"Brooks, Terry - Landover 01 - Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

He chose to walk. The decision was a perverse mix of
stubbornness and wariness. The store was only half a dozen
blocks from the hotel on Lexington, and anything that close

22 MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE - SOLD!

ought to be walked. The day was iron gray and chill, but the
rains had moved northeast into New England. A cab was a
waste of money. Furthermore, by walking he could approach
the store at his own pace and on his own termsЧkind of
work up to what he was going to do. The trial lawyer in him
always appreciated the advantage of being able to orches-
trate one's own entrance.

He took his time, letting the feel of the autumn morning
bring him fully awake, but he was there by nine-forty any-
way. Rosen's was a fifteen-storey chrome-and-glass corner-
stone to two thirty-plus-storey skyscrapers that ran half a
block on Lexington and the better part of a short block on
the cross street west. An old establishment, the store had
obviously been remodeled when the skyscrapers had gone
in, the aged stone facade giving way to a more modern look.
Plate-glass display windows lined the walkway along Lex-
ington, filled with fashions displayed on mannequins with
frozen smiles and empty stares. The late morning rush hour
traffic passed them by unsmiling, unseeing. Ben followed the
line of windows south to a recessed entry and passed through
two sets of double-doors sandwiching a weather foyer to the
store within.

The ground floor of Rosen's opened out before him, cav-
ernous, polished, sterile. Rows of metal-and-glass display
cases filled with jewelry, cosmetics, and silver filled the hall,
gleaming and shining beneath a flood of fluorescent light. A
handful of shoppers browsed the aisles that ran between the
display cases while store personnel looked on. No one
seemed much interested in generating sales. It all had the
appearance of some arcane ritual. He glanced about. To his
right, an escalator climbed through the ceiling to the floor
above. To his left, a bank of elevators lined a distant wall.
Straight ahead, where even the most bewildered shopper
could not fail to see it, a glass-encased directory announced
the departments and the floors on which they could be found.

He took a moment to read the directory. There was no
listing for Meeks. He hadn't really expected that there would

Terry Brooks 23