"Death Trance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

swivelled and its ferocious teeth snapped; it let out a coarse roar of fury that made Michael's hair prickle with fear. The pedanda screamed: it was the first time Michael had ever heard a grown man scream. And then the mask stretched open its painted jaws and tore off the priest's head, exposing for one terrible, naked second the bloody tube of his trachea.
Michael turned and ran. He burst through thepaduraksa gate, sped across the outer courtyard and back to the bronze doorway where the leyaks were waiting. His lungs shrieked for air; his mind was bursting with terror. But he dragged back the gate and ran out into the street, and there were no leyaks there now, only gas lamps and fruit stalls and boys on mopeds. And then he was running more slowly, and then he was walking, and as he reached the corner by the night market, he realized that he was out of the death trance and that, suddenly, it was all over.
He walked for a long time beside the river, where the market lights were reflected. He passed fortune-telling stands, where mynah birds would pick out magic sticks to predict a customer's future. He passed warong stands, where sweating men were stirring up nasi goreng, rice with chili and beef slices. And in his mind's eye the mask of Rangda still swivelled her eyes and roared and bit at the high priest's head, and still the leyaks followed him, their eyes glowing.
Tears ran down Michael's cheeks. He called for his father, but of course his father did not answer. Michael was a priest now, but what did that mean? What was he supposed to do? His only guide and teacher had been supernaturally savaged to death by Rangda; and Rangda's acolytes would probably pursue him day and night to take their revenge on him too.
He prayed as he walked, but his prayers sounded futile in his mind. They were drowned by rock 'n' roll and the blurting of mopeds. It was only when he reached the corner of Jalan Gajahmada that he realized he had left his precious bicycle behind.
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CHAPTER ONE
Memphis, Tennessee, 1984
'Well, I believe that Elvis is still alive, that's my opinion. I believe that Elvis was sick right up to here with all those fans; sick right up to here of havin' no privacy; sick right up to here of all those middle-aged broads with the upswept eyeglasses shriekin' and droolin' and high-flyin' they ste-pins at him; sick right up to here of belongin' to the public instead of his own self and bein' constantly razzed for growin' himself a good-sized belly when tell me what man of forty-two don't, it's a man's right. So he fakes his death, you got me? and sneaks out of Graceland in the back of a laundry truck or whatever.'
The sweat-crowned cab driver turned around in his seat and regarded Randolph at considerable length, one hairy wrist dangling on top of the steering wheel. 'You just remember where you heard it, my friend, when this white-bearded old man rolls back into Memphis one day, fat and happy, and says, "You all recollect who I am? My name's Elvis the Pelvis Presley, and while you been showerin' my tomb with tears, I been fishin' and drinkin' and havin' an excellent time and thinkin' what suckers you all are."'
Randolph pointed towards the road ahead with a flat-handed chopping gesture. 'Do you mind keeping your eyes on the road? Elvis may have cheated death but you and I may not be quite so lucky.'
The cab driver turned back just in time to swerve his cab away from a huge tractor trailer that had suddenly decided to change lanes without making a signal. As the cabbie swerved, he was given a peremptory two-tone blast
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on the horn from a Lincoln limousine crowded with Baptist priests.
'Forgive me, forgive me,' the cab driver begged the Lincoln's occupants sarcastically as the limousine swept by. 'I done seen the wrongness of my ways. Or at least I done seen the ass end of that truck before we got totalled.' He turned around to Randolph again and said comfortably, That's a fair amount of potential forgiveness in one vehicle, wouldn't you say? But what do you think of the way I missed that truck? That's sixth sense, that is. Kind of a built-in alarm system. Not everybody has that, sixth sense.'
'I'd honestly prefer it if you'd use your first sense and look where the hell you're going,' Randolph told him testily.
'All right, my friend, no need to get sore,' the driver replied. He turned around again, his sweaty shirt skidding on the textured vinyl seat, and switched on the radio. It was Anne Murray, singing 'You Needed Me.' He turned the volume up, surmising correctly that Randolph would find it irritating.
Randolph was a heavily built man, tall and big-boned, and in accord with his appearance, he was usually placid. He made an ideal president of Clare Cottonseed Products, Incorporated, a business in which Southern tempers invariably ran hot to high. If he hadn't inherited the presidency from his father, the board would probably have chosen him anyway. He never raised his voice above an educated mumble. He played golf, and fished, and loved his family. He had grey hair and reminded his junior secretaries of Fred MacMurray.
He enjoyed being nice. He enjoyed settling arguments and making even the least of his two thousand employees feel wanted. His nickname at every one of Clare Cottonseed's seven processing plants was 'Handy Randy.' He usually smelled slightly of Benson & Hedges pipe tobacco. He had a degree in law, two daughters, one son, and a wife called Marmie, whom he adored.
But today he was more than irritated. He was upset,
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more than upset. His phone had rung at 4:30 that morning and he had been called back from his vacation cabin on Lac aux Ecorces in the Laurentide forests of Quebec, where only two days earlier he and his family had started their three-week summer vacation. It was their first family vacation in three years and Randolph's only time off in a year and a half. But late yesterday evening fire had broken out at his No.2 cottonseed-processing plant out at Raleigh, in the northeast suburbs of Memphis. One process worker had been incinerated. Two other men, including the plant's deputy manager, had been asphyxiated by fumes. And the damage to the factory itself had so far been estimated at over two million dollars.
It would have been unthinkable for the company president to remain on vacation in Canada, fishing and swimming and buzzing his seaplane around the lakes, no matter how much he deserved it.
To complete Randolph's irritation, his company limousine had failed to show up at the Memphis airport. He had tried calling the office from an airport pay phone smelling of disinfectant, but it was 7:45 p.m., and there was no response. Eventually - hot, tired and dishevelled - he had hailed himself a cab and asked to be driven to Front Street.
Now they drove west along Adams Avenue. The radio was playing the '59th Street Bridge Song.' Randolph hated it. He sat back in his seat, drumming his fingertips against his Samsonite briefcase. 'Slow down, you move too fast . . . got to make the morning last . . .'The business district was illuminated by that hazy acacia-honey glow special to Memphis on summer evenings. The Wolf and the Mississippi rivers, which join at Memphis, were turning to liquid ore. The twin arches of the Hernando de Soto Bridge glittered brightly, as if offering a pathway to a promised land instead of to nowhere but West Memphis.
The day's humidity began to ease and surreptitious draughts wavered around the corners of office buildings. The breeze that came in through the open taxi window smelled of flowers and sweat, and that unmistakable coolness of river.
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They drove along Front Street, known to the citizens of Memphis as Cotton Row. Randolph said, 'Here. This is the one.'
'Clare Cottonseed?' the driver frowned. He wiped the sweat from his furrowed forehead with the back of his hand.
'That's me,' said Randolph.
'You mean . . . you're Clare Cottonseed?'
'Handy Randy Clare in person,' Randolph smiled.
The cab driver reached behind with one meaty arm and opened the door for him. 'Maybe I ought to apologize,' he said.
'Why?'
'Well, for sounding off, for driving like an idiot.'
Randolph gave him twenty-five dollars in new bills and waved away the change. 'It's hot,' he said. 'We're all acting like idiots.'
The cab driver counted the money and said, Thanks.' Then, 'Didn't one of your factories burn last night? Out at Raleigh?'
'That's right.'
'Is that why you're here?'
"That's right,' Randolph said again. 'I'm supposed to be fishing in Canada.'
The driver paused for a moment, wiped his forehead again and sniffed. 'You think it was deliberate?'
'Do I think what was deliberate?'
"The fire. Do you think somebody torched that factory?'
Randolph stayed where he was, half in and half out of the taxi. 'What did you say that for?'
'I don't know. It's just that some of the people I pick up, they work for other cottonseed companies, like Gray-son's, or Towery's, and none of them seem to think that Clare's going to be staying in business too long.'
'Clare is the number-two cottonseed processor after Brooks. Saying that Clare is going out of business is like saying that the Ford Motor Company is going out of business.'
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'Sure, but you know how things are.'
'I'm not so sure I do,' Randolph replied cautiously, although he had a pretty fair idea of what the man was trying to suggest. It was no secret in Memphis that Clare Cottonseed was a political and economic maverick. All the other big cottonseed processors in the area were members of a price-fixing cartel that called itself the Cottonseed Association but which Randolph unflatteringly referred to as the Margarine Mafia. Randolph's father, Ned Clare, had rarely upset the Association, even though he had always insisted on remaining independent. Ned Clare had kept his salad-oil and cattle-cake prices well up in line with the Association's, but when Randolph had taken over the company, he had wanted to expand and economize and he had introduced a policy of keeping his prices as low as possible. The members of the Association - especially Brooks - had made their displeasure quite clear. So far, however, their hostility had been expressed politically rather than violently, but Randolph had recently begun to wonder when political push might escalate into violent shove.
'Listen,' the cab driver told him, 'I believe in what you're doin', right? I believe in free enterprise, free trade. Every man for himself. That's the American Way as far as I'm concerned. I mean . . . I'm not sayin' it's a fact that somebody set light to your factory. Maybe I'm talkin' out of my ass. But, well, given the circumstances, it ain't totally beyond the bounds of possibility, is it?'