"Crais, Robert - Elvis Cole 08 - L.A. Requiem 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Crais Robert)

"The Santa Anas are bringing the smoke south. Couple of hours, the ash will begin to fall. It'll look like gray snow." The fire was forty miles away. We were in no danger.

Lucy shifted the frown to her Lexus, parked below us at the curb. "Will it hurt the paint?"

"By the time it settles it'll be cool, just like powder. We'll wash it off with the hose." Elvis Cole, Professional Angeleno, educating the recent transplant, who also happens to be his girlfriend. Wait'll we get a big temblor.

Lucy didn't seem convinced, but then she stepped inside, and called her son. "Ben!"

Less than a week before, Lucille Chenier and her nine-year-old son had left Louisiana and settled into the apartment that they had taken in Beverly Hills, just south of Wilshire Boulevard. Lucy had been a practicing attorney in Baton Rouge, but was beginning a new career as a legal analyst for a local television station (a nouveau occupational fruit growing from the ugly tree that was the Simpson trial). Trading Baton Rouge for Los Angeles, she gained a larger salary, more free time to spend with her son, and closer proximity to moi. I had spent all of Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday morning arranging and rearranging the living room. That's love for you.

The television was tuned to the station she now worked for, KROK-8 ("Real News for Real People!"), which, like every other station in town, had interrupted regular programming with live coverage of the fire. Twenty-eight homes were threatened and had been evacuated.

Lucy handed Ben the box. "Too heavy?"

"Noway."

"Your room. Your closet. Neatly."

When he was gone I slipped my hand around her waist, and whispered, "Your room. Your bed. Messy."

She stepped away and considered the couch. "First we have to get this house in order. Would you please move the couch again?"

I stared at the couch. I had moved it maybe eight hundred times in the last two days.

"Which wall?"

She chewed at her thumb, thinking. "Over there."

"That's where it was two moves ago." It was a big couch. It probably weighed three thousand pounds.

"Yes, but that was when the entertainment center was by the fireplace. Now that we've put the entertainment center by the entry, the look will be completely different."

"We?"

"Yes. We"

I bent into the couch and dragged it to the opposite wall. Four thousand pounds.

I was squaring the couch when the phone rang. Lucy spoke for a minute, then held out the phone.

"Joe."

Joe Pike and I are partners in the detective agency that bears my name. He could have his name on it if he wanted, but he doesn't. He's like that.

I took the phone. "Hernias R Us." Lucy rolled her eyes and turned away, already contemplating new sofa arrangements.

Pike said, "How's the move going?"

I walked the phone out onto the balcony. "It's a big change. I think she's finally realizing how big. What's up?"