The Face[脸]
| 载入中... |
QUEEN PALMS, KING PALMS, ROYAL PALMS, Phoenix palms shook their feathery fronds like the storm-tossed trees in Key Largo. Buses and cars and trucks and SUVs clogged the streets, their wipers not quite as persistent as the beating rain, side windows half fogged, horns bleating, brakes barking, jockeying for position, idling and spurting forward and idling again, the drivers exuding a palpable frustration reminiscent of the opening scene of Falling Down, minus the summer heat of that movie, minus Michael Douglas, although Ethan supposed that Michael Douglas might be in this mess, too, quietly going as mad as had his character. In front of a bookstore, under an awning, stood a group of spike-haired, eyebrow-pierced, nose-pierced, tongue-pierced, painted punk rockers or just plain punks, dressed in black, one of them wearing a bowler hat, which made him think of the droogs in A Clockwork Orange. And here came a group of teenage schoolgirls, all beautiful, enjoying their seasonal freedom, walking without umbrellas, their hair plastered to their heads, all laughing, each of them playing the part of a fey party girl, all trying to be Holly Golightly in a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s shot this time three thousand miles from the original [407] location, this time on the nation’s wild coast. The storm gloom transformed midday to dusk, as if some director were shooting day-for-night. The shop lights, the neon, the cold-cathode tubes, the bright festoons of colorful and vaguely Asian lanterns that decorated streets in a politically correct nonreligious holiday spirit, the headlights and taillights—all rippled and flared off the storefront windows, off the walls of the glass buildings that rose in lunatic defiance of the earthquakes to come, across the wet pavement, sparkled like sequins in scintillant quicksilver plumes of vehicle exhaust, reminding Ethan of atmospheric shots in Blade Runner.
The day was simultaneously too real and a fantasy, the dreams of Hollywood having brightened the city in a few places, darkened it in many more, changed it in every corner, until nothing seemed as solid as it ought to be.
They were in Ethan’s Expedition, having left Hazard’s plain-wrap department sedan at Our Lady of Angels. Since Ethan had no police authority, he couldn’t arm-twist information out of anyone, but his partner couldn’t both arm-twist and drive.
To check out their six leads, they would enter jurisdictions other than those strictly within the authority of the LAPD. Without preparing the way through proper channels, even Hazard would not have entirely legitimate authority. They didn’t have time for protocol.
Hazard rode shotgun, making phone calls. His voice rose from a polite and almost romantic murmur to a demanding thunder, but most often settled into an easy folksiness, while relentlessly he used his status as homicide detective to coax-pinch-push-pull-wrench cooperation from a series of higher-education bureaucrats.
Every college and university in the greater Los Angeles area had closed for the last two or three weeks of the year. Something less than a skeleton staff remained on duty to serve those students who had not gone Home for the holidays.
At each institution that he phoned, he employed charm, appeals to [408] good citizenship, threats, and persistence to get from one know-nothing to another, but always eventually to a know-something who could further their investigation.
Already they had learned that the drama professor—Dr. Jonathan Spetz-Mogg—had organized both of the weekend conferences on acting for which Rolf Reynerd had written checks. They had been granted an appointment with Spetz-Mogg at his Home in Westwood, to which they were en route without benefit of emergency flashers or siren.
In the process of tracking down Dr. Gerald Fitzmartin, who had organized the three-day weekend conference on screenwriting, Hazard became so infuriated with the runaround at which all academic types excelled that he paused in the chase before frustration drove him to smash his department-issued phone to pieces against his own forehead.
“All these university cheese-eaters hate cops.”
“Until they need you,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, then they love us.”
“They never love you, but if they need you to save their ass, then they’ll tolerate you.”
“You know that Shakespeare quote?” Hazard asked.
“There’s more than one.”
“About how to make the world a better place—”
“Kill all the lawyers.”
“Yeah, that one,” Hazard said. “Shakespeare didn’t stop to think who trains all the lawyers.”
“University cheese-eaters.”
“Yeah. You want to make a better world, go to the source.”
The traffic remained relentless and tight. The Expedition kissed paint with a black Mercedes SUV, spared from a bruise to the factory finish by nothing more than the lubricating lip gloss of rain.
With a start, Ethan thought that he saw Fric on the sidewalk, wandering alone among strangers. A closer look proved that the boy was younger than the Manheim heir, trailing behind his parents.
[409] This had not been the first false Fric that he had seen and reacted to since leaving the hospital. His nerves had been rubbed raw by too much weird experience.
“What about Blonde in the Pond?” Ethan asked. “Did you get your lab report this morning?”
“Didn’t check. If I’ve got the true goods on my city councilman, it’ll just make me squirmy, having to leave him walking around full of himself, the way he is, like he’s the Lord by election, which is even more infuriating when you think how many ballot boxes his thugs stuffed for him. I’ll call the lab tomorrow, the day after, whenever it is we settle the situation we’re in.”
“Sorry about this,” Ethan said.
“If you’re sorry for that nose of yours, get it fixed. Anything else you’re sorry for, you shouldn’t be.”
“Lunch and a few mamouls didn’t pay you for this much trouble.”
“It wasn’t you turned my world upside down. Some guy gives me a set of dream bells out of a nightmare, then disappears into a mirror, I tend to get shook up without your help.”
Hazard reached under his jacket with both hands, tugging on his cotton sweater, and Ethan said, “You bulked up since yesterday?”
“Yeah. Had me a breakfast of Kevlar.”
“Never knew you to wear protection.”
“I’ve been thinking maybe I’ve dodged more bullets than any man has a right to. Doesn’t mean I’m not still fearless.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t.”
“I’m scared shitless, but I’m still fearless.”
“That’s the right psychology.”
“Survivor’s psychology,” Hazard said.
“Anyway, what’s wrong with my nose?”
“What isn’t?”
The hard rain abruptly began to fall harder, and Ethan cranked the windshield-wiper speed to the highest setting.
Hazard said, “Feels like the end of the world.”
<< PrevPage [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] ... NextPage >>
推荐阅读
载入中...