|
At last came the absolutely delicious moment. He was satisfied hewas alone.
He stepped into the living-room door, his back to the long hall,and slowly scanned the room, failing to see me, of course, and thenhe put his large nine-millimeter gun back in his shoulder holster, andhe slipped off his gloves very slowly.
There was enough light for me to note everything I adored abouthim.
Soft black hair, the Asian face that you couldn't clearly identify asIndian or Japanese, or Gypsy; could even have been Italian or Greek;the cunning black eyes, and the remarkably perfect symmetry of thebones梠ne of the very few traits he'd passed on to his daughter,Dora. She was fair skinned, Dora. Her mother must have been milkwhite. He was my favorite shade, caramel.
Suddenly something made him very uneasy. He turned his back tome, eyes quite obviously locked to some object that had alarmed him.
Nothing to do with me. I had touched nothing. But his alarm hadthrown up a wall between my mind and his. He was on full alert,which meant he wasn't thinking sequentially.
He was tall, his back very straight, the coat long, his shoes thoseSavile Row handmade kind that takes the English shops forever. Hetook a step away from me, and I realized immediately from a jumbleof images that it was the black granite statue that had startledhim.
It was perfectly obvious. He didn't know what it was or how it hadgotten here. He approached, very cautious, as though someonemight be hiding in the vicinity of the thing, then pivoted, scanned theroom, and slowly drew out his gun again.
Possibilities were passing through his mind in rather orderly fashion.
He knew one art dealer who was stupid enough to have deliveredthe thing and left the door unlocked, but that dealer would havecalled him before ever coming.
And this thing? Mesopotamian? Assyrian? Suddenly, impulsively,he forgot all practical matters and put his hand out and touched thegranite. God, he loved it. He loved it and he was acting stupid.
I mean, there could have been one of his enemies here. But thenwhy would a gangster or a federal investigator come bearing a giftsuch as that?
Whatever the case, he was enthralled by the piece. I still couldn'tsee it clearly. I would have slipped off the violet glasses, which wouldhave helped enormously, but I didn't dare move. I wanted to see this,this adoration of his for the object that was new. I could feel hisuncompromising desire for this statue, to own it, to have it here ... thevery sort of desire which had first attracted him to me.
He was thinking only about it, the fine carving, that it was recent,not ancient, for obvious stylistic reasons, seventeenth centuryperhaps, a fleshed-out rendering of a fallen angel.
Fallen angel. He did everything but step on tiptoe and kiss thething. He put his left hand up and ran it all over the granite face andthe granite hair. Damn, I couldn't see it! How could he put up withthis darkness? But then he was smack up against it, and I was twentyfeet away and stuffed between two saints, without a good perspective.
Finally, he turned and switched on one of the halogen lamps.
Thing looked like a preying mantis. He moved the thin black ironlimb so the beam shone up on the statue's face. Now I could see bothprofiles beautifully!
He made little noises of lust. This was unique! The dealer was ofno importance, the back door forgiven, the supposed danger fled. Heslipped the gun in the holster again, almost as if he wasn't even thinking about it, and he did go up on tiptoe, trying to get eye level withthis appalling graven image. Feathered wings. I could see that now.
Not reptilian, feathered. But the face, classical, robust, the long nose,the chin .. . yet there was a ferocity in the profile. And why was thestatue black? Maybe it was only St. Michael pushing devils into hell,angry righteous. No, the hair was too rank and tangled for that.
Armour, breastplate, and then of course I saw the most telling details.
That it had the legs and feet of a goat. Devil.
Again there came a shiver. Like the thing I'd seen. But that wasstupid! And I had no sense of the Stalker being near me now. No disori-entation. I wasn't even really afraid. It was just a frisson, nothingmore.
I held very still. Now take your time, I thought. Figure this out.
You've got your Victim and this statue is just a coincidental detailthat further enriches the entire scenario. He turned another halogenbeam on the thing. It was almost erotic the way he studied it. Ismiled. Erotic the way I was studying him梩his forty-seven-year-oldman with a youth's health and a criminal's poise. Fearlessly he stoodback, having forgotten any threat of any kind, and looked at this newacquisition. Where had it come from? Whom? He didn't give a damnabout the price. If only Dora. No, Dora wouldn't like this thing.
15/163 首页 上一页 13 14 15 16 17 18 下一页 尾页
|
