"Pronzini, Bill - Nameless Detective 008 - Scattershot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pronzini Bill)

Bill Pronzini, Nameless Detective - ScattershotScattershot.

Welcome to hard times . . . It was not a good week for Nameless. First, a harmless job of tailing a client's husband turns into a baffling case of disappearance and murder. Then, the simple task of finding a missing socialite takes a bizarre twist into blackmail and another murder. And finally, the apparently breeze job of guarding some valuable wedding presents turns into a messy affair of robbery and deception.

As if this weren't enough, his relationship with the woman he hopes to marry has turned sour, a crazy woman sues him for criminal negligence, and he finds not only his career and reputation threatened, but also his life.

It's all in a week's work for the Nameless Detective...

Bill Pronzini, Nameless Detective Scattershot.

The bumper sticker said: JOGGING IS FOR JERKS. I stood there in my brand-new blue jogging suit, panting and dripping sweat on the sidewalk, and I thought: Amen, brother. Jogging is definitely for jerks. And horse's backsides, which was what I had been feeling like as I trotted my beer belly up and down the beach at Aquatic Park. People had kept looking at me-fishermen on the pier, kids, a bunch of black musicians, even a shopping bag lady. Big, shaggy, overweight fifty-three-year-old guy in a blue jogging suit with white piping on it, running splayfooted and puffing like a Clydesdale. That was me, the spectacle. That was the horse's backside.

Kerry, I thought, I ought to strangle you.

And where was she? Not out here on this fine Sunday morning in July, making a fool of herself in her blue jogging suit with the white piping on it. "I might be a little late," she'd said on the phone, "so you go ahead and start without me."

Yeah. She was now forty-five minutes late, and maybe she wasn't going to show up at all. Maybe she had decided, in her infinite wisdom, that she didn't want to be seen cavorting in public with a horse's ass.

The jogging had been her idea, of course-one of her current passions. "You could stand to lose a few pounds around the middle," she'd said. "And jogging is fun, you'll see."

Well, I had seen, all right, and jogging was not fun. Jogging was about the least fun thing I had ever done. Jogging was for jerks.

I kept on staring at the bumper sticker. It was on the front bumper of a 1978 Datsun, and the Datsun was parked near the Aquatic Park pier at the foot of Van Ness, and I was standing on the sidewalk in front of it feeling stupid. I did not want to turn around and go lumbering back for another lap along the beach; I did not want to give the fishermen and the black musicians and the shopping bag lady another show. I wanted to take off my blue jogging suit and stuff it into a trashcan and then go get a nice cold beer somewhere. If it wasn't for Kerry ...

A bald guy wearing a windbreaker came up the path from the beach and went past me to the Datsun. He stopped next to the front fender, laid a possessive hand on it, and narrowed his eyes at me. "Something about my car?" he said.

"I was just admiring your bumper sticker."

"Yeah?"

"Where did you get it?"

"Why do you wanna know?"

"I want to get one for my car," I said.

"How come? You're a jogger, ain't you?"

"Not anymore. I'm taking the pledge."

The bald guy considered that. "My brother-in-law's a jogger," he said. "He's also a jerk. That's why I put the sticker on there. It annoys the hell out of him and my wife both."

"Good for you."

"Yeah. I got it in a place at the Wharf. They make them up with anything you want on 'em, as long as it ain't obscene."

"Jogging is obscene enough," I said.

He nodded sagely, gave me a crooked grin, and got into his Datsun. I turned around and looked at the path to the beach. Then I went the other way, uphill past where my own car was parked to the bocce ball courts. I loved Kerry, I would do just about anything for her, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.