Guns
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Год: 1976
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House
- ISBN: 978-0-394-40679-4
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Guns». Краткое содержание книги:
“No, she’ll be home. Night of a job, she’ll be home,” Colley said, and rang the bell again. They could hear chimes sounding inside the apartment. Colley thought he heard a television set going, but that might have been in the apartment next door. He pressed the bell button again. The peephole flap suddenly went up, and then fell again an instant later. They heard the door being unlocked — first the deadbolt, then the Fox lock, then the night chain. The door opened wide.
Jeanine stood slightly to the side to let them past. She didn’t scream, she didn’t say a word. She’d already seen them through the peephole, so she knew something had gone wrong. She just watched them silently now as they moved past her into the living room, and then she closed and locked the door behind them — first the deadbolt, then the Fox lock, and then the chain. They were standing in the middle of the living room waiting for her to tell them where to take her husband, who was dripping blood all over the rug. She didn’t ask what happened, she didn’t ask how bad it was, she didn’t say a word. She began walking toward the rear of the apartment instead, and they followed her without being told to follow her. Jocko was beginning to weigh a ton. He was a big man to begin with, and now they were practically dragging him across the floor, his feet trailing, his two hundred and twenty pounds multiplying with each step they took.
“In the bathroom,” Jeanine said.
They managed to squeeze him through the narrow bathroom door by going through it sideways, and then they sat him down on the toilet bowl, and Jeanine began undressing him. She was wearing white shorts cut high on the leg, an orange halter top, no shoes. Her long blond hair was hanging loose around her face as she took off his windbreaker and then began unbuttoning the white shirt under it. Both the shirt and the windbreaker were soaked with blood, and each time she brushed her hair away from her face, she got blood on her cheek and in the hair itself.
She had good features going a bit fleshy; Colley guessed she was in her late thirties, maybe closer to forty. Her eyes were dark green, not that pale jade you saw on most light-complexioned women, but a deeper green — like an emerald a burglar had once showed him. She had a good sensible nose with a tiny scar on the bridge that made it look like she’d lived with the nose a long time, had sniffed around with it a little, had maybe stuck it in places where it didn’t belong, and had it broken or slashed. The nose and the eyes and the mouth, those were what gave her face definition. The mouth was full, the upper lip lifting gently away from her teeth, so that you always saw a flash of white and got the impression she was parting her lips about to say something. Her skin was very white; he imagined she turned lobster-red in the sun. Years ago she’d been a stripper down in Dallas, Jocko told him, and she still had a stripper’s body, heavy breasts in the halter top, generous hips, good legs showing below the brief shorts, thighs a bit fleshy, like her face, but the calves firm, tapering to slender ankles. Her feet were big. Her feet were peasant’s feet. They didn’t seem to go with that face and that body.
She lowered Jocko’s shirt off one shoulder and then gently tugged the sodden material away from the wound and slid the sleeve off his arm. Colley caught his breath when she exposed the wound. There was only a small hole where the bullet had gone in, but on the other side of Jocko’s arm, just behind the biceps, the exit hole was enormous. Colley could see a bone inside the arm. He turned away.
“This is bad,” Jeanine whispered.
He nodded. He did not look at the wound again. He had not expected the damage to be this bad, in spite of all the blood, in spite of the fact that the cops had been carrying .38-caliber pistols.
“Take off his shoes and socks,” Jeanine said.
Colley stooped at Jocko’s feet and began unlacing his shoes. There was blood even on the shoes — Jesus, what a mess! He got off the shoes and socks and then he helped Jeanine pull down Jocko’s pants and take off his undershorts. Jocko had red crotch hair, same as the hair on his head. He had a very small pecker. Colley was surprised, big man like that. Massive head, red hair curling on it, eyelids closed over those pale-blue eyes, menacing eyes hidden now by the closed lids; his face looked almost cherubic except for the curl of his lip betraying the meanness even when he was unconscious. Power in the wide shoulders and huge chest. Must’ve lifted weights as a kid, blood on the bulging pectorals, tiny contradictory prick. He was still unconscious, but he twitched now, and grunted something.
“You going to need me?” Teddy said. “I want to get rid of the car. Hot car sitting out there with blood all over the front seat.”
“Go ahead,” Jeanine said.
“Okay to call my wife? She’s gonna be wondering.”
“Phone’s in the bedroom,” Jeanine said, and went to the sink, and put a stopper in it, and let the water run. Teddy went down the hall to the bedroom. Jeanine soaped a sponge, and then went to where Jocko was sitting on the toilet bowl, and began washing the wound. Down the hall, Teddy was dialing the phone. The apartment was silent except for the clicking of the phone dial and the tiny splashing sounds Jeanine made when she dipped the sponge into the sink and lifted it from the water. There was blood on her white shorts. Blood on her thigh, too. Down the hall, they could hear Teddy’s muffled voice. Jeanine pulled the stopper from the sink, and then turned on the hot-and cold-water faucets and tested the stream of water with her hand. With a clean washcloth she began rinsing off Jocko.
Teddy came back up the hallway and leaned in the bathroom doorway. “I’m gonna split,” he said. “Get rid of the car.” He hesitated. “Were they both dead, Colley?”
“I don’t know,” Colley said. “Two cops sitting the store,” he explained to Jeanine. “In the back room there.”
“Him and Jocko walked into a stakeout,” Teddy said.
“Minute Jocko threw down on the old man, the two of them came out the back yelling fuzz.”
“You shot two cops?” Jeanine said.
“I only shot one of them. Jocko...”
“Never mind who shot them,” Jeanine said. “I’m asking—”
“Yeah, two cops got shot.”
“They both looked dead,” Teddy said. “Colley, they really looked dead to me. That one laying closest to the door, his brains were all over the floor.”
“Great,” Jeanine said.
“They surprised us,” Colley said.
“Great,” she said again. “Two dead cops.”
“I ain’t so sure about them being dead,” Colley said. “I ain’t even sure about the one Teddy says had his brains...”
“It’ll be on television later,” Teddy said. “I’ll bet it’s on television. Two cops getting killed.”
“Look, we don’t know for sure...”
“They’re dead all right,” Teddy said. He looked very owlish and wise and sad behind his glasses. He also looked exhausted. He had been busy since early that morning, boosting the car in Brooklyn, and he still had to get rid of it. Before the holdup it had only been a stolen car. Now it was a car that had been used in a felony murder... Well, Colley wasn’t sure either one of them was dead. Man could look dead without being dead.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” Teddy said.
“You going outside like that?” Colley said.
“Huh?”
“All that blood on your clothes?”
“Shit,” Teddy said. “You got something I can put on, Jeanine? Just something to...”
“Jocko’s clothes’d be too big for you,” Colley said.
“There’s some stuff from when Bobby was here,” Jeanine said. “His brother.”
“All I need’s a raincoat or something,” Teddy said.