Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground
Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Don Winslow - A Cool Breeze on the Underground» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Триллер, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.
- Название:A Cool Breeze on the Underground
- Автор:
- Жанр:
- Год:неизвестен
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:3 / 5. Голосов: 1
-
Избранное:Добавить в избранное
- Отзывы:
-
Ваша оценка:
- 60
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
A Cool Breeze on the Underground: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «A Cool Breeze on the Underground»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.
A Cool Breeze on the Underground — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком
Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «A Cool Breeze on the Underground», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.
Интервал:
Закладка:
Neal watched Boskin shove a huge hunk of the pancake into his mouth, chew it quickly, and wash it down with a slug of beer. It was true, Neal thought, Boskin really would rather talk about Smollett than eat.
Boskin set the beer down and continued. “But now he’s feeling badly about all the vicious shit he wrote in Pickle, so when he’s asked to do a second edition, he takes most of it out. But he has one copy somewhere-one copy in which he puts all the notes: who’s who, what the joke is, and the truth about Lady Vane. Was she his mistress? Is all the juicy stuff true?”
Boskin jabbed his chopsticks into his Dragon and Phoenix and came up with a piece of shrimp. “So Smollett gets old. As do we all, so drink up. He goes to Europe for his health. Gets a tumor the size of a baseball on his hand. His daughter and only child dies. Life sucks the big one. Miserable, bankrupt… he finally croaks in Italy. But we know for a fact that he had a copy of every one of his books with him when he went for the deep drop. So what would the widow do? No money… no prospects… no piece of The Rock…”
“Sell them.”
“Right! All she had to trade on was her late beloved’s fame. So she sold his whole collection, one by one. And every other book has surfaced except his Pickle. The Pickle. Four volumes of literary treasures. That’s how the rumor started. They say it’s never surfaced because it has all these marginal notes with all the goods on Samuel Johnson, Garrick, Akenside, and, of course, the sporting Lady Vane.
“Any collector, any eighteenth-century scholar, would give his left testicle to have a look at those volumes. Except they don’t exist. The rest of that duck is yours, by the way.”
Except they did exist-in Simon Keyes’s apartment. Neal had held them in his hands, books that could provide his future, his fortune, and his freedom. And he’d put them back on the shelf.
16
The piccadilly hotel was as simple as its name. Not plain or unattractive, but simple in the sense that it knew what it was: a good solid place from which to do business, tour the city, go the theater, and take in the sights of London. It offered large rooms, big beds, decent food, and room service. You could ring up for anything you wanted at the Piccadilly Hotel. The Piccadilly Hotel knew that people went to hotels to do things they didn’t do at home.
The lobby was large, built in the days when people met socially in hotel lobbies. It featured a lounge with old wing-back chairs big enough to seat Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, and a decently dark, mahogany bar that was somehow always cool in hot weather and warm in cold weather. It was the kind of bar where the men always kept their ties knotted but felt relaxed, anyway; the kind of a lounge where the barkeep would never disturb you to ask whether you wanted another but was always there with your drink at the slightest glance.
The lobby ended at the registration desk. The Piccadilly Hotel had too much sense to make a new guest search for the bloody thing, and it was always staffed by at least half a dozen red-jacketed clerks who knew their business: See that the room was paid for, and get the guest to it. If you made a reservation at the Piccadilly Hotel, you always got a room. They didn’t believe in overbooking; in fact, they always kept a couple of rooms saved for emergencies. You could stay for a night or a year at the Piccadilly Hotel. The rules were the same. You paid your bill, and kept your jacket on.
Neal shucked his off the moment he stepped into his room, a nice large one on the sixth floor, with a small window air conditioner that struggled bravely against the heat. He kicked his shoes off on the ubiquitous red carpet and surveyed the room with a consumer’s eye. The blue wallpaper was the color of the sea after a storm, and was decorated with prints of heavily muscled, bare-chested, bare-knuckled boxers toeing the line. A manly room.
The bed had been built in an era when gentlemen kept their riding boots on for afternoon expressions of affection. Like the hotel, it was large and sturdy, and proclaimed itself the focal point of the room. A small bathroom led off from the right. It had a deep old tub, an adequate sink, and newly refurbished countertops and mirrors. One small window broke up the wall, and a double-jointed gymnast might have made out the view of Piccadilly Circus.
Neal gave the bellhop a grotesquely large tip and dismissed him with a “What’s your name, in case I need anything?”
Then he carefully hung up his jackets-the all-purpose no-wrinkle blue polyester blazer and the striped seersucker-and his summer-weight trousers. He laid his folded shirts out in a bureau drawer, placed his cheap travel alarm clock on the bedside table, and put some paperback books on the lower shelf. He carefully laid out his toilet kit on the bathroom counter and took some manila folders out of his briefcase and laid them around the room, then placed the British editions of that month’s Playboy and Penthouse on the floor in the bathroom.
After ringing room service for a bottle of scotch and a bucket of ice, Neal changed into a fresh blue shirt and red regimental tie. He knotted the tie, then undid the top button of his shirt and yanked the knot down. Next, he lit a cigar, puffed on it until it started to smoke, and left it burning in an ashtray to stink up the room.
He overtipped the room-service waiter, poured three fingers of the scotch down the bathroom drain, and made a weak one for himself. Then he sat down with his copy of the classified ads that had lured Scott Mackensen into the world of big-time sin, and started to dial numbers.
Team Number One showed up a half hour later. They were each rather pretty. The senior member sported flaming red hair, freckles, and wore a green dress and impossibly cliched black mesh stockings. Her colleague was a pleasantly plump blond lady. Neither of them were the ones who had dated Scott and friend. Both of them tensed up when they saw only one man in the room.
“Relax,” said Neal. “I just want to talk.”
“Don’t you like us, love?” asked the green dress, just about fed up with freaks.
Neal gave them their standard fee in cash, with his apologies and reassurance.
Team Number Two was made up of two black-haired, blue-eyed, black-dressed, severe types, who accepted Neal’s apology and cash with a dry sneer of contempt.
Team Number Three consisted of two Irish girls, who were delighted with the money. Team Number Four was a pair of positively gorgeous black women, and Neal secretly felt abashed that his dismissal stuck in his throat for a long moment. Team Number Five claimed to be a mother and daughter team, and might have been for all Neal knew. It made him wonder what kind of man would go for a threesome with the older woman and a woman who was at least twenty-five dressed up as Alice in fucking Wonderland. Team Number Six arrived about one, and were smashing-looking, with a smashing fee, but still not the right ladies. Neal felt he was getting close, though, and showed them the Polaroid. “Hard up, are you, darling?” “You could say that.”
“Sorry. Never seen them. If that’s it, then, we’ll just be tripping along. Are you a frustration freak, is that it?” You don’t know the half, lady.
Number Six offered to perform for him, if that’s what he wanted. Number Seven were transvestites. Number Eight was a cop.
An enormous cop. His wide shoulders sloped from years of stooping under small ceilings and through small doors. His large head was matched by a large nose. He had sad, cop eyes. Eyes that had seen it all and wished they hadn’t. He was wearing a three-piece gabardine suit and refused to sweat. Neal put him in his late forties. “May I come in?” he asked, entering. “Sure.”
Читать дальшеИнтервал:
Закладка:
Похожие книги на «A Cool Breeze on the Underground»
Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «A Cool Breeze on the Underground» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.
Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «A Cool Breeze on the Underground» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.