"Cook, Glen - From the Files of Garrett, P.I. 01 - Sweet Silver Blues 2.0a" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

1


Bang Bang Bang
It sounded like someone was knocking with a sledgehammer. I rolled over and cracked a bloodshot eye. I couldn't see a figure through the window, but that wasn't surprising. I could barely make out the lettering on the grimy glass:

GARRETT

INVESTIGATOR

CONFIDENTIAL AGENT

I had blown my wad buying the glass and wound up being my own painter.
The window was as dirty as last week's dishwater, but not filthy enough to block out the piercing morning light. The damned sun wasn't up yet! And I'd been out till the second watch barhopping while I followed a guy who might lead me to a guy who might know where I could find a guy. All this led to was a pounding headache.
"Go away!" I growled. "Not available."
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Go to hell away!" I yelled. It left my head feeling like an egg that had just bounced off the edge of a frying pan. I wondered if I ought to feel the back to see if the yolk was leaking, but it seemed like too much work. I'd just go ahead and die.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I have a little trouble with my temper, especially



when I have a hangover. I was halfway to the door with two feet of lead-weighted truncheon before sense penetrated the scrambled yolk.
When they are that insistent, it's somebody from up the hill with a summons to do work too sticky to lay on their own boys. Or it's somebody from down the hili with the word that you're stepping on the wrong toes.
In the latter case the truncheon might be useful.
I yanked the door open.
For a moment I didn't see the woman. She barely came up to my chest. I eyeballed the three guys behind her. They were lugging enough steel to outfit their own army, but I wouldn't have been shy about wading in. Two of them were about fifteen years old and the other was about a hundred and five.
"We're invaded by dwarfs," I moaned. None of them was taller than the woman.
"Are you Garrett?" She looked disappointed in what she saw.
"No. Two doors down. Good-bye." Slam! Two doors down was a night-working ratman who made a hobby of getting on my nerves. I figured it was his turn in the barrel.
I stumbled toward bed with the vague suspicion that I had seen those people before.
I wriggled around like an old dog. When you're hung over there is no way to get comfortable, feather bed or creek bed. Just as I was getting reacquainted with being horizontal again, Barn! Barn! Barn!
I told myself I wouldn't move. They would take the hint.
They didn't. It sounded like the entire room was about to cave in. I was not going to get any more sleep.
I got up again-gingerly--and drank a quart of water. I chased it with skunky beer and clung to my temper precariously.
Barn! Barn! Barn!
"I don't make a habit of busting female heads," I




told the tiny woman when I opened the door again. "But in your case I think I can make an exception."
She was not impressed. "Dad wants to see you, Garrett."
"Say, that's wonderful. That explains a gang of runts trying to break my door down. What does the gnome king want?"
The old codger said, "Rose, it's obvious this isn't a convenient time for Mr. Garrett. We've waited three days. A few more hours won't make any difference."
Rose? I should know a Rose from somewhere. But where?
"Mr. Garrett, I'm Lester Tate. And I want to apologize-on Rose's behalf-for bothering you at this hour. She's a headstrong child, and having been overindulged by my brother all her life, she's blind to any desires but her own." He spoke in the soft, tired voice of a man who spends a lot of time arguing with a whirlwind.
"Lester Tate?" I asked. "Like in Denny Tate's uncle Lester?"
"Yes."
"It's beginning to come back. The family picnic at Elephant Rocks three years ago. I came with Denny." Maybe I had laundered my memory because Rose had been an unspeakably nasty wench that day. "Maybe it was all the hardware that made me forget your faces." Denny Tate and I went back about eight years, but I hadn't seen him in months. "So how is Denny?" I asked, maybe a little guilty.