"Robert McCammon - Night Calls The Green Falcon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

engulfed by a wall of fire and agony.




CHAPTER TWO : AN OLD RELIC

He awoke, his flesh wet with nightmare sweat and his stomach burning
with the last flames of an enchilada TV-dinner.
He lay in the darkness, the springs of his mattress biting into his back,
and watched the lights from the boulevard тАУ reflections of light тАУ move
across the cracked ceiling. A fan stuttered atop his chest-of-drawers, and
from down the hall he could hear the LaPrestas hollering at each other
again. He lifted his head from the sodden pillow and looked at his alarm
clock on the table beside his bed: twenty-six minutes past twelve, and the
night had already gone on forever.
His bladder throbbed. Right now it was working, but sometimes it went
haywire and he peed in his sheets. The laundromat on the corner of Cosmo
Street was not a good place to spend a Saturday night. He roused himself
out of bed, his joints clicking back into their sockets and the memory of
the nightmare scorched into his mind. It was from Chapter One of тАШNight
Calls the Green FalconтАЩ, when he couldnтАЩt get the planeтАЩs canopy up,
because he didnтАЩt like close places. The director had said, тАЬCut!тАЭ and the
canopyтАЩs hinges had been oiled and the sequence had gone like clockwork
the second time around.
The nightmare would be back, and so would the rest of them тАУ a reel of
car crashes, falls from buildings, gunshots, explosions, even a lionтАЩs attack.
He had survived all of them, but they kept trying to kill him again and
again. Mr. Thatcher at the Burger King said he ought to have his head
looked at, and maybe that was true. But Mr. Thatcher was only a kid, and
the Green Falcon had died before Mr. Thatcher was born.
He stood up. Slid his feet into slippers. Picked his robe off a chair and
shrugged into it, covering his pyjamas. His eyes found the faded poster
taped to the wall: NIGHT CALLS THE GREEN FALCON, it said, and
showed an assemblage of fist fights, car crashes and various other action
scenes. IN TEN EXCITING CHAPTERS! the poster promised. STARRING
CREIGHTON FLINT, тАШTHE GREEN FALCONтАЩ.
тАЬThe Green Falcon has to piss now,тАЭ he said, and he unlocked the door
and went out into the hallway.
The bathroom was on the other side of the building. He trudged past
the elevator and the door where the LaPrestas were yelling. Somebody else
shouted for them to shut up, but when they got going there was no
stopping them. Seymour the superтАЩs cat slunk past, hunting rats, and the
old man knocked politely at the bathroomтАЩs door before he entered. He
clicked on the light, relieved himself at the urinal and looked away from
the hypodermic needles that were lying around the toilet. When he was
finished, he picked up the needles and put them in the trash can, then
washed his hands in the rust-stained sink and walked back along the
corridor to his apartment.
Old gears moaned. The elevator was coming up. It opened when he was