"George R. R. Martin - WC 2 _ Aces HIgh" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

"It was 1969," Fortunato said. "Ten years ago." Hiram nodded and cleared his
throat. Fortunato didn't need magic to know that the fat man was uncomfortable.
Fortunato's open black shirt and leather jacket weren't really up to the dress
code here. Aces High looked out over the city from the observation deck of the
Empire State Building, and the prices were as steep as the view.
Then there was the fact that he'd brought along his latest acquisition, a dark
blonde named Caroline who went for five hundred a night. She was small, not
quite delicate, with a childlike face and a body that invited speculation. She
wore skintight jeans and a pink silk blouse with a couple of extra buttons
undone. Whenever she moved, so did Hiram. She seemed to enjoy' watching him
sweat.
"The thing is, that's not the coin I showed you before. It's another one."
"Remarkable. It's hard to believe that you could come across two of them in this


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good a condition."
" I think you could put that a little stronger. That coin came of a kid from one
of those gangs that's been trashing the Cloisters. He was carrying it loose in
his pocket. The first one came of a kid that was messing with the occult."
It was still hard for him to talk about. The kid had murdered three of
Fortunato's geishas, cut them up in a pentagram for some twisted reason that he
still hadn't figured out. He'd gone on with his life, training his women,
learning about the Tantric power the wild card virus had given him, but
otherwise keeping to himself.
And, when it got to bothering him, he would spend a day or a week following one
of the loose ends the killer had left behind. The coin. The last word he'd said,
"TIAMAT" The residual energies from something else that had been in the dead
boy's loft, a presence that Fortunato had never been able to trace.
"You're saying there's something supernatural about them," Hiram said. His eyes
shifted to watch Caroline as she stretched languorously in her chair.
"I just want you to take another look."
"Well," Hiram said. Around them the luncheon crowd made small noises with their
forks and glasses and talked so quietly they sounded like distant water. "As I'm
sure I said before, it appears to be a mint 1794 American penny, stamped from a
hand-cut die. They could have been stolen from a museum or a coin shop or a
private . . ." His voice trailed of. "Mmmmm. Have a look at this."
He held the coin out and pointed with a fleshy little finger, not quite touching
the surface. "See the bottom of this wreath, here? It should be a bow. But
instead it's something sort of shapeless and awful looking."
Fortunato stared at the coin and for a half-second felt like he was falling. The
leaves of the wreath turned into tentacles, the ends of the ribbon opened like a
beak, the loops of the bow became shapeless flesh, full of too many eyes.
Fortunato had seen it before, in a book on Sumerian mythology. The caption
underneath had read "TIAMAT".
"You all right?" Caroline asked.
"I'll be okay. Go on," he said to Hiram.
"My instinct would be to say they're forgeries. But who would forge a penny? And