"Lessig, Hugh - Purple Politics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lessig Hugh)

= PURPLE POLITICS
A Frisco Foil bar tale
By Hugh Lessig


She introduces herself as Monica, and considering this is D.C., I figure she's heard all the jokes, so I just shut up and bless my good fortune.

"You mind if I sit here?" She has expensive whiskey breath.

"It's a public bar."

She doesn't look like a Monica. She has spiked blonde hair cut close to her head and the face of someone who works 12-hour days and enjoys it too much. Tight skin. Hard blue eyes. A Monique, maybe. Not a Monica.

"What newspaper do you write for?" She sees the press badge around my neck.

I have noticed this about Washington types. They ask who you "write" for, like everyone who ever pounded out five column inches on a freeway wreck is a Tolstoy about to break out.

"I work at The Frisco Foil," I say. "I'm covering the National Gay Rights Conference. It contains a number of prominent San Franciscans, so I've got a local angle -- with nipple rings, I'll wager."

Monica looked around. "But this isn't a gay bar."

"I'm aware of this. See, my boss wants a feature story on life in Georgetown -- straight life in Georgetown. So I came here to pick up some string. My editor disappoints me, to be honest. I had a decent 20-incher on these lesbian bodybuilders who built speakers' platforms for the Official Protest Area. Ripsaws and such. I liked them for reasons that -- well, I liked them."

"The Foil?" She wrinkles her noise "You've got that funny motto."

"Boldly seeking the Truth and Mayhem. Yes, ma'am. We're regular comedians."

She lights a cigarette and lets the smoke escape through her nose. "Are you interested in writing about something besides lesbians with power tools?" She refuses to look me in the eye, which is normally a sign of trouble. But on her, at this moment, I find it enjoyable. Here in Washington, maintaining eye contact is something of a religion. Everyone has to do it, the politicians, the bureaucrats, the valets, the bellboys. After three days it's gotten under my skin.

"Listen, Mr. Reporter, I..."

The beep of her pager jangles the connection between us. She checks the number and says she must get the call. She walks toward the sound of a jukebox playing Tony Bennett and disappears into the gathering gloom. I watch her go and return to my beer.

This is a basement bar. It has nearly every type of beer known to man. Lots of dark, sweet stuff from Belgium and Holland with a good hang time on the froth. I could never figure the Lowlanders. Done in by the Nazis with their stiff pilsners and stiffer tanks. For a moment I imagine myself as a Dutch spy in a 1930s Berlin biergarten, where the waitresses are big-boned blondes with braids coiled like climbing rope, and someone is hiding the microfilm in her cleavage.

Her scream comes from the hallway.

I am off the stool and into the hall.

Monica is on the floor.

I lean down next to her ear. Whoever held the knife began the cut just behind the earlobe and dragged it neatly across her throat. A dark pool spreads toward me.

"Look it up." Her voice is a strangled whisper. It sets my teeth on edge.

"Look up what, sweetheart? Tell me where to look."

Her hand emerges from her blouse. It holds a purple flower. Then she says, "HJR 2225." Her body shudders once and goes limp, and her eyes fall dead open.

I stuff the purple flower in my breast pocket and rummage through her purse. I come up with a business card. It says her full name is Monica Birdsong and that she works for some place called EDK Consultants Ltd. I stand up. People are starting to gather.