"Van Lustbader, Eric - Black Blade(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)
Wolf recalled seeing that car from his rooftop perch, part of the background environment in motion.
'Any description at all on this person, Bobby. Think now.'
'I have, Lieutenant, but I can't come up with anything. I mean, if I had to swear to it I wouldn't even know whether it was a man or a woman.' Bobby sighed. 'Got a partial on the licence, though.'
'That was great work.' Wolf appreciated Bobby's discerning eye, but he also recognized the young man's need for positive reinforcement now - not to mention his need to be busy. 'Get onto DMV now. Get them to clear the computers. Tell them to run the partial with your description of the car. I want an answer inside an hour.'
Then he knelt beside Junior Ruiz. Afterwards, Wolf would remember that Bobby's face was as pale and pinched as that of the girl Arquillo had decapitated.
Toughminded and as loyal as any terrier, he had nodded, darted away into the sharp, acid-white false dawn made by the revolving lights of the blue-and-whites he - or maybe Junior, his last call in - had ordered up. The lights bloomed and faded like nuclear flowers born and dying in the same brief moment. At Wolf's shouted commands, the uniforms began to seal off the area, some of them trooping dispiritedly into the tenement to hit the crime scene and round up any witnesses. Even so engaged, they haphazardly broke windows, rousted drunks, and brought out their burnished nightsticks, mainly, he supposed, because they were bored, scared or both. They had a life, it was true, but it was another kind of life, unimaginable to civilians, where the fear of being a target filled the days and nights like decay fills a rotten tooth.
Through it all, Wolf still knelt, holding Junior Ruiz's wet head in his hands, keeping it raised even when the ME's men arrived, as if even in death his man needed protection from the street.
The Werewolves were headquartered in a run-down movie theatre in Chinatown that had shown a stultifying succession of cheap, racist Kung Fu films (the villains were invariably Japanese, scrutable, wholly evil) until a teen tong war, more violent than any of the films, had closed the place down.
Its decomposing exterior hunkered on the decayed thoroughfare of East Broadway like a ragged dog beneath the vibrating steel underside of the Manhattan Bridge. There were large gaps now in the bridge, where girders had rusted away, leaving exposed timbers which were spirited away in the middle of the night to fuel the bonfires in the burgeoning communities of the homeless under the East River Drive and elsewhere around the city.
Wolf liked the anonymity of the location, although he had been somewhat surprised that he hadn't been afforded space at One Police Plaza, southwest of the theatre. In fact, Commissioner Hayes Walker Johnson had requested just such a spot, and the Werewolves would have been assigned a suite of offices there had it not been for the clandestine interference of Chief of Police Jack Breathard, who did not like Wolf or his swift accession into the stratosphere of the NYPD. Breathard saw Wolf as his one true rival in the department and, as such, deserving of every administrative snafu Breathard's Machiavellian brain could throw at him.
Seeing the interior of the dilapidated theatre for the first time, Wolf had decided to simply pull out all the seats, plywood over the rotting, threadbare carpeting and treat the space as if it were a loft, dividing off cubicles for each of his staff, providing a larger space near the front where the movie screen still hung, as glossy as the hair of a forties film noir heroine. The other walls, however, were still as dark as pitch with the spilled blood of young Chinese; Wolf's repeated requests for a paint crew were still being rerouted by Breathard.
After a necessary detour, it was to this odd office that Wolf and Bobby Connor headed when they had wrapped things up at the crime scene. By that time, DMV had got back to them. There was no match between the partial licence plate number and the black '87 Firebird. Naturally. Stolen plates. It was to be expected, but you needed to run down every lead.
Wolf and Bobby went to see Junior's wife and kid, and Bobby had watched mute and numb while Wolf held the sobbing woman in his arms and had gently rocked her. The kid, eight years old, had sat on a corner of the shiny couch, holding a baseball bat in his hands, saying nothing at all; Bobby had wondered what the kid might be thinking, maybe smashing in the side of their heads for taking his daddy away from him.
'This may not mean anything to you now, Maria,' Bobby overheard Wolf talking softly in idiomatic Spanish to Junior's widow. 'But your man was brave. He was doing something important, making his force felt on the street. That's something you'll be able to tell Julio when he's old enough to understand, and it will change his life.'
'I don't know how you do it, Lieutenant,' Bobby had said in the car, on their way to the theatre. 'I wouldn't've known the right words to say.'
'Were they the right words, Bobby?' Wolf had stared straight through the windshield, oblivious to Bobby's weaving in and out of early morning truck traffic. 'I'm glad you thought so.'
'Weren't they? You calmed her down.'
Wolf had made no move; it was this uncanny ability to lapse into utter stillness that often unnerved Bobby as it unnerved Wolf's quarries. 'I don't know any more whether I believed what I said or whether it was just bullshit.'
'But you were right what you said.'
Wolf, his mind on other matters - burning faces, the thickness of the dark, vipers uncoiling in his gut - said, 'Maybe, in time. But for right now the only thing that matters is that Junior's dead.'
Bobby had waited a moment, thinking as he steered around a newspaper van. 'No, Lieutenant,' he had said at last, 'what matters is that Junior's dead and his murderer is still at large.'
There was an overpowering sense of gloom at the office. Someone had thrown Junior Ruiz's photo up on the screen as a kind of memorial. He looked wide-eyed, considerably older than his twenty-nine years, and so serious you'd never know without having spent time with him how funny he could be. Wolf went to his cubicle, sat back in his metal-and-vinyl swivel chair and thought about just how much he despised his life.
When had he come to the conclusion that the city was no place for him: last week, last month or last year? He was sick of living in the soft yellow underbelly of a rotting metropolis, patrolling its filth-strewn byways inbetween days, his head filled with the monstrous voices of his quarry. My God, he wondered, how had a boy who had grown up in Elk Basin, Wyoming, got himself into this particular sewer? He closed his eyes. He knew why he had fled Elk Basin. The truth was he didn't want to think about it. The reality was he was here now and he damn well better decide what he was going to do about it. Live in the sewer all his life or ... Or what?
'Lieutenant?' Bobby Connor's voice.
Bobby backed off. Rank aside, there was something uniquely formidable about Wolf Matheson, with his high-cheekboned face, straight, brushed-back hair and curiously shaped eyes the colour of cinnamon. Beyond anything physical, however, he possessed an intensity of -Bobby was not sure of the right word - stillness, maybe?, that set him apart from anyone else Bobby had come in contact with.
Wolf, his breathing slowed, deepened, had too much to think about. Such as who had killed Arquillo - and Junior Ruiz, for that matter? It was easy to say that in the dark Arquillo had wrestled Junior's piece from him and had shot him, but was that what had really happened? Wolf, projecting himself back into the alley, Junior Ruiz's blood covering him, had, in fact, felt the residue of his slain man's aura like a teardrop left behind on a jilted lover's cheek. And he knew - knew - that Junior had not been shot by Arquillo.
Who, then, had taken his piece from him, turned it on him point-blank? Bobby's anthropomorphic shadow figure, thick as syrup, scary as shit.
And who had been waiting for the shadow in that pieced-together black '87 Firebird? And how in the hell had this shadow managed to conceal its aura from him?
It was becoming clear to him - as it should have in the instant he had seen the blood bubbling as thick as syrup upon Arquillo's proud, mad matador's face - that this investigation was something more than any of his others.
He tried to think, but his mind was cluttered with images of the girl Arquillo had decapitated - not innocent, surely, but what sin was grievous enough to deserve such butchery? Images of Junior's eyes like copper pennies, already patinaed; images of his widow who had known -because every cop's wife waits for it, fears it - why he had appeared at her front door in the grim light before dawn. And, most vividly, images of the eerie fire that had come simmering up from inside Arquillo.
He had better listen to himself, the clutter a clear indication of how far this mystery was pushing his emotions around . . .
'Here is your mind' - held in one gnarled, weather-, beaten hand. '- And here is your body.' The other hand held a forearm's span from the first.
The young Wolf had watched with a combination of fascination and dread as the old man had brought his two hands together. At first, they seemed to be moving so slowly, but at the end they came together so swiftly and with such a force that the resulting sound, as sharp, startling as.a sudden thunderclap, had caused Wolf to jump. And, in the aftermath, the familiar jingling of the carved animals - bear, bison, hawk and wolf - on the old man's beaded bracelets.
The old man had smiled, as if he enjoyed startling his grandson. In the place where he dwelled, the smells, heady and pungent, of hide tanning into leather, the ashes of a fire, and herbal oils too exotic and complex for the child to identify, combined to make Wolf lightheaded.
The old man's smile had turned benevolent. 'You do not believe me. That is good. Belief in anything - especially yourself - can only come over time.' He had reached out so that his thin, long fingers settled over Wolf's shoulders. They were strong, those fingers, and Wolf remembered their strength as he remembered few other things in his past.
'Now settle yourself,' his grandfather had said, fixing the boy in his careful gaze. Wo. This way. Keep your back still, like that, yes, very still.' He was a tall, handsome man and, though not particularly bulky, Wolf imagined him to be the largest man on earth. Perhaps the child was responding to the old man's aura, which was formidable. Wow observe, soon you will cease to feel your body. In a moment, there is only your mind, gorged with the chaos of youth. Are you happy with this: running, running and never thinking? How could you be? Only in the stillness of thought can decisions be properly made. Think of a mountain or a tree, how still they are. When you become as still as a mountain or a tree you will at last be able to think.'
It had taken the young Wolf a long time to understand what his grandfather had meant. Kineticism was such an integral part of his life - as it was his father's - Wolf always playing baseball, hide-and-seek, running races, seeing his endurance and strength multiply as he ran with the Wind River Shoshones on the marathon races so important to them, a reminder of a past they could no longer remember . . .
Wolf started, opening his eyes. Had he fallen asleep or was he still being haunted by the old man? Haunted by something, for certain.
'Matheson -'
Wolf stared up at the wide, black, moustachioed face of Jack Breathard, Chief of Police, and in Wolf's estimation, an exceedingly dangerous man. Breathard's small yellow eyes were as cold as a meat locker, though his wide mouth was smiling in that practised expression only those in media or comfortable with it could muster. Breathard, a big man by any standard you cared to name, loomed over Wolf like the ogre just slid down Jack's beanstalk.
'How's it goin'?'
'Going just fine, Chief.' This said neutrally but somewhat warily because Breathard was far too busy to waste his time with idle chatter.
'Heard you lost a man this morning, shot with his own service revolver.' His face had taken on the expression of a stern schoolmaster. 'That's not the kind of news we like to disseminate to the press.'
'I'll pass your rebuke on to Junior Ruiz's widow.'
Breathard's tree trunk arms went rigid as he leaned over, pressed his palms onto Wolf's desk. 'Now, look here, wise ass, I don't take shit like that from anyone, hear? Any time a man of mine is killed in the line of duty it's bad enough; killed with his own gun, stinks. You know my meaning. It makes us seem incompetent. We already have enough shit shovelled at us by civilians in the way of charges of brutality, racism, graft and protectionism, without this kind of crap.'
'I can see your point,' Wolf said while grinding his teeth.
'No, you fucking well can't, Mr Big-Shot-Bring-'Em-In-Dead-Or-Alive.' He lifted his hands off the desk, pointed a sausage-like forefinger at Wolf. 'You may be the Commissioner's fair-haired white boy, but you ain't mine. I got my eye on you, Matheson. I'm just waiting for you to fuck up so I can get you out of here, fill this place with my people. You got any of my people here?'
'You know Squire Richards works for me.'
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |