"Dan Simmons - Carrion Comfort (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

jackets, the applause of retainers, the gouts of blood from the dying boar? Or did Willi remember
the slam of jackboots on cob-
blestones and the pounding of his lieutenants' fists on doors? Perhaps Willi still associated his
Hunt with the dark European night of the ovens that he had helped to oversee.
I called it Feeding. Willi called it The Hunt. I had never heard Nina call it anything.
"Where is your VCR?" Willi asked. "I have put them all on tape."
"Oh, Willi," said Nina in an exasperated tone. "You know Melanie. She's so old fashioned. You know
she wouldn't have a video player."
"I don't even have a television," I said. Nina laughed.
"Goddamn it," muttered Willi. "It doesn't matter. I have other records here." He snapped rubber
bands from around the small, black notebooks. "It just would have been better on tape. The Los
Angeles stations gave much coverage to the Hollywood Strangler, and I edited in the . . . Ach!
Never mind."
He tossed the videocassettes into his briefcase and slammed the lid shut.
"Twenty-three," he said. "'Iiventy-three since we met twelve months ago. It doesn't seem that
long, does it?"
"Show us," said Nina. She was leaning forward, and her blue eyes seemed very bright. "I've been
wondering since I saw the Strangler interviewed on Sixty Minutes. He was yours, Willi? He seemed
so-"
"Ja, ja, he was mine. A nobody. A timid little man. He was the gardener of a neighbor of mine. I
left him alive so that the police could question him, erase any doubts. He will hang himself in
his cell next month after the press loses interest. But this is more interesting. Look at this."
Willi slid across several glossy black-and-white photographs. The NBC executive had murdered the
five members of his family and drowned a visiting soap-opera actress in his pool. He had then
stabbed himself repeatedly and written 50
sHARE in blood on the wall of the bathhouse.
"Reliving old glories, Willi?" asked Nina. "DEATH TO THE PiGs and all that?"
"No, godamn it. I think it should receive points for irony. The girl had been scheduled to drown
on the program. It was already in the script outline."
"Was he hard to Use?" It was my question. I was curious despite myself.
Willi lifted one eyebrow. "Not really. He was an alcoholic and heavily into cocaine. There was not
much left. And he hated his family. Most people do."
"Most people in California, perhaps," said Nina primly. It was an odd comment from Nina. Years ago
her father had committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a trolley car.
"Where did you make contact?" I asked.
"A party. The usual place. He bought the coke from a director who had ruined one of my-"
"Did you have to repeat the contact?"
Willi frowned at me. He kept his anger under control, but his face grew redder. "Ja, ja. I saw him
twice more. Once I just watched from my car as he played tennis."
"Points for irony," said Nina. "But you lose points for repeated contact. If he were as empty as
you say, you should have been able to Use him after only one touch. What else do you have?"
He had his usual assortment. Pathetic skid-row murders. Two domestic slayings. A highway collision
that turned into a fatal shooting. "I was in the crowd," said Willi. "I made contact. He had a gun
in the glove compartment."
"TWO points," said Nina.
Willi had saved a good one for last. A once-famous child star had suffered a bizarre accident. He
had left his Bel Air apartment while it filled with gas and then returned to light
a match. Two others had died in the ensuing fire.
"You get credit only for him," said Nina.
┬л JQ, ia. ┬╗