LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

in the ignition and the engine ground and fired, Jurgen flared his wings, uttering a censorious hiccoughing sound. Dubykky murmured soothing words as they backed out. “Grawp,” Jurgen objected after Dubykky shifted into first gear and the truck lurched forward down English Street. It seemed wrong to him that while he was standing still the world moved past, and at a steadily increasing pace.

      Matthew Gans, Jr.—if that was indeed the correct name, which Dubykky had no reason yet to believe—might be lurking anywhere. Miles upon miles of sand and scrub, mountains, gullies, and lake shore all lay within the walking range of a sturdy boy. And, if Dubykky’s suspicions proved correct, the creature was more than merely sturdy. This could mean days of searching. Yet Dubykky’s experience told him that the creature would seek to conceal himself until he was ready to strike. That gave Dubykky the idea where to look.

      “I’ll call you Junior,” he said aloud, just to get the feel of the name, “whether you’re Matthew Gans or not.” Jurgen took a small step sideways and peeped around at him, curious.

      Hawthorne was one of those high desert towns that had always seen better days. It was surrounded by a halo of neglect. From its outskirts, dirt roads cut through the sand flats and into and out of ravines and around little knolls of rock and greasewood, where invariably stood trailers or tarpaper shacks at irregular intervals, most empty, at least temporarily, companions to scavenged automobiles and jumbled appliances. If Nevada’s highways linked its far-flung towns into a state, it was the dirt roads that lashed a town to the landscape. Where the sandy ruts ultimately led revealed what the community cared about, past and present—a mine, a ranch, a reservoir, a fossil bed, a hunting range, a campground, a field cabin, a hot spring, a graveyard, a lake, an inexplicable pasture, or, as was sometimes the endpoint, a petering out, an idea abandoned.

      Dubykky started down three of the roads until each time he came upon a shack leaking light from behind a sheet-curtained window, then turned back. A deserted road was what he sought. The fourth he explored proved to be just that. He followed its ruts until they dwindled away and put the Ford into reverse. It was too risky to turn around in the soft sand, so he stayed in reverse until he returned to the last of the shacks he had passed.

      He stopped nearby, letting the truck idle while he emptied his mind of every thought and sense impression. It was an old familiar practice of his, and the nighttime desert produced nothing to distract him. The last thing he noted before he achieved complete blankness was the faint susurrus of Jurgen’s even breathing. The crow had fallen asleep.

      Nothing from the first shack intruded on his inner void, not the least whisper. He was wearing a wool sweater and heavy corduroy trousers against the intensifying night chill. Even so, cold soon penetrated, and he realized it, a mentation that ended the trance. He tried to re-enter it but shivered. Strange, that. So slight a chill had never distracted him. It was one more instance, if a small one, of change creeping into his long, errant life, a life in which change, if it came at all, came for a reason, foreseeably.

      That had not been the case recently. That very morning Dubykky had experienced something nearly unprecedented: a gush of warmth for a human. This unaccustomed emotion arose while he was standing behind his desk at Dubykky & Cledge, Esq., Attorneys at Law. It was evoked, in fact, by his brand-new partner.

      Dubykky and Milton Cledge could not have been more dissimilar, even discounting that Cledge was a twenty-six-year-old human and Dubykky had lived more than half a millennium as something that only looked human. It was their here-and-now temperamental differences that mattered, and they did not put Dubykky off. He got along with humans just fine when he needed to. But Milt was proving to be almost superhuman in a modest, inadvertent way. The exceptional thing about him was his face. Not its appearance, which was somewhat adolescent and doughy. Its expressions. Milt could not control them—did not even realize he couldn’t. That ought to have simply been ridiculous, yet the first time they met, Dubykky perceived at once that there was much more to Milt’s expressions than mannerism. They were the emotional eruptions of a decent person. The perfect antithesis of Dubykky.

      He had been interviewing applicants to become his partner in the Hawthorne law practice, until then a solo concern. Cledge was among them. He walked into the interview looking determined but wary. It took place in Reno because that was Nevada’s largest city and conveniently near the California border. Nevada had no law school of its own, so most fledgling lawyers came from those in California, McGeorge above all. Dubykky rented a Mapes Hotel conference room for the purpose, the tinny jingle-jangle of slot machines just audible in the distance, the air scented by tobacco smoke, nervous sweat, greasy food, and hair oil. How better to make a Nevada newcomer antsy?

      Yet Cledge surprised Dubykky. He did not fidget or perspire. He sat still and straight in his chair, hands on his lap. He met Dubykky’s eyes expectantly. His smile, if tentative, was pleasant, unassuming. Dubykky was charmed despite himself. For that reason, he skipped the usual opening pleasantries. He asked straight off, “What would you do if you discovered I was cheating our clients out of their money?”

      The bluntness was rewarded. Cledge’s grimace of revulsion was pure reflex. “Tell them,” he answered tightly.

      “Tell them? Really? Not ask me about it first?” Dubykky pretended to be affronted.

      Bewilderment wrinkled Cledge’s brow. “No. If I knew it to be true, you’d be untrustworthy. It would be best to warn off clients.”

      “So you’d favor clients over our partnership.”

      A moue of offense, then a squint of craftiness, and Cledge replied, “There would be no law practice without clients.” His eyes widened. He evidently realized the answer was evasive.

      It amused Dubykky, both the evasion and the telltale expression. If principled, Cledge was yet eager for the job.

      Dubykky pressed, “I suppose you’d report me to the Bar. Or would it be the police?”=

      Cledge’s eyebrows leapt in astonishment, then came rushing back down from indignation. “Not right off! Of course not. I’d confront you first.” He shifted in his chair while his eyes wandered uncertainly. When he continued, he tried to sound reasonable, and it was wonderfully stilted. “Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances. Defrauding, that is to say mulcting, may be redressed privately.”

      Honest, unsubtle, labored, naïve. Dubykky was content.

      “Do you gamble, philander, or patronize brothels?”

      Cledge reddened. His chin lifted, and he put his hands on the chair arms to hoist himself to his feet. Dubykky waved for him to remain seated.

      “I take it that means no to all three.”

      Incredulous outrage distorted Cledge’s whole face. “I’m a Catholic, and a devout one.”

      Earnest, sensitive, upright. At that point Dubykky ceased evaluating Cledge simply as a prospective partner. He began considering him as a husband for Mildred. As the interview progressed, Cledge proved himself to be sensible and intelligent as well, if only reasonably so. He was also reasonably slow to recognize humor, reasonably strong in physique, and reasonably homely in appearance. As such he was the sort of man who would feel lucky winning the hand of a lovely, educated young woman like Mildred and temperamentally mild enough to put up with her waywardness. Best of all, he was completely unable to dissemble. Even someone as self-absorbed as Mildred could read his heart. Nothing would be so conducive to a solid, functional marriage for her than actually recognizing what her husband was thinking at any given time, rather than imputing to him what she wanted him to be thinking. Dubykky hired Cledge on the spot.

      Seated in the pickup pondering his unexpected affection for Cledge and the uneasy sense that his own nature was somehow changing, Dubykky thought back to when his partner had walked into his office earlier that day.

      “Were you talking to yourself?” Cledge inquired.

      Dubykky had been venting to himself about Mildred’s inattention during a phone call he had just ended. Cledge’s expression was jocular, yet perplexity also lurked there. He must have already come to the conclusion that Dubykky was eccentric, perhaps

Скачать книгу