"Karl Edward Wagner - At First Just Ghostly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

The Queen of Spades peeked out from beneath the accountant's tight black shoes.
"The opportunity to deliver a line such as that comes only once in a lifetime," Lennox said with
admiration. He reached down to recover the truant card, but the impact of landing skidded it away.

Probably the really and truly best thing about flying first class across the Atlantic was that you were
first off the plane and first to get through immigration and customs. Lennox had a morbid dread of being
engulfed by gabbling hordes of blue-haired widows from New Jersey or milling throngs of students
hunchbacked by garish knapsacks and sleeping bags. "Americans never queue up," he once observed to
an icily patient gentleman, similarly overrun while waiting for a teller at a London bank. "They just mill
about and make confused sounds."
"The purpose of your stay here, sir?" asked the immigrations officer, flipping through Lennox's
passport.
"Primarily I'm on holiday," said Lennox. "Although for tax purposes I'll be mixing in a little business,
as I'm also here to attend the World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton some days from now."
The officer was automatically stamping his passport. "So then, you're a writer, are you, sir?" His
eyes abruptly focused through the boredom of routine, and he flipped back to the passport photo.
"Cody Lennox!" He compared photo and face in disbelief. "Lord, and I've just finished reading
They Do Not Die!"
"Small world," said Cody imaginatively. "Will you still let me in?"
"First celebrity I've had here." The immigrations officer returned his passport. "Your books have
given me and the wife some fair shivers. Working on a new one, are you?"
"Might write one while I'm here."
"I'll want to read it, then."
Lennox passed through to baggage claim and found his two scruffy suitcases. They were
half-empty, as he preferred to buy whatever he needed when he needed it, and he hated to pack. He
also hated carry-on luggage, people who carried on carry-on luggage, and cameras of all sorts. Such
eccentricities frequently excited some speculation as to his nationality.
Cody Lennox was, however, American: born in Los Angeles of a Scandinavian bit-player and a
father who worked in pictures before skipping to Mexico; educated across the States with two
never-to-be-completed doctorates scattered along the way, and now living in New York City. He had
had eight best-selling horror novels over the last five years, in addition to some other books that had paid
the bills early on. His novels weren't all that long on the best-seller lists, but they were there, nonetheless,
and film rights and script work all added up to an enviable bundle. He had been on Johnny Carson
twice, but he had never hosted Saturday Night Live. His books could be found at supermarket
check-out counters between the tabloids and the TV Guides, but only for a month or so. It was a living.
Once he had been happy with his life.
Cody Lennox hauled his pair of cases through the green lane at Heathrow customs. He had made
this trip a dozen times or more, and he had never been stopped. Sometimes he considered becoming a
smuggler. Probably he looked too non-innocent for the customs officers to bother examining his luggage.
He looked a little like an on-the-skids rock star with his designer jeans and T-shirt and wrinkled
linen jacket. He still had the face of a young James Dean, but his ash-blond hair was so pale as to seem
dead-white. His left ear was pierced, but he seldom bothered to wear anything there, and his week-old
smear of a beard was fashionable but too light to be noticed. He wore blue-lensed glasses over his pale
blue eyes, but this was more of necessity than style: Lennox was virtually blinded by bright sunlight.
 Lennox adjusted his scarred watch to London time while he waited to cash a traveler's check at the
bank outside the customs exit. He saw no sign of his seatmate, and for this he was grateful. Bastard might
have told him about the missing card.
The Piccadilly Line ran from Heathrow to where Lennox meant to go, but he was in no mood for
the early morning crush on the tube. Still feeling the buzz of a long flight and too many drinks, he joined
the queue for a taxiтАФnudging his cases along with his foot, as he endured confused American tourists