77 Shadow Street. Dean Koontz. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Dean Koontz
Издательство: HarperCollins
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Ужасы и Мистика
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007327096
Скачать книгу
id="ub621e28e-ca42-5556-9540-90147c4954f3">

      

      DEAN KOONTZ

      From here in the Nutland,

       To Ed and Carol Gorman,

       Out there in the Heartland,

       With undiminished affection

       after all these years.

      O dark dark dark.

      They all go into the dark…

      —T. S. ELIOT, East Coker

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Chapter 18: Apartment 1-C

      Chapter 19: Apartment 2-G

      Chapter 20: Apartment 3-F

      One

      Chapter 21: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 22: Apartment 2-F

      Chapter 23: Apartment 3-H

      One

      Chapter 24: Here and There

      One

       Part Two

      Chapter 25: Topper’s

      Chapter 26: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 27: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 28: Topper’s

      Chapter 29: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 30: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 31: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 32: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 33: Here and There

      One

      Chapter 34: 77 Shadow Street

       About the Author

       Other Books by Dean Koontz

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       How slow the shadow creeps; but when ’tis pastHow fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!

      —HILAIRE BELLOC, For a Sundial

       Chapter 1

      The North Elevator

      Bitter and drunk, Earl Blandon, a former United States senator, got home at 2:15 A.M. that Thursday with a new tattoo: a two-word obscenity in blue block letters between the knuckles of the middle finger of his right hand. Earlier in the night, at a cocktail lounge, he’d thrust that stiff digit at another customer who didn’t speak English and who was visiting from some third-world backwater where the meaning of the offending gesture evidently wasn’t known in spite of countless Hollywood films in which numerous cinema idols had flashed it. In fact, the ignorant foreigner seemed to mistake the raised finger for some kind of friendly hello and reacted by nodding repeatedly and smiling. Earl was frustrated directly out of the cocktail lounge and into a nearby tattoo parlor, where he resisted the advice of the needle artist and, at the age of fifty-eight, acquired his first body decoration.

      When Earl strode through the front entrance of the exclusive Pendleton, into the lobby, the night concierge, Norman Fixxer, greeted him by name. Norman sat on a stool behind the reception counter to the left, a book open in front of him, looking like a ventriloquist’s dummy: eyes wide and blue and glassy, pronounced marionette lines like scars in his face, head cocked at an odd angle. In a tailored black suit and a crisp white shirt and a black bow tie, with a fussily arranged white pocket handkerchief blossoming from the breast pocket of his coat, Norman was overdressed by the standards of the two other concierges who worked the earlier shifts.

      Earl Blandon didn’t like Norman. He didn’t trust him. The concierge tried too hard. He was excessively polite. Earl didn’t trust polite people who tried too hard. They always proved to be hiding something. Sometimes they hid the fact that they were FBI agents, pretending instead to be lobbyists with a suitcase full of cash and a deep respect for the power of a senator. Earl didn’t suspect that Norman Fixxer was an FBI agent in disguise, but the concierge was for damn sure something more than what he pretended to be.

      Earl acknowledged Norman’s greeting with only a scowl. He wanted to raise his newly lettered middle finger, but he restrained himself. Offending a concierge was a bad idea. Your mail might go missing. The suit you expected back from the dry cleaner by Wednesday evening might be delivered