"Walsh, Thomas - Nightmare In Manhattan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walsh Thomas)

On this side of Maple Avenue there were no street lights, as in the center of Dover Village, and consequently most details seemed to be either solid black or ice-coated white Ч a path under the trees, shadows along the school roof, a few scrubby pines, starlight glittering in sharp, jeweled facets from the top of a stone fence. Far below Maple Avenue, and perhaps because more distant, there were finer and colder shadings Ч the blackness not quite so heavy and solid down there, but almost powdery blue, the roofs silver-blue, a few lighted windows under them, and a few street lamps suspended magically, like globular yellow drops, against ink-black air.

The waiting began. Now and again trees cracked suddenly under the pressure of that intense and penetrating cold; now and again Calhoun had to rub his face to get warmth and feeling into it. It seemed an exceedingly long time before they heard the 11:40 from Manhattan Depot rumbling away at the next station down, panting at them as if from an incredibly remote point in empty space; but then almost at once toy cars and toy lighted windows appeared in the valley, vanished behind a low ridge, and appeared again much larger and closer.

Headlights were turned on in the Dover Village parking lot after the 11:40 had pulled away from it; but none of them could have been Carl RothmanТs because none of them headed past the tracks and up the hill toward Maple Avenue. Walking, Calhoun decided. He waited some more.

Not a sound anywhere after that, not around Maple Avenue; no visible movement of any kind; no wind, but the persistent and bitter cold. Something wrong now? Calhoun asked himself anxiously. He moved deeper into the woods, with George OТMara turning his head to watch him; he studied the hill road, saw nothing of importance, and looked over at the school, at the valley sloping away beneath it, at the station.

He was struck by one detail: the school lay almost directly between Maple Avenue and the station. And he began to worry about it. Would Carl Rothman, much more familiar with Dover Village than they were, attempt a short cut across empty fields, up the back of the hill, and on over the school grounds? They had assumed, of course, that Rothman would come up the long way from the station, using the road. But would he?

Calhoun thought about it; then he slipped away under trees and over hard snow to one end of the school playground. He wished that Donnelly were available for consultation. It was true, no matter how Rothman approached 24 Maple Avenue, that there would be several of DonnellyТs men in back of him. But suppose he came up this way, using the school grounds, and seeing the police cars just around the turn in the school driveway? He would be warned then, certainly. Had Donnelly anticipated a development of that kind?

He did not know; but he was insisting to himself that Donnelly must have anticipated it when someone wearing a gray hat and a gray overcoat appeared below him. This man cut across the circular ornamental plot that looked out over Dover Village, reached the drive and saw the police cars and CalhounТs coupe parked together just in front of the playground. He stopped.

Perhaps then, because it was difficult for DonnellyТs subordinates to climb an unfamiliar and icy hill without making some noise at one point or another, he heard something in back of him. He seemed to listen intently, head cocked. Calhoun recognized him. There was shrubbery alongside the school drive, and Carl Rothman slipped over to it, listened again and melted himself into velvet blackness.

Three of DonnellyТs men, who must have come up on the train with Rothman, moved up to the edge of the circular lawn, studied it and began cautiously to advance across it.

They were seen. They were understood also, because RothmanТs shadow, darker and a little more solid than the hedge shadow, moved down soundlessly on this side of the building, CalhounТs side. Then it was not going to be done any more the way Donnelly had wanted to do it Ч all at once, so no one would have a chance to harm little Tony Murchison, Carl Rothman entering 24 Maple Avenue without hindrance, then everyone relaxed in there, the lights going on, and then a sudden rush in when the men were gathered together in the kitchen or the living room, when they were all placed, and when none of them would have a chance to get upstairs again to the Murchison boy.

So Calhoun showed himself on his hill, not shouting at DonnellyТs men, but waving his arms out and back frantically at the other end of the school building. He also was seen and understood, because DonnellyТs men ran back that way in order to come around again and head off Carl Rothman from that direction. Calhoun himself, losing balance momentarily, crashed through low bushes to the school playground; and Carl Rothman darted out suddenly from the hedge toward higher ground and a patch of woods.

Donnelly, however, had not forgotten anything after all. A state trooper sprinted into view from behind one of the baseball backstops, and headed rapidly down the short side of the triangle between the woods, the backstop, and Carl Rothman. Then the man in the gray overcoat attempted to stop himself too suddenly. He slipped. He got up and ran back at the school building, very foolishly; but that way there was no salvation for him. He stopped again, sliding on the immaculate surface of the snow with his arms flung out. He turned south. No one was there yet, he ran for it Ч and then DonnellyТs men came around in front of him at just the right moment.

After that it was all dumb show, a pantomime of increasing terror and desperation on a white field cut jaggedly across one corner by the motionless shadow of the school building. Carl Rothman could not have understood in a coherent way what was happening to him, since all this began and developed with the greatest rapidity. He was not shouted at, either; and he was not warned to do this or that Ч to stop, to put up his hands, to surrender himself Ч because it was very important, for the childТs sake, not to alert 24 Maple Avenue until Donnelly could be informed as to what was happening down here.

Five men, all bigger and stronger than Carl Rothman, and all moving with speed, silence, precision and deadly purpose, sprinted in at him from five different angles Ч and it must have been their silence, most of all, that confused and terrified him. What he felt then, if there was time to feel anything, was probably something very like the bewilderment and terror which a six-year-old child must have experienced earlier in the afternoon.

How could all this have happened to him with no warning? What had caused it? How had he betrayed himself? He could not have been able to answer any of those questions. He fell, or else he attempted to kneel. He took a gun out of his pocket, dropped it, sobbed brokenly, sprawled after it. He lay rigid, facing Calhoun but not pointing the gun at him.

Calhoun, racing desperately now, bulldog jaw set, eyes glittering and arms extended and curled in front of him, made one last headlong dive at the man in the gray overcoat.

Carl Rothman shot himself.

Then Calhoun hit him, driving him forward into a basketball upright; and then Calhoun pushed the body away quickly, and got up with his stomach feeling empty and upset, his lungs and his left shoulder hurting him. The trooper and DonnellyТs men ran up, stopped and stood around aimlessly for a few seconds. Not one of them touched Carl Rothman, and not one of them, in an uneasy and covert manner, could avoid looking at him.

Calhoun croaked out of that dry throat of his:

УSomebody get up there and tell Donnelly about this. Before Ч Ф

But of course Donnelly had heard it. There was noise up at 24 Maple Avenue, and one of the police cars, which had been facing in that direction, roared around to it from the school drive. A spotlight came on, and harsh white illumination burst out suddenly over the Rothman house. Three men ran down from the upper road and stationed themselves just a bit out from the back of the house. They waited there. Nothing else happened.

Calhoun, who had a peculiar mixture of physical sensations now Ч the nausea, first of all; after that a feeling of extreme flesh heat; and after that another impression of the intense outer cold smoothing the heat away, working constantly on it Ч trotted a few steps toward Maple Avenue. Still nothing happened Ч no yelling up there, no shots, no excitement; and then suddenly Calhoun understood that nothing was going to happen. He stopped. He turned back.

One of DonnellyТs men kicked a small hillock of clean snow over a patch that had begun to form near a basketball upright, near a gray hat that was lying drunkenly on its crown, near a pair of dark glasses which had been upended in front of it. The hillock became stained again, slowly. DonnellyТs man left it alone. George OТMara came down presently from 24 Maple Avenue.

УNobody inside,Ф OТMara said. УNothing. Not even the kidТs body. I guess they never brought him up here at all.Ф

There was a long silence. Then Calhoun fought against it in the only way he could think of to fight against it.