Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994
- Автор: Bashover Albert, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1994
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994». Краткое содержание книги:
An arm came round my waist. A leg braced itself against the wall. A huge, warm hand crushed mine on the doorknob. I felt myself being pulled with the steady force of a bulldozer. The door was yanked shut in front of me, and we lay gasping on the hallway floor. The other one was Joe, of course. Blessedly muscular Joe.
“Damn fool.” he said.
Mr. Gillespie crept forward and the five of us, he, the two policemen, Joe, and I, waited in the smelly hall for the noise to end. Six more cops joined us, and we waited some more. An hour of silence had passed before we dared to enter.
The officers insisted on going first, guns at the ready. They didn’t fool me. If they thought vandals were inside, or anything human or animal that could be brought down by guns, they would have gone in a lot sooner. We walked as if we expected land mines.
It was as silent and cold as a snowcapped mountain. The air wasn’t too bad. In a moment we found out why. The drapes on the picture window were in tatters. The window itself was broken on both sides of the mirrored plywood, allowing much of the foul odor to escape. I prayed that was all that had escaped. There were no mirrors left, neither the ones we had brought nor the other. But if we had expected from the noise to find blood, gore, clumps of torn, coarse fur, we were wrong.
Ankle-deep ash was all we found, most of it on the overturned paneling between what had been old — and much older — mirror. I bent down and scooped up a handful of it, let it run through my fingers. It wasn’t ash after all. It was too shiny, too needle sharp. The rear housing of raw wood Joe had built five years before was still on the wall. So was the frame of varnished beams. A cleaning, a new window, new drapes, and the only reminder of the evil that had existed here would be the lovely frame Joe had built.
I knew he’d agree to remove it.
Zeke and the Dragon
by Jas. R. Petrin
When Zeke came home with the dragon, he told George not to worry about it, he’d have it clear of the house in plenty of time before Ma got back from Fargo, she’d never even know. He let it out of the sack in Louie’s room down in the basement and grinned at it through the crack in the door, going, “You know what this li’l sucker’s worth, bro? I mean, do you?”
George said he had no idea.
The thing belly-down on the floor like it was dead.
Zeke told him, beaming, “A fortune, that’s what. A goddamn fortune. What’ll we call him?”
George didn’t know.
Zeke said, “How about — let’s call him Ed.” Zeke made kissy-kissy sounds at Ed through the partly opened door while George listened.
George then tapped his brother gently on the arm and said, “Zeke, you think maybe we could go upstairs, sit down, and have a little talk about this?”
And they did that.
“First,” George said, hunkered in the middle of the sofa with his knees poking up, trying to remain rational with this idiot brother of his, “I don’t know what that thing is you got down there, some kind of lizard — not a dragon, there’s no such thing — and second, I don’t know what you’re gonna do with it, something I’d like to know since I live here, remember, till my welfare kicks in; and third, when Ma walks through that door with Louie, I don’t know what you think you’ll tell her to keep her from killing you. Okay, you get rid of it. The animal’s gone. But it stinks, Zeke — I mean it stinks. You think Ma won’t say nothing, a smell like that hits her soon as she walks in the door?”
“George... George...” Zeke said smiling, slowly shaking his head. Talking softly as if George was the fool. “George, listen...”
Here it comes.
“You know that redheaded dope Dufault?”
Get ready for it.
“Sure you do. Listen what happened. I drop by Dufault’s, okay? Check and see why he’s past due recycling the stuff I give him, all that copper the phone company didn’t want no more, polluting the back of their truck? Bang on the door of his shop — nothing. He’s got those motorcycles spread around in there, I can see through the dirt on the glass, changing parts the way he does, but no answer. No Dufault. And no copper.”
“Lizard. We’re talking lizard here, Zeke.”
“It’s a dragon. Will you gimme a minute? I don’t hafta tell you nothing, you know.”
“Yeah, you do. You owe me that much, since I’ll probably get killed along with you, soon as Ma gets home, that thing stinking up the place.”
“What you smell is money. Now listen. I go in Dufault’s window, the one at the back that lifts up I keep forgetting to tell him about. Drop into the back room and look around. You should see the stuff he’s recycling: VCR’s, TV’s, micro-waves — a friend of the environment. But no copper. And what I told him, the deal we made, I goes, Dufault, this copper don’t leave here till I get paid. Only it did. It must have. I couldn’t find it in there, could I?”
“Zeke...”
“I’m getting to it, George.”
“The lizard...”
“The dragon. I’m getting to it. So I poke around the shop. Dufault’s. Everything under the sun but no copper. I start feeling p.o.’d at the guy. Feeling I oughtta do something — no copper, no money, nothing. So I’m wandering around, rearranging the place a little, almost sort of a gag, then looking at the motorcycles, the rest of that junk, I get a idea. Hey. I’ll take his van. It’s the best thing he’s got, there in the shop. Park it someplace and make him cough up my dough before I tell him where to find it—”
“The cops’d find it before he would. Anything of Dufault’s, they definitely got a sheet on it.”
“Oh yeah?” Zeke looked sober. “Maybe you’re right. I didn’t think about that. Huh. Anyway, getting back to it, I writes Dufault this little note—”
“A note.”
“Yeah, see—”
“You deliberately provoked that lunatic?”
“That’s right. You know, to get his attention. I plank it down right there on the workbench where he’ll see it. Then I push the button hauls up that big overhead door, and out of the shop I roll in the van, George, down Salter and over the bridge, all the freights down there in the Weston yards like toy trains on a plywood board at the Polo Park mall—”
George folded his arms and said, “By the time we get to the lizard, Ma’ll of killed it with an axe, she’ll of taken care of you, a couple of swings, and be coming at me screaming. Louie’ll be there on his knees, reeling off pages of scripture and praying for our souls while the SWAT teams kicks down the door. Come on. They went to Fargo, Zeke. Shopping. Not to live there.”
“I thought it was a mental health weekend. For Ma. Louie trying to keep her on the wagon.”
“Okay, let’s talk about Louie? He comes home early and there’s a giant lizard in his room, what’s he gonna think?”
“Who cares. He’s a Christian.”
“Zeke...”
“Nothing against him. But they got to turn their other cheek, Christians. It’s God’s rule. I could of brought home two dragons—”
“Finish your story.”
Zeke took a deep breath. “If you’ll let me. So I’m in the van, breezing along, I got the windows open because there’s this smell—”
George nodded.
“—and what happens, I lose track of time. Or I lose track of the mileage, I dunno. Anyway, the van starts to cough. I take a look at the fuel gauge an’ guess what?”
George stared at him. This dope with the three day beard, the beer gut, the T-shirt, the broken boots. George thinking, I dunno, Zeke. You look at the fuel gauge and see that you got — lemme see — a flat tire?