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

"Yeah, I'm a cop. Sam HorowitzЧout of Bristol, so don't get upset. I need some
help, and I was told this agency was handy for the kind of help I have in mind."
She was chubby, almost fat, but it was as if weight gained after a certain point
had gone entirely to her breasts and hips. She wore a faded tee shirt with a
marijuana plant, on it and the words buy american!, and faded and patched jeans
that seemed far too tight. "What kind of work?"
"UhЧexcuse meЧbut the place is called Spade and Marlowe. Are you one of them?"
"Marlowe's dead," she responded matter-of-factly. "I'm the Spade."
I was always uncomfortable with that kind of humor, but it was too good a line
not to appreciate. It was soon clear that she wasn't the secretary or a partner,
but the whole damned agency. She picked up a creaky old wooden chair that had
been overturned behind the desk and pushed it out and to the side. "Take a
seat," she invited. "That's the only chair, but I don't use it much anyway."
"Thanks, I'll stand. Now, then, Ms. ... ?"
"Brandy Parker. This job pay?"
"Some. A lot if we can get some results. The families involved have big rewards
out."
"How big?"
"A few grand. The rewards, anyway."
"Take the chair," she invited, perching on the desk. "I'm suddenly very
interested."
I told her about the case so far, the missing kids, the kiddie-pom pictures, the
tracing to the distributor who worked out of a building in this area, all of it.
She listened attentively, asking a few very good questions when she needed
clarification, and seemed to get increasingly interested when I showed her the
magazine and the pictures of the two kids before they were snatched. I liked the
fact that the more we talked, the less money seemed important and the more her
own anger grew. She was used to all the shit that went on around these
neighborhoods, but this was particularly dirty, and the facesЧand the contrast
in the picturesЧmade it very real.
The cops had been right; she was very good when working in her element, and
turned up a number of solid leads within forty-eight hours. The Camden cops
would have to make the official bust, but we needed to feed them place, time,
and the rest. Brandy's car was broken and she hadn't had the money to fix it, so
we used my unmarked one, which for anything requiring traveling meant we saw a
lot of each other. The word finally came down that a pedophile ring was working
a seedy hotel in the low-rent district, and we staked it out for very long
periods. A week of all-night stakeouts will let you get to know somebody pretty
well.
Maybe it was because we were both lonely, both generally depressed, or maybe
that we just had the same idea of right, wrong, and maybe, but we just sort of
clicked in spite of our ingrained prejudices. No, it's not the way you think.
She had more prejudices about Jews than I ever had about blacks. Hell, three
fine, upstanding white guys had stood around while I lay bleeding on the ground
back at Clark while two black SPs had finally braved the stones and dragged me
back, saving my ass. Even though we'd been poor, my parents had always marched
in civil-rights campaignsЧthey were old enough to remember "restricted"
neighborhoods against JewsЧand I never thought of blacks as being any different
than Poles, Germans, Spaniards, or Chinese for that matter. In my family's world
there were only two kinds of people, Jews and goys.