"Michael Marshall - The Straw Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marshall Michael)

multilevel log cabin, the furniture hand-hewn by elves. The menu offered a chilling variety of organic
soups and home-made breads, accompanied by salads largely predicated upon bean sprouts. I know I'm
out of step, but I don't regard bean sprouts as food. They don't even look edible. They look like pallid,
mutant grubs. The only worse thing is cous cous, of which there was also plenty on offer. I don't know of
any aunt on this planet who eats that kind of shit, but both staff and patrons seemed about as happy as
could be. Almost maniacally so.
After a brief and somewhat stilted wait we scored a seat by the front window. This annoyed a spruce
young family behind us, who'd had their eye on the table and didn't understand how being first in line
entitled you to certain benefits. The woman outlined her dissatisfaction to the waitress, loudly observing
that the table had space for four people and we were only two. Normally this kind of thing brings out the
very best in me, particularly if my foes are all wearing identical navy blue fleeces, but right then the well
was dry. The husband was no competition, but the two children were blond and solemn and looked like
a pair of judging angels. I didn't want to get on their bad side. The waitress, who was of the genus of tan,
pretty but rather hefty young women who flock to places like Dyersburg for the winter sports, elected not
to get involved, instead staring brightly at a patch of the floor approximately equidistant between the two
sets of combatants.
Davids glanced briefly across at the matriarch. He's of my parents' age, tall and gaunt with a
good-sized beak, and looks like the guy who God calls on when he really wants Hell to rain down. He
opened his briefcase and drew out a lot of documents, making no effort to conceal the kind of event they
pertained to. He laid them out in front of him in a businesslike way, picked up the menu, and started to
read it. By the time I'd finished watching him do these things, the family was all studiously looking
elsewhere. I picked up my own menu, and tried to imagine why what it said was of interest to me.
Davids was my parents' attorney, and had been since they'd met him after moving from Northern
California. I'd spoken to him on a couple of previous occasions, Christmas or Thanksgiving drinks at
their house, but in my mind he was now simply one of a number of people with whom my acquaintance
was about to draw to an abrupt close. This bred a curious mixture of distance and a desire to prolong the
contact, which I was unable to translate into much in the way of conversation.
 Thankfully, Davids took the lead as soon as the bowls of butternut and lichen soup arrived. He
recapped the circumstances of my parents' death, which in the absence of witnesses boiled down to a
single fact. At approximately 11:05 on the previous Friday evening, after visiting friends to play bridge,
their car had been involved in a head-on collision at the intersection of Benton and Ryle Streets. The
other vehicle was a stationary car, parked by the side of the road. The post-mortem revealed
blood-alcohol levels consistent with maybe half a bottle of wine in my father, who had been the
passenger, and a lot of cranberry juice in my mother. The road had been icy, the junction wasn't too well
lit, and another accident had taken place at the same spot just last year. That was that. It was just only of
those things, unless I wanted to get involved in a fruitless civil litigation, which I didn't. There was nothing
else to say.
Then Davids got down to business, which meant getting me to sign a large number of pieces of paper,
thereby accepting ownership of the house and its contents, a few pieces of undeveloped land, and my
father's stock portfolio. A legion of tax matters pertaining to all of this were efficiently explained to me
and then dispatched with further signatures. The IRS stuff went in one ear and out the other, and I gave
none of the papers more than a cursory glance. My father had evidently trusted Davids, and Hopkins
Senior hadn't been a man to cast his respect around willy-nilly. Good enough for Dad was good enough
for me.
I was listening with less than half of my attention by the end of it, and actually enjoying the soup тАФ
now that I'd improved the recipe by adding a good deal of salt and pepper. I was watching the spoonfuls
as they came up toward my mouth, savouring the taste in a studious, considered way, encouraging the
flavour to occupy as much of my mind as possible. I only resurfaced when Davids mentioned UnRealty.
He explained that my father's business, through which he had successfully sold high-priced real estate,
was being shut down. The value of its remaining assets would be forwarded to any account I cared to