"Jack L Chalker - - G.o.d. Inc 1 - Labyrinth Of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

and nothing else. That was why she could work this neighborhood. As for being in
the neighborhood after dark, I might get a little nervous, sometimes, but
anybody who dared to attack Mrs. Kybanski deserved what he would get.
"That's who I'm waiting for, Mrs. K.," I replied. "She's been out all afternoon
on a case, and she's overdue getting back." The truth was, I was worried. I
always worried when she went out alone on one of these things, even though it
was just tracking down the address of a guy who owed about ninety years' worth
of child-support and alimony payments. We were on a contingency fee, as usual,
which made it all the more important. The wife had thought the guy had skipped
to parts unknown, but a few days ago somebody who knew him swore to her he was
running a 7-Eleven over in south Philly. Trouble was, she couldn't remember
which 7-Eleven store, and there were like fifty over there. Those damned stores
multiply faster than coat hangers and grocery bags.
So all I could do was sit around the dingy little office with its cracked
door-glass and its cardboard-and-tape patch on the window and try and occupy my
mind. We had a drawerful of unpaid bills, a bunch of collection notices, and
very little else. The only reason they let us stay in the office was that nobody
else would be idiot enough to rent it, but even that had its limits. The fact
was, we were sinking fast, and were only really keeping going by handouts from
Brandy's large family and from old friends of her dad who'd started this agency
long ago. Me, I had no family to speak of and no real friends, not since I got
married, anyway. Of course, they weren't real friends at all if that was gonna
put them off. The closest relative I had was Uncle Max in Harris-burg, who owned
a number of car dealerships, but he hadn't even sent me a birthday card since I
got married. Worse, I hate most police and detective work; it's boring and you
get no respect at all. Trouble is, I don't know how to do anything else and I
never saw anything else any better. I often think I was just born wrong. I was
intended for one of those rich multimillionaire Jewish families that have twin
BMWs and get wings named after them at Mount Sinai Hospital because they needed
a tax loss that year.
God got the religion right, but He must have been having an off day that
timeЧsomething I'm accustomed to (off days, that is)Чand dropped me in the
family of a shoe salesman in Baltimore, with no rich relatives except Uncle Max
(and he wasn't rich then), who worked six days a week to feed and clothe and
house us and to try to save enough money to get me a good education and not have
to go through this. Instead he only got ulcers, then a heart attack of the kind
you never go back to work from and where the medicines cost a hundred bucks a
month, and Mom had arthritis so bad there was no way she was gonna make it,
either. I managed high schoolЧpublic, not the fancy prep school with the old-boy
network they wanted for meЧbut I knew right off that if I was gonna make it in
the world, it had to be Uncle Max style. He started selling cars for others
while living like a dog, putting all the money in investments, becoming salesman
of the year repeatedly and doing a lot of politicking. He even switched to a
synagogue miles away because its members had better business connections.
So, he finally finds this daughter of a rich lawyer and marries her, although
she's a hundred-percent Jewish American princess, a loudmouth nag, and to me she
always bore a strong family resemblance to Lassie. But her daddy bankrolled the
car business and now Max has nine dealerships, a couple of million bucks,
his-and-hers Cadillacs (he doesn't sell German cars), and, last I heard, a
mistress or two on the side to console him. Me, I just couldn't play that game,