"Tom Reamy - That Detweiler Boy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reamy Tom)

The Detweiler Boy
by Tom Reamy


The room had been cleaned with pine-oil disinfectant and smelled like a public
toilet. Harry Spinner was on the floor behind the bed, scrunched down between
it and the wall. The almost colorless chenille bedspread had been pulled askew
exposing part of the clean but dingy sheet. All I could see of Harry was one
leg poking over the edge of the bed. He wasn't wearing a shoe, only a faded
brown and tan argyle sock with a hole in it. The sock, long bereft of any
elasticity, was crumpled around his thin rusty ankle.

I closed the door quietly behind me and walked around the end of the bed so I
could see all of him. He was huddled on his back with his elbows propped up by
the wall and the bed. His throat had been cut. The blood hadn't spread very
far. Most of it had been soaked up by the threadbare carpet under the bed. I
looked around the grubby little room but didn't find anything. There were no
signs of a struggle, no signs of forced entryтАФbut then, my BankAmericard
hadn't left any signs either. The window was open, letting in the muffled roar
of traffic on the Boulevard. I stuck my head out and looked, but it was three
stories straight down to the neon-lit marquee of the movie house.

It had been nearly two hours since Harry called me. "Bertram, my boy, I've run
across something very peculiar. I don't really know what to make of it."

I had put away the report I was writing on Lucas McGowan's hyperactive wife.
(She had a definite predilection for gas-pump jockeys, car-wash boys, and
parking-lot attendants. I guess it had something to do with the Age of the
Automobile.) I propped my feet on my desk and leaned back until the old swivel
chair groaned a protest.

"What did you find this time, Harry? A nest of international spies or an
invasion from Mars?" I guess Harry Spinner wasn't much use to anyone, not even
himself, but I liked him. He'd helped me in a couple of cases, nosing around
in places only the Harry Spinners of the world can nose around in unnoticed. I
was beginning to get the idea he was trying to play Doctor Watson to my
Sherlock Holmes.

"Don't tease me, Bertram. There's a boy here in the hotel. I saw something I
don't think he wanted me to see. It's extremely odd."

Harry was also the only person in the world, except my mother, who called me
Bertram. "What did you see?"

"I'd rather not talk about it over the phone. Can you come over?"

Harry saw too many old private-eye movies on the late show. "It'll be a while.
I've got a client coming in in a few minutes to pick up the poop on his
wandering wife."