"Robinson, Spider - Callahans Crosstime Saloon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

he reached under his leather vest to his shirt pocket. Knuckles white, he hauled
out a flat, shiny black case about four inches by two. His eyes never left
Callahan's as he opened it and held it up so that we could all see the gleaming
hypodermic. It didn't look like it had ever been used; he must have just stolen
it.
He held it up to the light for a moment, looking up his bare, unmarked arm at
it, and then he whirled and flung it case and all into the giant fireplace.
Almost as it shattered he sent a cellophane bag of white powder after it, and
the powder burned green while the sudden stillness hung in the air. The guy with
the eyes looked oddly stricken in some interior way, and he sat absolutely rigid
in his seat.
And Callahan was around the bar in an instant, handing the Janssen kid a beer
that grew out of his fist and roaring, "Welcome home, Tommy!" and no one in the
place was very startled to realize that only Callahan of all of us knew the
kid's first name.
We all sort of swarmed around then and swatted the kid on the arm some and he
even cried a little until we poured some beer over his head and pretty soon it
began to look like the night was going to get merry again after all.
And that's when the guy with the eyes stood up, and everybody in the joint
shut up and turned to look at him. That sounds melodramatic, but it's the effect
he had on us. When he moved, he was the center of attention. He was tall,
unreasonably tall, near seven foot, and I'll never know why we hadn't all
noticed him right off. He was dressed in a black suit that fit worse than a
Joliet Special, and his shoes didn't look right either. After a moment you
realized that he had the left shoe on the right foot, and vice-versa, but it
didn't surprise you. He was thin and deeply tanned and his mouth was twisted up
tight but mostly he was eyes, and I still dream of those eyes and wake up
sweating now and again. They were like windows into hell, the very personal and
private hell of a man faced with a dilemma he cannot resolve. They did not
blink, not once.
He shambled to the bar, and something was wrong with his walk, too, like he
was walking sideways on the wall with magnetic shoes and hadn't quite caught the
knack yet. He took ten new singles out of his jacket pocket -which struck me as
an odd place to keep cash-and laid them on the bar.

Callahan seemed to come back from a far place, and hustled around behind the
bar again. He looked the stranger up and down and then placed ten shot glasses
on the counter. He filled each with rye and stood back silently, running a big
red hand through his thinning hair and regarding the stranger with clinical
interest.
The dark giant tossed off the first shot, shuffled to the chalk line, and said
in oddly-accented English, "To my profession," and hurled the glass into the
fireplace.
Then he walked back to the bar and repeated the entire procedure. Ten times.
By the last glass, brick was chipping in the fireplace.
When the last, "To my profession," echoed in empty air; he turned and faced
us. He waited, tensely, for question or challenge. There was none. He half
turned away, paused, then swung back and took a couple of deep breaths. When he
spoke his voice made you hurt to hear it.
"My profession, gentlemen," he said with that funny accent I couldn't place,