"Van Lustbader, Eric - Dark Homecoming(eng)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Her heart broke to leave Nestor alone, but in truth there was nothing more she could do for him and she was already late for work.
Lord Constantine Fine Imports on NE Fortieth Street in the Design District of Miami was a two-story persimmon-colored building with a gated courtyard filled with palms and hibiscus trees.
She got into the office and hit her desk running. As one of three partners, she was in charge of buying from the South American and Mexican export companies, which accounted for three-quarters of Lord Constantine's high-end furniture and accessories business. Consequently, there were an alarming number of urgent calls she had to make. She was so busy she didn't have time to brief her assistant on the afternoon's appointments. Sonia liked to have just the right furnishings displayed for her best decorator clients.
At twelve-thirty, just as her stomach was starting to growl like a lion at feeding time, Carol, her assistant, stuck her head in the door.
"Sorry," she said, "but I just got a call from Florida Power and Light. You were having power outages?"
Sonia nodded. She was still wondering whether to show Ellen Wright, her first appointment, the pre-Columbian head that had just arrived. "This morning."
"Well, they've got to get into your place."
"Okay, make an appointment for-"
"They say now." Her assistant's freckled face held an expression of regret. "There seems to be some kind of royal screwup that has to do with the gas lines and they say it can't wait."
Sonia cursed under her breath. There went her afternoon. "Okay.
Tell them I'll be right there. Oh, and Carol, please cancel Mrs. Wright, then take a look at my calendar. I'll phone you with an update as soon as I get a handle on how long I'm going to be. Hopefully you won't have to cancel anyone else."
It had begun to rain as Sonia drove home. Not just rain, but a South Florida torrent dropping out of a roiling charcoal sky. The rank smell of tropical vegetation turned the air to soup. Thunder boomed and rolled and the lines of cars on the road threw off thick sprays of water.
Instead of work she found herself thinking about Lew Croaker. She longed to call him, promised herself she would as soon as she had a spare moment. She liked him a lot, which surprised her. First of all, she hardly knew him; wary at heart, it usually took her a while to warm up to a man. Second of all, he was Anglo. Oh, but not just any Anglo, she reminded herself. He knew Latinos, appreciated their culture. Plus, he wasn't a muy macho pig, like so many men she'd met.
She was surprised that even though the power was still out in her house, she heard the TV from Estrella's next door. Mr. Leyes had been a lineman for Bell South, He'd been paralyzed falling off a pole, and now he stayed home all day and watched ESPN.
She'd forgotten to return the umbrella to the car where she usually kept it, so she got soaked running from the side carport to her front door. Her house was neat and freshly painted, a white one-story with tile roof and stucco facade dating back to the 1950s. Its trim was a shade of very pale blue that seemed indigenous to El Portal. She ran past the cement seahorses holding up a cracked fountain that no longer worked, past a dripping lemon tree and thick night-blooming jasmine, now whipped by the wind and bent by the rain. She went up the steps to the covered porch, then took a look around. Where the hell was FPL? Just like the utilities to cry emergency then be late showing up. She decided to wait for them inside.
The warm, vivid, tropical colors with which she'd decorated were muted in the gloom. Rain pelted the windowpanes, sheeting down the glass. Another roll of thunder boomed and echoed outside.
She went through the living room and into the small kitchen. Out of habit, she opened the refrigerator, but she saw nothing appealing inside.
She went into her bedroom and turned on the battery-powered bedside radio. Gloria Estefan crooned in Spanish, which was followed by a very sexy Afro-Cuban number by Machito. The Cu-bop was in two-four time, and she merengued into the bathroom. A
plastic bubble skylight lent what little illumination there was, and she leaned over the sink, peering at herself in the mirror.
She started. What was that? Her gaze flicked to a corner of the mirror. What had she seen there? A shadow moving? Must have been a car passing outside, she thought, her gaze returning to her own reflection.
In the bedroom the music had stopped. An announcer was reading an ad for a Latin party jam in South Beach this Saturday. It sounded cool. She wondered whether Croaker would go with her if she asked him. She hoped he would. Getting hot and sweaty with him would be a treat. The more she thought about him the more she wanted to see him. He was awfully sexy. Her thoughts drifted to them dancing the merengue at the Shark Bar before his poor sister had popped up out of nowhere. Sonia remembered how he held her, how he moved with her, and her breath grew hot in her throat.
She started; she saw it again. Now she was sure. There was movement behind her-either in the bedroom, or beyond, in the living room.
For a long time, she did not move. Her gaze flicked from one side of the mirror to the other, scrutinizing the wedge of the interior she could see in reflection. She did not want to turn around yet, did not want to give any overt sign that she had seen something amiss. She was not frightened, but she was wary. She'd had a gym-freak boyfriend about a year ago who was paranoid about urban violence. He'd shown her a trick or two about self-defense, and after that she hadn't been afraid of getting into her car at night or even driving to the nearby 7-Eleven at three in the morning for milk or sugar. The night crawlers who hung out there didn't bother her.
But this was her home.
Was someone in the living room?
She turned and, as calmly as she was able, went back into the bedroom. She stood there for a long, breathless moment, scanning the gloom. Hello, she thought. Anybody there? She felt herself give a little shiver. A male voice was spewing out the news in rapid-fire Spanish. None of it was good.
She stared at the telephone, which was on a nightstand on the far side of the bed. Her knees felt suddenly weak, and she sank to the bed. As she did so, she glanced into the living room. At this new angle, she saw something that made her heart leap into her throat. There was a darkly glistening puddle on the wood floor of the dining alcove. Rainwater. But she hadn't been near the dining alcove. From this position a wall protruded out, blocking off most of that small space. Someone could be standing there, waiting.
Could it be one of the electrical linemen? But then why didn't he say something?
There was more urgency inside her now, and she sprawled across the bed, reaching for the phone. The bitter taste of fear was in her mouth and now her only thought was to call 911. She felt the shock wave of air coming her way even as she lifted the receiver. Darkness, like a great shadow, bloomed on her right side, and the bed rocked as someone hit her full force.
She screamed as she went flying. The receiver bounced on the bed, spun away from her as she hit the floor on her back. A weight like a six-hundred-pound gorilla pressed painfully onto her breasts and rib cage, immobilizing her. At the same time, something soft and perfumed and very familiar enveloped her face. It pushed down, making breathing difficult, then impossible. It was her pillow. Someone was trying to smother her.
She opened her mouth to scream but cotton-covered down filled it. Her jaws were thrust wide open by the terrible pressure and she began to choke. Something dark and primitive went off in her brain like a Roman candle and she began to thrash wildly with arms and legs. It was too little too late.
Breath caught in her throat and she began to gag. But she did not give up. Her clawed hands raked and scraped flesh until a powerful grip pinioned her wrists against the floor.
She heard a voice hiss: "Cuidado! Be careful! You know this! She must not be damaged in any way!"
It was a Spanish dialect that seemed awfully familiar to her. Where had she heard it before? Then she had it: Bennie's grandfather, that strange and sometimes frightening man, had used it on occasion. It was curious the minutia the mind could latch onto at such moments. She recalled Bennie's grandfather-a tall, stoop-shouldered man with craggy brows and a thick pure white mustache-with a preternatural clarity. Smoking one of his aromatic hand-rolled cigars, he seemed to hover in the air. He was whispering to her in his dialect, and she knew he was trying to tell her something vital. She cried out in her desperation to hear him, but she could not.
Life was escaping her with each beat of her heart. She tried to take a ragged breath through the wadding that filled her mouth, but to no avail. Her lungs were on fire and when she gagged again, acidic vomit filled her throat and she spiraled downward.
Bennie's grandfather had disappeared. On the Shark Bar's dance floor, she merengued with Lew Croaker. The sensual beat throbbed through her, insinuating itself into her very bones. She looked into his eyes and melted. She was weeping for joy. I want you, she said in her mind as she died.
2
By late afternoon Croaker felt drained. He'd given blood to Dr. Marsh for HLA typing, he'd interviewed Dr. Niguel, to see if he had any further insight into Rachel's condition when she was admitted to Emergency, and he'd spent more time with Matty and Rachel.
At last, he took a breather outside in the hospital's parking lot and used his cell phone to call his charter office at the marina. He had them cancel his appointments for the next several weeks. Between the money he had been paid by the Feds for his work after he'd left the NYPD and the successful investments he'd made over the years, he didn't need the income from the fishing charter in order to live. He did it because it gave him pleasure.
He'd just hung up when the cell phone chirped.
"Hello?"
Silence. No, not quite. He could hear a quick catch of breath.
"Lew?"
"Yes."
"This is Maria."
Maria. It took him a moment to orient himself. Bennie's Maria.
"Hola, Maria. Como est?s?"
"Do you know where Sonia lives?"
"El Portal. Yes, she told me."
"We need you here."