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

Bennie took Croaker by the arm, led him out the front door into the gentle night. Crickets and tree frogs made a soft susurrus that was almost hypnotic.
Bennie said, "Once, as a little boy, I saw my grandfather heal a woman's arm shriveled by disease. How is this possible, you ask." He pointed above their heads. "Like that tree frog who doesn't have a clue about our conversation, you haven't got a clue 'bout this healing process. You don't have the healer's consciousness, so you don't get that. 'Bout this, you're like that tree frog up there. To him, this conversation can't, like, exist 'cause he doesn't have the ability to get it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, see?"
Croaker nodded
"This spirit-stone, it belonged to my grandfather." Bennie's voice was as quiet as if he were in church. "It's very powerful. I want you to put it on Rachel's chest." He put his hand over Croaker's fingers, making him grasp the stone. "It's a healer's stone. But I'm not a healer, Lewis, and neither are you. So the energy in it's, like, limited. Still, who knows, it may help in some way."
Croaker thought he felt a kind of warmth emanating from it, but perhaps it was just his imagination. "I'll take good care of it."
Bennie looked at it almost wistfully. "You know what they say about Guarani healers, Lewis. They never die. Their power, like, remains."
Bennie walked Croaker to the car. Silence enveloped them. As Croaker opened the T-bird's door, Bennie said, "Esuchame, Lewis. I have a favor to ask of you."
"Anything, buddy."
Bennie nodded. "Two days from now I want to charter your boat."
Croaker laughed. "You're giving me more business? What kind of favor is that?"
"It's not for fishing, Lewis. I need it, like, for the night."
Croaker frowned. "This isn't for anything illegal, is it, Bennie?"
"No, nothin' like that. But-" He looked around, as if the rustling palms might be studded with directional microphones. "But this is strictly between us. You can't tell anyone-not even the people in your office. Far as they know, you're using the boat for yourself. Okay?"
"Sure, but you have your own boat."
"Cigarette's no good for this run." Bennie clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks, buddy. This is, like, super important. I don't know anyone else I can trust." He held the T-bird's door open wide for Croaker. "Remember. In two days."
"What time?"
"Gotta midnight appointment. We'll need to leave Islamorada at eight."
"Where the hell are we going, Bennie? Miami or Cuba?"
Bennie said nothing, put his forefinger across his lips.
He sure was being damn secretive, Croaker thought. Then he shrugged mentally. What the hell. What were friends for, anyway?
"Bennie." On impulse, he embraced his friend. "Whether it helps Rachie or not, thanks for your grandfather's spirit-stone."
3
It was after nine; it had taken him an hour and a half to get back to Royal Poinciana Hospital in Palm Beach.
Matty was asleep when he arrived. The nurses in the Dialysis Unit had let his sister sleep on a bed in one of the empty cubicles. Croaker tiptoed past her on the way to see his niece. He asked the duty nurse about Rachel's condition. When she told him it hadn't changed, he wondered whether that was good or bad. Perhaps it was a little of both. Barring a miracle, it was the best they could hope for at the moment.
Rachel lay as he had left her, on her back, unconscious, hooked up to so many hoses she looked like some postmodern mythic creature, part human, part machine. Shadows still as death lay across her like shrouds, and Croaker felt an unspent shout of denial welling up inside him. He could not let her drift away into oblivion. He had to find some way to get her a healthy kidney.
When he sat down beside her, he found that he was trembling. He slipped his right hand into hers, trying to warm it. It seemed to him that memories of Sonia, brief but poignant, mingled with his awareness of Rachel, almost as if their two souls shared a space on another plane of existence. Linked in a cosmic and unknowable manner. Perhaps this sense was his way of feeling closer to a niece he had longed to know, or, perhaps, tonight of all nights was special and what he felt had some basis in truth. In any case, he would not laugh at himself for harboring such odd and spiritual thoughts.
He dug out the spirit-stone Bennie had given him. Its dark green color seemed dull, muted by the fluorescent lights. Croaker turned it over a couple of times between his fingers. It looked to him no different from any of a thousand such wave-washed stones one might pick up along a seashore.
Nevertheless, he set it carefully between Rachel's breasts. It lay there, dark and seemingly heavy, creasing the sheet with which she was covered. He looked at her face, willing her back to life, but of course nothing happened.
He waited for what seemed an extraordinarily long time while the many machines ticked over, the fluids dripped into her, and she continued to drift deep inside her coma.
At last, he reached out to pluck the spirit-stone from atop her chest. His fingers closed over it, and he felt a kind of warmth that almost burned him.
"Who's there?"
He started just as if someone had jabbed him with a needle.
He leaned over her bed. "Rachel?"
Now that she was awake, he could see her ice blue eyes for himself, so vivid they were riveting.
"Who are you?"
"I'm your uncle Lew. Mommy's brother." He moved into the light so she could see him better. "She's right outside. I'll go get her."
"No!"
It was just a whisper but it held him as immobile as if it had been a shout. He could feel her grip on his right hand, as if she were using all the strength she had left to keep him at her side.
"My God, Uncle Lew. I was... I think I was dreaming about you." She tried to smile, failed. "You were on a white horse and your armor shone like the sun."
He smiled both at the image and to encourage her. "This is Florida, honey. I think its much too hot for armor. But it's me. I'm here now."
She squeezed his hand, "I know it's you, Uncle Lew."
"Rachel, honey, let me get Mom. She's so worried about you. I know she'd want to talk to you."
"But I don't want to talk to her." Those eyes stared up at him.
"The doctor, then. Honey, you've been asleep for some time. I've got to tell them you're awake."
"Please, Uncle Lew. I can't bear to be poked and prodded. In a minute you can call them. But now just stay here with me."
It was wrong and he knew it. Dr. Marsh should be notified at the very least. But he seemed helpless before her or, more accurately, his feelings. He was bound to adore her, he had known that. His only niece, he would accept her unconditionally, and, to be brutally honest, her intense desire to be with him mirrored his own fondest wish. He could not find it in himself to deny her. Besides, the detective inside him fervently wished for answers.
"Rachie, what happened to you?"
"All these tubes," she whispered.
"You're in a hospital. You took some bad shit, is all."
Her expression was curious. "You're nothing like Matty. She doesn't have a clue I'm into drugs."