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

The lobby was typical of places that used the word residences for apartments that began at one million dollars. With its four massive crystal chandeliers, its custom Missoni carpets, and its pink suede and brushed bronze furniture, flamboyant was a woefully inadequate adjective to describe it.
Up on the twelfth floor, he turned on all the lights in the apartment, as if banishing the dark could dispel Matty's sudden and crushing depression. To his report of Rachel's stable condition she had said not a word during the short drive over the Flagler Memorial Bridge, down Royal Poinciana Way to Palm Beach proper.
He put her on one of the two facing oversize sofas in the living room. The entire place was furnished grandly in a decorator's idea of the European style: period furniture, upholstered in sweeps of pale moire fabric and French provincial patterns, antique Oriental carpets in Iranian reds and blues muted by time and sunlight. This was all set off by eclectic accent pieces: statuary, paintings of the French countryside, mincing side tables, swags on lush curtains, massive cut-glass bowls, and ornamental knickknacks in profusion. The walls were partially paneled with the ubiquitous Floridian mirrors, which reflected the two bodies of water in dizzying and unexpected angles.
All this highly conspicuous artifice provided a brittle surface of culture. That hardly surprised him, given what he knew of Donald Duke, but something else did. In all this wonderland of overpriced junk, Croaker discovered no photographs, no personal possessions or mementos of the last fifteen years, no sense of individuality. Where was Matty amid this anonymous chic and glitter?
Matty sat with her bare feet on the carpet, looking undone by terror at the center of this perfect, hollow splendor. She was like a projectile in transit: in a limbo defined not by stasis but by velocity.
"When was the last time you ate?" She made him prompt her out of silence. "Matty...?"
"I don't remember."
He headed for the kitchen. "I'll fix you something."
"You'll have to be some kind of magician," she called after him. "I haven't shopped in a week."
She wasn't kidding. In the comparatively small kitchen he discovered a refrigerator with nothing in it but three white paper containers from Chinese takeout, half a carton of spoiled skim milk, an empty box of shredded wheat, a head of garlic, half a head of spoiled iceberg lettuce, some semiwilted scallions, and a jar of Reese's peanut butter. The freezer held foil-wrapped packages of cake, a bag of gourmet coffee beans, and two unopened pints of Haagen-Dazs ice cream.
"Jesus," he muttered, peering into the containers of Chinese takeout. One held rice hard as ice, the second a shrimp dish whose ammoniac smell made him wince. The third had once contained an order of ginger beef. All that remained, however, were long slivers of ginger embedded like wooden splinters in a congealed brown sauce.
He rummaged through the cupboards, found pasta and a third of a bottle of Scotch. All in all, with the plastic packet of soy sauce from the takeout, it was enough. He dug out a large pot, filled it halfway with water, and set it to boil. In a bowl with some warm water he spooned out the peanut butter, thinned it to the proper consistency. Then he chopped up the garlic and scallions, added the slivers of ginger and the soy sauce, then the garlic, and got that mixture going in a saucepan. He slopped in a generous dollop of Scotch. By that time the water was boiling in the pot. He measured out the pasta and dumped it in.
When, fifteen minutes later, he called Matty to the table, her eyes got big as saucers. "What the hell is that?" she asked, pointing to the pasta in a pale brown sauce.
"Sit down and eat," he ordered, sprinkling the scallions over the top.
Matty sighed, ran her hands through her hair, and sank into a chair. By this time, she had scrubbed her runny makeup off her face and he could see all over again the beautiful young girl he remembered. Once she started to eat, she couldn't stop. After her fifth or sixth forkful, she looked up. "You are some kind of magician. This is fantastic!"
"Thanks." He sat down opposite her, took a small portion onto his plate. It was mainly for show; the steak he'd eaten at Bennie's was sitting on his stomach like a leprechaun digging for a potful of gold.
Matty wiped her lips. "Where'd you learn to cook like this?"
"In Japan," Croaker said. "Actually, it was something of a neces- sity. I hate raw fish, so wherever I was I ferreted out the best Chinese restaurant. And let me tell you there are some great ones there." He spiraled some pasta on the tines of his fork. "Somehow I always managed to get friendly with the chef." He laughed, remembering. "It wasn't so surprising." He extruded the nails from his biomechanical hand. "Once I gave 'em a demonstration of my own brand of slicing and dicing food, they were always asking me back into their kitchens. You should have seen 'em crowd around."
Matty shook her head as she helped herself to more pasta. "You really are full of surprises."
"So are you." He looked at her pointedly, and when her gaze met his, he said, "Matty, d'you think you can tell me why Rachie thinks she drove Donald away?"
She frowned. "She said that?"
"Uh-huh. She also said that her father didn't come to see her after the breakup."
"That part's true enough." She put her fork down, frowned. "Let me tell you, we had some screaming fights on the phone about that."
"Not in person?"
She shook her head. "Donald was adamant about that. He'd cut the ties and as far as he was concerned that was that. For him the divorce was like an operation; he couldn't understand why anyone would want to go back and revisit their gallbladder."
"But Rachel was his daughter-"
She raised her eyebrows. "In his eyes, Rachel was mine; she was part of the life he once had and had gotten bored with."
"You say that so calmly."
She pushed her plate away; she'd had enough of her food. "Donald was a driven man. He had furies in his head. He was always restless, always tearing down and building, never satisfied with what he'd created. I understood him. That was something you never bothered to do."
Despite himself, Croaker was incensed. "You're defending this bastard-still?"
Matty sighed, raked scarlet nails through her thick hair. "I can see where this will lead and I have no desire to go down that road again." She put a hand over his. "Not when we've found each other again." She smiled at him. "But, truly, Lew, there was a side to him you never quite got. You were too busy hating his guts."
"He gave me good reason."
Her eyes turned hard for just an instant, and Croaker clenched his biomechanical hand beneath the table. "The truth now, Matty.
The whole truth and nothing but. At Rachie's christening I was so happy for you, despite how you'd treated us. Then Donald came up to me and put his arm around me. I swear he almost kissed me on the cheek."
"I remember that."
"But you don't know the rest," Croaker said. "He told me how great it was to have a cop as part of the family, what great buddies we were going to be-how we'd do things together, you know, guy to guy. Like flying out on his private jet to go hunting and fishing. 'The whole country is our preserve,' he told me. 'And when we go, I want you to feel free to bring your cop pals. You know, the big shots from downtown, the high-steppers from City Hall.' He hugged me to him. 'My marrying your sister is the best thing that ever happened to you,' he said. Trust me. Together, we'll make more money than you've ever dreamed of. If you get your buddies to play along.'"
"What do you mean?"
He saw the dismayed look in her eyes and he held on to her hand. "Before I go on... This is the last of him, Matty. He's spent too many years standing between us. I won't allow that to happen anymore. It's all in the past. Agreed?"
She nodded. "Yes, Lew," she said breathlessly. "As far as I'm concerned, Donald's history. But I want the true history now."
"All right. Donald wanted to be hooked into all the right people in New York. That meant politicians, cops, and union leaders. He wanted me to make the introductions, twist arms here and there if need be. All so he could make his dirty deals." He leaned forward over the table. "Honey, that's when I blew up and threatened him."
"You never told me," she whispered.
"Because I was so stone cold angry," he said. "But also maybe you weren't ready to hear it."
Croaker's heart broke at the look of desolation on his sister's face. Now she knew that there was more to Donald than she had known. The funny thing was, he'd dreamed of this moment, of setting her free from her self-induced fantasy about Donald. But now that it had happened, he tasted only ashes in his mouth. "Jesus, I fucked up my life."
"No, honey. You fell in love."
She laughed harshly. "Is that what it's called these days?" She shook her head, but she continued to grasp his hand as if it were a lifeline. "I was smart, beautiful-and vulnerable. And Donald saw it all in a flash, spread out in front of him like a four-course feast."
She tried to smile. "This is the way it was, Lew. All his friends-no, strike that-all his associates-young millionaires and clever entrepreneurs-had married for status. They moved in on women of certain pedigree whose families' status would ensure them entree to circles beyond even their money. Okay, but Donald was different. Maybe that was too easy a game for him. He wanted something more. To tear down and build something almost from scratch like he did in business. He wanted to play Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle. He wanted to create a lady of culture and breeding out of this waif from Hell's Kitchen."
She waved a hand. "Oh, he made no bones about it. For my part, I was thrilled. Who in my position wouldn't be? The attention and grooming he lavished on me was my dream come true. Tutors in diction, manners, foreign languages-my God, he even hired a famous coach of the Met's opera divas! I had private lessons in ballet, tennis, horsemanship, polo, exercise, sailing. When he judged me ready, I came out. We went on fox hunts in England, played polo in Argentina, crewed in Newport. It bunded me to everything else."
She held on to her elbows as a drowning woman will clutch onto a spar. "This is my Walpurgisnacht." Her gaze struck Croaker's face with full force "Donald's dead now, my daughter's on the point of death, and everything I admired in him is turned to dust. At last, the truth is staring me in the face like a death's head. And if I can't face up to what he was now, I never will."
Matty reached out and placed the palm of her hand on the crown of his head as if in benediction. Then she ruffled his hair, as she used to do when they were young.
"It's okay." Her voice, with the depth and timbre of a coloratura, filled the room. "At last I understand just how angry we've been with each other."