"Block, Lawrence - Scudder 1982 - Eight Million Ways To Die" - читать интересную книгу автора (Block Lawrence)

'I know.'

'Give the folks an honest deal and you will never miss a meal. That's a rhyme my mama taught me. How come you uptown, Matthew?'

'I'm looking for a guy.'

'Maybe you found him. You off the force these days?'

'For some years now.'

'And you lookin' to buy something? What do you want and what can you spend?'

'What are you selling?'

'Most anything.'

'Business still good with all these Colombians?'

'Shit,' he said, and one hand brushed the front of his pants. I suppose he had a gun in the waistband of the lime green pants. There were probably as many handguns as people in Kelvin Small's. 'Them Colombians be all right,' he said. 'You just don't ever want to cheat them is all. You didn't come up here to buy stuff.'

'No.'

'What you want, man?'

'I'm looking for a pimp.'

'Shit, you just walked past twenty of 'em. And six, seven hoes.'

'I'm looking for a pimp named Chance.'

'Chance.'

'You know him?'

'I might know who he is.'

I waited. A man in a long coat was walking along the block, stopping at each storefront. He might have been looking in the windows except that you couldn't; every shop had steel shutters that descended like garage doors at the close of business. The man stopped in front of each closed store and studied the shutters as if they held meaning for him.

'Window shopping,' Royal said.

A blue-and-white police car cruised by, slowed. The two uniformed officers within looked us over. Royal wished them a good evening. I didn't say anything and neither did they. When the car drove off he said, 'Chance don't come here much.'

'Where would I find him?'

'Hard to say. He'll turn up anyplace but it might be the last place you would look. He don't hang out.'

'So they tell me.'

'Where you been lookin'?'