"Ellison, Harlan - Objects Of Desire (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

"Yeah?" Not the way I usually speak, but this was about as weird a venue, as
troubling a set of circumstances as any I'd handled since I'd been promoted to
Homicide. "Uh, excuse me, Lieutenant, but what do you want us to do with these
three ladies?"

I looked over at them, huddling near the door, and for a moment I hated them.
They were taller than I, they were prettier than I, they were certainly
wealthier than I, they had no hips and their asses were smaller than mine, and
they dressed a lot better. I won't compare cup size: at least I had them beat in
that capacity.

"Keep them from talking to each other, but be easy with 'em. I think they're
famous, and we've got enough problems in the Department this week." I was
talking, of course, about the serial hooker-slayer who had been leaving bits of
unrecognizable meat all over town for the preceding six months. Then I went to
work. Bird nest smell. Not nice.

The first half dozen were either too wetbrain or demented even to grasp what I
was asking them. Clearly, none of them had been out in that alley. But someone
had been; the old man probably didn't cut his own throat. I'd say definitely,
not even possibly.

The first bit of remark that bore any relation to a lead, was the ramble of a
guy in his thirties, broke-down like the rest of them, but apparently not as
long in the life as his peers. He had been an aerospace worker, laid off at
Boeing a few years earlier in one of the periodic "downsizing" ploys.

His name was Richard. He mumbled his last name and I wrote it on my pad, but I
paid less attention than I might've, had he been a real suspect, when he said,
"Wull, I seen the green light."

"Green light?"

"Richard. Muh name's Richard."

"Yeah, I got that part. You said `a green light.'"

"Uh-huh. It was a light, out there, with him, y'know the dead guy?"

I said, yeah, I know the dead guy. "And there was this light. And it was green."

"Uh-huh."

I contemplated a career in orthodonture, as I was already pulling teeth. "Well,
look, Richard, you can be of great help to us in solving this murder, if you
could just tell me exactly what you saw. Out there. In the alley. The green
light. Okay?"

He nodded, the poor sonofabitch; and I confess I felt my heart go out to him. He
actually was doing the best he could, and I didn't want to push him any more