LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the date on a well thumbed Gary Larson desk calendar. “I guess this is what the weather dorks call unseasonable. Miss Spote...”

      She appeared at the door miraculously: Radar O’Reilly reincarnated as Attila the Hun.

      “Mr. Lee?”

      “Miss Spotea, ask Koban to bring the Rolls around front.”

      “Yes, sir.” Her voice reeked disapproval.

      “What’s the problem, Miss Spotea, does Jesus also disapprove of my Rolls Royce, or is it just me?”

      “Egregious displays of wealth are an offense in the eyes of the Lord.”

      “Hmmm, and what is God’s choice this year? A Ford? A Chevrolet? A Volvo? No, something more functional I suppose.”

      Her bloodless lips drooped at the corners. “It is not patriotic to mock American products.”

      “Right! Obviously God doesn’t think much of Volvos. I’m not sure I understand, Miss Spotea. Has God chosen you as arbiter of good taste in automobiles, along with everything else?”

      “The Grace of God is alike unto patriotism.”

      Sydney grunted. Stupidity and dogma affected him like a straight right to the gut. He felt a strange numbness creep over him as he tried to follow the tortured maze of her logic.

      “Ask a foolish question,” he muttered, “proving once again you get what you ask for.”

      Sydney Lee had long since concluded that as a rule he did not welcome the conversation of bigots, and trying to talk to Miss Spotea hadn’t done anything to change his mind.

      “Ask Koban to bring the Rolls, Miss Spotea, without the drama or disapproval if you please.” Sydney put more snap into the second request.

       She left the office abruptly, but not without the⎯see how wrong you are, and right I am⎯long-suffering sigh of the unfulfilled martyr.

      Sydney Lee didn’t drive. He knew how, but if anyone asked, he said he didn’t. He had loved Rolls Royce automobiles since boyhood, especially if someone else drove. As soon as he could afford a driver, he bought an old gun-metal gray Rolls Royce Phaeton as big as a mobile home; some would say the steering wheel was on the wrong side.

      Koban Mitsunaga, Lepidopterist and gardener, liked driving the Rolls almost as much as Sydney liked being driven.

      Koban was Sydney’s expert on gardens, butterflies, insects, birds. A couple years before, Sydney hired him to write a report for a lazy Professor of Botany at UCLA. Doing research and writing reports was a staple of Mysteries Unlimited Ltd., the business establishment of which he was CEO, President and owner. There is an over abundance of lazy professors in the California university system.

      “Tenure encourages sloth, stupidity and undeserved arrogance. Write that a thousand times on the board, please,” Sydney murmured.

      In the two weeks during which Mitsunaga was supposed to write the report he pestered Sydney constantly about the gardens.

      Koban was bad tempered and opinionated. He watched the Mexican gardeners constantly. Every time they stopped working, he screamed curses in Japanese, and to get his point across, beat the ground with a large ebony walking stick. They smiled cheerfully and in Spanish, suggested he perform anatomically and athletically impossible acts with a variety of farm animals.

      When they came the next day, Koban ran them off and went to work on the gardens himself. He finished the report in an evening, and then hollered at Sydney in atrocious English.

      “I am butterfry person,” he shouted. “You tlap me into Amellican steleotype. You sink all Japanese are gardeners.”

      Sydney didn’t mind. He knew eccentric like Jack Nicklaus knows the power fade.

      “How much money you make in butterflies?” He almost said butterfries.

      “You sink I do this for money?”

      “I don’t know. Answer the question.”

      Koban grunted something in Japanese, and then looked at Sydney slyly. “Not much.”

      “I didn’t think so. Okay, here’s the deal. I pay you two thousand a month and bonuses. You can be my resident flower and insect man, write papers, do research, whatever. The rest of the time you’re the gardener. I’ll even throw in a place to live if you don’t give me a lot of shit.”

      “What is, give shit?”

      “Trouble.”

      “Hah! I don’t give shit. I am Zen Master, always selene.”

      “Selene like a moon beam. Sure you are. What’s your answer?”

      “I will take job, but don’t try to exproit me, I know Bill of Lights.”

      “Pardon me? Look, just go mow the lawn or something. Try being inscrutable. Say Richard writes Roger Rabbit rapidly over and over.”

      It was fine. Sydney ignored his tantrums when people, mostly himself, dropped cigar wrappers in the garden, and when he needed someone to drive the Rolls, Koban volunteered.

      Life, Sydney thought with satisfaction, is filled with the unexpected.

      He waited on the steps while Koban put their overnight bags and a large picnic basket in the boot. Koban insisted on calling it the tlunk. Sydney couldn’t even say the word.

      “Koban, I hate to say this old pal, but you are giving ethnicity a bad name.”

      Sydney’s daughter, Charlie Lee, joined him on the steps.

      “Don’t do anything silly at that prison, Daddy. They might not let you go.”

      “Might not be so bad. A couple years in jail with a thousand sex-starved women.”

      “I estimate three hundred and fifty five, Daddy. The rest don’t like men very much, and probably have more body hair than you do.”

      Sydney laughed. “You’ve ruined a perfectly workable fantasy, Charlie Lee.”

      As the Rolls glided down Franklin Avenue to the Hollywood Freeway, he thought about Charlie Lee and smiled.

      “The Gods give and the Gods take away.”

      On the drive north to the Mojave he put his attention on the new project. Before he decided to interview the erudite Miss Heely, he made a few discreet inquiries, called in a few favors.

      “It doesn’t make sense, Koban.” He thumbed through a growing file. “She was in excellent financial shape before the ‘May Day Massacre’. That’s what the newspapers called the theft.”

      Koban sucked his breath in, and hissed.

      “Hisssss, So ka.”

      “Ninety million, Jesus! How in hell do you steal that much?”

      “Carefully.” Koban said with perfect diction.

      Sydney looked up at Koban who didn’t change expression.

      “Cute, you’re probably not even Japanese. Matter of fact I’ve noticed a certain Korean caste to your face.”

      Koban grunted enigmatically and did not rise to the bait.

      Sydney went back to the file. “She had a good securities portfolio, stock in the bank and more every year; salary seventy-seven thousand, bound to go higher. It’s crazy. She made it in a profession where she’d have to be twice as bright as every man who wanted her job. Articulate, outspoken and obviously competent; definitely on the fast track.”

      He thumbed through his notes and pulled out Miss Heely’s vital statistics.

      “Zippedy do dah, Zippedy hey....mmmm, thirty two, never married, I wonder why?”

      Attached to the page were several pictures:

Скачать книгу