"Barker, Clive - The Great and Secret Show v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

"It was the same."
"Yes."
"See?" she said. "Whatever's between us...it's wrong. Maybe it's the Devil's work."
"You don't believe that."
"I don't know what I believe," she said. He moved towards her, but she kept him at bay with a gesture. "Don't, Howie. It's not right. We shouldn't touch each other." She started towards the door. "I have to go."
"This is...is…is...absurd," he said, but no stumbling words of his were going to stop her leaving. She was already fumbling with the security bolt he'd put on when she'd entered.
"I'll get it," he said, leaning past her to open the door. In lieu of any comforting words he kept a silence which she only broke with:
"Goodbye."
"You're not giving us time to think this through."
"I'm afraid, Howie," she said. "You're right, I don't believe the Devil's in this. But if he isn't, who is? Have you got any answers for that?"
She was barely able to keep her emotions in check; she kept gulping air as if trying to swallow, and failing. The sight of her distress made him long to hug her, but what had been invited last night was now forbidden.
"No," he told her. "No answers."
She took the cue of his reply to leave him at the door. He watched her for a count of five, defying himself to stand and let her go, knowing what had happened between them was more significant than anything he'd experienced in eighteen years of breathing the air of the planet. At five, he closed the door.

PART FOUR:
PRIMAL SCENES
I

Grillo had never heard Abernethy happier. The
man fairly whooped when Grillo told him the Buddy
Vance story had taken a turn for the cataclysmic, and
that he'd been there to witness it all.
"Start writing!" he said. "Take a room in town—charge
it to me—and start writing! I'll hold the front page." If Abernethy sought to excite Grillo with B-movie clichйs he failed.
What had happened at the caves had left him numb. But the
suggestion that he take a room was welcome. Though he'd
dried off at the bar where he and Hotchkiss had given their
account to Spilmont, he felt dirty and exhausted.
"What about this Hotchkiss guy?" Abernethy said.
"What's his story?"
"I don't know."
"Find out. And get some more background on Vance. Have you been up to the house yet?"
"Give me time."
"You're on the spot," Abernethy said. "It's your story. Get to it."
He revenged himself on Abernethy, albeit pettily, by taking the most expensive room on offer at the Hotel Palomo, in Stillbrook Village, ordering up champagne and a rare hamburger, and tipping the waiter so well the man asked him if he hadn't made a mistake. The booze made him light-headed; his favorite condition in which to call Tesla. She wasn't in. He left a message stating his present locale. Then he looked up Hotchkiss in the directory and called him. He had heard the man give his account to Spilmont. No mention had been made of what they'd glimpsed escaping from the fissure. Grillo had similarly kept quiet on the subject, and the absence of any questions on the subject from Spilmont suggested nobody else had been close enough to the fissure to witness the sight. He wanted to compare notes with Hotchkiss, but he drew a blank. Either he wasn't in or he'd decided not to answer the telephone.
With that route of enquiry blocked, he turned his attention to the Vance mansion. It was almost nine in the evening, but there was no harm in his wandering up the Hill to have a look at the dead man's estate. He might even talk his way inside if the champagne hadn't got the better of his tongue. In some regards the timing was advantageous. This morning Vance had been the focal point of events in the Grove. His relatives, if they had a taste for the limelight—and few didn't—could bide their time before choosing between suitors for their story. But now Vance's demise had been superseded by a larger, and fresher, tragedy. Grillo might therefore find the contingent more eager to talk than he would have done at noon.
He regretted deciding to walk. The Hill was steeper than it had seemed from below, and badly lit. But there were compensations. He had the street to himself, and so could leave the sidewalk and wander up the center, admiring the stars as they appeared overhead. Vance's residence wasn't hard to locate. The road stopped at its gates. After Coney Eye, there was only sky.
The main gate was unguarded but locked. A side gate, however, gave him access to a path which wound through a colonnade of undisciplined evergreens, which were alternately flooded with green, yellow and red light, to the front of the house. It was vast, and utterly idiosyncratic; a palace which defied the aesthetic of the Grove in every way. There was no trace here of the pseudo-Mediterranean, or the ranch style, or the Spanish style, or the mock-Tudor, or the modern colonial. The whole mansion looked like a funfair ride, its facade painted in the same primaries that had lit the trees, its windows ringed with lights which were presently turned off. Coney Eye, Grillo now understood, was a little piece of the Island: Vance's homage to Carnival. There were lights burning inside. He knocked, aware that he was being scrutinized by cameras above the door. A woman of oriental extraction— Vietnamese, perhaps—opened it, and informed him that Mrs. Vance was indeed in residence. If he'd wait in the hallway, she told him, she'd see if the lady of the house was available. Grillo thanked her, and waited while the woman took herself off upstairs.
As outside, so in: a temple to fun. Every inch of the hallway was hung with panels from all manner of Carnival rides: brilliantly colored advertisements for Tunnels of Love, Ghost Train Rides, Carousels, Freak Shows, Wrestling Shows, Gal Shows, Waltzes, Dippers, and Mystic Swings. The renderings were for the most part crude, the work of painters who knew their craft was in the service of commerce, and had no lasting merit. Close scrutiny didn't flatter the displays; their gaudy self-confidence was to be viewed through the crush of a crowd rather than studied under the spotlight. Vance had not been blind to that fact. By hanging the items cheek by jowl on every wall he effectively drew the eye on from one to the next, preventing it from lingering too long on any detail. The display, for all its vulgarity, drew a smile from Grillo, as no doubt Vance had intended, a smile that fell from his face when Rochelle Vance appeared at the top of the stairs and began her descent.
Never in his life had he seen a face more flawless. With every step she took towards him he expected to find a compromise in its perfection, but there was none. She was of Caribbean blood, he guessed, her dark features had that ease about their line. Her hair was drawn back tight, emphasizing the dome of her forehead and the symmetry of her brows. She wore no jewelry, and only the simplest of black dresses.
"Mr. Grillo," she said, "I'm Buddy's widow." The word, despite the color of her dress, couldn't have seemed more inappropriate. This was not a woman who'd risen from a tear-soaked pillow. "How can I help you?" she asked.
"I’m a journalist—"
"So Ellen told me."
"I wanted to ask you about your husband."
"It's a little late."
"I was in the woods most of the afternoon."
"Ah yes," she said. "You're that Mr. Grillo."
"I'm sorry?"
"I had one of the policemen..." She turned to Ellen. "What was his name?"
"Spilmont."