"Mel Gilden - Zoot Marlow 2 - Hawaiian UFO Aliens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gilden Mel)

'I'm on the case,' I said.
'Case?' Thumper said.
 'You know. Trouble is his business.' Bill yocked then, which kind of undercut the dignified effect I
was trying to achieve.



CHAPTER 5
PHANTOM PHONE CALLS AT THE MALIBU BAR AND
NO-GRILL
┬л^┬╗
Trouble is his business,' Mustard mumbled from his place on the floor. 'Business is his trouble. He's
troubled by all this magic business.'
'From the mouths of surfers,' I said, and walked out the door with Bill in my wake.
Pacific Coast Highway had come back to life with the appearance of the sun. People in beach clothes
walked up and down, some of them followed at a respectful distance by robots carrying surfboards.
Across the busy street, a line of shops sold anything a person at loose ends might need. Fried chicken,
T-shirts, sun screen, all the necessities. Everything but a clue. Any idea I had about where to start looking
for a cure for what ailed Captain Hook was so vaporous it passed like the body odour of a ghost of an
idea and didn't leave even the ghost of a calling card.
Bill and I walked for a while, taking the air, enjoying both the hustle and the bustle. The smell of hot
grease coiled around my nose and I was suddenly hungry. We didn't have hot grease on T'toom, and I
didn't have any natural resistance to this kind of thing, I stopped at a counter that had 'Arturo's World of
Burgers' spray-painted on the wall over it and had one with everything. Bill wanted one too, but I didn't
see any point in spending the money. I turned away from 'Arturo's World of Burgers' and almost ran into
a ratty looking guy with mud-coloured hair down in his eyes. 'Spare change?' he said.
'No such thing,' I said, and was going to give him a quarter and keep moving when an idea hit me with
almost physical force. 'Let's talk,' I said and grabbed his thin arm with the hand that wasn't holding the
loaded burger.
'No kinky sex,' the guy said.
'Suits me,' I said, which seemed to confuse him. I shoved the burger into his hands, and he looked at
it with disbelief.
'No kinky sex. No drugs.'
'Will you stop that and sit down?' I sat down on the brick wall dividing the walkway from the sand.
Bill sat on one side of me, and this ratty guy sat on the other.
I don't know if there was a clean spot on him anywhere. He'd been walking on his cuffs for a long
time, which was better than nothing, I guess, because his great knobby feet weren't wearing any shoes.
He inhaled the burger and licked his fingers. I guessed he was ready to listen now and said, 'You
sleep on the beach?'
'I told you. No kinkтАФ'
'You wouldn't believe how uninterested I am in kinky sex. You sleep on the beach?'
'Sometimes,' the guy said, looking at me from the tip of his eye. He was mighty cagey. Yes, sir.
'You know about the big top hat?'
'I seen it,' he said hurriedly, 'but I didn't have nothing to do with it.'
 'Did you see it get washed up?'
He thought for a moment, and then said, 'It didn't get washed up. It landed.'
'Ah,' I said. Bill said it too.
'You see anybody get out of it?'
A little more confident now, the guy said, 'How about a drink? All this talking's making me kinda dry.'
'Drink?'