IN HIS DEPARTMENT SEDAN, HAZARD FELT AS adrift as any sailor’s ghost on an abandoned and rotting ship, chained to his floating haunt by nothing more than the stubborn habit of living. Disoriented, with no purpose that made sense.
In the rain and mist, the streets seemed like the shipping1 lanes of a strange spook-ridden sea, and it was easy to imagine—and almost possible to believe—that many of the seemingly diaphanous2 vehicles gliding3 past him in the veiled night were piloted by spirits that had given up the flesh but not the city.
He had phoned in the license4 number on the Land Rover and had learned that it was registered to Kurtz Ivory International, whatever that might be. According to DMV records, the only vehicle registered to Vladimir Laputa was a 2002 BMW, not an Acura like the one that had been salted in the parking garage.
Having obtained that information, Hazard didn’t know what he could do next. He didn’t like being at a loss for action.
Every time he tried to puzzle out his next move, however, into his memory came the image of Dunny Whistler sorcerously transformed from flesh into a cascade5 of water, in an instant becoming one with [503] the puddle6 in which he had stood, performing a splashless vanishment.
In the wake of that sight, in the cold continuing echo of the conversation with the dead Hector X, logical reasoning failed Hazard. He found his thoughts spiraling again and again through the same disturbing chambers7, down into a nautilus shell of dread8.
Although he had missed lunch, he wasn’t hungry. Although he had no appetite, he stopped at a drive-in fast-food palace for a king’s plate of cheeseburgers and French fries.
The king’s plate proved to be a bag, of course, and the chalice9 of coffee was a Styrofoam cup full of a bitter swill10 that had been brewed11 with tree bark. Probably hemlock12.
He remained too agitated13 to sit in the restaurant parking lot to have dinner. He drove while he ate.
He needed to keep moving. Like a shark, he felt that he would die if ever he stopped.
Eventually he returned to the tony neighborhood in which the professor lived. He parked across the street from the house.
Sitting there, he heard in his mind the warning voice of Dunny—Two bullets in the brain—and he knew beyond doubt that he would have suffered precisely14 that end if he had rung Laputa’s doorbell.
For now the hyena15, as Rachel Dalton had called him, was out on an Acura adventure. Without its resident demon16, the house was just a house, not a killing17 ground.
Hazard phoned Robbery/Homicide and obtained Sam Kesselman’s home telephone number.
In possession of the number, he considered what he was about to do. He knew that with this move he might be handing his enemies all the weapons they would need to destroy him.
His Granny Rose had once told him that woven throughout the very fabric18 of the world is an invisible web of evil, and that across this vast construction, deadly spiders quiver to the same secret seductive [504] music, and do the same dark work, each in its own way. If you don’t resist this sticky web when you feel it plucking at you, as often it does, then you will become one of the twisted eight-legged souls that dance upon it. And if the poisonous spiders are not crushed at every opportunity, there will sooner than later be spiders uncountable, but no humanity at all.
Hazard keyed in the number.
Sam Kesselman himself answered, first with a cough and a sneeze and a curse, but then in a voice so cracked and rough that he sounded like the product of a genetic-engineering lab working on human-frog crossbreeds.
“Man, you sound bad. You seen a doctor?”
“Yeah. Flu’s a virus. Antibiotics19 don’t work. Doctor gave me some cough medicine. Said get lots of rest, drink lots of fluid. Been drinkin’ ten beers a day, but I think I’m gonna die anyway.”
“Go to twelve.”
Kesselman knew about Rolf Reynerd’s murder by Hector X, and he knew that Hazard had in turn shot the shooter. “How are you with the OIS team?”
“I’ll come through with a clean report. Sounds like they’re ready to give it to me now. Listen, Sam, there’s a connection with the murder of Reynerd’s mother, and that’s your case.”
“You’re gonna tell me Reynerd was involved with it.”
“You’ve smelled something wrong with him all along, huh?”
“His alibi20 was just too airtight.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
Hazard told Kesselman about the partial screenplay, but he edited the story line. He recounted the part about the swap21 of a killing for a killing, as in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, but not the part about the scheme to murder a movie star.
“So you think ... Reynerd had ... a kill buddy,” Kesselman said between explosive coughs.
“I know he did. I’m pretty sure it’s this guy named Vladimir Laputa. [505] I know Vamp and the Lamp is your case, Sam, but I’d like to develop this further, nail this Laputa if I can.”
Maybe Kesselman really did need to hack22 up a Guinness-record weight of phlegm, or maybe all the throat clearing was a delaying tactic23 to give him time to think. Finally he said, “Why? I mean, you have your own caseload.”
“Well, I think this one is on both our desks as of last night.” He hadn’t directly lied to Kesselman yet. Now he started: “Because I think Laputa didn’t just murder Mina Reynerd, he also hired the hit man, Hector X, who dropped Rolf.”
“Then even though the file’s on my desk, it’s de facto your case, too. The way I feel now, I’m gonna have to stay at all times less than twenty steps from a bathroom until at least next week, so you might as well go for it.”
“Thanks, Sam. Just one more thing. If you’re ever asked about you and me and this, could I have stopped by your house instead of phoning you, and could we have had this conversation earlier today, like twelve hours ago?”
Kesselman was silent. Then he said, “What kind of hellacious destruction are you bringing down on us?”
“When I’m done,” Hazard said, “they’ll kick your ass24 out of the department, strip away your pension, and clean a public toilet with your reputation, but they’ll probably let you go on being a Jew.”
Kesselman laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough, but when the coughing finally ended, he finished the laugh. “As long as we wind up in the same gutter25, at least it’ll be entertaining.”
After he concluded the call, Hazard sat in the car for a while, staring at the Laputa house, thinking through his approach. He was committed to bold action, but he didn’t want to act rashly.
Getting into the place was the easy—even if not legal—part. He still had the Lockaid lock-release gun that he had used to spring the deadbolt at Reynerd’s apartment.
Conducting a search without leaving evidence that he had been [506] there, then getting out again, all as smooth as an apparition26 first manifesting and then fading back to the spirit world: that was the hard part.
Throughout his career, he’d largely gone by the book, no matter how incoherent the text sometimes might be. Now he had to convince himself that the justification27 for rogue28 action was overwhelming.
From a jacket pocket, he removed the set of silvery bells. He turned them over and over in his hand.
At ten minutes past eight o’clock, he got out of the car.
收听单词发音 |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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diaphanous
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| adj.(布)精致的，半透明的 | |
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gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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cascade
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| n.小瀑布，喷流；层叠；vi.成瀑布落下 | |
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puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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chalice
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| n.圣餐杯；金杯毒酒 | |
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swill
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| v.冲洗；痛饮；n.泔脚饲料；猪食；（谈话或写作中的）无意义的话 | |
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brewed
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| 调制( brew的过去式和过去分词 )； 酝酿； 沏（茶）； 煮（咖啡） | |
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hemlock
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| n.毒胡萝卜，铁杉 | |
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agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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hyena
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| n.土狼，鬣狗 | |
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demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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antibiotics
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| n.（用作复数）抗生素；（用作单数）抗生物质的研究；抗生素，抗菌素( antibiotic的名词复数 ) | |
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alibi
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| n.某人当时不在犯罪现场的申辩或证明；借口 | |
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swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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hack
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| n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳 | |
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tactic
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| n.战略，策略；adj.战术的，有策略的 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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