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

'Do you think he fucked her, too?'
'I don't know.' Moun popped a bubble. 'Maybe. I think he liked that kind of thing.'
'What kind of thing?'
Moun made a moue with her black lips; the effect was frightening. 'Are lawyers always so dense? Trip up. Larry liked to fuck, but I got the impression he didn't want any, you know, entanglements.'
'Relationships, you mean. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, that was Larry.'
That made Moun laugh. 'They're all like that, aren't they?'
'All who?'
'Oh, you know, guys like Larry. I got to understand him after a while. He was a big shot, lots of money, I bet he ate all his meals at places like the Four Seasons and Lutece. I mean in that life he was a suit like all the rest of the suits, only deep down inside he was laughing at them, the other suits, you know. He hated that kind of life, it wasn't him at all.'
'What was him?'
Moun looked at him. 'Larry was bent - I mean seriously bent.'
'Sexually.'
'Like what else?'
He said, 'Did Larry ever tie you up?'
Moun popped a bubble. 'Are you Larry's lawyer or his shrink?' She gave a delicious little shiver. 'He never did, no, but I wouldn't have minded.'
'You wouldn't?' Wolf said, surprised despite himself. It was impossible to think of this bizarre creature as being someone's daughter.
She came up close to him, and he could smell her scent, a combination of neroli and cloves, sharp and exotic and without the slightest nuance. 'Are you a control freak?' she asked. 'Most men are, I know, but, see, there's a pleasure in loss of control - it's powerful, I mean, it could kind of control you if you let it, and that in itself heightens the pleasure.' She looked up at him. 'Do you like pleasure? Do you even understand it?'
Wolf had the irrational notion that she was about to ask him back into that noisome inner room for a bout of tie up the princess; part of him was wondering what it would be like, another part was appalled that he was even fantasizing about it.
'You mentioned before that Larry came in with a friend.'
Moun popped her bubble. 'What?'
'You said a friend from out of town - that Larry was playing the big shot with him. He also bent?'
She laughed. 'Oh, no way, man, not him. He was uptight and not a bit all right.'
'How so?'
She cocked her head; it made her look like some kind of futuristic fighting cock. 'You know the type: a suit, a crew, a tight-ass.'
He didn't bother asking her for a better description.
Within the red glow coining from the core of him he saw the face of a handsome young Ivy-Leaguer, no doubt Yalie, blond, inquisitive blue eyes - pulled from Moun's memory like a trout from a lake. He said, 'From out of town.'
'Yeah, right.'
'How'd you know that?'
'He kept saying things, like "back in DC", things like that. Also - ' here she squinted at him, the ultimate test of his New Yorker-dom, whether he could get this '- he had that Martha, Wouldja Look At-all Them Tall Buildin's look.'
'You mean he had an accent.'
Moun grinned at him, a truly horrifying sight, like something you'd see in a National Geographic special on New Guinea cannibals. 'Uh huh.'
'What kind?'
'Kinda Southern, kinda.'
'By that I take it you mean not a broad You-all, but a soft one.'
'Right.'
DC for sure, Wolf thought. 'He have a name, this friend of Larry's?'
'Sure did,' Moun said, enjoying this interview plenty. 'The only interesting thing about him. McGeorge Shipley.' She nodded. 'Worked for the government, too.'
'The Federal government?'
'Uh huh. Larry asked him a question, I couldn't hear what, and Shipley took out a business card. His pen was out of ink so he asked me for mine - to write something on the back. That's when I saw his name on the card. And the seal. The card said he worked for the Department of Defense.'
Interesting, Wolf thought. Moravia, who shuttled back and forth between New York and Tokyo, palling around with some heavy hitter from Defense. Now what could that be all about? Nothing in his file mentioned any ties to the Feds. All of a sudden, Lawrence Moravia began to increase in importance.
He took a quick stroll around the gallery again, said to Moun in the most casual way, 'You get a look at what Shipley wrote on the back of his card?'
'Yeah.' Moun's tongue, seeming almost a neon pink against her shiny, black lips, swept briefly up and out. 'Want to know what it was?'
For a dizzying moment he thought she was going to ask for his services in that dank back room, small, thin body pushed sweatily up against his, her avid fingers loosening his belt. Some quid pro quo.
Then she laughed. 'You should see your face.'
Wolf laughed with her, liking her despite her bizarre-ness. It occurred to him that there was more to her than the rebellious child wanting merely to shock her elders.
'It was a phone number, a two-oh-two area code.' She recited the number as if she had used a mnemonic to memorize it.
'How come you remembered it?' he said, writing the DC number down.
Moun shrugged her thin shoulders; every time she moved he could scent the cloves and neroli drifting off her like pollen. 'I remember everything. Especially about Larry. He was like that, God, I don't know why.' She seemed abruptly sad, as if only now the news of his death had reached her.
'What can you tell me about the artist Chika?' he said to change the subject.
Moun put her hand lovingly on one of the sculptures, a gesture that in its innocence reminded Wolf of the disturbing photos in Lawrence Moravia's inner sanctum. 'You mean what's in the brochure or what I know?'
'They're not the same?'