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

'Course, the gun didn't do no good, but the fact that I also called the cops
helped nab the triggermen in the act of tryin' to kill me and led eventually to
the indictment and conviction of a popular young black politician on the way up
who just happened to be in the mob's pocket.
All that didn't help, though. Fact is, I got no new cases worth much and lost
some old clients even though I got a reputation as a PI at least as good as
Daddy out of it. Big Tony and the mob never did get touched by it all, even
though they ordered it; the white folks had gone scot-free and the black folks
had taken the fall, as usual, and for some reason I got blamed for that. Crazy
thing was that the only folks who would toss a case or two my way were the
smalltime crooks in the ghetto. Seems they were impressed and wanted me on their
side.
Still, not enough came in to make even the basic bills, and I sold the house and
lived on that for a while, takin' a one-room dump near work. I was just goin'
through the motions, though, and I knew it. I just didn't know anything else to
do. Oh, I had a bunch of relatives, mostly cousins, in the area, but about the
best I could hope for was some kind of job as a domestic or cab driver or
something. I didn't have no skills to speak of, no real contacts, no diploma-
and you needed that just to collect garbage-and only me as a job reference.
Couldn't get no unemployment-I was self-employed-and welfare didn't mean shit
unless you had a couple of illegitimate kids. The only guys I knew who might be
marriage bait were either ones I couldn't stand, ones who wanted some kind of
house nigger, or ones that were already as high as they were gonna go and were
like street cleaners or handled the drive-in window at McDonald's.
Here I'd done somethin' the cops couldn't or wouldn't do, and dumb luck or not I
done it good, and instead of gettin' the gold stars and thanks and all the rest
I got shut out. I got to admit that my fantasies turned back again, and every
time I passed one of the hookers I got more and more tempted-and without Daddy
around I had offers from a couple of local pimps.
The cops, though, had at least a little soft spot for me, since I'd given them
some good collars. I mean, a couple of white cops got to bust a bunch of
meddlesome black dudes in Camden, and that was gold stars on them. That's why,
at just about this time, they sent Sam around to me.
Sam was older than me by a good ten years, pudgy, balding, but kinda cute. He
was also the first white man I ever took a liking to, and a big shock. It was
the first time I found out Jewish white guys could be about as poor and out of
it as me. He was a cop from Bristol, up north a bit in Jersey, and he was down
tryin' to track down a ring that snatched little kids and turned them into
kiddie porn objects. Fact was, I took to him right off, not just 'cause I needed
somebody right then but even though he was white and Jewish he reminded me one
hell of a lot of Daddy. He had that same sense of moral outrage Daddy always
did, more than I ever could bring up, and when he was after bad guys he wanted
their asses bad. He also had a real passion for the old detective stories and
for all them old detective movies on the Late Late Show starring Bogart or
Robert Montgomery or Lloyd Nolan, the kind my Daddy always loved and grew up on.
And, like me, he wasn't too thrilled to be a detective, he just didn't know how
to do nothin' else. He also had a college education and real brains. He goes on
them brains, too; I go on feelin's and sometimes guts but I ain't never gonna be
no brain and I know it.
In the end, we busted those suckers, got back one kid, and exposed a crooked cop