"Marc Laidlaw - The Diane Arbus Suicide Portfolio" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laidlaw Marc)

тАЬI showed you mine,тАЭ he said, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
тАЬYouтАЩre the one who talked about trust. тАЬ
тАЬMine didnтАЩt come out,тАЭ she said.
тАЬWhat do you mean?тАЭ
тАЬI mean the roll was fogged, all twelve negs burned black, pure white prints.
Nothing on them. I thought I could bring them with me, but it didnтАЩt work.тАЭ
 тАЬWait a minute. You telling me thereтАЩs no trade?тАЭ Now he was pissed, and
ready to make a grab at her. She was little, she could elude him. HeтАЩd have to be
fast. тАЬWell fuck IтАЩm giving you my prints.тАЭ
тАЬI saw them, thatтАЩs enough. They came out good. YouтАЩre a fine
photographer. I can tell how much work you put into them. And I . . . appreciate
that.тАЭ
That was it for Brovnik. Her whole story of being an accomplice, nothing but
a lie to get a look at private records. This was suddenly more than personal; he
would make it official, too.
He hurled the prints at her. They curled off in twelve different arcs, like a
blossom opening around him as he leapt to cut her off.
She gasped, spinning away, and found herself trapped in a corner where a tall
family mausoleum backed up against the brick of the surrounding buildings, below a
high row of broken windows. Nowhere for her to go.
He stooped for the flashlight, which sheтАЩd dropped. тАЬAll right, lady,тАЭ he said,
and switched it on.
The light caught her for a glancing instant, and that was all it took--all he got
for his pains and for his memories. He saw that her skin was shimmery black, her
short-cropped hair silvery gray, and the very centers of her eyes, brilliant white. Then
she shrank to nothing and disappeared, like a little woman-shaped balloon deflating
instantaneously to the size of a speck of lichen on the marble tomb, then even
smaller, gone. The beam hit nothing but the chipped brick wall and a slab of marble
with some cryptic gang hieroglyphs streaking the side.
He backed up, swinging the beam to and fro, up and down, looking for the
crack sheтАЩd slid away through, the secret door that had opened to swallow her up,
the rabbit hole, anything. Nothing. None of those things would explain what heтАЩd
seen, anyway.
In the time heтАЩd had to look at her, really look--and it was an almost subliminal
impression--heтАЩd seen that she wasnтАЩt any dwarf. She had none of the characteristic
squashed features, no stubby fingers or any of that. For her size, she was perfectly
proportioned-like a normal grown woman who had shrunk in the wash. This
remained true as she vanished: All proportions stayed constant as if she were
zooming backward down a tunnel with her eyes fixed on his, until she blinked out.
The last thing he remembered was her faintly wounded look, and her color . . . that
shifting silvery black like nothing heтАЩd ever seen in a person--though tantalizingly
familiar.
Brovnik hunted through the cemetery till the sun came up, but he didnтАЩt find
anything except his twelve dented, scratched prints. He shoved them in a crypt to rot
and hurried back to his car. In the strong morning sunlight it was just barely possible
to not think of her consciously. But somewhere inside, his mind kept going over the
details; the cop inside him wouldnтАЩt quit.
It was his day off. After a few hours spent futilely trying to sleep, he went into
the lab, fished out the negatives of the Arbus suicide, and studied them on the
lightboard. The hair looked similar to what heтАЩd seen in the flashlight beam--an odd