Ли Чайлд - Этаж смерти with W_cat

[ 929] “Can’t help you with that inquiry, that’s for sure,” he said. “That’s a subject we prefer not to discuss in here. Best if you ask me about somebody else altogether.”

[ 930] I shrugged under the shroud of towels.

[ 931] “OK,” I said. “You ever heard of Blind Blake?”

[ 932] “Him I heard of, that’s for sure,” the old man said. “That’s a guy we can discuss, no problem at all.”

[ 933] “Great,” I said. “So what can you tell me?”

[ 934] “He was here, time to time, way back,” he said. “Born in Jacksonville, Florida, they say, just over the state line. Used to kind of trek on up from there, you know, through here, through Atlanta, all the way up north to Chicago, and then trek all the way back down again. Back through Atlanta, back through here, back home. Very different then, you know. No highway, no automobiles, at least not for a poor black man and his friends. All walking or riding on the freight cars.”

[ 935] “You ever hear him play?” I asked him.

[ 936] He stopped work again and looked at me.

[ 937] “Man, I’m seventy-four years old,” he said. “This was back when I was just a little boy. We’re talking about Blind Blake here. Guys like that played in bars. Never was in no bars when I was a little boy, you understand. I would have got my behind whupped real good if I had been. You should talk to my partner here. He’s a whole lot older than I am. He may have heard him play, only he may not remember it because he don’t remember much. Not even what he ate for breakfast. Am I right? Hey, my old friend, what you eat for breakfast?”

[ 938] The other old guy creaked over and leaned up on the next sink to mine. He was a gnarled old fellow the color of the mahogany radio.

[ 939] “I don’t know what I ate for breakfast,” he said. “Don’t even know if I ate any breakfast at all. But listen up. I may be an old guy, but the truth is old guys remember stuff real well. Not recent things, you understand, but old things. You got to imagine your memory is like an old bucket, you know? Once it’s filled up with old stuff there ain’t no way to get new stuff in. No way at all, you understand? So I don’t remember any new stuff because my old bucket is all filled up with old stuff that happened way back. You understand what I’m saying here?”

[ 940] “Sure I understand,” I said. “So way back, did you ever hear him play?”

[ 941] “Who?” he said.

[ 942] I looked at both of them in turn. I wasn’t sure whether this was some kind of a rehearsed routine.

[ 943] “Blind Blake,” I said. “Did you ever hear him play?”

[ 944] “No, I never heard him play,” the old guy said. “But my sister did. Got me a sister more than about ninety years old or thereabouts, may she be spared. Still alive. She did a little singing way back and she sang with old Blind Blake many a time.”

[ 945] “She did?” I said. “She sang with him?”

[ 946] “She sure did,” said the gnarled old guy. “She sang with just about anybody passing through. You got to remember this old town lay right on the big road to Atlanta. That old county road out there used to come on down through here straight on south into Florida. It was the only route through Georgia north to south. Of course now you got the highway runs right by without stopping off, and you got airplanes and all. No importance to Margrave now, nobody coming on through anymore.”

[ 947] “So Blind Blake stopped off here?” I prompted him. “And your sister sang with him?”

[ 948] “Everybody used to stop off here,” he said. “North side of town was just pretty much a mess of bars and rooming houses to cater to the folks passing through. All these fancy gardens between here and the firehouse is where the bars and rooming houses used to be. All tore down now, or else all fell down. Been no passing trade at all for a real long time. But back then, it was a different kind of a town altogether. Streams of people in and out, the whole time. Workers, crop pickers, drummers, fighters, hoboes, truckers, musicians. All kinds of those guys used to stop off and play and my old sister would be right in there singing with them all.”

[ 949] “And she remembers Blind Blake?” I asked him.

[ 950] “She sure does,” the old man said. “Used to think he was the greatest thing alive. Says he used to play real sporty. Real sporty indeed.”

[ 951] “What happened to him?” I said. “Do you know?”

[ 952] The old guy thought hard. Trawled back through his fading memories. He shook his grizzled head a couple of times. Then he took a wet towel from a hot box and put it over my face. Started cutting my hair. Ended up shaking his head with some kind of finality.

[ 953] “Can’t rightly say,” he said. “He came back and forth on the road, time to time. I remember that pretty well. Three, four years later he was gone. I was up in Atlanta for a spell, wasn’t here to know. Heard tell somebody killed him, maybe right here in Margrave, maybe not. Some kind of big trouble, got him killed stone dead.”

[ 954] I sat listening to their old radio for a while. Then I gave them a twenty off my roll of bills and hurried out onto Main Street. Strode out north. It was nearly noon and the sun was baking. Hot for September. Nobody else was out walking. The black road blasted heat at me. Blind Blake had walked this road, maybe in the noon heat. Back when those old barbers had been boys this had been the artery reaching north to Atlanta, Chicago, jobs, hope, money. Noon heat wouldn’t have stopped anybody getting where they were going. But now the road was just a smooth blacktop byway going nowhere at all.

[ 955] IT TOOK ME A FEW MINUTES IN THE HEAT TO GET UP TO THE station house. I walked across its springy lawn past another bronze statue and pulled open the heavy glass entrance door. Stepped into the chill inside. Roscoe was waiting for me, leaning on the reception counter. Behind her in the squad room, I could see Stevenson talking urgently into a telephone. Roscoe was pale and looking very worried.

[ 956] “We found another body,” she said.

[ 957] “Where?” I asked her.

[ 958] “Up at the warehouse again,” she said. “The other side of the road this time, underneath the cloverleaf, where it’s raised up.”

[ 959] “Who found it?” I said.

[ 960] “Finlay,” she said. “He was up there this morning, poking around, looking for something to help us with the first one. Some help, right? All he finds is another one.”

[ 961] “Do you know who this one is?” I asked her.

[ 962] She shook her head.

[ 963] “Unidentified,” she said. “Same as the first one.”

[ 964] “Where’s Finlay now?” I asked her.

[ 965] “Gone to get Hubble,” she said. “He thinks Hubble may know something about it.”

[ 966] I nodded.

[ 967] “How long was this one up there?” I said.

[ 968] “Two or three days, maybe,” she said. “Finlay says it could have been a double homicide on Thursday night.”

[ 969] I nodded again. Hubble did know something about it. This was the guy he had sent to meet with the tall investigator with the shaved head. He couldn’t figure out how the guy had gotten away with it. But the guy hadn’t gotten away with it.

I heard a car in the lot outside and then the big glass door sucked open. Finlay stuck his head in.

[ 970] “Morgue, Roscoe,” he said. “You too, Reacher.”

[ 971] We followed him back outside into the heat. We all got into Roscoe’s unmarked sedan. Left Finlay’s car where he’d parked it. Roscoe drove. I sat in the back. Finlay sat in the front passenger seat, twisted around so he could talk to the both of us at once. Roscoe nosed out of the police lot and headed south.