"Charles de Lint - Someplace To Be Flying" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

window to reel it off: "Here's the way it plays, kid. You only stop for
money. You don't pick up strays. You never get involved." One, two,
three.
But some things you didn't walk away from. This time of night, in
this part of town, she was probably a hooker-having some altercation
with her pimp, maybe, or she hadn't been paying attention to her radar
and got caught up with a john turned ugly-but that still didn't make it
right.
He hit the brakes, the Chev skidding for a moment on the slick
pavement before he got it back under control. The baseball bat on the
seat beside him began to roll forward. A surge of adrenaline put him
into motion, quick, not even thinking. He grabbed the bat by its handle,
put the car in neutral, foot coming down on the parking brake and
locking it into place. Through the windshield he could see the man
backhand the woman, turn to face him. As the woman fell to the
pavement, Hank popped the door and stepped outside. The baseball bat
was a comfortable weight in his hand until the man reached under his
jacket.
Hank could almost hear Moth's voice in the back of his head. "You
get involved, you get hurt. Plain and simple. And let me tell you, kid.
There's no percentage in getting hurt."
It was a little late for advice now.
The man wasn't interested in discussion. He pulled a handgun out
from under that tailored dove-gray suit jacket and fired, all in one
smooth move. Hank saw the muzzle flash, then something smashed
him in the shoulder and spun him around, throwing him against the
door of the Chev. The baseball bat dropped out of numbed fingers and
went clattering across the pavement. He followed after it, sliding down
the side of the Chev and leaving a smear of blood on the cab's paint job.
Moth is going to be pissed about that, he thought.
Then the pain hit him and he blacked out for a moment. He floated
in some empty space where only the pain and sound existed. His own
rasping breath. The soft murmur of the cab's engine, idling. The faint
sound of Miles and Shorter, the last cut on the tape, just ending. The
muted scuff of leather-soled shoes on pavement, approaching. When he
got his eyes back open, the man was standing over him, looking down.
The man had a flat, dead gaze, eyes as gray as his suit. Hank had
seen their kind before. They were the eyes of the men who stood
against the wall in the back room of Eddie's bar, watching the action,
waiting for Eddie to give them a sign that somebody needed
straightening out. They were the eyes of men he'd picked up at the
airport and dropped off at some nondescript hotel after a stop at one of
the local gunrunners. They were the eyes he'd seen in a feral dog's face
one night when it had killed Emma's cat in the yard out behind her
apartment, the hard gaze holding his for a long moment before it
retreated with its kill.
The man lifted his gun again and now Hank could see it was an
automatic, as anonymous as the killer holding it. Behind the weapon,
the man's face remained expressionless. There was nothing there. No
anger, no pleasure, no regret.