Murder on the Rocks

Оглавление

Talmage Powell. Murder on the Rocks

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

chapter 10

chapter 11

chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

chapter 17

Отрывок из книги

IF YOU’VE BEEN AROUND WASHINGTON you’ll know Hogan’s, Main Avenue near the Municipal Fish Wharf. Draft beer, formica table tops, steel cutlery, and the best seafood north of New Orleans. The Negro waiters are faster than Japanese jugglers and most of them have worked at Hogan’s since before the war with Spain. The main room has maple paneling, linoleum floor tile, and a few game fish mounted on oak trophy plaques. The coral and dried starfish are for tourists who can’t leave town without a meal at Hogan’s to tell about at the next Lions’ meeting in Sassafras, Missouri. On the side next to the bait shop there is an open doorway with a script neon sign that spells Cocktail Lounge. Inside, there is just enough light to read a drink list in Braille if you have sensitive fingers, and that’s for the civil servants who crowd Hogan’s every noon in the hot months. White-collar workers from Agriculture and Interior and Labor and the Bureau of Engraving. Men and women with humdrum jobs, enough money to get along on, and a gnawing fear of loneliness.

It was Saturday afternoon. Outside, on the sidewalk, you could broil whole swordfish, but Hogan’s air conditioner was a blessed wind from Bluie West. The time was three o’clock. I was finishing an order of Crab Norfolk, and I was on my fourth draft ale. I had worked late to finish a tax case and have the rest of the week-end free. My ketch was tugging at a Yacht Club buoy three blocks away, its icebox jammed with beer and cold cuts, and within the hour I planned to be tacking down the quiet Potomac, a line over the stern. Down past Mount Vernon, anchoring for the night in Gunston Cove.

.....

She said, “My father has been in the diplomatic service nearly thirty years. He’s known and trusted. When his government started sending assets abroad they sent something here for his safe-keeping. Something rather special.” Picking up the glass, she sipped cognac and set it back on the chow table.

“How special?” I asked.

.....