"Gibson, William - Johnny Mnemonic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

Fast Eddie Bax was in the chair opposite them before the beef's hands
were off the table. 'You black belt?' I asked eagerly. He nodded, blue
eyes running an automatic scanning pattern between my eyes and my hands.
'Me too,' I said. 'Got mine here in the bag.' And I shoved my hand
through the slit and thumbed the safety off. Click. 'Double twelve-gauge
with the triggers wired together.'
'That's a gun', 'Ralfi said, putting a plump. restraining hand on his
boy's taut blue nylon chest. 'Johnny has a antique firearm in his bag.'
So much for Enward Bax.
I guess he'd always been Ralfi Something or Orther, but he owed his
acquired surname to a singular vanity. Built something like an overripe
pear, he'd worn the oncefamous face of Christian White for twenty years
- Christian White of the Atyan Reggae Band, Sony Mao to his generation,
and final champion of race rocks. I'm a whiz at trivia.
Christian White: classic pop face with a singer's highdefinition
muscles, chiseled cheekbones. Angelic in one light, handsomely depraved
in another. But Ralfi's eyes lived behind that face, and they were small
and cold and black.
'Please,' he said, 'let's work this out like businessmen.' His voice was
marked by a horrible prehensile sincerity, and the corners of his
beautifull Christian White mouth were always wet. 'Lewis here,' nodding
in the beefboy's direction, 'is a meatball.' Lewis took his impassively,
looking like something built from a kit. 'You aren't a meatball,
Johnny.'
'Sure I am, Ralfi, a nice meatball chock-full of implants where u can
store your dirty laundry while you go off shopping for people to kill
me. From my end of this bag, Ralfi, it looks like you've got some
explaining to do.'
'It's this last batch of product, Johnny.' He sighed deeply. 'In my role
as broker - '
'Fence,' I corrected.
'As broker, I am usually very careful as to sources.'
'You buy only from those who steal the best. Got it.'
He sighed again. 'I try,' he said wearily, 'not to buy from fools.. This
time, I'm afraid, I've done that.' Third sigh was the cue for Lewis to
trigger the neural disruptor they'd taped under my side of the table.
I put everything I had into curling the index finger of my right hand,
but I no longer seemed to be connected to it. I could feel the metal of
the gun and the foam-padded tape. I'd wrapped around the stubby grip,
but my hands were cool wax, distant and inert. I was hoping Lewis was a
true meatball, thick enough to go for the gym bag and snag my rigid
trigger finger, but he wasn't.
'We've been very worried about you Johnny. Very worried. You see, that's
Yakuza property you have there. A fool took it from them, Johnny. A dead
fool.'
Lewis giggled.
It all made sense then, an ugly kind of sense, like bags of wet sand
settling around my head. Killing wasn't Ralfi's style. Lewis wasn't even
Ralfi's style. But he'd got himself stuck between the Sons of the Neon
Chrysanthemum and something that belonged to them - or, more likely,