"Van Lustbader, Eric - Black Blade(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Naoharu Nishitsu lay in utter darkness. Behind him, across the tatami mats, through the sliding doors out to the snow-covered garden that was, to him, something of a shrine, he heard the frail clatter of the moso bamboo. Because the sliding doors were partially open, it was very cold in the room. Nishitsu, naked, did not mind.
He heard a gentle stirring - felt it, really, as one catches the whiff of a scent - and he stretched upon the futon. In a moment, Evan was kneeling beside him, her slim girl's body warm and smelling of a certain kind of exotic fruit.
Tell me, Evan,' he said, as she served him bitter green tea, frothy and pale, 'are you happy here?'
'I never considered it, Nishitsu-san,' she said, settling herself on her haunches. 'Forbidden Dreams is my home, it always has been. It is my duty to be here, to serve you.' Her voice was like cotton that you could pull apart with your hands, mould back together in another shape at whim.
'Then, can you tell me whether you have ever been happy?'
'I am content, Nishitsu-san.'
He grunted. 'I am not, Evan.'
That statement hung in the air like a straight razor about to fall off a shelf.
'There is a growing sense of dissent.'
'Dissent?'
'Yes,' Nishitsu said, lying quite still. 'I am speaking now of loyalty. Something that, up until now, did not seem to be an issue.' He watched her, a dim charcoal outline in the blackness of the room. 'Historically, from the time of the Shoguns, we of the Toshin Kuro Kosai have always been of one mind, set on one path, and that path was secure. Now I believe it is not.'
'Are you speaking of a traitor, Nishitsu-san?'
From utter stillness, he shot up on one elbow, his left hand gripping her right wrist so hard he could feel her bones give. 'Clever girl.' Evan made no sound, but he sensed her head had swung around and, a moment later, he could smell a change in her scent, slightly acrid, musky, less delicate. His nostrils dilated as he feasted on the odour, complex and heady, of her fear.
'Yes, a traitor.' His voice was a harsh whisper. 'I believe that someone close to us has turned against us, is working from within to undermine our plan.'
His other hand came up, cupped her breast. He clamped down so hard that now, despite her iron discipline, he heard a distinct whimper come from between her lips. 'You wouldn't know anything about this, would you, Evan?'
'What?'
He had startled her, surely, and this was good because it meant he could trust her, but he did not relax his painful hold on her. On the contrary, he ground down harder on wrist and breast until he could feel her vibrating with the pain, until, bending over, he could taste her pain in the bitterness of her newly produced sweat.
'Someone, Evan, and it could be you,' he said, rolling the taste of her around his mouth, no less precious than the finest wine. 'Someone we know well is betraying us or thinking of betraying us, and it could be you, who slept with the spy Lawrence Moravia again and again.'
'But I did not know he was a spy; if I had I certainly would have tried to discover who he worked for.'
Nishitsu was grateful for the darkness because he could not stop himself from smiling. It was true what he had learned about the sexes: men were duplicitous, but women knew how to discover their duplicity.
It did not matter that Nishitsu already knew who Moravia's masters were, that he had known from the moment the amateur had sent his coded fax from the American Express office on the Ginza. It had not mattered to Nishitsu that he could not read the message, only that his people there had reported to him the destination of the fax.
Evan need know nothing of this; it was his experience that too much information could become an insupportable burden. In any event, he had a more important use for Evan. He loosened his grip on her, felt in response a lessening of that odour he loved so completely. 'Who would betray us?'
'I don't know.'
His mouth was so close it brushed the skin of her cheek, the corner of her lips. 'The suspects are limited. There are only a few people with enough power, experience and guile.' There was a thin line of saliva sealing her lips, and he wanted it. 'A male has the strength of ego required to oppose us, a woman the subtlety of character. What is your sense? Which one?'
'A man.'
'I would have said a man. Shoto Wakare, in fact, is my prime suspect.' He let go of her wrist and was gratified to see that she did not move it. 'I know how your gift works and I give it full credence in these matters.'
'I have always done what you have asked, Nishitsu-san.'
He could not help himself, tasted the wetness between her lips. 'And you will do so again,' he said throatily. 'You will help me find our traitor.'
In answer, Evan lifted her head, revealing the long arch of her neck. Nishitsu felt a commingling of poignancy and lust at the sight of that tender flesh, at how she so willingly exposed it to him.
He moved over her, his powerful legs spreading her thighs. In a moment, she was crying out, but it was a different sort of cry from her whimpers of before.
Wolf had decided not to tell anyone about the door in the back of Moravia's wardrobe, the cell behind it or its bizarre contents, including the photos and the sculpture. He couldn't even bring himself to tell Bobby. Why not? He didn't know, except some instinct told him to keep that part of the investigation to himself for now.
The late afternoon was cold and still, as if there was no weather at all, only a vast frozen grey pall that threatened to smother the city in nothingness. He parked on East Third Street, opposite an old brownstone. The ground floor was given over to an art gallery, if you could call fabric and black leather strips affixed to sheets of burned twisted metal art. The huge pieces were visible in the window behind reinforced steel gates painted hideous shades of green, purple and yellow, like a raw bruise, upon which was scrawled like elegant graffiti, Urban Decay.
At least they got the name right, he thought. The painted iron gates were drawn back, but even so the sculptures in the windows seemed to drink in the acrid winter light, absorbing all illumination.
Inside the gallery, it seemed as dark and drear as midnight. The dreadful gallery was presided over by a painfully thin young woman with the figure of a coat rack, long, lank hair as red as a fire engine and a repellent blue-white complexion. Her eyes were circled by thick rings of kohl, and her lipstick and nail lacquer were as black as the walls of the gallery. All of this made her appear closer to death than to life which, Wolf supposed, was the point. Charming, he thought. Or very hip, depending on your point of view.
The young woman's name was Moun which, she informed him in words clipped out between tiny sharp teeth, rhymed with noun. Wolf told her he was an attorney representing the estate of the late Lawrence Moravia. When Moun. looked at him blankly, he pulled out a snapshot of Moravia, showed it to her.
'Oh, Larry,' Moun said. 'He's dead? Gee. Gross.' Then she shrugged off whatever grief had momentarily seized her. 'Sure, he came in here a lot, he liked to look around. I played this game I always do, you know? At first, I was sure he wasn't interested in the art, just, you know, taking a friend from out of town around a kinky neighbourhood, playing Mr New York. But then I got to know him better, and eventually I knew he'd buy a piece.' She opened a wad of Bazooka bubble gum, crammed it in her mouth. 'You usually get a feel from people, you know? Like I knew when you walked in you weren't here to buy.'
'Like why did you think I was here?'
If Moun had any idea that he was mocking her she gave no sign of it. She cocked her head to one side as if he were a sample a new artist was bringing her to evaluate. She chewed reflectively, then popped the biggest bubble Wolf had ever seen. 'I thought you'd made a mistake. There's a boutique down the block called Urban Design, sells, you know, like trendy stuff.' Х
'Isn't this trendy stuff?' Wolf said, spreading his hands.
'Is art trendy?' Moun asked seriously. 'It's not meant to be bought then thrown out next season. No, no, it's -timeless. That's what makes it art.' She watched him as he moved around the gallery, popping bubbles now one after another. 'All these pieces are made by one artist, Chika,' she said, trying to be helpful. Then, nervously, 'You aren't going to ask for Larry's money back.'
Wolf turned to look at her. 'Why would I want to do that?'
'Gee, I don't know,' Moun said, 'but, well, since Larry's dead, I thought your being here and all, that, well . . . ' She lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
'How come you call him Larry?'
Moun shrugged. "That's his name, isn't it?' She popped another monstrous bubble. 'Anyway, Larry and I. . .' She hesitated. 'I think that's why he came in so much. It wasn't anything, just - Well, one Saturday afternoon we went back behind there' - she indicated a matte-black door at the rear of the gallery - 'and, you know, fucked.' She giggled. 'It was kind of cool because there were customers in the gallery and we could hear them, you know, moving around and talking while we fucked. It was very cool.'
I'll bet it was, Wolf thought. He said, 'When did Mr Moravia - Larry - buy his ... Chika?'
'At the opening,' Moun said. 'He came for the party. Chika was here, and he bought the piece after talking to her. That would have been, gee, about a week ago. That's why I thought, well, you know . . .'
'That the estate wanted to return the sculpture.'
'Yeah.' Moun made a face. 'Well, you know, Chika's stuff isn't for everyone. In fact, I really didn't think it was for Larry, but he flipped over it; he was talking a blue streak to Chika.'
'The artist.'
'Uh huh.'