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

outlook on life than my own sweet department. I was trying to track down a
couple of long-missing local kids whose faces had shown up in a kiddie-porn
magazine in Denmark, some of which had gotten imported back here, and they were
recognized. The importer was in Camden, and clearly was far more than just an
importer, and we were all on him. Even bad cops draw the line someplace. Most of
'em, anyway. With some relief they assigned me to temporary duty in Camden
because they needed more men for stakeout duty than Camden could spare, and
that's what first brought me to this neighborhood and how I met Brandy.
The neighborhood looked older than England and not nearly as well kept up.
Blocks and blocks of narrow streets and rowhouses and smashed windows and sour
smells and garbage all over the place. There was this one little office building
stuck in the middle, so run-down-looking that to this day I believe that if they
took away the boarded-up and condemned row homes on either side, the place would
collapse. It kind of bends in the middle, somehow. The windows are all barred
but rusty, and they're all cracked or have holes through them filled with tape
or cardboard. The neighborhood itself was mostly black here, although there were
some Asians now, mostly Koreans and Vietnamese who couldn't afford even the
slums of Philadelphia just across the river. A couple of blocks away were a few
small white enclaves, mostly old folks and those too poor to move to a
higher-class slum. Eighty percent of the place were on permanent welfare; the
other twenty percent were burglars, dope dealers, pimps and whores, and folks
whose businesses needed this kind of anonymity.
There was no way I could stake out a neighborhood like this; I'd stick out like
a sore thumb, but I needed a place staked out, preferably by somebody familiar
with the place. I needed a good source of information, too, since it was clear
that Camden Vice leaked like a sieve even on kiddie-porn scum. A source had
recommended a private detective agency actually in the district; shady, the
source said, and on a shoestring, but they did anything for a buck and kept
their prices within an investigation's contingency fund. You went in this
building and walked up two flights and it was the second door on the left.
SPADE & MARLOWE, Private Investigations, it said on the door in faded and
peeling letters. The glass was frosted, but it was also cracked, and was held
together with masking tape. Inside, it was full of file cabinets and a week or
two of half-eaten lunches; and roaches had the right of way in the small outer
office, which contained no desk and only one chair, an ancient overstuffed thing
.like you'd see in my grandmother's living room in the old days but cracked and
torn, with stuffing coming out this way and that, and springs that had
surrendered when Grant had commanded the Army. The door to the inner office
looked openЧI soon discovered it was nonexistentЧand I walked to it and looked
in.
There was a single old oak desk piled high with crap, a thirty-year-old manual
typewriter on the floor, an old black dial phone from the fifties at least, and
heaps of papers and other residue. It looked like my apartment. At first I
thought nobody was there, but then I heard noises coming from behind the desk
and then a head popped up and looked at me.
She was chocolate brown, with a full oval face, the biggest brown eyes I ever
saw, and Afro-style hair so huge and bushy I thought at first it had to be a
wig. "Oh, sorry, didn't know anybody was here," she said in a very low, throaty
voice. Then she stood up, all five foot five of her, and stared at me. "You a
cop?"