"Westlake, Donald E as Stark, Richard - Parker 01 - The Hunter (Point Blank) 1.2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westlake Donald E)

v1.2 minor scan errors corrected since v1.1, thanks to the person who pointed out the errors.


Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.
Filmed as Point Blank with Lee Marvin and Payback with Mel Gibson.

Do unto others ...
She shot him just above the belt and left him for dead. Then they toarched the house with Parker in it and took the money he had helped them steal. It all went down just the way they had planned it.

Except for one thing: Parker was coming back.

He roars into New York City, stealing and scamming and punching his way into the land of the living. Now Parker wants revenge: from the woman who betrayed him and from the man who used his money to pay off the syndicate. And then, when Parker finds them, he'll want something more. He'll want his money back from the Outfit. Every bloody cent...




THE HUNTER (1962)



RICHARD STARK


ONE

Chapter 1

When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, Parker told him to go to hell. The guy said, "Screw you, buddy," yanked his Chevy back into the stream of traffic, and roared on down to the tollbooths. Parker spat in the right-hand lane, lit his last cigarette, and walked across the George Washington Bridge.

The 8 A.M. traffic went mmmmmm, mmmmmm, all on this side, headed for the city. Over there, lanes and lanes of nobody going to Jersey. Underneath, the same thing.

Out in the middle, the bridge trembled and swayed in the wind. It does it all the time, but he'd never noticed it. He'd never walked it before. He felt it shivering under his feet, and he got mad. He threw the used-up butt at the river, spat on a passing hubcap, and strode on.

Office women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations above their nylons. He was big and shaggy, with flat square shoulders and arms too long in sleeves too short. He wore a gray suit, limp with age and no pressing. His shoes and socks were both black and both holey. The shoes were holey on the bottom, the socks were holey at heel and toe.

His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, looked like they were molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins. His hair was brown and dry and dead, blowing around his head like a poor toupee about to fly loose. His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless. His suit coat fluttered behind him, and his arms swung easily as he walked.

The office women looked at him and shivered. They knew he was a bastard, they knew his big hands were born to slap with, they knew his face would never break into a smile when he looked at a woman. They knew what he was, they thanked God for their husbands, and still they shivered. Because they knew how he would fall on a woman in the night. Like a tree.

The office men drove by, clutching their steering wheels, and hardly noticed him. Just a bum walking on the bridge. Didn't even own a car. A few of them saw him and remembered themselves before they'd made it when they didn't have a car. They thought they were empathizing with him. They thought it was the same thing.

Parker walked across the bridge and turned right. He went down that way one block to the subway hole. All down the street ahead of him were the blacktop and the sidewalks and the gray apartment buildings and the traffic lights at every intersection going from red to green to red. And lots of people, on the move.

He trotted down the steps into the subway hole. The spring sun disappeared, and there were fluorescent lights against cream-shaded tile. He went over to the subway-system map and stood in front of it, scratching his elbow and not looking at the map. He knew where he wanted to go.

The downtown train pulled in, already crowded, and the doors slid back. More people pushed on. Parker turned, yanked open the no admittance door and went on through. Somebody behind him shouted, "Hey!" Ahead, the subway doors slid at each other. He jumped, ran into the people standing in the car, and the doors met behind him.

He went all the way downtown, got out at Chambers and walked over to the Motor Vehicle Bureau on Worth. On the way, he panhandled a dime from a latent fag with big hips and stopped in a grimy diner for coffee. He bummed a cigarette from the counter girl. It was a Marlboro. He twisted off the filter, threw it on the floor, and stuck the cigarette between his bloodless lips. She lit it for him, leaning over the counter toward him with her breasts high, like an offering. He got the cigarette fired, nodded, dropped the dime on the counter, and went out without a word.