"Island of the Sequined Love Nun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

4 Pinnacle of the Pink Pyramid

A low buzz of anticipation ran through the halls of the hospital. Reporters checked the batteries in their microrecorders and cell phones. Orderlies and nurses lingered in the hallways in hope of getting a glimpse of the celebrity. The FAA men straightened their ties and shot their cuffs. One receptionist in administration, who was only two distributorships away from earning her own pink Oldsmobile, ducked into an examining room and sucked lungfuls of oxygen to chase the dizziness that comes from meeting one’s Messiah. Mary Jean was coming.

Mary Jean Dobbins did not travel with an entourage, bodyguards, or any other of the decorative leeches commonly attached to the power-wielding rich.

“God is my bodyguard,” Mary Jean would say.

She carried a .38-caliber gold-plated Lady Smith automatic in her bag: the Clara Barton Commemorative Model, presented to her by the Daughters of the Confederacy at their annual “Let’s Lynch Leroy” pecan pie bake-off, held every Martin Luther King Jr. Day. (She didn’t agree with their politics, but the belles could sure sell some makeup. If the South did not rise again, it wouldn’t be for lack of foundation.)

Today, as Mary Jean came through the doors of the main lobby, she was flanked by a tall predatory woman in a black business suit—a severe con-trast to Mary Jean’s soft pastel blue ensemble with matching bag and pumps. “Strength and femininity are not exclusive, ladies.” She was sixty-five; matronly but elegant. Her makeup was perfect, but not overdone. She wore a sapphire-and-diamond pin whose value approximated the gross national product of Zaire.

She greeted every orderly and nurse with a smile, asked after their families, thanked them for their compassionate work, flirted when appropriate, and tossed compliments over her shoulder as she passed, without ever missing a step. She left a wake of acutely charmed fans, even among the cynical and stubborn.

Outside Tucker’s room the predatory woman—a lawyer—broke formation and confronted the maggotry of reporters, allowing Mary Jean to slip past.

She poked her head inside. “You awake, slugger?”

Tuck was startled by her voice, yanked out of his redundant reverie of unemployment, imprisonment, and impotence. He wanted to pull the sheets over his head and quietly die.

“Mary Jean.”

The makeup magnate moved to his bedside and took his hand, all compassion and caring. “How are you feeling?”

Tucker looked away from her. “I’m okay.”

“Do you need anything? I’ll have it here in a Texas jiffy.”

“I’m fine,” Tucker said. She always made him feel like he’d just struck out in his first Little League game and she was consoling him with milk and cookies. The fact that he’d once tried to seduce her doubled the humi-liation. “Jake told me that you’re having me moved to Houston. Thank you.”

“I have to keep an eye on you, don’t I?” She patted his hand. “You sure you’re feeling well enough for a talk?”

Tucker nodded. He wasn’t buying the outpouring of warm fuzzies she was selling. He’d seen her doing business on the plane.

“That’s good, honey,” Mary Jean said, rising and looking around the room for the first time. “I’ll have some flowers sent up. A touch of color will brighten things up, won’t it? Something fragrant too. The constant smell of disinfectant must be disturbing.”

“A little,” Tuck said.

She wheeled on her heel and looked at him. Her smile went hard. Tuck saw wrinkles around her mouth for the first time. “Probably reminds you of what a total fuckup you are, doesn’t it?”

Tucker gulped. She’d faked him out of his shoes. “I’m sorry, Mary Jean. I’m…”

She raised a hand and he shut up. “You know I don’t like to use profanity or firearms, so please don’t push me, Tucker. A lady controls her anger.”

“Firearms?”

Mary Jean pulled the Lady Smith automatic out of her purse and leveled it at Tucker’s bandaged crotch. Strangely, he noticed that Mary Jean had chipped a nail drawing the gun and for that, he realized, she really might kill him.

“You didn’t listen to me when I told you to stop drinking. You didn’t listen when I told you to stay away from my representatives. You didn’t listen when I told you that if you were going to amount to anything, you had to give your life to God. You’d better damn well listen now.” She racked the slide on the automatic. “Are you listening?”

Tuck nodded. He didn’t breathe, but he nodded.

“Good. I have run this company for forty years without a hint of scandal until now. I woke up yesterday to see my face next to yours on all the morning news shows. Today it’s on the cover of every newspaper and tabloid in the country. A bad picture, Tucker. My suit was out of season. And every article uses the words ‘penis’ and ‘prostitute’ over and over. I can’t have that. I’ve worked too hard for that.”

She reached out and tugged on his catheter. Pain shot though his body and he reached for the ringer for the nurse.

“Don’t even think about it, pretty boy. I just wanted to make sure I had your attention.”

“The gun pretty much did it, Mary Jean,” Tucker groaned. Fuck it, he was a dead man anyway.

“Don’t you speak to me. Just listen. This is going to disappear. You are going to disappear. You’re getting out of here tomorrow and then you’re going to a cabin I have up in the Rockies. You won’t go home, you won’t speak to any reporters, you won’t say doodly squat. My lawyers will handle the legal aspects and keep you out of jail, but you will never surface again. When this blows over, you can go on with your pathetic life. But with a new name. And if you ever set foot in the state of Texas or come within a hundred yards of anyone involved in my company, I will personally shoot you dead. Do you understand?”

“Can I still fly?”

Mary Jean laughed and lowered the gun. “Sweetie, to a Texas way a thinkin’ the only way you coulda screwed up worse is if you’d throwed a kid down a well after fessing up to being on the grassy knoll stompin’ yellow roses in between shootin’ the President. You ain’t gonna fly, drive, walk, crawl, or spit if I have anything to say about it.” She put the gun in her purse and went into the tiny bathroom to check her makeup. A quick primping and she headed for

the door. “I’ll send up some flowers. Y’all heal up now, honey.”

She wasn’t going to kill him after all. Maybe he could win her back. “Mary Jean, I think I had a spiritual experience.”

“I don’t want to hear about any of your degenerate activities.”

“No, a real spiritual experience. Like a—what do you call it? — an epiphany?”

“Son, you don’t know it, but you’re as close to seeing the Lord as you’ve ever been in your life. Now you hush before I send you to perdition.”

She put on her best beatific smile and left the room radiating the power of positive thinking.

Tucker pulled the covers over his head and reached for the flask Jake had left. Perdition, huh? She made it sound bad. Must be in Oklahoma.