Snowball in Hell - lanyon Josh (читать книги без TXT) 📗
He wondered if Lt. Spain would think he was trying to skip town.
The train wheels rumbled along the track. He closed his eyes, putting his head back for a moment. He had learned to snatch sleep where he could find it, and this seemed to be a safe enough place for a catnap….
A German flare arched high into the night. Machine-guns and forty-millimeter guns opened up, firing from across the dunes, slicing the night with yellow, green, blue, and red tracers-pretty, like fireworks. Tongues of colored flame licking out, licking hungrily for the transports high overhead, knocking them out of the sky. He watched them go down, burning. He turned his head and Matt was standing next to him, watching him. Matt's face was shadowed by the fire, little pinpoints of flame in his pupils.
«Where there's smoke,» he said, and he smiled that smile that made him look younger and almost affectionate.
Nathan started awake to a surge of new passengers coming down the aisle, taking the seats around him. He sat up, automatically reaching to straighten his tie, and realized the train had stopped. Turning to the window, he peered out, trying to see which station it was. Old-fashioned Christmas
lights hung from the station pavilion. Several lights were dead, like missing teeth in a wide grin. A peeling sign read ..di … all.
Hoping it wasn't an omen, Nathan rose, steadying himself on the back of a seat, and made his way hastily down the aisle towards the platform. He found his path blocked by two nuns struggling with a mountain of parcels, and, instinctively, he stopped to help them shove their packages out of the way. It only took a minute, but as he reached the platform, he saw a Ford station wagon sedan pull up at the far end of the pavilion. A familiar tan coat and fur hat slipped inside, and the Woody glided away.
Nathan swore under his breath, crossing the platform and walking out onto the street. He looked around himself.
Indian Falls was a resort town, but if it hadn't been for the tatty fake pine garland strung across Main Street, it could have passed for a ghost town. A steady wall of closed shops stood across from the railroad station: a beauty parlor, a pawn shop, a cigar store, a lending library, a Chinese laundry. Nathan peered at his watch. It was eight-thirty.
He went back to the now deserted station and read the sign on the ticket window. BACK IN ONE HOUR. Swell. He stared at the final twinkling lights of the departing train now vanishing into the pine-thick mountains.
Now what?
One thing for sure, it felt cold enough for snow. He shivered and looked up at the starry sky. Not a cloud anywhere. That was the good news. The bad news…
He walked back out to the street. Far down the block he spotted lights. A corner all-night drugstore. He started walking.
It was warm and bright inside the drug store. It was also mostly deserted. An elderly woman with a Swedish accent pointed him to a public phone, and Nathan dug for change, wondering if the woman took much heat from idiots mistaking her for a Kraut.
It took time and persistence, but at last he reached LAPD Headquarters, and, to his surprise, with a little more persistence he actually got through to Lt. Matthew Spain.
«Spain here,» he answered, still crisp and efficient at eight-thirty-no, nine o'clock-at night. Spain worked late for a married man, but that was homicide.
«It's Nathan Doyle,» Nathan said.
There was a funny pause, and then Spain said, «What can I do for you, Mr. Doyle?»
«I've located Pearl Jarvis. She's staying at Little Fawn Ski lodge up near Indian Falls. It's in the Sierra Nevadas.»
«I know where Indian Falls is. I used to camp there,» Spain said, sounding almost human. «How'd you find her?»
«I followed her from Los Angeles.»
«By car or train?»
Doyle couldn't see why it mattered, but that was a cop for you. They liked all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. No loose ends. Not so different from a good reporter, really.
«By train. I'm in Indian Falls right now, trying to get a ride up to the lodge.»
«Why are you telling me this?» Spain asked, and his voice was back to its normal brisk and impersonal tone. «You're unusually cooperative for a newsman.»
«Because-« Nathan changed his mind, and took a chance on the truth. «I want you to hurry up and solve this thing.»
Spain asked smoothly, «Any particular reason? Or are you just a concerned citizen, Mr. Doyle?»
«I … think you know my reason,» Nathan said very quietly, although there was no one to overhear him, no one at all in the drugstore now except for him and the little old lady with apple-red cheeks and hair as white as powdered sugar.
There was another surprised silence on the other end of the phone.
Then Spain said, «You're heading up to the lodge, you said?»
«If I can hire a car.»
«Try not to spook her.»
Nathan snorted. «Tell it to your granny,» he advised, and Spain chuckled.
«I'll be seeing you,» he said, and rang off.
Nathan replaced the phone on the hook and approached the grandmotherly-looking lady behind the counter.
Twenty minutes later he was on his way to Little Fawn Lake in a battered pick-up truck driven by Mrs. Svensson's grandson, a big blond man with a hook in place of his left hand.
«Where'd you stop that packet?» Doyle asked as they left the silent streets of Indian Falls behind, winding slowly up
through the mountain roads. Giant pines and incense cedars blocked the waning moon.
Svensson didn't look at him, pushing the car into first gear with the hook as the car began to climb. «What's that?»
«Where'd you lose the arm?»
«Bombing run over Wilhelmshaven.» Svensson looked at him.
If you were of eligible age and not in the service, there had to be a damn good explanation, and Doyle made his excuses. «Reporter. I was in Tunisia with the Brits. The Eighth Army.» He wasn't ashamed of being a journalist, but by the end of his stint he'd begun to feel strange about recording and observing the free world's struggle for survival without taking part in it himself.
«Where'd you get hit?» Svensson asked, and Doyle shot him a surprised look.
«Medenine,» he said, and the other man laughed.
«Mina,» he explained. «My Grandmother. She can always tell. She nursed a lot of boys in the other one. The first one.»
«The War to End All Wars,» Doyle murmured.
«Yeah. When you think this one's ending?»
Doyle thought it would be another two or three years, but Svensson believed it would be winding up pretty quick now that the Americans were in, and they passed the rest of the trip talking it over.
The highway grew narrower and steeper, seeming to wind up into the stars. One side of the road was thick forest, and the other a sheer drop into darkness. And then they pulled
around an S-curve and the lodge was before them-just waiting for Heidi and the goats to show up.
«That's it,» Svensson said. «Little Fawn Lake Lodge.»
It must have been modeled on one of those Swiss chalets that populate snow globes everywhere. All that was missing was the snow.
A narrow gravel drive lined with foot-high Christmas trees curved under a trellised porte-cochere, and beneath the dead vines and bare bones of the car port was a door bedecked in a giant holly wreath. The drive itself snaked back to the pine-lined highway and disappeared in darkness.
There was no sign of the Woody station wagon, but that was no surprise. Pearl had had quite a start on Nathan.
He paid Svensson and thanked him, and went into the lodge thinking of possible explanations for his missing luggage. He'd picked up a toothbrush and a couple of essentials at the drug store, but it was going to be hard convincing anyone he'd actually planned this excursion.
The front door jangled cheerfully thanks to a bunch of silver bells. Nathan found himself in a warm, cozy lobby with a high ceiling beamed with rough logs. Colorful woven rugs lay on the wooden floor, and cheerful chintz framed the big bay windows. A twelve-foot Blue Spruce trimmed in old-fashioned, handmade ornaments towered next to a fieldstone fireplace at one end of the long room. At the other end were two arched doorways. A sign over one doorway indicated the bar, and the second doorway led to the dining room. A staircase wrapped in evergreen started at the back of the
