"Woods, Stuart - Dead Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Woods Stuart)

Stuart Woods 1993 - Dead Eyes

CHAPTER 1

The first letter arrived on a Monday. Chris Callaway was annoyed when her secretary told her it had been in the mailbox. It was unstamped.

The tone was friendly, not too worshipful, not too familiar.

Dear Ms. Callaway, Your work has given me such a lot of pleasure that I felt I had to write to you. Somehow I had missed your films until last week, when I saw Heart of Stone on late-night television. I was so impressed that I saw Valiant Days in Westwood the following night.

I have since rented the videos of Mainline and Downer, and I was impressed with your very high standard of work in all of them.

Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone and feeling that you had known him for a long time? I have that feeling about you.

Thank you again for your fine work. You'll be hearing from me.

Admirer

When Chris had bought this house, she had taken a lot of trouble to keep the address strictly private.

All her bills went to her manager's office, and when she found it necessary to give an address, she used a box number. Her friends sent their Christmas cards to the box, damn it, she thought, and now some fan had found her. She handed the letter back to Melanie, her secretary.

"Answer it cordially, and refer him to the box number."

"There's no return address," Melanie said, turning over the envelope.

Chris felt oddly frustrated at not being able to reply to. the writer.

Many of the actors she knew didn't answer their fan mail at all or referred it to a service or handling but she had always replied to everything, and it amounted to twenty or thirty letters a month, jumping to a hundred after the release of a new film. Melanie wrote the replies, and Chris signed them.

"Then call the security patrol and ask them to keep a watch on my mailbox."

Melanie gave her the 'you-can't the-serious' look. "Chris, don't you think you're overreacting? It's a letter, not a bomb."

Chris laughed.

"You're right." Jesus, she thought, why am I letting a little thing like this get to me?

Melanie glanced at her watch.

"You're due at Graham Hong's in twenty minutes for your class, and Danny's doing your hair here at one."

"Right, I'd better get going." Chris grabbed her duffel and entered the garage through the study door. A moment later, she was driving down Stone Canyon, past the Bel Air Hotel, toward Sunset in the Mercedes 500SL convertible. It amused her that in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, there were so many of the flashy little cars that she could think of hers as anonymous.

"Graham Hong turned out to be big for an Asian--over six feet and well-muscled, yet lithe. He taught in his home and it was nothing like a gym, more of a teahouse. Hong greeted Chris with a cup of tea and asked her to sit down.

"Have you ever had any martial arts training?" he asked. His voice was accentless California; no trace of anythin Asian.

"None," she replied.