"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

spell cat or write much beyond their name. I got a big vocabulary, but I never
could keep all that grammar shit right. Well, you know, you speak black English
on the streets and white English around Daddy and it's kinda like thinkin' in
one language and talkin' another. I got one of them ghetto-southern accents I
ain't never gonna lick, and I gave up years ago tryin' to correct my grammar.
It's a lost cause. I'm a low-class hick with a big vocabulary, so sue me.
I got the bug, though, helpin' Daddy on cases and gettin' things mostly in
shape. The files might not have had the best grammar but they was complete and
up to date. I never was no good at math, but after we got the free calculator
for subscribing to PI Magazine I always knew we was deep in a hole. Still, I
learned the business, for what it was worth. It's a damned dull, boring job with
no respect and few rewards, no matter what the books and TV and movies tell you.
No big action, either. Daddy had a gun, a big magnum, but he almost never
carried it and I don't think he ever fired it as a PI. I did a lot of practicing
with that sucker and I got pretty good, but that thing has a kick they don't
show you on them TV shows and it ain't much good at any range. I also took
karate and judo lessons at the Y and got pretty good at that, though I never had
much call to use 'em.
I also just about cut out any social life. It weren't none of Daddy's doin', it
was just me. Truth was, I just didn't have much self-image, as they call it.
Never did. When Ma died and Daddy was away so much, I couldn't be on my own, so
I got into the gang and did what the gang did. I figure now that's what all that
fantasizing 'bout bein' a hooker was all about. Any girl who has that trade as
her sole ambition ain't got much sense of herself. When men pay, then you got
worth, right there, in dollars and cents. I was fat and slow and no matter how
good a shape I whip into I ain't never gonna be no Tina Turner.
Daddy and the agency, then, became my whole life, my whole identity. I don't
blame nobody, but it's just the way I am. I can't change that any more than I
can change how I look or how I talk. Nobody would believe it if I told 'em,
anyway-except maybe Sam, who knows it but just can't figure it.
But one night Daddy didn't check in-the cops did, and I had to go down and
identify the body. He hadn't even taken his gun with him on that job, but he got
far too many holes to go anywhere afterwards. It was kinda weird standin' there,
in the morgue, lookin' at his water-soaked and bloody, bullet-ridden body. One
part of me said it was him, but with all the life out of him he just didn't look
real, somehow. I couldn't even cry, but all through that night and the next few
days I just got madder and madder. The cops had no real leads and he'd been
pretty closemouthed about it all even to me, 'cept that it was something big,
bigger than he'd ever had before.
I cracked the case, after two months, when the cops couldn't, and I got some
reputation as hot shit for it but it wasn't all that damned hard. Sure, I didn't
know anything about that case, but whoever it was didn't know that and I just
began to put out the word that I had leads and knew more than I did and set
myself up as a target. The cops thought it was real gutsy of me, but truth was
I'd just had all I had left in the world snatched from me and I didn't really
care if they killed me so long as I got at least one of the bastards involved.
Detective shit is more guts and dull routine than anything else; there ain't no
real Sherlock Holmeses. The only thing is, most of the crooks around ain't all
that smart, either-they just got smart lawyers. I set myself up, got invited to
a meet just like Daddy, and I went, just like Daddy, only I took the magnum.