"Nayler, Ray - How They Kill You At Thousand Palms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

How They Kill You At Thousand Palms
by
Ray Nayler

David felt the place before he saw it. He knew it was close, and his fingers were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel in anticipation for minutes before it came out of the haze. The palm trees rose off to the side of the highway in leaning rows, shaking their mangy heads in the breeze. Some were dead and drying in the heat, frondless. They stuck up out of the ground like the fingers of a buried giant. A sun-faded gray billboard sign showed a woman in a red-and-white striped bathing suit waving in front of a pool and said, in almost illegible white letters, "Welcome to THOUSAND PALMS!!!"
He guided the car through an open, wrought iron gate and down a wide neglected boulevard scattered with sharp fallen fronds blown down in the windstorm of the night before. He remembered the motel roomЧsmoking cigarettes and looking out the window into darkness as the wind battered the top of the lone Joshua tree in the middle of the parking lot. He had been a hundred miles away from Thousand Palms, and he had felt BenЧcould picture him, sitting in his trailer and looking out into the darkness, waiting. Both of them waiting, together. And somehow he knew that Ben would not run away, this time. Could Ben feel him the same way?Чlook at an empty plate in a diner and know that he had eaten from it?Чsee the snuffed out cigarette in an ashtray and know the hand that had extinguished it? Could Ben feel him now, closing in? He thought so. How many close calls had he had? How many still-warm motel beds in thirty years? How many times had he smelled that cheap cologne lingering in a bathroom? But each of those times, when he was close, he had known he wouldnТt catch him. He had hopedЧbut he had known. This time was different.
Ben had made a mistake in Barstow, leaving that girl behind. For David, it was a simple matter of showing BenТs picture around and the red-eyed little girlЧnot more than seventeenЧhad raised her head from the corner booth in the dinerЧwhere she had drunk innumerable cups of coffee. Ben had left her sleeping in a motel room, alone. ButЧsmart little thing that she wasЧsheТd relieved him of his wallet. So after David had agreed to a priceЧwhich was twenty dollars and a bottle of SoCoЧshe gave him a slip of paper. It was a receipt for one hundred and twenty dollarsЧthe price of two months trailer space at Thousand Palms, dated three days before. Two months! Ben was digging his heels in. The girl offered to come with him. Instead, heТd dropped her off at the Greyhound stop in VictorvilleЧwith four hundred dollars and two more bottles of SoCo in the pockets of her baggy pea coat. SheТd kissed him goodbye and put her tongue in his mouth. HeТd tasted Ben, and gagged.
He drove slowly along the boulevard as the numbers on the signsЧmost of them fronting empty lotsЧincreased and he got closer. The few trailers left in the place looked like weathered rock outcroppings. They had become part of the landscape. Lot #39 came up on the right hand side, and he glanced down the cul-de sac, seeing the small aluminum airflow trailer sitting under two badly leaning palms whose heads were inches away from colliding. BenТs car was not there. He kept driving, pulling his car into an empty lot a few hundred yards past BenТs space, parking it behind a dumpster full of dry grass cuttings and plant litter, out of sight of the main boulevard. David sat in the car for a moment, letting the beating of his heart slow. He opened the glove box and took out the scratched black .45 automatic. He shoved a clip in and sat with a moment with it in his lap, petting it absently with one hand and staring at the cinderblock wall next to his car. A lizard made its way up the wall, stopping every few seconds and jerking its head around, looking for predators. It made the top of the wall safely and started doing push-ups in the hot sun. David pushed the automatic into its shoulder holster and slipped on a light linen jacket specially cut to conceal the gunТs bulge as much as possible.
When he stepped out of the car, the heat hit him like a fist and almost doubled him over. The tops of the palm trees roared in the hot breeze, as if they were on fire. Immediately, he began to sweat. He made his way back down the wide boulevard, sticking close to the rows of palms, ready to duck behind one of them at the sound of a car. But no cars came. Thousand Palms was as silent and empty as the desert that surrounded it.
The trailer sat in the middle of a circle of dead grass littered with palm debris and a broken lawn chair. The lock on the front door was an easy one, and David had it open in under a minute. When he opened the door, the smell from the trailer hit him in the faceЧthe reek of cheap cologne and cigarettes riding atop a ground swell of other musty odors. The dim interior of the trailer was hotter than the outsideЧfuriously, violently hot. It was a single room with a small partition separating a tiny kitchen area. The main living and sleeping area was filled by a fold-down wall bunk, an old leather armchair, and a minuscule black-and-white television set. The walls were wallpapered with western scenesЧcowboys lassoing calves, Indians on horsebackЧlike the walls of a ten-year-old boyТs room. Magazines were strewn across a small coffee tableЧnot Penthouse, as David had expected, but Teen Beat and Bop fanzines. David closed the door softly behind him, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light that filtered through the dusty blinds. On the bunk was a teddy bear, and, stacked neatly at the end, a small pink and white dress. The dress was too small for a grown woman. DavidТs stomach turned. He drew the .45 from its holster and crossed to the bathroom door.
The cramped bathroom was littered with shaving instruments, combs, and a bottle of the cologne that had haunted him for thirty years. A pair of white childТs tights hung over the shower. On the edge of the sink sat two toothbrushes. One of them had Kermit the Frog grinning on the handle. DavidТs stomach cramped and his heart quickened. He tasted bile. He could feel BenТs throat under his fingers, his hands crushing the life from him. He caught his reflection in the mirror and jumped, startled at the ugliness of the face there. The brown eyes had turned inky black, like two holes drilled in the lined face. A grimacing square of teeth showed from peeled-back lips. It was a skullЧthe face of the boatman waiting at the edge of the river. He touched the glass with the barrel of the .45.
"Tonight."
The mouth in the mirror moved silently and in sync.
* * *
Dusk came hours later without breaking the heat in the trailer. David had taken his jacket off and sweated through his shirt until it was wet against his body. He sat in the leather armchair with the .45 in his hand pointing at the closed door. He sat and waited, and while he waited he leafed through the picture book that was his memory. His snapshots. Thirty years ago, a pretty blonde girl in a bar, looking over her shoulder. Her face a little pale. Now, slightly turned away from him, stirring her drink and gazing into the red fluid, the ringlets of her blonde hair flowing down across a cheekbone in a sweeping curl that hid everything but her eye and the delicate, slightly rounded tip of her nose. How long had he sat and watched her, not wanting to go back to her husband and tell her he had found her? She had looked nothing like the picture shoved across his deskЧshe had around her a feeling of calm, of quiet.
Later, in the hotel room, her in her bra and panties, one leg off of the bed as she reached for her cigarettes, laughing and looking over her shoulder at him. She was about to say something--she was about to say
"And to think that youТre still getting paid for this."
He reached over to light her cigarette. "IТve been paid for worseЧthatТs for sure. And you werenТt hard to find. It just took a little legworkЧshowing your picture around. You have a face people remember."
She shook a cigarette from the pack and stuck it between her lips. He reached over and lit it with a match he snapped into flame with his thumb. It was a nice touch, and she raised an eyebrow in response to it.
"Are you sure you want to go back to him?" Now, suddenly, his controlled hand shook. "We could . . ."
She blew smoke in his face. "IТve worried him enough. HeТs paid for what he did. I just want to go backЧnow that heТs sorryЧmaybe we can start over. You have to forgive, a little."
David made a helpless gesture at the bed, the room, their nearly naked bodies. "Then what is this?"
She smiled. "A last little bit of revenge. IsnТt it sweet, though?"
And sheТd kissed him.
Two days later she was dead in a bathtub, naked, with a manТs tie wrapped around her throat and the frying pan that had smashed her face in laying in a dry puddle of blood. Her blonde hair had been stained pink and red with her own blood. That was another snapshot. HeТd been there, looking over the police detectiveТs square shoulders. The cops had looked at him like his faultЧheТd brought her back into the arms of the man who beat herЧand now, she was dead. And Ben was gone. Ben had planned itЧheТd emptied his bank accounts, packed his suitcases, and disappeared.
But nobody stayed away foreverЧand as long as they were somewhere on the earth, David Madden could find them. It was what he did. Between cases, for thirty years, in every free moment, he had hunted. And hunted. From Tucumcari, New Mexico to Cairo, Illinois to Spokane, Washington.
The breeze had stilled outside, and the crickets took over. The heat subsided a little, but it still lay thick in the trailer. David sat and watched the door, unmoving. Finally, lights played across the blinds, and he heard the sound of a carТs engine shutting off with a shudder. Boots clunked across the pavement. He cocked the pistol and listened.
The knob of the door turned and the door slowly opened. David watched the black shape in silhouette as it paused in the doorway, suddenly becoming aware of his presence in the dark, the head raised as if to sniff at the air.
"WhoТs there?" BenТs voice said into the darkness.
David clicked the lamp on next to his chair.
BenТs face was gray, and his green eyes were so wide that the irises looked like olives floating in glasses of milk. His arms were filled by two bags of groceries. He stared down the barrel of DavidТs automatic. As David watched, the expression on BenТs face slowly changed from one of ashy shock to one of recognitionЧand acceptance.
"So you finally found me."
David nodded. "Could you feel me last night, during the storm?"
Ben shook his head.
David felt an odd sort of disappointment. He felt cheated, somehow.
"CouldnТt you tell how close I was?"
"No."
"Did you stand at your window and look out into the darkness?"
Ben shook his head. "No."
David gestured angrily with the barrel of the automatic. "Put the fucking groceries down on the table. You look like an idiot standing there with all that food."
Ben walked over and set the groceries down. He did it with an incredible slowness, moving in jerks, staring the entire time at the gun in DavidТs hand.
"Now sit down on the bunk."
Ben obeyed. His hands clutched the side of the bunk. He cleared his throat and his eyes moved from the gun and locked for the first time with DavidТs. "YouТre going to kill me, arenТt you?"
"Yes. But first youТre going to tell me about how you killed her, and why. You had planned to kill her before you hired me, hadnТt you?"
Ben nodded. He closed his eyes and brought one hand up to his face, rubbing with thumb and middle finger at his temples. "Yes," he said to the floor. "I knew that she wasЧthat she was cheating on me. She didnТt even have the decency to have an affairЧit was just whoever she could find. She didnТt even try to hide it. She would just laugh at me." He looked up into DavidТs eyes again. "She would just laugh at me. Have you ever had a woman that you loved laugh at you?"
"DonТt drag me into this. I didnТt beat her face in with a frying pan and then strangle her with one of my ties."
Ben winced. "It was so long ago. I never . . . I could never . . . I canТt believe."
"ItТs funny," David said. "Sitting here tonight it seems like just yesterday."
With a sudden brave burst of hatred Ben yelled: "You slept with her. You slept with my wife. I hired you to bring her back to me, and you slept with her!"
"What?" DavidТs hand tightened on the grip of the automatic.