Читать книгу Mysteries Unlimited Ltd. - Donald Ph.D. Ladew - Страница 6

The late afternoon sun turned the sky over Santa Monica crimson. Occasionally there is beauty in Babylon. The air, washed by two days of rain, was soft and clear, unstained by the refuse of an urban transportation system gone mad. But beauty doesn’t last. The sky over LA, like the soul of the city, was tainted, tarnished, and toxic.

Sydney Constant Lee raised his bottle in salute, and then looked around the garden. He took a long drink of ice-cold Moosehead Ale; head tilted back, eyes closed with pleasure.

Sydney watched the dome of the Griffith Park Observatory change from gold, to orange, to red. He got up, walked over to a control box and adjusted a couple knobs. Water gurgled, sprayed and dripped over the three acres of gardens and trees.

Back in his lawn chair, Sydney picked up the bottle, drained it in two swallows, and looked around at all the water.

“This is very Zen. I think I’m acquiring vast quantities of karma.”

He hummed a cheerful tune. “Zippedy doo dah...hmmm hmmm...Zippedy ay.”

There were five empties in the six pack. Sydney reached out, took the sixth and uncapped it.

“My oh my what a helluva a day...hmmm...hmmm.”

Water from a rainbird splashed across his shoes. He heard a melodious, deeply missed, voice echo across the landscape of time.

“Sydney, don’t you know any other songs?”

Every Thursday afternoon Sydney Lee sat in the garden, drank a six-pack of Moosehead Ale, communed with his memories and read new case correspondence.

Sydney’s secretary, Miss Spotea, came to the window every thirty seconds to see if he was ready for her. Her liverish hands pulled nervously at her thinning gray hair. She spotted the five empties quicker than an eagle spies a mouse.

Miss Spotea had discovered an intolerant, cold-hearted, kick-ass Jesus many years before. She understood sin as one who has only dreamed of close and personal contact with the seamier side of life. She knew those five dead soldiers and one dying were the work of the devil.

He chuckled. “I hate to say this, Miss Spots, but you are becoming a big-time pain in the ass.”

Nearby in the converted three-story Victorian mansion that was also Sydney’s home and place of business, two young researchers stood together in the window of an office. They couldn’t see Miss Spotea, appearing and reappearing in the window one office over like a Shakespearean ghost.

The ladies, Miss Jessie Ruth, age nineteen, affectionately called, Baby Ruth, and Miss Claire Alice Gomez, three times divorced and ready to try again, watched Sydney having his Thursday afternoon whatever.

Miss Gomez was discussing Sydney in terms that would have made a longshoreman blush.

Miss Ruth was a virgin and keenly interested in sex, a subject about which she had little practical knowledge. She more than made up for this deficiency with her skill as a researcher. She had taken her doctorate in history when she was seventeen and another in Geography a year later.

“Do you think what they say about tall men is true?” Claire-Alice asked. Her expression brought new meaning to the word, lascivious.

Miss Ruth looked puzzled. “I don’t know Claire. What do they say about tall men?”

Claire Alice looked at Baby like the younger sister who hasn’t experienced puberty.

“You know, that their equipment is proportional to their height.” She made a gesture indicating a measurement, which if true, would put Sydney Lee on a par with the great stud horse, Secretariat.

Even the naive Miss Ruth got the picture. She blushed bright pink and giggled nervously. Then overcome by curiosity, she peered out the window at Sydney as if she might somehow pierce his corduroy pants and verify what could barely be imagined.

At that moment Sydney was trying to get the last drop from the last bottle.

“Don’t stare, Baby, you can’t see from here,” Claire teased.

“I was not!”

Claire Alice sighed. “I think he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, Claire, all you think about is sex. It’s making you weird.”

“It’s not the thinking, Baby, believe me. I’m suffering from the lack of, and if I don’t get some real soon...”

Sydney Lee lay back in the chair, his long shanks straight out, hands locked behind his head. He wore his graying hair long, in a pony tail and cultivated a luxuriant mustache. His wife, gone for ten years, said he was prettier than Willie Nelson, so he kept his hair long in her memory.

In repose, his face was hawkish, and arrogant, made more so by high cheekbones and deep-set black eyes. The effect was somewhat spoiled by a badly flattened nose.

In the Who’s Who of sports, he was listed as WBC Light Heavy weight Champion of the World, retired; undefeated. He had thirty one professional fights, won twenty eight by knockout and lost one when he was an amateur. He went out a winner in a game where most men end up broke and unable to tie their shoe laces without help.

“You are totally radical, Claire. Besides, he’s...at least forty!”

Claire gave her young friend a look of profound pity. “Baby, I hate to say this but you don’t know diddley. Young men aren’t worth shit. They’re vain, selfish and clumsy, and they come quicker than a cat can scratch. Most of them learn about sex from little girls like you. Definitely a case of the halt leading the lame!”

“That’s not fair. Just because I’ve never slept with a man doesn’t mean I won’t know what to do when the time comes.”

“Sure.” Claire rolled her eyes drolly and added another word to Miss Ruth’s expanding vocabulary.

Sydney spotted them in the window and waved. The two girls grinned and waved back enthusiastically. He blew them each a kiss.

Miss Spotea was mid-cycle near the window and realized his tender communication wasn’t meant for her. She zipped out of Sydney’s office to the one next door.

“Miss Ruth, Miss Gomez, get away from that window. Surely you have something better to do than spy on the Director during his hour of relaxation. There’s work to be done. If you don’t mind, let’s do get on with it.”

“Hour of relaxation?” Claire stage whispered to Baby Ruth. “Getting blitzed in the garden every Thursday is an hour of relaxation? Miss Spots, you old prune, the lights may be on but you are definitely not home.”

As Miss Spotea left, Claire muttered, “I sure do have something I want to do, but that tall, cute-assed Indian ain’t co-operating.”

Miss Spotea’s head popped back into the office. “Satan has ears, Miss Gomez.”

“No shit!”

Outside, Sydney watched the last orange daubs of sunset fade from the sky. He raised his arm and made a pumping motion, the military, form-on-me, signal.

Miss Spotea, who was waiting for just such a signal, reacted like a good soldier. She gathered a stack of correspondence, a fleece lined aviator’s jacket and a thermos of coffee. As she left the building she flipped a switch and the lamps in the gardens lit the dusk like a flock of iridescent fireflies.

After she delivered the correspondence and coffee to a table beside Sydney’s chair, she hesitated instead of going back into the building.

Sydney looked up at her wearily. “What is it now, Miss Spotea?”

She clenched her teeth and girded her loins, or whatever it is the self-righteous do before they screw up a perfectly good day. She blurted out a complaint made many times over the past few years.

“Miss Gomez cursed me. She used the language of the devil.”

“Make up your mind, Miss Spotea. Did she curse you, or swear in your presence?”

“It doesn’t matter; she has the mouth of Satan.”

“You are wrong, Miss Spotea. It does matter. One would be an indication of malice and poor judgment. That’s against my rules; the other is a personal preference for expression, not against my rules. We’ve had this talk before. Do me a favor, drop it. It bores me, especially as it is a subject on which I have already set policy.”

Miss Spotea swelled, saw Sydney’s expression and deflated like a pricked balloon. Her rubbery lips popped incomprehensible protest. She stomped back up the flagstone path to her office.

“Silly damned woman,” Sydney muttered.

He poured a large cup of coffee, took a manila envelope from the top of the pile and looked it over. The return address said: J.K.Heely, State Women’s Prison, Chowchilla, California.

“Hello, hello, what’s this? Another, I didn’t do it! Nice handwriting. Don’t see this sort of thing anymore.”

He opened the letter with a pocket knife and pulled out a dozen pages in the same handwriting, single spaced, both sides. An hour later, half of the coffee gone, Sydney stopped to put his jacket on.

“I love a surprise, ninety million dollars!”

“Lady, you’re bright, logical, and you’re in a world of trouble!” Sydney sat back and locked his fingers behind his head. “If you’re telling the truth, how come you’re not six feet under? Might as well be. Prison! Worse than dead. Didn’t whine though, not once. Good for you, girl. Guilty or innocent, you’ve got me interested.”

He got up, stretched, bending backward in a bow. He’d been sitting so long muscles and vertebrae made audible pops.

“This one has possibilities.”