"Johnston, Jim - Hot Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnston Jim)

Mose leaned his elbows on his desk, giving me the benefit of his serious look. 'He's hiring on men. Some tough ex-oilmen. I hear there'll be a lot of new faces on his pay roll come the weekend.'
'So?'
'So. I want you to be one of them. You can be a roughneck if you want. Get into his organisation and let me know what's happening.'
I drank some of his bourbon and swirled the ice cubes in the glass. 'What do I have to keep a look out for?'
'Diamonds!'
'Ice, huh?'
Mose turned in his swivel chair and looked out of his window. 'Word is Monro has some sort of claim up there. He's expecting to make a big killing.'
I set the drink down on the desk, picked up a pencil and tried dunking the ice.
'Well, now it makes some sense. Monro has his hand in every business in this burg - it makes sense that he would expand into gemstones. They're small, highly portable, they make the dames go wild - mebbe I'll expand into the diamonds market myself.'
Moses turned to face me: 'There's more -'
'There always is with you, Mose. You're the original Mr Wheels-within-wheels.'
Moses pushed his chair back and pulled open a drawer in his heavy desk. He pulled out a legal folder and let it drop with a heavy thud on his desktop. 'I had a deal with a customer of mine recently - it went suddenly sour on me and I began to wonder why.'
Mose opened the folder and took a clipping from a newspaper and passed it over to me, continuing, 'Then a little birdie told me something.'
I read the headline: Baton Rouge Slaying and Burglary.
Below, it read: Police tonight are investigating the burglary and slaying at the house of Captain Rowland Clarke. Captain Clarke, famous for his explorations in Alaska at the end of the last century, when he was on the track of the Northwest Passage which he believed to be an underground route carved by volcanic hot springs that would keep the subterranean water ways clear -
Mose interrupted me before my lips got too tired. He had a sheaf of clippings fanned out in two hands.
'I was mentioned in the old guy's papers because I had recently taken an inventory of his stuff. I was probably the only man alive who knew what had been stolen.'
'Apart from the thief, of course.'
'Apart from the thief, of course. And, whoever tipped off the thief to pull that particular job. - Go on, take a clipping, any clipping.'
I picked one at random. 'You know who pulled the job?'
'The cops found out. Clarke wasn't just slain. He had been beaten up first. Guy left his calling card all over the old man.'
I read the new headline: Man Arrested in Burglary Case.
'They got Leo Nulty,' continued Mose, 'known in his circles as Knuck the Canuck. He's a strong-arm man for some local loan sharks. His specialty is working over people with brass knuckles.'
'I heard of him.'
Pyper handed me over a photograph. 'Seems like I was the only one the old Captain could trust. He couldn't even bring himself to get a good lawyer -'
The photograph was of a map drawn on parchment and tacked to a claims form.
Mose continued: ' - so he gave me this for safe-keeping.'
'Claims map. I take it the paperwork is good?'
'It checks out.'
I leaned back, rubbing my brow with the thumb of the hand that held my drink. 'So, what we're talking about here is a map to the old Captain's treasure trove.'
'There's that - but there's more to it, Wolf, my boy. We're talking about an archaeological find of the first magnitude. That's not just any old diamond mine -'
I glanced at the map, with its weird scrawls and pictures that looked like match-stick men with wings, claws and sharp teeth.
Mose went on ' - it's also a temple to some old Eskimo god. And if I know Monro, he'll melt the gold, break up the diamonds and sell them for their intrinsic worth. But, if we could get the stuff back intact, we're talking about increasing the sale-value by a factor of ten.'
For some reason the map made my skin crawl. I didn't like the look of it and I didn't like the sound of this story. 'An Eskimo temple, Mose. Sounds pretty screwball to me.'
'It's all in the old captain's notes, Wolf. Why don't you take 'em home with you and read 'em over? Give me a call when you want to talk.'
I glanced out into his office and saw one of his Sephardic cousins entering. I rose and drained my glass. 'If I want to talk -'
'Of course, my boy, of course.'
I set the empty glass on the desk. 'Nice hooch, Mose. Makes Prohibition seem almost like a bad thing.'
I rose and fetched my hat from the hat stand, picked up the heavy folder and strolled out through the office, where Mose's secretary, Rosie, was typing at her iron-mongery.
Rosie looked up as I passed, all curls and rose-petal lips. 'Bye, Wolf.'
'Bye, Rosie.'
* * * * *
That night I sat on the edge of my chair, reading through the old Captain's hand-written notes. I had a bottle of sour-mash to keep me company, to keep the chill of his words away from me, but I barely made it. Over thirty years ago and it seemed like I was re-living yesterday.
I read: 'October 12 1898. The ship is now thoroughly trapped in the ice. We have no option now but to make it our base-camp and off-load the cargo. The ice will shatter the hull over the winter and if we are trapped inside, then none of us will survive.'
Later on, I read: 'November 9 1898. Today a prowling polar bear broke into our stores tent. Lieutenant Thompson was slain when he shot at it and only managed to wound it. Our Eskimo guides have taken the bear to be an omen of death for the expedition.'
Later again: 'December 1. The ship was destroyed by fire. I think it was set by Able Seaman Brown, driven mad by the scurvy. With Angekok, the last of our Eskimos to remain faithful to me, I am setting out over the ice. We have three dogs left to pull the provisions sleigh. Angekok says he knows of a place where we can winter-over. The ice shifts about us and changes landmarks day and daily. I can't understand how he navigates without a compass - Angekok says that his ancestors lead him from the spirit world.'
Later on, I stared over Captain Clarke's shoulder as he peered ahead into the eerily pulsing red light: 'It is always midnight here. Since leaving the ship, I have lost track of the time. Yet up ahead, for the past three marches, I have seen a red glow in the west. Angekok says that it is the Eye of Malsum, a place of eternal fire. Most probably a volcano or some sort of earthquake zone.'
By this stage in the log, he had stopped keeping track of dates and days; the entries had lost some of their coherence and read more like a narrative written from memory: 'Angekok says we can spend the winter in this cavern. If we were to continue on outside, with our provisions so low, we would not be able to eat enough to keep ourselves sufficiently warm. We can eat the dogs as need arises and Angekok says that there are mushrooms that grow underground here.'
Then the big payola, a few pages later: 'I have finally discovered where Angekok has been slipping off to for the past few days. There is more to this place than he first told me. There has been some sort of ancient civilisation here in times past.
'Angekok was in a cavern and he was worshipping a wolf-headed stone idol surrounded by blazing pots of oil. There was a steaming waterfall down the far side of the cavern, and beyond that was a dark tunnel where the water drained away.