"Destroyer - 027 - The Last Temple" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

There was a knock on the door.

Their heads snapped up, one in shock, the other in disappointment. Goldman looked at Ida, who shrugged diffidently, beginning to pat her hair back in place.

"The Post probably has a nearby Baltimore office," she said.

Secured by her presence, Goldman nodded and then opened the door.

A hard-looking man of medium height stood outside in a simple, but expensive suit. Goldman blinked, taking in the hard face and the dark wavy hair. Goldman looked for a press card or a pad and pencil, but saw only empty hands and thick wrists.

But when the man smiled and spoke, Goldman lost his strength of a moment before and stumbled back.

"Heil Hitler," the man said and pushed open the door.

Goldman soiled his pants.


Dustin Woodman pressed all the call buttons in the foyer of the apartment building on Pennsylvania Avenue and cursed.

He cursed his parents for not naming him Maurice or Chauncey, or Ignatz. He cursed Warner Brothers for putting up $8 million for a certain movie and cursed the public for making that certain movie a smash hit. He cursed the switchboard girl for thinking it funny to connect every crackpot, weirdo, joker, housewife, or wino who called in for Woodward, Bernstein, Hoffman, or Redford.

And he also had a gold-plated, solid platinum curse for the editor who made him answer all these calls. "In the paper's interest," he had been told. Up the paper's ass, he thought.

He got them all, every call to the main office by every dippo who had congressmen dancing naked in his refrigerator or who had uncovered a conspiracy to poison feminine hygiene sprays. Woodman got them all.

The door buzzed and clicked open. Woodman pushed on it while reaching into his pocket for a stick of sugarless gum, recommended by four out of five dentists for patients who care about their teeth. Woodman was beginning to develop the second of the newspaperman's three curses, a flaccid spare tire, broadening his waist. He had always had the first curse-no suntan-and he was too young yet for the third curse-alcoholism-but he could do something about the second, so he cut out sugar and began to take stairs two at a time for exercise.

The door buzzed again.

Woodman took the stairs two at a time until he discovered that hopping up stairs and chewing gum at the same time was a little too much exercise.

He scratched his earthy blond hair as he rounded the third-floor landing. He felt wetness bounce off his middle finger and slide onto his hair.

What a place, he thought, stopping. Complete with leaky water pipes.

Below him, he heard the door buzz again as he brought his hand down and shook off the moisture.

The floor and his trouser leg were suddenly dotted with red. Woodman brought his hand up and looked at it. Swirled around his middle finger, like the tattoo of a lightning bolt, was a streak of blood.

He looked up and saw a small trickle of blood dripping over from the fourth-floor landing. Woodman sucked in his breath and grabbed his pencil, although he did not know why. He held it in his right hand as he went up the stairs cautiously. In his mind, he was composing leads for his story.

"The stink of blood emanated from a peaceful-looking Baltimore flatЕ"

He rejected that.

He reached the fourth-floor landing. He saw that the red stream was coming from the slightly opened door marked A-412. His mind dictated to him: "Acting on a hunch, this reporter fought fear to discoverЕ"

He pushed the door open and stopped.