Sleeping Dogs (Butcher's Boy, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 4: Butcher's Boy

Perry, Thomas

 
9780804111607: Sleeping Dogs (Butcher's Boy, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 080411160X ISBN 13: 9780804111607
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

He came to England to rest. He calls himself Michael Shaeffer, says he's a retired American businessman. He goes to the races, dates a kinky aristocrat, and sleeps with dozens of weapons. Ten years ago it was different. Then, he was the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled mob hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war. Ever since, there's been a price on his head.
Now, after a decade, they've found him. The Butcher's Boy escapes back to the States with more reasons to kill. Until the odds turn terrifyingly against him . . . until the Mafia, the cops, the FBI, and the damn Justice Department want his hide . . . until he's locked into a cross-country odyssey of fear and death that could tear his world to pieces . . .
"Exciting . . . Suspenseful . . . A thriller's job is to make you turn the pages until the story's done and your eyes hurt and the clock says 3 a.m. . . . I wouldn't try to grab this one away from somebody only half-way through. No telling what might happen."
-- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thomas Perry won an Edgar Award for The Butcher’s Boy, and Metzger’s Dog was one of the New York Times's Notable Books of the Year. His other books include The Face-Changers, Shadow Woman, Dance for the Dead, and Vanishing Act. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.

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He came to England to rest. He calls himself Michael Shaeffer, says he's a retired American businessman. He goes to the races, dates a kinky aristocrat, and sleeps with dozens of weapons. Ten years ago it was different. Then, he was the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled mob hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war. Ever since, there's been a price on his head.
Now, after a decade, they've found him. The Butcher's Boy escapes back to the States with more reasons to kill. Until the odds turn terrifyingly against him . . . until the Mafia, the cops, the FBI, and the damn Justice Department want his hide . . . until he's locked into a cross-country odyssey of fear and death that could tear his world to pieces . . .
"Exciting . . . Suspenseful . . . A thriller's job is to make you turn the pages until the story's done and your eyes hurt and the clock says 3 a.m. . . . I wouldn't try to grab this one away from somebody only half-way through. No telling what might happen."
-- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

On August 14 at three in the afternoon, Michael Schaeffer noticed a small poster on a board inside the front window of a small teahouse. It said THE AMAZING POWERS OF THE INTELLECT in bold letters at the top, and this attracted his attention. He hoped that there were amazing powers in the intellect, although his dealings with others and many years of self-examination had revealed none that he thought much of. In smaller letters at the bottom, the poster said 14 AUGUST, FOUR P.M. and LYNCHGATE HOUSE, BATH.
 
He had a little trouble finding it, because in England “Lynchgate House” could mean anything from a private cottage to the corporate headquarters of a conglomerate. By asking directions he discovered it to be a country house not, strictly speaking, in Bath, owned by someone not named Lynchgate. When he arrived, he found a pair of pink, beefy young women at the entrance to smile at everyone and presumably to shut the door when their number approximated the capacity of Lynchgate House. Inside, he followed a middle-aged woman in a flowered dress to a large room with leaded-glass windows that reached from the fifteen-foot ceiling nearly to the floor, and looked out onto a garden with a foreground of topiary trees shaved and worried into the shape of gumdrops and a background of hedges nearly twenty feet high.
 
The room contained about thirty-five people, all very British and all apparently from the class of British people who always seemed to be busy doing things that couldn’t possibly bring in any money, but didn’t necessarily cost much, either: gardening and bird hikes and lectures. He wondered how many of them knew Latin, and decided that probably all of them did. His eyes settled inevitably on a pretty young woman who was arranging some pamphlets on a table at the front. She bent over as she worked, and he appreciated the curve of her hips under the light silk dress she wore. At this moment The Honourable Meg came in, scanned the crowd and sat down next to him.
 
The first thing Schaeffer noticed was her skin. It was fair, and appeared to have an even, uniform smoothness like natural ivory, its only variance a slight flush to her cheeks. Her shining dark brown hair made the skin seem to glow, and her bright green eyes looked amused. What she had wasn’t exactly beauty, but perfection, and this was unnerving because it tempted him to scrutinize her for flaws. He sat stiffly in his chair to keep from violating the expanded amount of space that seemed her due.
 
The girl he had been watching turned around and announced, “Mrs. Purvis will open the meeting with a few announcements on our autumn trip to Atlantis.”
 
Schaeffer barely breathed. Maybe it was the name of something else, or maybe he had heard the word wrong.
 
Mrs. Purvis was a slightly plump, enthusiastic blond lady in her forties, and she dispelled his doubts. “After the experience we had last year on our trip to the alien landing strips on the Plains of Nazca, I’d like to beg everyone to pay attention to the instruction sheet when packing this year. We’ll be establishing our base camp on Grand Turk Island. It is tropical, but we’ll be there in hurricane season. During a hurricane, between twenty-five and fifty centimeters of rain may fall in two days, and the winds may be violent, so dress accordingly.”
 
Michael Schaeffer felt distinctly uncomfortable. He wondered for a moment how this group of people would go about dressing for twenty inches of rain and 150-mile-an-hour winds. The girl who had introduced Mrs. Purvis now launched into a few more details. “Everything we know about ancient Atlantis suggests they wore bright colors, probably lots of reds and yellows. So please try to respect that scheme. There will be ever-so-many lingering spirits about, and it won’t do to offend them.”
 
Schaeffer slipped out of his seat and moved toward the door. As he made it past the two beefy girls, one of them asked, “Something wrong, Meg?” and he heard a soft voice at his shoulder. “Sorry, dear. We’ve just got to leave. My friend has another appointment.” Then she slipped her arm in Michael’s and pulled him out of Lynchgate House.
 
Outside the door she didn’t let go of his arm. “Thank you. I’m sorry I had to hitchhike, but when you left it was my last chance. Two persons might have to leave at once for some perfectly benign reason, but if they leave one after the other, it appears to be a trend and they get very upset.”
 
“Do they?” he said. “You’re welcome.” He tried to turn toward her to remove his arm from her grasp subtly.
 
“Don’t do that,” she insisted. “They’ll think I just grabbed you for a convenient exit, and they already resent me.”
 
“Who are you, their psychiatrist?”
 
“Meg Holroyd. The Honourable Margaret Susanna Moncrief Holroyd. Does that mean anything to you?”
 
“Where I come from, it would mean you’re a politician, so the ‘Honourable’ would be a lie. Here I suppose it means something else.”
 
“No, it’s a lie here, too. It means that hundreds of years ago there was a man in my family whose homicidal tendencies got him a title. My people are from York, but nobody goes up north anymore except to sweep the cobwebs out of the family battlements. Where do you come from, by the way?”
 
“Arizona.” Automatically he fed her the first half of his prepared story.
 
She demanded the other half. “What’s your name?”
 
“Michael. Would you like to go for tea or something?”
 
“Charmingly put. Who could refuse? Macready’s isn’t far.”
 
“Good. When we get there you’ll have to let go of my arm. Why do those people resent you?”
 
She smiled proudly. “I did something cruel to them for fun.”
 
“You did?” He watched her as they walked. “What?”
 
“Something horrible. Afterward, at the next meeting, they voted a formal reprimand and made speeches saying how irresponsible I was about taking care of the hidden secrets vouchsafed to the initiates.” She laughed happily.
 
“In other words, you’re not planning to tell me.”
 
She studied him for a moment, or pretended to. “Yes, knowing you as I do, I suppose I’ll have to. You’ll make me, won’t you?”
 
As they entered Macready’s tea shop and he followed her to a table in a dark corner, he had a moment to evaluate the risk he was taking. But then they were seated, and he decided to defend himself with questions. “You don’t seem to take your friends very seriously. What are you doing with them?”
 
She shrugged. “They’re one of my hobbies. I give them money, so I get to play with them. I inherited them, actually. My grandfather was a scholarly sort, and all his life he supported study groups and lectures on scientific topics. But late in life when he was beginning to think a lot about dying, and was getting a bit dotty, he lost interest in geology and archaeology and flora and fauna, and became obsessed with this sort of thing.”
 
“Expeditions to Atlantis?”
 
“Well, it’s a whole range of things, all mixed up and linked together. There’s Atlantis, but some of them think it was an ancient civilization and others think it was people from outer space. There’s a...

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Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
1993
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
080411160X
ISBN 13 
9780804111607
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Friedensallee 273
Hamburg
22763
Deutschland

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