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

"And I meant every word of it." A kind of crazy pulse was beating in his head as remembrance flooded back. "That's when she told me she never wanted to speak to me again," he said to Sonia. Then he rounded on Matty. "Now aren't you glad you came back?"
Without another word to either woman, he opened the glass door, strode through the crowded club, past Bennie and Maria, clamped in fiery embrace on the dance floor, and out into the sea of cars in the asphalt parking lot.
It wasn't long before Bennie Milagros came dancing down the Shark Bar's front steps. Above the entrance, the front half of a gargantuan fierce-looking molded plastic shark thrust skyward in a plume of fake foam. It was tacky, but Rafe Roubinnet said it made him laugh every time he looked at it.
Bennie moved aside to allow a couple of South American businessmen and their women to get by, then went purposefully across the lot to where Croaker sat behind the wheel of the T-bird.
He climbed into the car beside Croaker and handed him a drink.
"Here, I thought you could use this."
Croaker accepted it without comment.
Bennie extracted a long Cuban cigar from his breast pocket, took some time with the ritual of lighting it. He smelled of mescal and male sweat. A hint of Maria's perfume clung to him like pink clouds cling to cherubim. Pretty soon the cigar smoke masked it all.
"Regarding you, I think that, you know, a bat outta hell woulda left the club in better shape." He puffed on his cigar, not looking at Croaker, not looking at anything. "Sonia is steely-eyed, so you must've somehow gotten to her; she's upset for you. Maria's kibitzing with her, and me, I'm out my ecstatic dancing partner, maybe for the rest of the evening." Another languorous puff. "Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. There's this juicy guapa askin' everyone in there where you went. God hears me, she's got some kinda figure on her."
"She's my sister, Bennie."
"Well, shit." Bennie frowned darkly, clamped the cigar between his lips.
Above their heads, the palm fronds clattered like an unruly chorus in concert with the high chirps of the tree frogs.
Someone bursting out of the club caught their attention. "Here she comes," Bennie said softly. He waited until he had Croaker's gaze. "This sucks, man, this bad feelin'. It's like poison, you know?"
"I'm sorry I screwed up your evening, Bennie."
"Don't be dim." Bennie waved his cigar in the air. "This here's bigger than an evening with Maria." He blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke. "You know what I thought about in that moment when the shark came up, Lewis? It wasn't my whole life flashing like a line of tarot cards. What I thought 'bout was my sister. Not my father, not my brothers. Mi hermana."
Bennie turned to face Croaker. "Rosa died five years ago. And what I was thinking was this: my father, he always sort of dismissed her accomplishments, even when she went to graduate school in Bogota, earned her master's in economics and got a job at the World Bank. Not that he didn't love her, not that he wasn't proud of her in his way. He just never showed it."
Bennie's eyes were clouded with memory and regret. "So in that moment I thought of Rosa. I saw her being wounded by my father's indifference, by my brothers' inattention, by my own benign neglect." He looked at Croaker. "See, something's changed now. The fuckin' shark did that to me, an' I'll never forget it. I miss her an' I'll never get a chance to tell her that."
Then, he leaned over, took Croaker's right hand, pointed to the tracery of blue veins along the back of it. "What's this?" he hissed. "It's fuckin' blood, Lewis." He nodded his head, as if he'd just solved the riddle of the Sphinx. "Just remember, whatever your sister is or isn't, whatever she's done, whatever hurt lies between you, you two're joined. She's blood."
Matty had spotted them and was walking over. She gave Bennie a hesitant look. Bennie slid out of the car. He chivalrously left the door open for her, went around to the driver's side, stood at Croaker's shoulder as Matty came up to the T-bird. He gave her his best silken smile, then leaned over, whispered in Croaker's ear: "God hear me, women can find more ways to be cruel. But, you know what? Sometimes their brothers can be worse."
Croaker watched him saunter slowly back to the club entrance, smoking contentedly. What an enigma Bennie Milagros was. Every time you thought you had a handle on him, he showed you another facet of his personality. He was mercurial, crass, muy simpatico, improbably spiritual-and endlessly puzzling.
A moment later Matty stood beside the T-bird, saying nothing. She'd darkened her curly, wild hair to the color of toffee. It suited her coloring better than when she'd had her hair dyed blonde. She was tall and willowy with the long legs and curvy figure a man like Donald Duke would have coveted-until someone taller and leggier came along.
About to say something she started, as car doors slammed and an old Buick fired up. Headlights swung across her face as the Buick rolled out of the parking lot. Then she took a step toward him. Her tension was palpable. "You know you have a habit of embarrassing the hell out of me in public."
"Maybe now you know a little of how Mama and I felt." Her expression was bleak, her lips thinned by anxiety. "Christ, this isn't easy."
"Why should it be? You sure as hell made it hard on us," She took a deep breath, then compulsively opened her purse, slipped something out of her wallet, passed it over to him.
It was a recent color snapshot of Rachel. She had Matty's thick, curly hair and her intense expression, but Donald's ice blue eyes and fair coloring. Whoever had taken the photo had caught her in an unguarded moment of concentration. She seemed as carefree as a person could get.
"She's beautiful," he said with a painful pang. He'd just realized how much he'd been cheated in the last fifteen years. He'd never had a chance to watch her grow up.
"Thanks." But she forgot to smile. She shook her head when he tried to hand back the snapshot. "That's for you."
Croaker's gaze lingered over it. "I can see both of you in her face."
"The thing is..." She hesitated. "Donald had been gone for two years. Six months ago he died. He was killed when his private jet got caught in a thunderstorm and crashed into a mountainside outside San Francisco."
Croaker wanted to say he was sorry, but the word stuck in his throat. Instead, he could not help saying, "That must have made you rich."
"Not really." She seemed resigned to his barbs. "A year ago, Donald remarried. A young oil heiress from Texas with impeccable family credentials which, I suppose, he'd longed for all the time. She gave birth to their son a week before he died. Donald stipulated that the estate will eventually go to him."
"Tough luck." He held the photo up. "But you still have Rachel."
Matty's face seemed abruptly pale. She looked like she was about to say something, then at the last minute changed her mind. "Lew, I..." Her gaze twisted away. "I have a confession to make. I know you didn't say anything when I said you'd hadn't tried to contact us."
His jaw clenched involuntarily.
"You see, I know you tried to keep in touch with Rachel." She took a long, shuddering breath. "I know because I made sure she didn't get the letters."
"Sonuvabitch!" His hands slammed the wheel, and she winced.
"It was terribly wrong of me, I know." She shook her head. "But I thought I was doing the right thing, shielding Rachie from someone I didn't want her to see."
He looked at her and said, "Why didn't you want her to see me?"
"Goddamnit." Matty's eyes were wet and she tried to look everywhere but at his face. "The truth is..." Her lip was trembling and she licked a tear that had slid down her cheek. Her gaze finally found his. "You see, she's so damn much like you."
Voices came, laughing and high-spirited, as a group came out of the club. Another engine started up and headlights lit the parking area for a moment before swinging out onto the road.
"Well, hell, what d'you know?" Croaker said in some wonderment. He looked at the photo of Rachel again before sliding it away.
Matty settled herself silently beside him. He smelled a waft of Giorgio perfume. They lapsed into an uneasy silence. Old wounds, surfacing, were proving difficult to deal with. Matty's anxiety had increased; he could feel it like an itching in his bones. The salsa band had returned, its rhythms insistent and alluring. He longed to be inside, dancing hip to hip with Sonia. He wanted very much to apologize to her.
As if she could read his mind, Matty said in her best brittle tone, "You look like you can't spare much time. Go ahead, then. Your girlfriend's waiting for you. But I must say I don't know why you waste your time."
"Oh, for Christ's sake." He'd been expecting something like this.
"You can do so much better than that."
"Like I could do better than being a cop," he said.
"I always had such high hopes for you."
"But they were your hopes, Matty. Not mine." He turned to her. "Tell me something. How come you never asked what it was I wanted out of life? How come you assumed you knew."
She seemed on the verge of tears. She was trembling slightly, and
Croaker had the distinct impression she was keeping the tears back by sheer force of will. "But I did know," she said in a small voice. "We both wanted more for ourselves than Mama and Pop had. I know that; we used to talk about it when we were young."