"Spider Robinson - The Magnificent Conspiracy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

on, dammit, you can still pull this off if you just hang on.
 "Stiffened piano wire," I said, meeting his eyes, "embedded in a hardwood grip
and filed sharp. You put it between the correct two ribs and shove. Ruptures the
heart, and the pericar-dial sac self-seals on the way out. Pressure builds. If you do it
properly, the victim himself thinks it's a heart attack, and the entry wound is vir-tually
undetectable. A full-scale autopsy would pick it upтАФbut when an overweight car
dealer in his fifties has a heart attack, pathologists don't generally get up on their
toes."
"Unless he happens to be a multibillionaire," Cardwell noted.
"My employers will regret leaving me in ignorance. Fluoroscope in the fence
gate?"
"The same kind they use in airports. If that weapon hadn't been so damned
interesting, you'd never have reached the garage."
"I wanted to do the research, but they were paying double for a rush job." I
sighed. "I knew better. Or should have. Now what?"
"Now let go of that thing and kick it far away." I did so at once.
"Now you can have another beer and tell me some things."
"Sorry, Cardwell. No names. They sent me in blind, and I'll speak to them about
that one day, but I don't give names. It's bad for business. Go ahead and call the
man."
"You misunderstand me, sir. I already know Hakluyt's name quite well, and I have
no inten-tion of calling police of any description."
I knew the location of every scrap of cover for twenty yards in any direction, and
I favored the welding tanks behind me and to my leftтАФhe looked alert enough not to
shoot at them at such close range, and they were on wheels facing him. If I could tip
my chair backwards and come at him from behind the tank ...
" ... and I'd rather not kill you unless you force me to, so please unbunch those
muscles."
There was no way he was going to let me walk away from this, and there was no
way I was going to sit there and let him pot me at his leisure, so there was no
question of sitting still, and so no one was more surprised than me when the muscles
of my calves and thighs unbunched and I sat still.
Perhaps I believed him.
"Ask your questions," I said.
"Why did you take this job?"
I broke up. "Oh, my God," I whooped, "how did a nice girl like me wind up in
such a pro-fession, you mean?" The ancient gag was sud-denly very hilarious, and I
roared with laughter as I gave the punchline. "Just lucky, I guess."
Pure tension release, of course. But damned if he didn't laugh at the old chestnut,
tooтАФor at himself for all I know. We laughed together until I was done, and then he
said, "But why?" and I sobered up.
"For the money, of course."
He shook his head. "I don't believe you." What's in your right hand, old man? I
only shrugged. "It's the truth."
He shook his head again. "Some of your colleagues, perhaps. But I watched your
face while I told you my story, and your empathic faculty seems to be functioning
quite nicely. You're personally involved in this, involved with me. You're too damn
mad at me, and it's confusing you as you sit there, spoiling your judg-ment. Oh no,
son, you can't fool me. You're some kind of idealist. But what brand?"
There isn't a policeman in the world who knows my name, none of my hits have