"Mallory, Michael - Ghost Writer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mallory Michael)

GHOST WRITER
By
Michael Mallory

Jim Lockridge eased his car up to the curb, making sure to engage the parking brake before getting out. No sense in having the car roll down the steep, winding drive. The place he was going was part of old Hollywood, perched on top of a hill, overlooking the L.A. basin. Below him, ten million lights glowed through the night fog. Above him, obscured by the darkness, was the Hollywood sign, from which at least one wannabe movie star jumped to her death in a gaudily public display of despair.

Hollywood was full of ghosts.

Lockridge smiled as he made his way to the entrance of the weathered Frank Lloyd Wright house. "Ghosts everywhere," he muttered, jabbing the doorbell.

"Coming," Burton Starkweather's voice called from behind the wrought iron door. A moment later he appeared, saying, "Hello, Lockridge, do come in." Starkweather was wearing charcoal grey wool slacks, a blue silk shirt with a pink ascot, and a maroon smoking jacket. With his manufactured tan and neatly trimmed gray moustache, Starkweather looked like he had stepped out of an amateur production of a Noel Coward play. This is what he believes writers are supposed to look like, Lockridge thought as he stepped past the older man, nearly gagging as he fought through the invisible wall of Starkweather's cologne, which hung inside the house like an ocean fog.

"Did you bring it?" Starkweather asked, closing the door.

Coughing from the cologne, Lockridge dropped a thick manuscript and three computer disks on the entryway table. "Hope you like it," he said.

"I'm sure I will," Starkweather replied. "Your sample chapters were excellent, better than usual. Burton Starkweather just keeps getting better and better with time, doesn't he?"

"No."

"Drink?"

"No."

"Refusing a drink? Good God, something must be weighing on your mind. Out with it, Lockridge."

"I was just wondering what your adoring readership would do if they learned that best-selling novelist Burton Starkweather was a complete fraud. What would they say if they knew you don't even write the titles of your books?"

Starkweather smiled as he splashed bourbon into a glass and swirled it. "We're playing this game again, I see," he said. "Very well, now it's my turn to say: And what would the police do if they learned that the hit-and-run driver they've been seeking for five years, the one who mowed down up-and-coming actress Martina Peluso with his car and then fled into the night like a scared rabbit, is none other than that one-time mid-list scribbler and currently respectable college professor James Lockridge?"

"Okay," Lockridge said, a tiny smile forming on his lips, "let's suppose the talentless TV hack who happened to witness a terrible accident years ago does go to the police. How does he explain his silence for all that time?"

Starkweather took a sip of bourbon and savored it. "Where does it say the witness has to identify himself? Or hasn't the high and mighty ghostwriter ever heard of an anonymous tip?"

The smile fell away from Lockridge's face. "Do you know how many times I've wished I had run over you instead?" he asked.

"I can guess," Starkweather said, draining his glass. "And for what it's worth, I'm sure poor Martina, wherever she is, wishes you had as well. At the time, however, you were so blotto I doubt you could have told us apart. That was your first Hollywood party, wasn't it? Most people drink too much at their first Hollywood parties and then attempt to drive home, though most don't kill someone in the process. Poor Martina. But that's ancient history. You've brought me the manuscript and since you won't have a drink, there's no reason for your continued presence here. Good night, please show yourself out."

Lockridge did not move.

"Something else is on your mind, then, I presume?" Starkweather said.

"I've been working on a new idea for a book, Burt."

"Great, send a treatment around and I'll take a look at it."

"It's not for you. It's for me."

"Indeed? Our agreement, as I recall, was that in return for my silence regarding your slight case of murder, you write for me, and me alone."