"Rain, Anthony - Miles Beckett - Hampton Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rain Anthony Vincent)

Hampton Blood
A Miles Beckett Mystery
by Anthony Rain



.........Dr. Rubin pulled an orange prescription bottle from his pocket, tapped out two pink pills into his cupped hand and raised the hand to his lips. He moved his tongue like a frog snaring an insect.
......."I can't tell you much," he said. "I don't know how he got into the house. He was suddenly there. He wore a ski mask and he was tall. I'd say several inches over six feet. We went to my office and I opened my drug closet and gave him what he wanted. I thought he would leave, but he suddenly got angry, started yelling and hitting me with his gun. I lost consciousness."
......."Do you remember what he yelled about?" It was mid-afternoon on a scorching July day. My words sounded like dry husks crackling in a hot breeze.
......."Not really, just gibberish about my being a fuck. It was before I blacked out. I don't remember much." Dr. Rubin was in his late sixties. He pushed a lock of white hair off his forehead and looked at me with blue eyes narrowed to bullet tips. His bruised face looked like spoiled fruit. "I don't care how you do it, Mr. Beckett. Just get my drugs back from Jimmy Campbell. I don't care if you have to kill the sonofabitch." He shifted in his seat, his anger getting the better of him.
......."Go easy, doctor," I said. "Tell me about Campbell." We were sitting in white cane chairs resting on a freshly cut lawn. Watery waves of light glittered on the surface of a pool off to the side. I wanted to get up and take a cannonball jump into it.
.......Rubin's face changed color, like a storm approaching from off shore turning the skies black. He leaned towards me. "Campbell's a local shit who sniffs out moneymaking schemes. Anyone who's lived on the East End long enough knows that." He stopped and scratched behind his ear.
.......A bronze Buddha statue watched us from his position near a pond. He looked dazed from the heat, too. "What makes you think he was Campbell's muscle?" I asked.
.......Rubin sat back in his chair. "I'm an addiction specialist. I detox heroin addicts. I've been doing this for over twenty years." He tried to force a smile. I thought of a child trying to force a round peg into a square hole. "Campbell's called me a couple of times. He had a business proposition, which I found insulting. The last time he called, I told him I would contact the police. I think he retaliated. It's obvious."
.......Behind Rubin, a house door opened. The glass caught the reflection of the sun and sent out a beacon of light across the lawn. A twenty-something brunette in a purple midriff blouse, blue jeans and sandals emerged. She was a looker. She went down the steps to a two-car garage. I heard a motor start and saw a black Jeep pull out and fly down the drive, the sun glaring off polished surfaces.
......."That's my daughter, Laura," said Rubin. I caught a tone of concern in his voice, but it was subdued, unable to gain flight in the hot air.
......."What was the proposition?" I asked.
......."He wanted to open a series of clinics, using my treatment methods. I would be the medical director and get an annual salary. He would handle the business end. That sound's like a normal business proposition, ordinarily. But not when Jimmy Campbell is involved. The scumbag."
......."It's also possible someone else knew you had drugs in the house," I said. Rubin twisted in his chair, nodding his head from side to side. Smart men don't like to be contradicted.
......."What was taken?"
......."All the medications I use were taken. The one I care about is called buprenorphine. It's a white powder, looks very much like heroin, and it's a controlled narcotic. I kept it in a large plastic jar. I can't buy it anymore because the FDA has now restricted it even from practitioners." He scratched behind his ear again. "Fortunately, I'm still allowed to use what I already own. It forms the basis of my treatment."
......."Last I heard, methadone was the rehab drug of choice." I knew a woman, a horse head named Emily. She was a hooker and lived on Saint Mark's Place. Every day she would walk over to the methadone clinic on First Avenue next to Bellevue. Then she'd sit in the park across the way from the hospital and nod off for a few hours, while the meth did its thing. When she woke up, she went back home and turned tricks. A lovely life.
.......Rubin waved his hands. "Methadone is crap. It's just replacing one dependency for another." He turned and stared at the Buddha. The Buddha stared back.
......."So now what? You have to close up shop? Take a loss in income?"
......."Crudely put, yes. I can't practice without buprenorphine." Rubin thrust his stitched chin out. "My practice is thriving, because my method is superior, quicker and anonymous. Buprenorphine will detox someone in six weeks. But the insurance companies are making it harder to earn any kind of decent income anymore. Patients expect to be treated for what their HMOs will pay. Ridiculous. I want to retire, but I need to practice a few more years."
......."All right, so Campbell is pissed he can't get in on your action, but that doesn't mean he has someone do a Holyfield on you. If he's looking to fatten his bank account, then he moves on and finds another sucker. Why haven't you gone to the police with this?"
......."I can't go to the police. I have reasons, one of which is I can't afford the notoriety. My patients come to me because I can guarantee their anonymity. If you take this case, you can't go to the police either. Can you agree to this, Mr. Beckett?"
.......I watched a seagull float with angled wings on a soft breeze and hover over the pool. The doctor hadn't broken any laws so far, and I figured I could handle whatever slippery slope I found myself standing on. "All right," I said.
.......He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. He tossed it at me. Inside was two grand in used hundreds. "I took the liberty of deciding on this for a retainer. And another thing: I don't want you commuting from your office in Manhattan. I want you to stay local until this is resolved."
***
.......Montauk Highway was clear and the sun made yellow triangles on the empty seat next to me. I had the window down since my air conditioner was on the fritz, and the air smelled like hot flowers. I passed a small restaurant with gray weathered wood and bright white trim and a large clam over the door. Past that, long green fields with grapevines and a sign advertising an afternoon wine tasting. The Hamptons are on the easternmost edge of Long Island. They've becomes the playground for migrating Manhattanites in the summer, trying to escape the hustle and crush of the city.
.......Campbell owned a jazz nightclub, The Siren's Song, located just past the town of Bridgehampton. Rubin said that was where Campbell could usually be found.
.......I passed two men in yellow and red racing uniforms on bikes, then saw a cloud of dust up ahead moving perpendicular to the road. A gray Caddy suddenly flew out from behind a high hedge and came directly in my lane. I swerved off the road as it passed, the two cars kissing along the drivers' sides. I stopped and watched in my rearview as it moved south, the license plate getting too small for me to read.
.......I put my car in park and checked the door. My blue '69 Chevy Impala had a line of gray paint and some scratches running under the handle. I got back in my car, cursing, and pulled onto the highway, but I didn't have to continue very far. Just past the hedge was The Siren's Song. I pulled in, cut the motor and got out. A very angry sun beat down on the empty gravel lot.
.......I walked past green and blue pastels into a dimly lit smaller room with a bar and stools. The counter top held two highball glasses. One was drained, the other barely touched. The full glass was warm. At the far end of the bar were double doors, one propped open showing a larger darkened room. Above me, a ceiling fan whirred furiously against the day's heat.
.......I went through the double doors and flicked on the lights. Pink and blue neon shapes appeared on the opposite wall and a series of small spotlights lined the ceiling perimeter. A window was open high up on the left-side wall. Round tables and chairs were placed before a stage, which held a black Baldwin piano and a series of mikes. A red velvet curtain served as the backdrop.
.......I made my way over to a door in the back near the exit. It was an office, with a desk and no windows. Behind the desk was a man. Behind him, blood spatters were on the wall. The man was dead.
.......I pulled my gun out and looked around some more. Satisfied I was alone, I went back to the office. The man was lying sideways on the desk, his right arm outstretched over the top. His chair was facing outwards and it looked like the force of the gunshot propelled him into it. He had long sandy-gray hair; an earring gleamed from his left ear. More blood spatters covered almost everything on his desk, and blood pooled under his chair and ran outward towards the wall. Flies were everywhere. I saw a large chest wound with powder marks on his shirtfront.
.......I spied a brass casing on the floor. I picked it up with a cocktail napkin lying on the desk and examined a .45-caliber shell. I could smell the cordite. I put it back on the floor. The man's pockets were turned inside out. I picked up a billfold. The driver's license name read James Campbell. It stated his age as forty-four and gave a local address on David Lane.
.......I went through the desk drawers, which had already been rifled. Heaped together in the top drawer were liquor purchase orders, musician contact sheets and other papers. In the bottom drawer was a gun, but it hadn't been fired. Campbell must not have had the chance to make a play for it, poor bastard.
.......I picked up the phone, still using the napkin and pressed *69. There was ringing on the other end, but no one answered, no voice mail kicked in. I hung up. The laptop was booted up, but no files had been opened. I wasn't going to find Rubin's buprenorphine on it, so I left it alone. A floor safe behind the desk was opened, but it was empty.
.......I got up and left the office, turning off the lights in the main room, wiping down the switch. I went behind the bar and poured myself a shot of scotch. The pungent smell of blood stayed in my nose, so I had two more. I put the glass in my pocket. I paused at the front window for a few seconds, then walked out.
.......Back on Montauk Highway, I headed for David Lane. I tossed the shot glass against some rocks on the way, and made it to Campbell's house in five minutes. A small white cube of a house on a hill, it was surrounded by fenced off property and shone like a new penny in the sun. I parked down the road and walked around back. An oval pool was choked with pink and white flowers from a series of mimosa trees lining one side. I moved over to a set of sliding glass doors. One of them had a large crack in it with a section missing near the door handle. The door itself was open.
.......I stepped into a living room that had been worked over. No matter which room I entered, everything was overturned and torn up. I looked for a plastic jar of white powder, but there was no sign of it. I split.
.......I waited by the side of the house, saw no one, then quickly walked back to my car.
.......I made a U-turn towards Southampton and called Rubin on my cell to give him the bad news. His voice went guttural, like someone had him by the balls.
......."Shit. Do you think his death is somehow related?"
......."I'm not sure, doctor. At the very least, you're not the only one pissed off at Mr. Campbell."
......."Did you find the buprenorphine?"
......."No, not at the club or the house."