McEvoy thought; the t
wasn't even locked. He hefted the suitcase and shook the small man's hand. "What you need
bigger car," he joked.
"And struggle to fuel and steer and park it? How I loathe the American product," said `Trn
frowning, pleased to wedge more mis-direction in as he climbed into the Toyota.
Ian McEvoy trudged back to his Seabee, pleased with an honest negotiation, cudgeling
memory to recall where he had seen Trnka before. Movies? He had heard that voice somewhere
sure. Maybe on the TV ...
 The telltales in the apartment were undis-turbed, the weather report optimistic. He left the clo
on their hangers but applied more ce-ment to his fingertips, scrubbing glassware and fin
meticulously as he had the Toyota's in-terior. Then he turned his attention to the telephones.
there was the microprocessor, which passed an on-the-spot function check before he installed i
a circuit board and patched the tiny rig into the automatic answering device. He disconnected
smoke alarm in his kitchen, then placed the answering device, connected to both telephones, in
sink. He dumped his small potted plant on the floor, cleared the hole in the pot's bottom onl
cover the hole with tape, and twisted coat hangers into a sling that suspended the empty clay
over the circuit board.
Next he mixed a cupful of magnetite and aluminum powder, pouring the potent stuff into the
pot. He used squibs and an igniter com-mon to model rocketry though he always, always emplo
them in threes, wired in parallel for reliability. Finally, though its crudeness irri-tated him
deployed the twenty-meter exten-sion cord and connected its bared wires directly to the s
circuit. He knotted the free end of the extension cord around a chair leg near a wall socket and s
several minutes taping the mousetrap firmly to the chair. Adhesive tape was so damnably adhesi
could take a faint impression of a fingerprint even through the protective cement. He had plent
time, and he knew how to use it.
After he wired one leg of the extension cord to the trap, arranging it to complete the circuit w
triggered, he deformed another coat hanger and taped it, centered vertically, to the inside door k