"Dan Simmons - Joe Kurtz 03 - Hard As Nails" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

if Officer O'Toole was becoming more laid back after the hot summer just past and
with the pleasant autumn just winding downтАФthe leaves on the only tree visible
outside her window were a brilliant orange but ready to blow off.
"You seem to have recovered completely from your automobile accident last
winter," said the parole officer. "I haven't seen even a hint of a limp the last few
visits."
"Yeah, pretty much full recovery," said Kurtz. His "automobile accident" the
previous February had included being knifed, thrown out of a third story window,
and crashing through a plaster portico at the old Buffalo train station, but he hadn't
seen any pressing need for the probation office to know the details. The cover story
had been a pain for Kurtz, since he'd had to sell his perfectly good twelve-year-old
VolvoтАФhe could hardly be seen driving around in the car he was supposed to have
wrecked up on a lonely stretch of winter highwayтАФand now he was driving a much
older red Pinto. He missed the Volvo.
"You grew up around Buffalo, didn't you, Mr. Kurtz?"
He didn't react, but he felt the skin tighten on his face. O'Toole knew his personal
history from the dossier on her desktop, and she'd never ventured into his pre-Attica
history before. What'd I do?
He nodded.
"I'm not asking professionally," said Peg O'Toole. "I just have a minor
mysteryтАФvery minorтАФthat I need solved, and I think I need someone who grew up
here."
"You didn't grow up here?" asked Kurtz. Most people who still lived in Buffalo
had.
"I was born here, but we moved away when I was three," she said, opening the
bottom right drawer of her desk and moving some things aside. "I moved back
eleven years ago when I joined the Buffalo P.D." She brought out a white envelope.
"Now I need the advice of a native and a private investigator."
Kurtz stared flatly at her. "I'm not a private investigator," he said, his voice flatter
than his gaze.
"Not licensed," agreed O'Toole, evidently not intimidated by his cold stare or
tone. "Not after serving time for manslaughter. But everything I've read or been told
suggests you were an excellent P.I."
Kurtz almost reacted to this. What the hell is she after?
She removed three photographs from the envelope and slid them across the desk.
"I wondered if you might know where this isтАФor was?"
Kurtz looked at the photos. They were color, standard snapshot size, no borders,
no date on the back, so they'd been taken sometime in the last couple of decades.
The first photograph showed a broken and battered Ferris wheel, some cars missing,
rising above bare trees on a wooded hilltop. Beyond the abandoned Ferris wheel
was a distant valley and the hint of what might be a river. The sky was low and gray.
The second photo showed a dilapidated bumper-car pavilion in an overgrown
meadow. The pavilion's roof had partially collapsed and there were overturned and
rusted bumper cars on the pavilion floor and scattered outside among the brittle
winter or late-autumn weeds. One of the carsтАФNumber 9 emblazoned on its side in
fading gold scriptтАФlay upside down in an icy puddle. The final photograph was a
close-up of a merry-go-round or carousel horse's head, paint faded, its muzzle and
mouth smashed away and showing rotted wood.
Kurtz looked at each of the photographs again and said, "No idea."
O'Toole nodded as if she expected that answer. "Did you used to go to any