Ray Bradbury - Hollywood Thrillers. Detective trilogy. "Hollywood thrillers. Detective trilogy" Ray Bradbury Hollywood thrillers detective trilogy

Detective trilogy in one volume. All novels take place in Hollywood. In the first novel, detective Elmo Crumley and a strange young man - a science fiction writer - undertake to investigate a series of deaths that at first glance are completely unrelated. The second novel centers on the mysterious story of a Hollywood tycoon who died on Halloween night twenty years ago. Constance Rattigan, the central character of the third novel, receives in the mail an old telephone directory and a notebook in which the names are marked with gravestone crosses. The main characters of the trilogy took on the task of saving the movie star and solving the mystery of the chain of unexpected deaths.

The book was also published under the title “The Hollywood Trilogy in One Volume.”

Ray Bradbury

Hollywood thrillers. Detective trilogy

DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS

A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS: ANOTHER TALE OF TWO CITIES

LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE

* * *

With love to Don Congdon, who made this book possible, and to the memory of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Ross MacDonald, and to the memory of my friends and teachers Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, sadly deceased,

Death is a lonely thing

For those prone to despondency, Venice, California used to offer everything your heart desired. Fog - almost every evening, the creaking groans of oil rigs on the shore, the splash of dark water in the canals, the whistle of sand lashing against the windows when the wind rises and starts gloomy songs over wastelands and in deserted alleys.

In those days, the pier was collapsing and quietly dying, collapsing into the sea, and not far from it in the water one could discern the remains of a huge dinosaur - a roller coaster ride, over which the tide rolled its waves.

At the end of one of the canals one could see the sunken, rusty wagons of the old circus, and if one looked closely at the water at night one could see all kinds of living creatures scurrying around in cages - fish and lobsters brought by the tide from the ocean. It seemed as if all the doomed circuses in the world were rusting here.

And every half hour a large red tram roared towards the sea, at night its arc cut out sheaves of sparks from the wires; Having reached the shore, the tram turned with a grinding sound and rushed away, groaning like a dead man who finds no peace in his grave. Both the tram itself and the lonely counselor, rocking from the shaking, knew that in a year they would not be here, the rails would be filled with concrete, and the web of highly stretched wires would be rolled up and taken away.

And then, in one such gloomy year, when the fogs did not want to dissipate, and the complaints of the wind did not want to subside, I was riding late in the evening in an old red tram that rumbled like thunder and, without suspecting it, I met Death’s partner in it .

That evening it was pouring rain, the old tram, clanging and squealing, flew from one deserted stop to another, covered with ticket confetti, and there was no one on it - only me, reading a book, shaking in one of the back seats. Yes, in this old, rheumatic wooden carriage there was only me and the counselor, he sat in front, pulled the brass levers, released the brakes and, when necessary, released clouds of steam.

And behind, in the aisle, someone else was riding, it is unknown when he entered the carriage.

I finally noticed him because, standing behind me, he was swaying and swaying from side to side, as if he didn’t know where to sit, because when you have forty empty seats looking at you closer to night, it’s hard to decide which one. choose them. But then I heard him sit down, and I realized that he sat down right behind me, I sensed his presence, like you smell the tide that is about to flood the coastal fields. The foul smell of his clothes was overcome by a stench that suggested he had drunk too much in too short a time.

I didn’t look back: I knew from experience long ago that if you look at someone, you can’t avoid a conversation.

Closing my eyes, I firmly decided not to turn around. But it did not help.

“Ox,” the stranger groaned.

I felt him lean towards me in his seat. I felt hot breath burning my neck. I leaned forward with my hands on my knees.

“Ox,” he moaned even louder. This is how someone falling from a cliff or a swimmer caught in a storm far from the shore could beg for help.

The rain was already pouring down with all its might, a big red tram rumbled through the night through meadows covered with bluegrass, and the rain drummed on the windows, and the drops flowing down the glass hid the fields stretching around from view. We sailed through Culver City without seeing the film studio, and moved on - the clumsy carriage rattled, the floor creaked under our feet, the empty seats rattled, the signal whistle squealed.

DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS

A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS: ANOTHER TALE OF TWO CITIES

LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE

* * *

With love to Don Congdon, who made this book possible, and to the memory of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Ross MacDonald, and to the memory of my friends and teachers Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, sadly deceased,

Death is a lonely thing

And behind, in the aisle, someone else was riding, it is unknown when he entered the carriage.

I didn’t look back: I knew from experience long ago that if you look at someone, you can’t avoid a conversation.

Closing my eyes, I firmly decided not to turn around. But it did not help.

“Ox,” the stranger groaned.

I felt him lean towards me in his seat. I felt hot breath burning my neck. I leaned forward with my hands on my knees.

“Ox,” he moaned even louder. This is how someone falling from a cliff or a swimmer caught in a storm far from the shore could beg for help.

And I smelled disgustingly of fumes when an invisible man sitting behind me shouted:

- Death!

- Death…

And the whistle blew again.

It seemed to me that he was going to cry. I looked forward at the streams of rain dancing in the rays of light as they flew towards us.

The tram slowed down. The person sitting behind me jumped up: he was furious that they weren’t listening to him, it seemed that he was ready to poke me in the side if I didn’t at least turn around. He longed to be seen. He couldn't wait to bring down on me what was bothering him. I felt his hand reaching out to me, or maybe fists, or even claws, how he was eager to beat me or slash me, who knows. I grabbed the back of the chair in front of me tightly.

The tram, rattling, braked and stopped.

“Come on,” I thought, “finish the deal!”

“... it’s a lonely matter,” he finished in a terrible whisper and moved away.

I heard the back door open. And then he turned around.

The carriage was empty. The stranger disappeared, taking with him his funeral speeches. You could hear the gravel crunching on the road.

The man, invisible in the darkness, muttered to himself, but the doors slammed shut. I could still hear his voice through the window, something about a grave. About someone's grave. About loneliness.

I raised the window and leaned out, peering into the rainy darkness behind.

I couldn't tell what was left there - a city full of people, or just one person full of despair - nothing was seen or heard.

The tram rushed towards the ocean.

I was overcome with fear that we would fall into it.

I rolled down the window noisily and was shaking.

All the way I convinced myself: “Come on! You're only twenty-seven! And you don’t drink.” But…

But still I drank.

In this remote corner, on the edge of the continent, where migrant wagons had once stopped, I found a saloon open late, in which there was no one except the bartender - a fan of the cowboy films about Hopalong Cassidy, which he admired on the late-night television show.

– Double portion of vodka, please.

I was surprised to hear my voice. Why do I need vodka? Should I work up the courage to call my girlfriend Peg? She's two thousand miles away, in Mexico City. What will I tell her? Am I okay? But nothing really happened to me!

Absolutely nothing, I just rode on a tram in the cold rain, and an ominous voice sounded behind me, making me sad and afraid. However, I was afraid to return to my apartment, empty as a refrigerator abandoned by immigrants wandering west in search of work.

There was probably nowhere greater emptiness than my home, except in my bank account - the account of the Great American Writer - in the old, temple-like bank building, which rose on the shore near the water, and it seemed that his will be washed out to sea at the next low tide. Every morning, the cashiers, sitting with oars in the boats, waited while the manager drowned his melancholy in the nearest bar. I didn't meet them often. Even though I only occasionally managed to sell a story to some pathetic detective magazine, I didn't have any cash to put in the bank. That's why…

I took a sip of vodka. And he wrinkled his face.

“Lord,” the bartender was surprised, “is this your first time trying vodka?”

- At first.

-You look just creepy.

“I’m really scared.” Have you ever felt like something terrible was going to happen, but you didn’t know what?

– Is this when you get goosebumps down your spine?

I took another sip of vodka and shuddered.

- No it's not that. I want to say: do you feel fatal the horror, how does it approach you?

The bartender fixed his gaze on something over my shoulder, as if he saw there the ghost of a stranger who was riding on a tram.

- So, did you bring this horror with you?

“Then you have nothing to fear here.”

“But, you see,” I said, “he talked to me, this Charon.”

“I didn’t see his face.” Oh God, I feel really bad! Good night.

- Don't drink anymore!

But I was already outside the door and looking around - was there something terrible waiting for me there? Which way to go home so as not to run into darkness? Finally he decided and, knowing that he had decided incorrectly, he hurriedly walked along the old canal, to where the circus wagons swayed under the water.

No one knew how the lion cages ended up in the canal. But for that matter, no one seemed to remember where the canals themselves came from in this old dilapidated city, where rags rustled under the doors of houses every night mixed with sand, algae and tobacco from cigarettes that littered the shore since nineteen hundred tenth year

Be that as it may, canals cut through the city, and at the end of one of them, in the dark green, oil-stained water, lay old circus wagons and cages; the white enamel and gilding had peeled off, and rust was corroding the thick bars of the grilles.

A long time ago, in the early twenties, both vans and cages, like a cheerful summer thunderstorm, swept through the city, animals rushed about in cages, lions opened their mouths, their hot breath gave off the smell of meat. Teams of white horses carried this magnificence through Venice, through meadows and fields, long before the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio appropriated lions for its screensaver and created a completely different, new circus, which is destined to live forever on film strips.

Now everything that remains from the last festive carnival has found refuge here in the canal. In its deep water, some cells stood upright, others lay on their sides, buried under the waves of the tide, which sometimes completely hid them from view at night, and exposed them again at dawn. Fish scurried between the bars of the bars. During the day, here, on these islands of wood and steel, boys danced; at times they dived inside the cages, shook the bars and burst into laughter.

But now, long after midnight, as the last tram sped along the deserted sandy shores to its destination, the dark water quietly splashed in the canals and smacked the grates, like ancient old women smacking their toothless gums.

With my head down, I ran through the downpour, when suddenly it cleared up and the rain stopped. The moon, peeking through a gap in the dark clouds, watched me like a huge eye. I walked, stepping on the mirrors, and from them the same moon and the same clouds looked at me. I was walking across the sky that lay under my feet, and suddenly - suddenly it happened...

Somewhere nearby, about two blocks from me, a tidal wave rushed into the canal; salty sea water flowed in a smooth black stream between the shores. Apparently, somewhere nearby a sandy bridge broke through and the sea rushed into the canal. The dark water flowed further and further. She reached the footbridge just as I reached the middle of it.

The water hissed around the bars of the lion cages.

I jumped up to the bridge railing and grabbed it tightly.

Because right below me, in one of the cells, something faintly phosphorescent appeared.

Someone in the cage was moving his hand.

Apparently, the lion tamer, who had fallen asleep for a long time, had just woken up and could not understand where he was.

The hand slowly stretched along the bars - the tamer had finally awakened.

The water in the canal subsided and rose again.

And the ghost pressed against the bars.

Leaning over the railing, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

But then the luminous spot began to take shape. The ghost was no longer moving only his hand, his whole body was moving awkwardly and heavily, like a huge puppet that found itself behind bars.

I also saw a face - pale, with empty eyes, the moon was reflected in them, and only - not a face, but a silver mask.

And somewhere in the depths of my consciousness a long tram, turning along rusty rails, grinded its brakes, squealed at stops, and at every turn an invisible man shouted:

– Death... is a... lonely thing!

The tide began again and the water rose. It all seemed strangely familiar, as if I had already seen such a scene one night.

And the ghost in the cage stood up again.

It was a dead man, he was rushing out.

Someone let out a terrible scream.

And when the light flashed in the houses along the dark canal, I realized that I was screaming.

- Calmly! Back! Back!

More and more cars drove up, more and more police officers arrived, more and more windows in the houses lit up, more and more people in dressing gowns who had not woken up from sleep came up to me, who also had not yet woken up, but not from sleep. Like a crowd of unfortunate clowns abandoned on a bridge, we looked into the water at the sunken circus.

I was shaking, I peered into the flooded cage and thought: “How come I didn’t look back? Why didn’t you take a closer look at that stranger, because he probably knew everything about this poor guy there in the dark water.”

“God,” I thought, “wasn’t it him, that guy from the tram, who pushed the unfortunate man into the cage?”

Proof? None. All I could present were three words that sounded after midnight on the last tram, and the only witnesses were the rain, knocking on the wires and repeating these words, and the cold water, which, like death, approached the cells sunken in the canal, flooded them and retreated, becoming even colder than before.

More and more awkward clowns were coming out of the old houses.

- Hey, people! Everything is fine!

It began to rain again, and the arriving policemen looked sideways at me, as if they wanted to ask: “What, don’t you have enough of your own to do? Couldn’t you wait until the morning and call without identifying yourself?”

At the very edge of the bank above the canal, looking at the water with disgust, stood one of the policemen in black swim shorts. His body was white - it probably had not seen the sun for a long time. He stood watching the waves flood the cage, watching the dead man float up and beckon to him. A face appeared behind the bars. The sad face of a man who has gone far and forever. A gnawing melancholy grew within me. I had to move away: I felt my throat starting to tingle from the bitterness - just in case I started sobbing.

And then the white body of the policeman ripped through the water. And he disappeared.

I was afraid that he had drowned too. The rain drummed on the oily surface of the canal.

But suddenly the policeman appeared again - already in the cage, pressing his face to the bars, he was gasping for air.

I shuddered: it seemed to me as if the dead man had surfaced to take his last convulsive life-giving sip.

And a minute later I saw the policeman, kicking with all his might, swim out from the far end of the cage and dragging behind him something long, ghostly, like a funeral ribbon of faded algae.

Someone choked back a sob. Lord Jesus, is it really me?

The body was dragged ashore, the swimmer was rubbing himself with a towel. The lights of the patrol cars were blinking and fading. Three policemen, talking quietly, leaned over the dead man, shining their flashlights on him.

– ... seems like almost a day.

-...where is the investigator?

- He's off the phone. Tom followed him.

- Wallet? Identification?

- Empty - obviously a newcomer.

They began to empty the drowned man's pockets.

“No, not a newcomer,” I said and stopped short.

One of the policemen looked back and pointed a flashlight at me. He looked into my eyes with interest and heard the sounds that burst from my throat.

- Do you know him?

- So why…

- Why am I upset? Yes because! He died, gone forever. Oh my God! I'm the one who found him!

Suddenly my thoughts jumped back.

A long time ago, on a bright summer day, I turned a corner and suddenly saw a stopped car and a man stretched out underneath it. The driver just jumped out and bent over the body.

I took a step forward and froze. Something was turning pink on the road near my shoe.

I realized what it was by remembering lab classes in college. A lonely little lump of human brain.

Some woman, clearly a stranger, passing by, stopped and looked for a long time at the body under the wheels. Then, obeying an impulse, she did something that she herself did not expect. Slowly she knelt down next to the deceased. And she began to stroke his shoulder, gently, carefully, as if comforting: “Well, well, don’t, don’t!”

The policeman turned around:

- Why do you think so?

- But how... I mean... how else would he get into this cage under water? Someone had to put it there.

The flashlight flashed again, and a beam of light searched my face, like the eyes of a doctor looking for symptoms.

- Did you call?

“No,” I shuddered. “I just screamed and woke everyone up.”

- Hello! – someone said quietly.

A plainclothes detective, short in stature, beginning to go bald, knelt down next to the body and was already emptying the drowned man’s pockets. Some shreds and lumps fell out of them, looking like wet snow flakes, like pieces of papier-mâché.

-What the hell is this? – someone was surprised.

“I know,” I thought, but remained silent.

Bending next to the detective, I picked up pieces of wet paper with trembling hands. And the detective at this time examined other pockets, taking out the same garbage from them. I clutched the wet lumps in my fist and, straightening up, put them in my pocket, and the detective just raised his head.

“You're soaked through,” he said. – Tell the policeman your name and address and go home. Dry.

The rain started again. I was shaking. I turned around, told the policeman my name and address and quickly walked towards the house.

I had run almost a whole block when a car stopped next to me and the door opened. The stocky, balding detective nodded at me.

- Lord, what a look you have, it couldn’t be worse! - he said.

“I already heard about this from someone just an hour ago.”

- Sit down.

- Yes, I live a block from here.

- Sit down!

Shaking, I climbed into the car and he drove me the last two blocks to my musty-smelling, cookie-box-sized apartment for which I paid thirty dollars a month. Getting out of the car, I almost fell over, the trembling was so exhausting.

“Crumley,” the detective introduced himself. – Elmo Crumley. Call me when you figure out what kind of pieces of paper you hid in your pocket.

I winced guiltily. He reached his hand into his pocket. And nodded:

- Agreed.

- And stop suffering and shaking. Who was he? No one. “Crumley suddenly fell silent, apparently ashamed of what he had said, and bowed his head, preparing to move on.

- And for some reason it seems to me that I know by whom“he was,” I said. – When I remember, I’ll call you.

I stood there completely frozen. I was afraid that something else terrible was waiting for me behind me. What if, when I open the door, the black waters of the canal rush in?

- Forward! - Elmo Crumley ordered and slammed the door.

He left. Only two red dots remained from his car; they were moving away in the streams of the rain that had started again, which made me close my eyes.

I looked at the phone booth near the gas station across the street. I used this phone as if it were my own, calling various publishers, but they never called me back. Rummaging through my pockets for change, I wondered if I should call Mexico City, should I wake Peg, should I lay my fears on her, should I tell her about the cage, about the drowned man, and... oh God... scare her to death!

“Listen to the detective,” I thought.

I was no longer able to get my teeth together, and I had difficulty inserting the damned key into the keyhole.

The rain followed me into the apartment.

What was waiting for me outside the door?

An empty twenty-by-twenty-foot room, a sagging sofa, a bookshelf with fourteen books on it and a lot of empty space waiting to be filled, a chair bought on the cheap, and an unpainted pine desk with an ungreased Underwood Standard typewriter from 1934, a huge , like a piano, and clattering like wooden shoes on an uncarpeted floor.

A sheet of paper, long awaited in the wings, was inserted into the typewriter. And in the drawer next to the typewriter lay a small stack of magazines - a complete collection of my works - copies of "Cheap Detective Magazine", "Detective Stories", "Black Mask", each of them paid me thirty or forty dollars per story. There was another box on the other side of the typewriter, waiting for the manuscript to be put into it. There rested a single page of a book that did not want to begin. It read:

NOVEL WITHOUT A TITLE

And under these words is my last name. And the date is July 1949.

That is three months ago.

Still shaking, I undressed, dried myself with a towel, put on a robe, returned to the desk and stared at it.

I touched the typewriter, wondering who it was to me - a lost friend, a servant or an unfaithful lover?

Just a few weeks ago she made sounds that vaguely resembled the voice of a muse. And now almost every time I sit stupidly in front of the damned keyboard, as if my hands were cut off right down to the wrists. Three, four times a day I sit down at the table, tormented by the pangs of creativity. And nothing works out. And if it does, it immediately flies crumpled up onto the floor - every evening I sweep a bunch of paper balls out of the room. I'm stuck in the endless Arizona desert known as the Drought.

My downtime was largely explained by the fact that Peg is so far away - in Mexico City, among her mummies and catacombs, and I am here alone, and the sun has not shown in Venice for three months, instead there is only darkness, and fog, and rain, and again fog and darkness. Every night I wrapped myself in a cold cotton blanket, and at dawn I turned around with the same disgusting feeling in my soul. Every morning the pillow turned out to be damp, but I could not remember what I dreamed about and why it became salty.

I looked out the window at the phone, I listened to it from morning to evening, day after day, but not once did it ring to offer to turn my wonderful novel into money, if I had managed to finish it last year.

Suddenly I caught myself with my fingers hesitantly sliding over the keys of the typewriter. “Like the hands of that drowned man in a cage,” I thought and remembered how they stuck out between the bars of the bars, swaying in the water, like sea anemones. And I remembered other hands that I never saw - about the hands of the one who stood in the tram car behind me at night.

Both of them had no rest in their hands.

Slowly, very slowly, I sat down at the table.

Something was pounding in my chest, it seemed like something was beating against the bars of a cage thrown into the canal.

Someone was breathing down my neck.

We need to get rid of both. I need to do something to make them calm down and stop pestering me, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep.

Some kind of wheezing sounded in my throat, as if I was about to vomit. But I didn't vomit.

Instead, fingers ran over the keys, crossing out the title “NOVEL WITHOUT A TITLE.”

Then I moved the carriage, made a space and saw the words appear on the paper: DEATH, then BUSINESS and, finally, LONELY.

I stared wildly at this headline, gasped and, starting to type, typed without stopping for almost an hour, until I made the tram, in the reflections of thunderstorm lightning, rush away through the downpour, until I flooded the lion’s cage with black sea water, which gushed out, sweeping away all obstacles, and released the dead man into freedom.

Water flowed down my hands, flowed down to my palms, and over my fingers onto the page.

And suddenly, like a flood, darkness came.

I was so happy about her that I laughed.

And collapsed into bed.

I tried to sleep, but I sneezed and sneezed and sneezed, I used up a whole pack of paper handkerchiefs and lay awake, completely miserable, feeling that my cold would never end.

At night the fog thickened, and somewhere far away in the bay, lonely and lost, a siren buzzed and buzzed incessantly. It seemed as if a huge sea monster, long dead, abandoned and forgotten, mourning itself, was swimming further and further from the shore, into the depths, in search of its own grave.

At night, the wind blew through my window, moving the printed pages of my novel. I heard the paper, sighing, like water in the canals, breathing, like the one on the tram breathing down my neck. Finally I fell asleep.

Woke up late in the bright sunshine. Sneezing, I reached the door, opened it wide and found myself in such a dazzling stream of daylight that I wanted to live forever, but, ashamed of this thought, I, like Ahab, was ready to encroach on the sun. However, instead I began to quickly get dressed. Clothes did not dry overnight. I pulled on my tennis shorts, put on my jacket and, turning out the pockets of my still damp jacket, I found papier-mâché-like lumps of paper that had fallen out of the dead man’s pockets just a few hours earlier.

Holding my breath, I touched them with my fingertips. I knew what it was. But I was not yet ready to think the question through to the end.

I don't like to run. But then he ran...

I ran away from the canals, from the cage, from the voice in the dark night tram, away from my room, away from the freshly printed pages waiting to be read, because they began the story of everything that happened, but now I didn’t want to re-read them yet . Without thinking about anything, I ran headlong along the shore to the south.

Fled to a country called the Lost World.

But he slowed down, deciding to watch the morning feeding of the strange mechanical animals.

Oil rigs. Oil pumps.

These giant pterodactyls, I told my friends, began to fly here by air at the beginning of the century and smoothly descended to the ground on dark nights to build nests. Frightened coastal residents woke up in the middle of the night to the chomping sounds of huge hungry animals. People sat up in their beds, awakened at three o'clock in the morning by the creaking, grinding, knocking of the bones of these skeletal monsters, the flapping of their bare wings, which rose and fell, reminiscent of the heavy sighs of primitive creatures. Their smell, eternal as time itself, floated over the coast, coming from the pre-cave age, from the times when people did not yet live in caves, it was the smell of the jungle that had sunk into the ground, to die there in the depths and give life to oil.

I ran through this forest of brontosaurs, imagining triceratops and palisade-like stegosaurs squeezing black molasses out of the ground, drowning in tar. Their plaintive cries echoed from the shore, and the surf returned their ancient thunderous roar to the land.

I ran past low houses nestled among monsters, past canals dug and filled with water back in 1910 so that they reflected the cloudless sky, gondolas slid smoothly along their clear surface in those days, and bridges were hung with multi-colored light bulbs like fireflies , promising cheerful night balls, similar to ballet performances, which were no longer repeated after the war. And when the gondolas sank to the bottom, taking with them the cheerful laughter of the last party, the black monsters continued to suck the sand.

Of course, some people from those times still remained here, hidden in shacks or locked in a few Mediterranean-style villas erected here and there at the whim of architects.

I ran and ran and suddenly stopped. It was time for me to turn back, go look for this papier-mâché-like garbage, and then find out what the name of its missing, dead owner was.

But now I could not take my eyes off the Mediterranean palazzo rising in front of me, shining with whiteness, as if the full moon had fallen on the sand.

“Constance Rattigan,” I whispered, “would you like to come out and play?”

In fact, the palace was not a palace, but a blinding snow-white Moorish fortress, with its facade facing the ocean, it posed a daring challenge to the waves: let them rush in, let them try to crush it. The fortress was crowned with turrets and minarets, blue and white tiles lay obliquely on the sandy terraces, dangerously close - only about a hundred feet - from the place where curious waves bowed respectfully to the fortress, where seagulls circled, trying to look into the windows, and where now froze I.

"Constance Rattigan."

But no one came out.

Lonely and mysterious, this palace, standing on the shore, where only the crash of the surf and lizards reigned, vigilantly guarded the mysterious queen of the screen.

A light burned in the window of one of the towers day and night. I never saw it being dark there. I wonder if she is still there?

A shadow darted outside the window, as if someone had come to look down at me, and then retreated like a moth.

I stood there, remembering.

Her dizzying rise in the twenties lasted only one quickly passing year, and then she was unexpectedly thrown down from a height and disappeared somewhere in the dungeons of the cinema. As they wrote in the old newspapers, the studio director found her in bed with a make-up artist and, grabbing a knife, cut the muscles in Constance Rattigan's legs so that she would never again be able to walk the way he loved. And he immediately escaped and sailed west, to China. Constance Rattigan has not been seen since then. And no one knew if she could even walk.

"God!" – I heard myself whisper.

I suspected that Constance Rattigan visited my world late at night, that she knew people I knew. Something predicted to me the possibility of meeting her soon.

“Go,” I told myself. “Take that copper knocker in the shape of a lion’s face and knock on the door that faces the shore.”

No. I shook my head. I was afraid that I would be greeted at the door with just the glare of black and white film.

After all, you don’t look for a meeting with secret love, you just want to dream that someday at night she will leave her fortress and walk along the sand, and the wind, chasing her, will cover her tracks, that she will stop near your house, knock on the window, will come in and begin to unwind the film, pouring out his soul in the images on the ceiling.

“Constance, dear Rattigan,” I mentally begged, “come out!” Jump into this long white limousine, there it is, sparkling and hot, standing on the sand near the house, start the engine, and we will rush with you south, to Coronado, to the sun-drenched shore ... "

But no one got out, no one started the engine, no one called me, no one rushed with me south, towards the sun, away from this fog siren buried somewhere in the ocean.

And I retreated, surprised to find salt water on my tennis shoes, turned and trudged back to the cold rain-drenched cages, walked along the wet sand - the world's greatest writer, which, however, no one knew except myself.

With wet confetti and wet wads of papier-mâché in my jacket pockets, I walked into the place I knew I should visit.

Where the old people gathered.

This cramped, dimly lit shop overlooked the tram tracks. It sold candy, cigarettes and magazines, as well as tickets for the red tram that rushed from Los Angeles to the ocean.

This shop, which smelled of tobacco smoke, was owned by two brothers, their fingers streaked with nicotine stains. They were always grumbling and bickering with each other like old maids. A group of old men took their place on a bench at the side. Oblivious to the conversations going on around them, like spectators at a tennis match, they sat here hour after hour, day after day, fooling visitors, adding years to their lives. One claimed to be eighty-two. Another says that he is ninety. The third boasted that he was ninety-four. Every week the age changed, the old people did not remember what they had invented a month ago.

Venice in California (Venice) is an eastern suburb of Los Angeles on the Pacific Ocean. It is adjacent to the town of Santa Monica to the south. Venice was created in 1905 according to the ideas and funds of the tobacco magnate Abbott Kinney, who decided to build a city on the model of Italian Venice, for which more than 32 km of canals were laid. A park with rides and other entertainment has been created. In the 1950s–1960s. the city fell into disrepair. Since the 1970s The revival of Venice began. Now it is known as a favorite habitat of artists and architects. Many avant-garde buildings appeared.

Hopalong Cassidy is a cowboy, the hero of 28 Westerns by C. E. Mulford, written in the 1907–1940s. Paramount Pictures made 35 films about him, and United Artists made another 31. All 66 films (1935–1953) starred William Boyd (1895–1972) as Hopalong, so in the end his name and his name heroes have become synonymous.

. Brontosaurus is a fossil reptile of enormous size (from 9 to 22 m in length) with a very long tail and neck.

Triceratops is a large (up to 6 m long) fossil reptile of the Cretaceous period with thick legs, a long tail, a horn at the end of the snout and a pair of horns on the forehead.

Stegosaurus is a fossil reptile up to 10 m in length, with a double crest of bone plates up to a meter high along the entire back.

Hollywood thrillers. Detective trilogy Ray Bradbury

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Title: Hollywood Thrillers. Detective trilogy

About the book by Ray Bradbury “Hollywood Thrillers. Detective trilogy"

The book was also published under the title “The Hollywood Trilogy in One Volume.”

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Ray Bradbury

Hollywood thrillers. Detective trilogy

DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS

A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS: ANOTHER TALE OF TWO CITIES

LET'S ALL KILL CONSTANCE

* * *

Death is a lonely thing

At the end of one of the canals one could see the sunken, rusty wagons of the old circus, and if one looked closely at the water at night, one could see all sorts of living creatures scurrying around in cages - fish and lobsters brought by the tide from the ocean. It seemed as if all the doomed circuses in the world were rusting here.

And behind, in the aisle, someone else was riding, it is unknown when he entered the carriage.

I finally noticed him because, standing behind me, he was swaying and swaying from side to side, as if he didn’t know where to sit - because when you have forty empty seats looking at you closer to night, it’s hard to decide which one. choose them. But then I heard him sit down, and I realized that he sat down right behind me, I sensed his presence, like you smell the tide that is about to flood the coastal fields. The foul smell of his clothes was overcome by a stench that suggested he had drunk too much in too short a time.

I didn’t look back: I had long known from experience that if you look at someone, a conversation will follow.

Closing my eyes, I firmly decided not to turn around. But it did not help.

Ox,” the stranger moaned.

I felt him lean towards me in his seat. I felt hot breath burning my neck. I leaned forward with my hands on my knees.

Ox,” he moaned even louder. This is how someone falling from a cliff or a swimmer caught in a storm far from the shore could beg for help.

The rain was already pouring down with all its might, a big red tram rumbled through the night through meadows covered with bluegrass, and the rain drummed on the windows, and the drops flowing down the glass hid the fields stretching around from view. We sailed through Culver City without seeing the movie studio, and moved on - the lumbering car rattled, the floor creaked under our feet, the empty seats rattled, the signal whistle squealed.

And I smelled disgustingly of fumes when an invisible man sitting behind me shouted:

Death…

And the whistle blew again.

It seemed to me that he was going to cry. I looked forward at the streams of rain dancing in the rays of light as they flew towards us.

The tram, rattling, braked and stopped.

“Come on,” I thought, “finish the deal!”

“... it’s a lonely matter,” he finished in a terrible whisper and moved away.

I heard the back door open. And then he turned around.

The carriage was empty. The stranger disappeared, taking with him his funeral speeches. You could hear the gravel crunching on the road.

The man, invisible in the darkness, muttered to himself, but the doors slammed shut. I could still hear his voice through the window, something about a grave. About someone's grave. About loneliness.

I raised the window and leaned out, peering into the rainy darkness behind.

I couldn't tell what was left there - a city full of people, or just one person full of despair - nothing was seen or heard.

The tram rushed towards the ocean.

I was overcome with fear that we would fall into it.

I rolled down the window noisily and was shaking.

All the way I convinced myself: “Come on! You're only twenty-seven! And you don’t drink.” But…

But still I drank.

Double vodka, please.

There was probably nowhere greater emptiness than my home, except in my bank account - the account of the Great American Writer - in the old bank building, like a Roman temple, which rose on the shore near the water, and it seemed that his will be washed out to sea at the next low tide. Every morning, the cashiers, sitting with oars in the boats, waited while the manager drowned his melancholy in the nearest bar. I didn't meet them often. Even though I only occasionally managed to sell a story to some pathetic detective magazine, I didn't have any cash to put in the bank. That's why…

I took a sip of vodka. And he wrinkled his face.

Lord,” the bartender was surprised, “is this your first time trying vodka?”

At first.

You look just creepy.

I'm truly terrified. Have you ever felt like something terrible was going to happen, but you didn't know what?

Is this when it sends shivers down your spine?

I took another sip of vodka and shuddered.

No it's not that. I want to say: do you feel fatal the horror, how does it approach you?

The bartender fixed his gaze on something over my shoulder, as if he saw there the ghost of a stranger who was riding on a tram.

So, did you bring this horror with you?

So, you have nothing to fear here.

But, you see,” I said, “he talked to me, this Charon.”

I didn't see his face. Oh God, I feel really bad! Good night.

Don't drink anymore!

The book was also published under the title “The Hollywood Trilogy in One Volume.”

Bradbury also solves ethical problems in a unique way: evil and violence in his books appear unreal, “make-believe.” Like some “dark forces”, the best way to combat them is to ignore them, beat them, and go to another plane of perception. This position is reflected very clearly in the novel “Trouble Is Coming,” where in the finale the main characters defeat the “dark carnival” of evil spirits with farcical fun.

Works

The main major works translated into Russian:

, (The Martian Chronicles)
, (Fahrenheit 451)

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