"The Traveler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawks John Twelve)

5

Michael Corrigan believed that the world was a battlefield in a continual state of war. This war included the high-tech military campaigns organized by America and its allies, but there were also smaller conflicts between Third World countries and genocidal attacks against various tribes, races, and religions. There were terrorist bombings and assassinations, crazy snipers shooting people for crazy reasons, street gangs, cults, and disgruntled scientists mailing out anthrax to strangers. Immigrants from the southern countries flooded across the borders to northern countries bringing horrible new viruses and bacteria that ate your flesh. Nature was so annoyed by overpopulation and pollution that it was fighting back with droughts and hurricanes. The ice cap was melting and the sea was rising while the ozone layer was being shredded by jet planes. Sometimes Michael lost track of a particular threat but stayed aware of the general danger. The war would never end. It was only growing larger and more pervasive, claiming new victims in subtle ways.

MICHAEL LIVED ON the eighth floor of a high-rise condominium in West Los Angeles. It had taken him four hours to decorate the place. The day he signed the lease, he drove over to a huge furniture store on Venice Boulevard and picked out the suggested arrangements for a living room, a bedroom, and a home office. Michael had offered to rent an identical apartment for his brother in the same building and fill it with similar furniture, but Gabriel rejected the proposal. For some perverse reason, his younger brother wanted to live in what was probably the ugliest home in Los Angeles and breathe the exhaust from the freeway.

If Michael stepped out onto the little balcony he could see the Pacific Ocean in the distance, but he had no use for views and usually kept the curtain closed. After his phone call to Gabriel, he made some coffee, ate a protein bar, and started calling real estate investment firms in New York. Because of the three-hour time difference, they were working in their offices while he was wandering around the living room in his underwear. “Tommy! It’s Michael! Did you get that proposal I sent you? What did you think? What did the loan committee say?”

Usually the loan committees were cowardly or foolish, but you couldn’t let that stop you. In the last five years, Michael had found enough investors to buy two office buildings and he was about to close a deal for a third building on Wilshire Boulevard. Michael expected people to say no and he already had his counterarguments ready.

Around eight o’clock he opened his closet and picked out a pair of gray pants and a navy blue blazer. Adjusting a red silk necktie, he moved through the apartment, passing from one television set to another. Fires and the powerful Santa Ana winds were the big story that morning. A fire in Malibu was threatening the home of a basketball star. Another fire was out of control east of the mountains, and the television screen showed images of people tossing photo albums and armfuls of clothes into their cars.

He took the elevator down to the parking garage and got into his Mercedes. The moment he left his apartment, he felt like a soldier entering a battle to make money. The only person he could count on was Gabriel, but it was obvious that his younger brother was never going to get a real job. Their mother was sick and Michael was still paying for her care. Don’t complain, he told himself. Just keep fighting.

After he had saved enough money, he would buy an island somewhere in the Pacific. Neither he nor Gabriel had a girlfriend, and Michael couldn’t decide what kind of wives would be suitable for a tropical paradise. In his dream, he and Gabriel were riding horses through the surf and the two wives were slightly out of focus, standing on a bluff wearing long white dresses. The world was warm and sunny and they would be safe, truly safe. Forever.