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

Wolf, about to answer, paused. It occurred to him that he didn't really much care what Johnson's own motivation was, and this concerned him. Even a month ago, it would have been an intellectual puzzle he would have pored over until he had unearthed the answer. He wondered what was happening to him - whether he was going a little crazy. The power he had been given was sought after by every member of the NYPD. He regularly gave audiences not only to the city's chief prosecutor but to the state's attorney general, both of whom treated him as if he were some sort of guru, giving them advice on how to pursue the convictions of the most dangerous felons. In short, he was living the dream of every person who entered law enforcement. He had worked hard to get to this place of privilege. And yet now that it was his, he was beginning to realize he no longer cared about it. What was the matter with him? Maybe he just needed some sleep. The Arquillo hunt had been in its final stages and he hadn't slept in thirty-six hours. Now this.
'Let's get over to Moravia's apartment,' he said as Bobby threw the cab in gear.
'But Moravia was iced at his office.'
'I think we'd better get a sense of the man before we visit a crime scene that's likely to be sterile.'
Lawrence Moravia had lived on the top floor of a new condo he had built on Central Park South. The building catered to Arabs and Japanese; his quarters took up the entire floor.
'Holy Jesus!' Bobby exclaimed when a uniform guarding the door let them in. Wolf said nothing; Bobby had said it all.
Moravia's apartment - house was a better description, though somewhat less than adequate - seemed endless. Room after room replicated itself before them, all decorated in the most exquisite and expensive taste, all looking out on one half of Manhattan island. From up here, Wolf thought, you could almost convince yourself that New York was as glittery and majestic as it appeared in this picture postcard view, that there were no monstrous deeds being perpetrated even as you looked out on its streets. You were so high up, you wouldn't even hear the squad car sirens. But, in truth, the panorama sickened Wolf; he had had experience in the pyrrhic value of a lofty, dispassionate perspective of monstrous deeds.
Bobby ran his hand along the Missoni fabric covering a vast semi-circular couch. 'I don't know about you,' he said, 'but I wouldn't mind having a tenth of this guy's dough.'
Wolf stared out of the windows at the gleaming towers of Manhattan. The stink of El Barrio might have been on another planet. 'See what you can turn up here. I'll hit the rear of the apartment.'
Wolf made no sound as he went from room to room. The place had that decorated look that made the rooms appear as if no one lived in them. The perfection and harmony of the colours, patterns, styles of furniture set his teeth on edge. So much money had been spent in furnishing this vast space, but it was a place to look at rather than to inhabit. It occurred to Wolf that he was looking at a video image, an advertisement, perhaps, meant to sucker you into parting with your hard-earned bucks.
He tried to imagine Lawrence Moravia moving through these rooms: what did he do here? Did he put his feet up on the highly polished mahogany burl deco table? Did he drip ice cream on the $250-a-yard fabric of this stylish but uncomfortable-looking chair? Did he leave hair and dandruff in the hand-carved jade Sherl Wagner sink? Who cleaned this place? - it was a job for Hercules.
The master bedroom seemed as large as half a football field. Like the other rooms, it was filled with artwork by minimalists whose names - Flavin and LeWitt - meant nothing to Wolf; neither did their work. There was a circular whirlpool spa set in the floor near the window that looked north over the bleached bare trees of Central Park, a vast skeleton dropped down into the centre of bleak Manhattan.
Wolf climbed into the spa, stared out the window. What had Lawrence Moravia thought of while he had soaked in the steaming water? Perhaps, if he was not alone in the spa, he had thought of nothing.
Wolf got out, went over and stretched out on the bed. It faced a blank wall, not the picture window. Why? It was important, before the data of any murder case began to accrete, to scope out the victim's psychological profile. Without knowing what was important to the victim, the incoming data could be ineffective or, worse, lead you in the wrong direction.
What did Moravia look at when he was in bed?
Wolf got off the bed, looked at the blank wall. It was perfectly featureless, different somehow from the other painted wall in the room, as if someone had sanded it down for some reason.
Between the wall and the bed was a small table. On it was an electronic object of some kind. Wolf switched it on, saw it was a Sharp flat-vision TV that projected its picture onto the smooth wall. Below it was a VCR and a laser-disc player. Wolf bent down, extracted the first half-dozen laser disc titles. These would be Moravia's favourites, being on the top. Eyes Without a Face, In the Realm of the Senses, Mфdchen in Uniform, The Mask, Psycho, Woman in the Dunes. Wolf knew some of the films, read the synopses on the jackets of the others. The bizarre themes of dual personalities and kinky sex linked them all. Not your typical home film library, he thought, replacing the discs. But already he had a better sense of Lawrence Moravia than he had got from reading the avalanche of police paperwork on the case.
He went to the wall that contained Moravia's wardrobe and slid open one mirrored door after another.
Suits from Brioni and Armani, handmade shirts from Ascot Chang, off the rack from Comme des Gargons, ties from Sulka and Frank Stella. Wolf paused, curious. It was as if he were looking at the wardrobes of two distinct men, one conservative, the other loose, high-fashioned. He thought about the duality theme that ran through the storylines of the films Moravia obviously liked best to watch; he felt it now; it was as if this place had been inhabited by two men, not one.
He moved on, encountered a series of Japanese kimonos exquisitely embroidered with feudal devices, cranes, peony blossoms, pine trees, the snaking path of a shimmering river. Something here; what?
The fantastic images seemed to shiver as a small breeze stirred the silks, and Wolf turned back into the room to find the source. His hand went to his gun and he pulled it out.
He went all around the perimeter of the bedroom. He stuck his head into the adjoining marbled bathroom. He was alone. What was out of sync? What was he missing? Or was he imagining things? He closed his eyes, not into darkness but into the glow from the heat emanating from the core of him.
He could see Lawrence Moravia, see the muzzle of the gun as it was placed against the back of his neck. But there was no struggle, no wildly beating heart. In fact, there was nothing at all, no emanation, no aura, no face to go with the killing. Again, he thought of kneeling in the alley with the corpse of Junior Ruiz, knowing Junior hadn't been killed by Arquillo but finding no trace of any other aura, feeling nothing but the slither of the vipers, cold and clamorous for attention.
So in this the commish's info had been correct: the two bullets to the base of Moravia's head had penetrated an already dead brain. Who had murdered Moravia and why? Why make it look like a mob hit? From which world had his murderer come: the straight-and-narrow world of Brioni suits and business lunches at the staid Four Seasons or the twilight world of the sexually bent In the Realm of the Senses! Wolf had got no clear signal, but on instinct he was willing to bet on the latter.
He returned to the bedroom. Back inside the wardrobe, he stood for a moment, feeling again the press of cool air. He went past the suits, stared hard at the kimonos, felt again the small but discernible pulse of air. On impulse, he passed his palm across the kimonos' silken fronts. They moved. He pushed them aside, felt the breath of air more clearly. He knelt down and saw what before he had missed.
Behind them was a crack of dim light.
Putting his hand against the crack, he felt the stirring of air, knew this was what had ruffled the edges of the kimonos. He reached out, opened an almost seamless doorway set into the back wall of the wardrobe. Stooping, he went through.
And found himself in a small room, no more than a rather large cell. There was a distinct scent, faint but still discernible. It was musky, herbal, unfamiliar but not at all unpleasant. His hand found a light switch, and he flipped it on.
The room was so sparsely furnished it could have doubled as a monk's cell: a reed mat sunk flush with the floor in one corner, an antique carved standing mirror against the opposite wall, a hibachi - a Japanese wood and copper grill - nearby, charcoal residue in it showing that it had been used. A seemingly authentic knight's armoured helmet and a pair of long doeskin gloves sat on one corner of the hibachi, an antique Oriental rug was rolled up along another wall. There were no windows, no doors, but the walls were hung with large black-and-white photographs, blowups meticulously and lovingly printed as if they were themselves artwork. The photos were variations on a single theme: sexual bondage.
Nude female forms - one could not accurately say bodies since the faces were never shown, but were always twisted away from the camera lens - were tied with cord, not merely wrists and ankles, but artfully patterned cords striping the flesh of breast, belly, thigh and crotch. The lighting caressed the naked flesh as would a lover, lending a three-dimensional quality, a kind of innocent yearning to the images, as if there was hidden amid these grotesque fleshscapes a hunger for forbidden knowledge. All the photos were highly charged with either erotic or pornographic content, depending on your point of view. In any case, they were shocking. Were they insulting, alarming or merely outrageous? Wolf suspected that a coherent case could be made for any one of the three.
But, in a sense, Wolf took in all of these eerie, sadomasochistic elements with only a portion of his mind, filing them away for future reference; in the end, he was obliged to concentrate on the object in the centre of the room.
An eight-foot sculpture hulked there, seeming even larger and more hideous in the close, dense atmosphere of the cubicle. It was constructed of trapuntoed fabric -kimono silks, Wolf noted, almost absently - and black leather strips affixed to sheets of burned twisted metal.
Like the photos, it was disturbing and fascinating all at once, like witnessing some disaster, bringing out all the worst instincts in the human soul.
It had a title, engraved on a small brass plaque: Art or Death. Or, Wolf thought, in Lawrence Moravia's case, Art and Death.
He bent down to take a close look at the plaque, noticed a tiny corner of white wedged beneath the sculpture. He pulled it out without difficulty. It was a bill for the piece, very recent, a week ago; on top was the name of an art gallery down on the Lower East Side, Alphabet City. He folded it, put it in his pocket.
Wolf took the unmarked cab uptown to Morningside Heights, parked illegally on Broadway near 116th Street.
'I've got to get out of here,' he had told Bobby back at Moravia's. 'Get back to the office and brief Tony. Send him to sit on the ME; get everything he can from him. Meet me back here at nine tonight.'
Now he slapped the POLICE BUSINESS sign on the dashboard, climbed the steps onto the campus of Columbia University. He had come to love this oasis of plazas, ivied walls, narrow walkways smelling of bricks and books, not the least of the reasons being that Amanda taught here.
As he approached the red-brick building she taught in, he thought about their first meeting just over a year ago. He had caught sight of her as she rushed across the campus, notebooks crammed under her left arm, a battered pigskin courier case clutched in her right fist. He had been up here investigating the murder of two Barnard girls who had been strangled and raped, in that order, the ME had confirmed. He had followed her to a classroom and had stopped a student on his way in. Minutes later, in the Registrar's office, he had produced his badge, asking for the class schedule of Professor Amanda Powers.
It wasn't until he had tracked down the Morningside Heights Monster, as the New York tabloids called him, that he had had a chance to take the time to return to her classroom. He had waited for the end of the seminar she was teaching, then had contrived to bump into her as she was emerging from the classroom.
In order to properly apologize (he said) he asked if he could buy her a cup of coffee. He could remember the coffee and doughnuts ordered at a nearby restaurant, the laughs they had shared. She had surprised him. Attracted to her physically, he had perhaps expected her to be an utterly serious-minded academician. Instead, he had found a fun-loving free spirit, fearless in questioning academic tradition, who was therefore constantly in trouble with her departmental head, but her transgressions were always excused because of her success with her students.
He went into her classroom now, sat down in the last row, watched her as she lectured to her students on the social responsibilities of mass communication. Amanda had a PhD in sociology, and the post-modern extrapolations of her field never ceased to fascinate her. Her ability to bring her subject alive was evidenced by the fact that her courses were among the first to be fully subscribed at the beginning of each semester. Wolf often thought that she was far too clever to spend her life teaching, but then he would visit her seminars and witness the galvanizing effect she had on her students and he would have to change his mind.
Amanda was of medium height, blonde hair blunt cut just above her square shoulders. She had a wide, laughing mouth, searching grey eyes and the kind of peachy complexion most New York women would kill for. He was certain when they had met that she was in her early thirties, and had been somewhat astonished to discover subsequently that she was a decade older than that. She lived in a university apartment in Morningside Heights that was pleasant enough, high-ceilinged, with lots of light from the south and west, but Wolf did not trust the neighbourhood. Despite attempts at gentrification in the eighties, it had slipped back into the 'armed and dangerous' category as far as the NYPD was concerned.
The seminar over, the students began to file slowly out. There was already a line to talk to Amanda but, as Wolf stood up, she saw him, made her excuses to the students, and came up the central aisle. Smiling, she put her arm through his, leaned happily against him as they walked out onto the campus grounds. He put her coat around her shoulders. The weather had cleared and it was mild for February, the sunshine less watery than any New Yorker might expect.
'What a surprise,' she said, kissing him now that they were out of sight of her students. 'I thought you'd be home in bed at this hour of the morning.'
'The only bed I'd like to be in now,' Wolf said, 'is yours.'
She laughed, quickening her pace past the ivy-clad brickwork. 'I'll race you there.'
'This must be the world's oldest dance,' Amanda whispered.
Light, as pale and thick as milk, spilled through the old-fashioned Venetian blinds, striping them both. A shadow arched over one naked breast, spilled down her belly, where Wolf's mouth moved in concert with the beat of her heart. She stood on tiptoe, knees bent, still and shivering at the same time, ice and fire churning through her while she whispered to him words only he understood. Hips canted forward, she bit her lip, wanting this to go on and on, but she wanted something more, and she curled down, twining herself with him, bringing them both up together.
Already her thighs were trembling so strongly she had to reach up, grab hold of him. Her breasts rose, and he took first one, then another in his mouth, laving the nipples until she gasped.