Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
Onager shrugged.
“And here too.” Robideau glanced around. “Can’t you get rid of some of this stuff?”
Onager took time to think. His eyes moved slowly, all the way to the left, all the way to the right. Clearly, whatever it was he perceived here was not what other mortals saw.
“Like what?” he muttered.
Robideau nodded at a large, overfilled cardboard box by the door. “Those are cat droppings, Bulwer. Why in the world do you keep something like that around?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can throw them out, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, here’s the problem. The town doesn’t want you to keep that sort of thing. It isn’t healthy. And they don’t like a lot of that other stuff outside on the porch, all those worn-out cars in the drive. Why hang onto it all?”
“You never know what you’re going to need.”
“An old Oreo cookie bag?” Robideau nodded at a carefully flattened and folded package on a mound of trash next to Bulwer’s chair.
“You never know.” A clutch of at least a dozen garden rakes clawed the air behind the old man’s head.
Robideau glanced at Oddlot Jenkins, inviting a little support. Oddlot’s blank stare was impassive. He wasn’t about to do any heavy lifting.
“It’s important you think carefully about this,” Robideau said. “There’s no use putting it off. The town means business.” He stepped back. “I’m going to ask you to sleep on it. Talk to Oddlot here about what can be done. I’ll check back with you tomorrow evening, and I’ll expect you to have made up your mind about these things.”
Glancing back as they walked away, Robideau could see Bulwer’s stolid reflection in a cracked mirror leaning against the wall.
“Well, that got us absolutely nowhere,” Pete said, as they climbed back in the car and slammed the doors. Oddlot pulled a U-turn in front of them and accelerated on by without a wave or a glance. “We’ll see,” Robideau replied. “I gave him time to mull it over.”
“Tell you what I’d do,” Pete said, “I’d nuke the place. The house and the goddamn theater.” He gave the camera back. “Got you some pictures, though. Just don’t try to flog them to House Beautiful.”
Robideau dropped Pete off at the Netley, then drove slowly home. The mouth-watering aroma of pot roast struck him as he entered the tidy house, and he realized how much he took this clean and cozy little house for granted. Mrs. Robideau took good care of him. She thrust an inviting glass of sherry into his hand.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are you going to throw that poor man out in the street?”
She followed him through to the office, where he sat down at his computer, shaking his head. He connected the camera to the USB port. “You amaze me. How do you know these things? I didn’t know myself what Butts wanted until he explained it to me there in his office.”
“Friends and telephones. Does that answer your question?”
The pictures began to move from the camera’s memory to the computer. Robideau smiled and nodded. “I guess it does.”
“Fine. Now answer mine. What’s going to happen to Mr. Onager if you take his house away?”
“It’s his movie house they want to take away, not his home. And I didn’t take anything except these photos.” He clicked the “view” icon, and the first picture flashed to the screen. It was Pete’s practice shot, showing the back window of Oddlot’s van. The next one showed the inside of the house.
“Oh, my dear Lord and everything that’s holy!” Mrs. Robideau gasped, shrinking back, horrified. “Does he really live like that?”
“He really does.”
“Then the poor man needs help.”
“I can’t help him if he won’t let me, and I’m afraid that’s going to be the problem.”
He flicked through the pictures, an even dozen of them, while Mrs. Robideau emitted little disbelieving gasps and groans.
“Is dinner ready?” Robideau asked her.
She was as pale as the plates on the table. “It’s ready. But I don’t know if I can eat it now.”
Jerry Doyle knew something about old theaters. The detective’s uncle had been a projectionist once. Which was a great thing back then for a kid, getting to see all the latest movies for free. He had practically lived in that magical theater, and his knowledge of it would help him here. He had climbed up the old iron fire escape to the roof of the Palace Roxy, and now stood at the door of the little shack that he knew was the emergency exit for the projection booth. The vent chimney from the carbon-arc lamps stuck out the side of it. Every old theater had one of these, dating from the days of hazardous nitrate film stock. Fire regulations had required it.
The front doors of the building were sealed like a vault; the back door, steel clad, was locked up too. But here...
He wedged the little pry bar into the crack between the door and the frame, punched it with the heel of his hand, and the door sprang open.
Nothing to it.
If that idiot of a police chief, Butts, wouldn’t take some good advice and search the place, then Doyle would just have to do it on his own. It was the only promising lead he had. The girl was crazy about the movies. Especially old movies. Took extra drama classes at her high school and rented every classic video she could find. Had she spotted this old place? Wondered about it? Had she actually been here?
Maybe not, but he would try to find out.
A short flight of steps, almost a ladder, ended in a cramped, narrow electrical room. He switched on his flashlight. There was a short cluttered bench, a DC generator, a lot of cabling, and a fuse box with an enormous lever on the side. There was also a pail and a string mop, the room doing double duty as a janitors’ closet.
He entered the projection booth. Nothing out of place here, but he was surprised to see the original equipment still in place. Well kept too. You could practically eat your lunch off it. Interesting.
He went down some narrow carpeted stairs to the auditorium.
Well! Whoever kept the projection booth tidy certainly didn’t expend a lot of effort down here. Place looked like a cross between a storage warehouse and a recycling station. He walked down to the front of the auditorium and stopped at the end of the aisle. He aimed his torch along the front row of seats.
His attacker must have been standing off to one side in the darkness, waiting for him. He had no warning before something came whistling at him through the air. It struck low, careened off his shoulder, and caught him just above the ear, knocking his glasses off. He stumbled sideways, dropped to his left knee, and crouched there, swaying. The next blow struck him above the eyes and knocked him on his back, with one leg crooked under him. He didn’t feel the furious rain of blows that fell on him after that.
Supplies were becoming harder to get, and the damn prices kept going up. Take the lamp house, for instance. He was buying the cheapest carbon rods he could find. A new pair only lasted an hour. Carbon savers helped — sleeves for splicing two used stubs together, good for about one reel — but they flared a little when they evaporated. Xenon lamps had been around for decades, but they couldn’t be used with this equipment. And in any case, the old ways were best.
Peering through the smoked inspection port, he twisted the knobs that brought the tips of the rods together, touched them briefly, and struck the arc. A flow of white-hot plasma now streamed sun-bright between them.
He double-checked the projectors. The movie, the first reel of it, was cued up in number one. The second reel waited in number two. He gave the lamp another minute for the color to stabilize, and then it was showtime.