"Ewing, Jack - Serves You Right" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ewing Jack)

Walk back to the car, around the corner. A sleek black sedan, it goes well with your expensive, steel gray suit. Together, they lend an official look that's not out of place in upscale neighborhoods, a look that gives you an edge in the low-rent districts.

Climbing in, you get the air conditioning going and fill out the required turn-in form attached to your copy of the summons. There are spaces to write in name of person served, address, date, time, and a thumbnail description: race, hair and eye color, approximate age, weight and height. This form is intended to check the process server's honesty, to discourage claiming successful service and collecting your fee-- when actually you've gone nowhere near the defendant's house and have trashed his paper to save yourself the bother.

You'd never do such a thing, of course, but you've heard about others in the trade who have cheated. A guy over in Ventura County allegedly got in trouble for putting down a "Chris Smith" he supposedly served as a white male, 40, 5'9", 150. Unfortunately, the real defendant turned out to be a twenty-something female, black, about 6'2" and 300 pounds.

Sign the completed form, swearing it's true, and put it in the glove box.

One down, twenty-nine to go. All arranged in rough geographical order--except for one you purposely put on the bottom--so you can hit each efficiently. But you'll still cover a hundred-fifty miles, easy, driving about a megalopolis crowded with double-digit millions of citizens, all sweltering in the grip of an unusually hot summer. It's going to be a busy day and, at a minimum of $25 per deadbeat, plus fifty cents per mile, a potentially profitable one.

The money's the only reason you stick with it. Wherever you go, you won't be welcome. Customers in their gated estates and penthouses, their suburban boxes, their ghetto shacks will all hate you for bringing bad news. And you'll hate them all right back with equal intensity--regardless of race, creed, color, national origin, or income--for the contempt that shows in their eyes. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Pity the poor guy in line behind you, who has to repossess cars and couches and TVs.

Your next victim is a squat, pot-bellied, middle-aged white man in a sleeveless gray T-shirt with underarm sweat stains the size of dinner plates. Looks and smells like he was baptized in beer and has been swilling it nonstop ever since.

"Yeah?" he says, giving you the fish-eye from the doorway of his dinky rented walkup in El Segundo, spitting distance from LAX.

"Nyle Slick?" you shout over the roar of a departing plane.

"Yeah. So?" He scratches at three-day stubble and hitches up the crotch of his baggy pants.

"I'm here to give you this." Whip out the paper, stick it in his hand, and step back.

Mr. Slick stares at it stupidly before realizing what it is. He works himself into a huff in a half-minute. Purple-faced and panting curses, he tears the summons into tiny pieces and flings them after you. He slams the door, still airing his four-letter-word collection.

It all rolls off like rain sliding down a Turtle Wax shine. Long as they throw nothing but words and paper, who cares? Once you personally deliver the summons, the lucky recipient can wipe his butt with it, for all the good it will do. You'll still get paid. And the lawyers will still hound him.

Sylvia Maybon, in an apartment off Crenshaw in Inglewood, is a blowsy blonde, made up like a Kewpie doll, with lots of detailing around eyes and mouth. Her frilly robe falls open when she reaches to take the summons, as if she were doing an impromptu audition as a body double. "Oops," she says coyly, tucking back a rosy-tipped breast the size of a California grapefruit. She nibbles a corner of the paper, eyes locked on yours. "Thank you," she breathes, closing the door with both hands. Her robe parts again.

You say: "No, thank you."

When Scott J. Sklar of Lennox, a young fellow with connect-the-dot pimples on cheeks and forehead, opens the door of his cheapo duplex, you see a closet-sized room behind him. A teen-aged girl, his bride, sits in a ratty armchair, the only furniture visible, taping a disposable diaper onto a baby squirming on her lap. Mr. Sklar is foolish enough to answer when you ask where he works. This tidbit is valuable to the lawyers as a potential source of income if garnishment becomes necessary. It also earns you a bonus for providing the tip.

Joe Febus is a heavy-set, balding, weary-looking guy. He doesn't say word one when you serve him at his job, a tire store in Westmont.

Lisa Beale, an anorexic receptionist at a Torrance ad agency, glares through oversized, rhinestone-encrusted eyeglasses and calls you a bunch of bad names. Some of them might even be true, but she doesn't have to tell everybody.

There's Simon Rainey. His skinny, pinch-faced wife leads you through a huge mansion overlooking the ocean on Palos Verdes Drive. In a bedroom big as your whole apartment, Simon is plugged into a machine with tubes running under the covers. His eyes are glassy and his face seems made of wax. He barely has strength to lift his mummy's hand and take the summons.

There's one who won't admit she's who you know she is.

You ring the doorbell of a tidy frame house in Wilmington. When the door opens on a chubby, fortyish woman trying to look thirty, you ask: "Colleen Qualls?"

"What is it?"

"Are you Colleen Qualls?"

"Who wants to know?"

"Look, I've got something to give Colleen Qualls. You that person?"