Glass Tiger
- Автор: Горес Джо
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Quercus
- ISBN: 978-1-84724-072-9
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «Glass Tiger». Краткое содержание книги:
39
Janet was sitting on the side of the bed with her hands knotted in her lap. She had heard nothing from the other room except The Dirty Dozen, Telly Savalas going psycho and getting his. She started to her feet when Thorne came through the connecting door in an agonized shuffle.
‘Is he...’ she began breathlessly. ‘Did you...’
‘Is he what?’ Thorne collapsed into the hard-back chair by the writing table. Then he got it. ‘Is he dead? Christ no. Guy like him, you give him a little nudge, he knows what he’d do to you if he had you tied up. His imagination does the rest.’
‘What does a little nudge mean, exactly?’
‘I snapped him under the nose. Once.’ He demonstrated. ‘Go look. Right now he’s trying to get those towels unknotted. He’ll square it with the night-clerk, get Horace to a doctor — don’t worry about him. He’s a pimp and he kills people.’
‘So do you kill people.’
‘Not for money. And not any more. But maybe I should have messed him up a little. He sure messed me up.’ He groaned his way to his feet. ‘Let’s get out of here. You’re driving.’
She did, Thorne clinging to the back of the Suzuki like a damaged limpet. It was a long ride, north on the 405 to La Cienega and all the way to Sunset. She stopped at an all-night convenience store for a bottle of Ibuprofen, then Thorne checked them into a twin-bedded room under his Benny Schutz identity. It was the same run-down motel below the Strip where he had stayed before he saw Walter Houghton, MD, for the first time.
He ate six pain pills, lay down on one of the beds, fully clothed, to stare at the ceiling. It was after two a.m., so the bar next door was closed. It would open again at four, but for now there was relative silence.
‘We gotta talk while I still can,’ he said. ‘You know, you saved my butt back there. They were going to kill me and dump me off the edge of Mulholland Drive.’
Janet sat on the other bed as she had sat on the bed in Watts, her hands white-knuckled in her lap. She said nothing. Thorne sighed. She wasn’t giving an inch.
‘Okay. It’s just what we thought. Jaeger wanted Hal to kill them both so Sharkey and Horace could shoot him just before the police got there. It would have been a perfect frame, the murderer and his victims, dead together. But Hal got away.’
‘Until you came along,’ she snapped. Then she added, in a softer voice, ‘I’m going to get some coffee. You want any?’ He just shook his head wearily. She nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll put up the DO NOT DISTURB sign when I leave. G’bye, Thorne.’
‘See you in a little while, Janet.’
‘Sure.’
But when he woke in the morning, Janet was gone. She’d left Thorne flat, just as she’d left Corwin. How could he have expected anything else?
She’d also left a note beside his head on the pillow, written on the back of an all-night coffee shop menu.
Thorne:
Sitting in that hotel room last night thinking you were torturing Sharkey, I knew I had to end it. I really didn’t know Hal at all, and I really don’t know you. I need my own life.
Goodbye. Good luck.