"Destroyer 005 - Dr Quake.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"You don't think so?" said Boydenhousen loudly. "You don't think so? Well, I can't live by what you think.

"Look," he said. "We opened up this community to you Feinsteins, way back in the 1920's when a lot of towns just weren't too all-fired happy to have your kind. We welcomed you. And I'm not saying you didn't like build the hospital and everything, but I am saying, you're a part of this community, dammit, and you don't have any right to endanger us. That's what I'm saying."

"And I'm saying, Sonny Boydenhousen, that we weren't all that welcome, but we made some good friends, of which there was never a Boydenhousen, which also is no great loss. What I'm saying is I'm part of a larger community and that's every poor town in this state. Every town that may someday be digging its babies out of piles of rock because they can't afford to pay. That's what I'm thinking."

"And I'm thinking," yelled Sonny Boydenhousen, "how fucking grateful I am that we can feel safe and not have to worry about that. How grateful that my kids are safe from that. You want to kill my kids, Harris? Is that it?"

Harris Feinstein lowered his gaze to the corporate table, a glistening, polished oak masterpiece, handed down from Curpwell to Curpwell, through generations of San Aquino patricians. The Curpwells were good people. He knew their family well. So did his father,

That was one of the grievously hard things about this decision. He wavered for a minute, looking at the faces of the men around him. Friend, enemy, he did not want to endanger one life. There were part of his life, all of them. They meant, really meant, more to him than someone living in Los Angeles or San Francisco or any of the other California communities that might be the next to be blackmailed for earthquake insurance.

Really, Harris, he told himself, aren't you being a bit prideful? Remember how you and Sonny were keychain guards on the 1938 San Aquino football team, the year you beat Los Angeles Gothic. And how when you were labelled the dirtiest football player in the state, the whole team celebrated by stealing a keg of beer and getting drunk? And Wyatt. Wyatt never made the football team, saying he had to hunt to keep food on the family table. But everyone knew the reason Wade Wyatt went hunting in the fall was because he didn't want to be accused of chickening out on football. Wade's father always put food on the table, but Wade had seen a movie in which the young frontiersman didn't go to school because he had to hunt for the family's supper.

And Dourn, loverboy Dourn. Dourn who got Pearl Fansworth pregnant in the junior year of high school and how Pearl had to go away. And how Dourn got Sonny's sister pregnant in his senior year and how he had to marry her.

And of course, Les Curpwell. A beautiful human being.

Harris Feinstein lowered his eyes to the table again and wondered why everything wasn't as clear as when he was in school or studying the Talmud with his father. Then, things were clear. Now, nothing was clear but that he felt very unintelligent and longed for someone to tell him what was right and good and which way to go. But that could not be. God had given him a mind. And meant for him to use it. So Harris Feinstein looked at his friends, and at the jeweled flag pin on Sheriff Wade Wyatt's collar, and he said, very sadly and very slowly:

"I must do what I must do and it is not an easy thing. And I am only sorry that you are not doing this thing with me."

His envelope sat on the table. Sonny Boydenhousen took a similar envelope from his attache case and put it on the table. Curpwell added another and so did Dourn Rucker.

Sheriff Wyatt gathered the envelopes together and pushed them into a small plastic garbage bag. The four other men watched silently as he closed the bag with a red covered wire tie. He made a small bow of it.

"Leakproof," he said. No one smiled. Harris Feinstein avoided the other men's eyes.

"Well, goodbye," he said.

"You going to Washington?" asked Dourn Rucker.


"Tonight," said Harris Feinstein.

"Oh/' said Sonny Boydenhousen. "Look. Those things I said about your family being welcomed here in San Aquino, like we were doing you a favor ... well, you know what I mean."

"I know," said Feinstein.

"I guess you're going to do it," said Curpwell.

"Yes."

"I wish I could say I thought you're doing the right thing," said Boydenhousen. "And I wish I could say I would want to do it with you. But I think you're doing a very wrong thing."

"Maybe, but...." Harris Feinstein did not finish his sentence. When he had shut the large brass-studded door to the most hallowed sanctum of power in San Aquino, the Curpwell office, Sheriff Wyatt made a suggestion.

He did so fingering the notches on his gun.

Les Curpwell didn't bother to answer and Dourn Rucker told Sheriff Wyatt that Feinstein would probably pound him into dentifrice anyway, so Wyatt might as well put away the gun.