"Lessig, Hugh - Picasso Smith Jr - Millstone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lessig Hugh)

Thrilling New Detective Fiction: Millstone


Millstone
A Picasso Smith, Jr. Mystery

by Hugh Lessig



.......They found John the Polack all torn up on the third floor of
Andersen's Mill. I got there late, which was just as well.
.......Someone had pushed him into the blades. So said the men in
the parking lot, men who carried coolers as big as boom boxes, and
who had circular tins of snuff tucked into the back pockets of their
dirty jeans. They didn't talk to me, but I heard "John the Polack
got his" and that kind of stuff.
....... I flashed my press badge at the guardhouse, and the
rent-a-cop gave me a look when he saw I worked for The River City
Blade. We wrote a week's worth of stories on this mill a few years
ago when the feds cited them for dumping waste oil in the
groundwater. I guess he must've been around for that.
....... A fine, rust red powder covered the ground just inside the
gate. It covered the pickup trucks next to the mill. It covered the
mill itself. It covered the forklifts and the men who drove the
forklifts. The men looked liked coal miners if coal had been red. I
wondered what the hell they made here.
......."Hey! Picasso."
.......As we approached the mill, one of the red men called to me.
He was a fiftyish man with big forearms and a beer belly that an
older woman might call cute. He wore the same hardhat and jeans and
T-shirt as everyone else, but I recognized his voice.
....... As he came closer, I saw it was Scott. Scott Stavros? Scott
Stackhouse? Scott something. His brother died in the 1989 San
Francisco earthquake, and I did a story on it. Since then, I've seen
him at Richmond Braves games, and he always mentions the story
because that earthquake disrupted the World Series, and it makes him
think about baseball.
....... We shook hands and I got the red junk all over me. It was a
fine powder, like flour, and it smelled like nothing in particular.
He laughed as I looked at my hand.
....... "Now you're initiated," he said.
....... Scott said he would look after me, and the guard left us to
talk.
....... "You picked a helluva day to come here, huh? Right up in the
mill, he got caught. They found him between the third and fourth
floors. One of them blades caught him right in the DMZ. I hear tell
he was calling for his wife as he got sucked down. She's been dead
these ten years. Hell, I figure the last thing he heard was her
voice from the Great Beyond."