"Destroyer - 031 - The Head Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"Oh," said the district man. It was a gray-furnitured office with the antiseptic cubicity of those who have very specific jobs and need not be expansive to the public. Walgreen sat down. It was not the kind of office that even old friends offered each other a drink in. It was more a file cabinet drawer than an office as Walgreen knew it, and he was very glad he had left the Secret Service for carpets and drinks and golf dates and all the cozy amenities of American business.

"I'm in trouble, but I can't dot the 'i' on it. It was just a phone call, but the voice… it was the voice. I don't know how much you know about business, but there are people you know who are just for real. It's a calmness in their voices, a precision. I don't know. This one had it."

"Ernie, I respect you. You know that."

"What are you driving at?" asked Walgreen.

"A phone call isn't enough."

"What do I have to do to get you guys in on it? Be killed?"

"All right. Why does this person want to kill you?"

"I don't know. He just said I should get all the protection I could."

"Were you drinking?"

"No, I was not drinking. I was working."

"Ernie, that's a standard crank call you got. That's a standard. They tell you to get a gun, to put on extra men, 'because, buddy, I'm gonna blow your brains out.' Ernie. Please."

"It was for real. I know standard crank calls. You're lucky you've got computers nowadays to keep track of them. I know crank calls. Moreover, I think you know I can tell the difference. This voice was not a crank. I don't know the why of it but, between you and me, this one's for real."

"You know I'm helpless, Ernie."

"Why?"

"Because in a report, it doesn't have Ernie Walgreen looking me in the eye like you're looking now and me knowing, right where you know it, that these people are for real. Knowing it in the gut."

"Got any suggestions? I've had a lot of practice making money."

"Use it, Ernie."

"With whom?"

"After Kennedy got shot out from underneath us, there was a big shakeup here. Pretty quiet but pretty big."

"I know. I had something to do with it," Walgreen said. The district man looked at him with mild surprise.

"Anyway," the district man said, "it didn't do anything because there was no way we could have stopped a guy getting in a shot like Oswald did, but we had to look like we made some changes so we could tell Johnson that the Secret Service that lost Kennedy isn't the same as the one guarding you now. In the shakeup, some good men, really good men, quit. They were very bitter. And I can't blame them. They have their own security agency now…"

"I don't need some retired policeman in a blue uniform to discourage shoplifting."

"No, they're not your normal corporate security. They do super stuff for super people and I'm talking about protecting foreign heads of state too, designing their palaces and everything. They're even better on protection than we are because their clients don't have to go running around to every airport crowd shaking hands. God, that terrifies me. Why couldn't a Howard Hughes hermit be President instead of some damned politician? It's always a politician." He paused. "What'd you mean, you had something to do with the shakeup?" he asked.

Walgreen shrugged. "I did some work for the President," he said, "in the security area."

"Which President?"