Paper curtain glass crown introductory fragment. Elena Mikhalkova paper curtain, glass crown. I recognized this one right away

All characters are fictitious, any resemblance to real or living people is coincidental.

Chapter 1

1

“What a wonderful start to the day,” thought Sergei Babkin. And he immediately tried to get this thought out of his head, because such thoughts are a sure way to frighten away everything good and lure something dubious and unsympathetic in its place.

The telephone played Bach's "Joke" softly.

“Hello, Igor Vasilyevich,” Ilyushin said cheerfully. - Glad to hear you.

And I'm really glad, thought Babkin.

Sergei himself considered Igor Perigorsky a mysterious and creepy creature, like a praying mantis. Formally, Perigorsky was the manager of the Artemis paint club. In fact, he played the role of the Lord God on a territory of twenty hectares and gave himself up to his occupation with a passion that could hardly be suspected in this imperturbable, lean man with infinitely long arms and huge semicircles of brown eyelids.

“Of course, Igor Vasilyevich,” Makar said calmly, after listening to his interlocutor. “I owe you, you know.

And this is where Sergei should be wary. Sergey should think why the powerful Perigorsky needed two private detectives when he is one of those people who have a goldfish on their parcels and considers it an honor if they are addressed directly.

But Babkin listened with half an ear, thinking that his wife had a birthday soon and it was completely unclear what to give her. Perfume? Ring? At the thought of choosing a gift, he was overcome by existential longing.

Does he need private detectives? Ilyushin asked into the phone. - Oh, that's how. No problem. Let it come.

“The ring,” thought Babkin. - Should it be simple? Or with stone? And if with a stone, then with which?»

- And you, Igor Vasilyevich. Total!

Ilyushin put down the phone and fixed a thoughtful glance on Babkin.

Looks like we have a new client.

My friend is a businessman, Perigorsky explained. Dear person in Kazan.

A friend has a son. Singer. Good boy. He had problems with the administrator. We must help.

“I don’t understand what they want from us,” Babkin grumbled, conjuring over a cezve in anticipation of a client who was about to appear. – Difficulties with the administrator? Translation: steal. And how can we help?

Ilyushin sipped his coffee and grimaced.

Seryoga, I couldn't refuse. After what Perigorsky did for us in Venice, we will even investigate the loss of his hamster. 1
The investigation in Venice is described in the detective story "The Hunt for the Winged Lion".

“What is there to investigate,” Babkin snorted. “Perigorsky himself ate it.

In the hallway, the bell broke into small trills.

- And here is the son! Makar put the cup on the windowsill. “Look, don’t scare the little boy for me!”

Babkin went to the hallway.

It must be said that even at that moment he was not tormented by a bad premonition. The clouds did not thicken, the parquet did not tremble underfoot. And he threw open the door, partly twisted by his thoughts in those clouds where his wife tried on the ring and blossomed in a grateful smile.

And having opened it, it immediately collapsed from these clouds.

In front of him stood the singer Jonik, known to all teenagers, and gloomily twisted a golden signet the size of a dumpling on his finger.

- Hey! Jonic muttered. Are you Ilyushin?

“Then move over.

With these words, the young rapper squeezed past Babkin and went deep into the apartment. And Babkin remained standing, feeling as if he had been slapped on the nose with a fly swatter.

To justify Sergei, it should be said that most people who talked with Jonik even for a very short time had a similar feeling. For some, it was accompanied by olfactory hallucinations. The nose stubbornly told the owner that he had stepped into a pile of foul-smelling substance.

It is all the more surprising that Jonik himself, at the first meeting, did not at all give the impression of a person capable of causing such an amazing effect. He was a plump-lipped young man with expressive dark eyes and somewhat childish, blurred features. Growth is average. Voice - nasal with hoarseness.

And with this nasal, hoarse voice, Jonik rapped. The song “My home is a slum” was played twice a day on General Radio. And with the hit “I am your wolf, you are my hare,” Jonik climbed to the top of the chart and sat there all summer, trampling on rivals with a plump leg.

The official legend said that Jonik was a child of the gate. Bastard and poverty. He sang in the streets to earn a moldy humpback. Twice went to jail for fighting and theft (single “I won’t return to the bunk”). He wandered, unloaded wagons, slept in boxes and ate what he himself caught in the Moscow Canal.

According to the generally accepted version, Jonik's life took a sharp turn when the "Bentley" of a very famous producer stalled in a traffic jam on Tverskaya and the unlucky owner was forced to go down the subway.

It was there in the passage that he heard the songs of the young rapper.

Until the morning, the producer sat on the spit-stained floor and listened, forgetting about everything. And with the first rays of the sun, he timidly approached the hoarse singer and offered a multi-million dollar contract, tours throughout the country and the glory of the king of Russian rap.

And the Bentley. Even if it was defective anyway.

Since then, Jonik has become the idol of millions. At least, that's what he claimed. I even wanted to change my last name to Kumirov, but someone dissuaded him.

There was a storm of applause in the hall.

- Brothers! Be strong! Be like me!

Listeners approvingly hooted and tried to be like Jonik.

The singer emphasized his masculinity by all available means. First, he shaved his head, leaving a tuft on the top of his head, like a pineapple. Evil tongues claimed that the new haircut gives Jonik a resemblance not to an army foreman, but to a sad monkey who failed an intelligence test. But good tongues called them scoundrels, scum and envious bastards for this.

Secondly, he wore camouflage. Wide-leg pants that Jonik dropped a little, boots two sizes too big, jackets with a thousand pockets. And on top of this camouflage kit of a partisan, sent behind enemy lines, clusters of golden chains were dangling as thick as a fattened boa constrictor.

Thirdly, with the indomitable ardor characteristic of youth, Jonik smashed and branded the modern stage. “Your pop idols are false idols! – he repeated in all interviews. “They are raping the people’s brain!”

A journalist who once had the imprudence to ask what kind of execution exposes the people's brain to Jonik's song "Two Nostrils" was thrown out of his dressing room by the rapper.

Not by myself, of course. The hands of the guards.

And, of course, fans. “Crowds of women lust after my muscular body! the rapper sang, patting his soft white belly. “Kamon, baby, don’t pretend you didn’t want me!”

Confirming the image of the most brutal singer in Russia, Jonik changed girlfriends faster than they had time to realize what a great man they were lucky to be next to. Preference was given to blondes. “Women are my weakness,” the singer repented to the camera. On one such weakness he eventually married. The young wife was the winner of one of the Moscow beauty contests. "I know I'm sexy," she drawled in a baby voice. “That’s why my Jonik chose me.” As befits a real man, his girlfriend Jonik from time to time beat and dragged her blond braids. After family scenes, she appeared, proudly sparkling with a bruise, like an order deserved in bloody battles. “Until you teach a woman life, it will be bad,” the singer shared the wisdom of his ancestors that had been revealed to him.

And at that moment this man was sprawled out in Ilyushin's armchair, legs wide apart, mumbling something indistinct.

Babkin would have got rid of the insolent man in three seconds, but Makar's expression stopped him. Ilyushin had fun. And if Ilyushin was having fun, Babkin had to play the role of a silent hallucination.

“Try to tell everything from the very beginning,” Makar suggested with mocking politeness.

- Hey, what am I doing? Jonik nervously drummed his fingers on the armrest.

Are you pretending to be a cow? Ilyushin suggested.

Jonik stared at him with a gloomy ram's gaze, before the pressure of which even new gates would fall. But Makar, if he wished, knew how to look as simple-hearted as a young dill.

“That’s all Andryukha,” the rapper squeezed out. - Reshetnikov. My administrator.

“So-so,” Ilyushin drawled encouragingly. - And what about him?

Jonic winced. Jonik twisted his mouth. Jonik made a face of immeasurable disgust, which the behavior of administrator Reshetnikov aroused in him.

Looks like he got someone.

- Where did it appear?

The rapper rolled his eyes.

- Yes, fir-burning ... He has an affair!

"Yeah," Makar said. - Novel. From your administrator.

- Well. Horned creature!

Ilyushin and Sergei looked at each other, and Babkin felt vague satisfaction, catching the confusion in Makar's eyes. It seems that even the mighty intellect of his partner gave in to this task. Makar did not understand how the novel of an administrator unknown to him becomes a problem for rapper Jonik.

About what he told their guest.

The young man looked at Makar with contemptuous pity.

“I think they said you’re smart,” he drawled nasally. - It doesn't look like it.

“Mimicry,” Ilyushin assured.

Jonik paid no attention to his words.

- If he has an affair, what does it mean? It's him, bitch, cheating on me, or what? Yes, I'm for it ...

And the young man expressively described the torments to which he would condemn the unfortunate Reshetnikov.

- Changes? - Babkin repeated in a daze, forgetting about his role as a silent hallucination.

“Wait a minute. What does change mean?

Jonic glanced at him.

“What, are you stupid too?” This freak has found someone. I have a nose for these things!

“Two nostrils,” Babkin recalled out of place.

- I picked him up, such trash, in the garbage heap. Pulled out of the mud like a kitten. Where would he be if not for me? And that's how he pays! Yes for this...

Jonik broke into a swearing tirade and kicked the chair.

“Uh-uh…” Makar was puzzled. “The situation is undeniably tragic. I sympathize and all. But how can we help?

The young man smiled wryly.

- What, you really don’t cut?

He leaned forward, and all the chains jingled menacingly, as if promising a long imprisonment in shackles.

2

"Forget to think," said Babkin.

"Never," Babkin said.

"I'd rather die," said Babkin.

Makar patiently listened to about ten options for refusal and returned to where he started:

Seryoga, we have no choice. We subscribed to this treasure with nostrils.

- I didn't sign up!

- Even as signed. When he accepted the help of Perigorsky.

“If I had been warned that in return I would have to hunt down someone's lover, I would send his help to you know where?

“I guess,” Ilyushin nodded. - But, as the famous song says, minced meat cannot be turned back, and you cannot restore meat from cutlets.

Babkin sat down on the floor and with difficulty suppressed the urge to grab his head and start rocking.

Do you even know where you're sending me?

- Cream of glamor! Makar promised. - The best people of our stage!

“Panopticon,” Babkin snapped.

- Have some fun.

- Who served in the army, he does not laugh in the circus. Listen, - he raised a pained look at Makar. "Why don't you take it upon yourself?"

“I don’t look like a bodyguard,” Ilyushin sighed. And this is the subject of my endless regrets. Whether business you, my widescreen friend.

“I’d like to hit you,” the widescreen friend said wistfully. - It won't help.

Sunbeams scattered across the parquet and at that moment seemed to Babkin the most malicious creatures in the world, not counting his partner. Tease, you bastards! They are good. They have freedom. Run wherever you want, dance for yourself even on the walls, even on the ceiling. And he has to do a humiliating job. To which he would not have agreed in life if it were not for Ilyushin.

“Hunt down someone else's lover,” Babkin said with disgust. - What could be worse.

- Track yours? Ilyushin suggested.

But Sergei did not listen.

- The most brutal Russian pop singer! he said with unspeakable sarcasm. - "Beat the perverts!" "Let's purge our ranks of homosexuals!" Ugh!

Babkin held out his hand for a cup and poured the cooled coffee into himself in one gulp.

- Explain to me why this is all? he demanded. - No one asks him to cut the truth-womb and publicly confess his inclinations. But why lie so blatantly?

Ilyushin shook his head condescendingly.

- Seryoga, you are like a child, by God. Do you think Jonic makes money by selling his songs? No. He is selling himself. And the audience that listens to him most willingly pecks at the slogans about the purity of the race and traditional values.

“But any idiot off the street who specializes in tracking down unfaithful wives can do the job for him,” Sergei said grimly.

Ilyushin laughed.

- So that the day after tomorrow the yellow press is full of headlines that the rapper Jonik, who talks about his love for blondes at all angles, is a jealous gay? Come to your senses, my naive friend. Any idiot on the street he turns to will first do the smartest thing of his life and sell that information to the press.

"What a pity I'm not an idiot," muttered Babkin.

Ilyushin was going to be sarcastic, but this time he restrained himself. He perfectly saw the comic side of the situation and could not help but laugh at his friend, who took what was happening to heart. Makar himself, having a detached cold mind, considered all this as an anecdote. But at the same time, he perfectly understood that a powerful blow had been dealt to Sergei's pride.

They were both detectives to the core. But Ilyushin took on another case, because he was curious. That was the driving force behind most of his actions. In another life, Makar Ilyushin would have become a cat, or rather, a stray cat, wandering around rooftops, garbage dumps and back stairs, catching one mouse after another, not so much because of hunger, but out of the pleasure of hunting.

Babkin in another life would have become a dog. And not a sub-fence mongrel, but a full-fledged servant: a Rottweiler or a Russian terrier. For a shepherd dog, he was too independent. It would never have occurred to Sergei to say that he was attracted by the idea of devotion to work, he did not even think of himself in such terms. However, he completed each successful investigation with a sense of satisfaction, not because the mystery had been solved, but because, in a global sense, he and Makar had restored justice. It is done. A real thing to talk about and think about with pride.

And suddenly - rapper Jonik.

The worst part was that this little bastard had thought of everything.

3

– Simple spying won't do anything,” Jonik said drawling his words. - I tried. My Andryusha is encrypted. Worse than that ... Stirlitz. But I have one guess who he contacted. And this is where everything works out well.

When Babkin found out exactly how everything was going well, his short-cropped hair stood on end.

“Party,” Jonik said. - Pati. Rally of freaks.

And, seeing the misunderstanding on the faces of the detectives, he deciphered:

- Bogdan has a party on Wednesday. He gathers friends at his country house. - At the word "friends" such a smile ran across Jonik's face that Babkin felt uneasy. - I'm also invited.

Makar raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Jonik nodded, noticing this movement. - I'm in shock. Ogloblya wants a truce. Okay, I'm not evil. There will be a truce for him.

Then Babkin began to remember something. Even he heard rumors about the scandal between the young rapper and Bogdan Gregorovich, the king of the pop scene, a handsome two-meter tall, quick-tempered and capricious as a child. It seems to have started with Jonik either spitting or urinating on Gregorovich's pink limousine. In response, Gregorovich publicly called the rapper an enuretic bug. And away we go. Insults fell faster than overripe apples, and the spectators, friends and foes of both, watched this performance with delight.

And now - a party in the house of Gregorovich. Where only a select few are likely to be invited.

“I don’t know why he calls me. - Jonik seemed to read Babkin's thoughts. - I do not care. But he will have someone there ... I think so, Andryusha muddied with this someone.

“So you want us to infiltrate a private party and follow your administrator and one of the guests there?” Makar was surprised.

Babkin even cheered up. Impossible order. Which means Jonik might be looking for someone else for the job.

But the guy grinned again, and Sergei was seized by a bad suspicion. It looks like they haven't been told everything.

- You know what's funny? Jonik glanced at them. - The fact that at such parties they hang out without protection. Like, all your own, you can relax.

He leaned back in his chair and stretched contentedly, as if illustrating his own words.

And then Babkin remembered. Even before him, a man extremely far from Russian music, some echoes of the public life of stars reached him. Before his mind's eye stood photographs of paparazzi from nightclubs, restaurants and creative drunks with the participation of Jonik.

And in these photos, the rapper was never alone. Behind him always - always! - towered two ambalas.

- How these singing cowards laughed at me! Jonic grinned. - They scratched their wit about me! "Our golden boy is afraid of being stolen!" he mimicked with a shrill note in his voice. “And I always knew that someday this habit would come in handy for me. I'm still playing them all.

- You mean you will also be with bodyguards at Gregorovich's party? - Makar already understood what was going on, but he hoped that some kind of loophole remained.

Jonic shook his head.

“Not with bodyguards. With a bodyguard. One. And this one will go second.

He nodded at Sergei.

The sunbeam lingered on Babkin's trouser leg and, it seems, pitifully stroked him with his paw.

Chapter 2

1

- Kesha! Bogdan called loudly. - Where are you!

Innokenty Kutikov, whom Gregorovich introduced to everyone as “my valet”, although the party knew him more as a nanny and the closest confidant of a pop star, appeared, as usual, completely silently. It appeared in the reflection behind the owner's back, like a cat that crept up to a flaunting peacock, and with a soft paw pulled a camisole on it.

He shrugged his shoulders as if trying to free himself from the suit's tight grip. Above the waist, he wore a snow-white shirt foaming with lace. Below the singer's waist, family underpants in an ardent pink flower were fitted.

– I will clatter, Bogdan Atanasovich, – Kesha promised insinuatingly. - Untrimmed nails. As in Tatyana Tolstaya's novel "Kys".

Both laughed. Or rather, Gregorovich laughed, and the valet smiled with the corners of his lips. It seemed that at birth he was given a limited number of sounds to use, and he spent them extremely sparingly, not spending on nonsense like laughter.

The singer twirled in front of the mirror, turned to his left side and arched his neck, meticulously peering into his reflection. The new camisole was luxurious: bright scarlet, stitched with gold threads, with a turn-down emerald collar.

“The belly hangs,” Bogdan said dejectedly. - Keshenka, is it hanging?

“Hanging,” the valet confirmed.

Gregorovich immediately became the color of a camisole.

"You are a ruthless man!" he cried. - If only once in my life I would say: you are beautiful, Bogdan Atanasovich, inhumanly beautiful, I am in love with you, everyone is in love with you, and your stomach is taut, and your waist is incomparable, and your voice is such that nightingales die with envy!

Kutikov shifted from foot to foot and repeated in a dull tone:

– You, Bogdan Atanasovich, are inhumanly beautiful. And your belly is tight. And the waist is incredible. And the baritone is amazing, just amazing.

The scream was so strong that it seemed that the mirror shuddered and went in a frightened wave.

- Liar! Sneak!

- How is it, Bogdan Atanasovich ... - Kesha was upset.

"Get out of here, you flattering bastard!"

The singer furiously began to rip off his camisole and got tangled in the lining.

“You are vindictive,” the valet reproached, helping him to extricate himself from the silk captivity. “Like all fat asses. Elbows here, here... Don't rip off your panties in the heat of anger, you'll freeze.

Who are you calling fat?

- And you will lean on hamburgers, stop getting into your golden cloak.

- Get out!

- I'm leaving. I'm going straight to your competitors. I will tell them how your jeans with rhinestones came apart in the middle of the concert. And the pebbles rained down in sparkling rain. Just like in your song. How is it ... Param-pam-pam, I will cling to you, param-pam, sparkling rain! - The valet murmured a well-known hit melodiously.

- Hate you! howled Gregorovich.

Kutikov looked down modestly.

– Thank you, Bogdan Atanasovich. I did my best!

The mirror shook again, this time with laughter. Released from the clutches of the camisole, the singer waved his arms, vigorously rubbed his chest, and embraced the valet with feeling.

- But I'm still nothing, huh, Keshenka?

“The time for self-consolation ended at ten,” he remarked phlegmatically. - And now you have a gym on schedule.

- Nazhorny! Bogdan mimicked. - I want to eat after it!

- You want to eat before him. And you have guests tomorrow. You must be handsome and thin.

Gregorovitch's face darkened.

- For whom to try something ... Olesya herself is covered in cellulite. Medvedkin counts every spinach leaf. Will Carmelita reproach me? Or maybe Raven?

- You invited Mr. Jonik, - Kesha reminded, putting on a camisole on a mannequin.

Elena Mikhalkova

Paper curtain, glass crown