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

I folded the money away, and Mr Chesnik shook my hand as he wished me good luck. 'Knowing
you, you'll probably need it.'
'Yeah. I'm always walking into a door or something.'
 Mr Chesnik enjoyed that.
I nodded to Marsha and the Oriental guy. They were still using their mouths for fly catchers as Bill
and I went out.
In the car I said, 'The address of the Big Orange Taxi Company.' Bill gave me an address downtown
and then directions how to get there.
We were driving east on Adams Boulevard when he said, 'I never saw anything like that spine
before.'
'You don't want to know what it is. Trust me.'
'Sure. I'm built that way.'
That's the main difference between a robot and a human.



CHAPTER 8
CON CARNEY'S LUCKY DAY
┬л^┬╗
I took Adams downtown. Since it was the middle of the morning and not rush hour, the traffic was only
hideous and not impossible.
We went north through a not very exclusive residential area with houses that looked as if they'd been
blown there by the wind, but had probably been there for years. Pale paint was flaked and patchy, as if
the houses had the mange. Lawns were thin and yellow, and the few stunted trees looked not very happy
to be there. A lot of wild kids were running around the streets, and clumps of discontented adults
gathered on corners drinking from brown paper bags, smoking cigarettes and talking.
Then the houses were behind us, and we were gliding past warehouses decorated with graffiti and
marred by broken windows. The warehouses farther on were in better condition, and belonged to people
who told you all about it with big signs painted in bold, manly letters.
Traffic thickened up again, and Bill told me to turn onto a side street, where there was a garage with
an open door not quite as wide as the Santa Monica Freeway.
I drove into the cool, dim building and parked in an empty space near a vest pocket office that was
tacked onto a side wall like an I afterthought. Outside it were three blocky chairs with chipping hide, held
together by curved metal tubes and good intentions.
Through the glass walls of the office. I could see two women and a man. One of the women was
talking into a microphone that rested on a little table pushed against the wall, and the other was at a desk,
labouring over some complicated forms. The guy was leaning back in his chair, looking lazily through
cigarette smoke, memorizing the cracked yellow ceiling. I wouldn't like the cigarette smoke. I never did.
The garage was full of pale green taxis, each with the words BIG ORANGE TAXI COMPANY on
the side. Bill and I got out of the Belvedere and slammed our doors. Each slam made a big boom in the
vast place. Anything that moved would make a big echo in a place like that. There was the same smell of
ancient grease as filled the garage at the Acme Robot Company.
Bill and I went into the office. No friendly bell tinkled. We stood on our side of a beat-up counter and
waited for somebody to notice us.
The woman at the microphone was small and slim, and had short dark hair. She whispered into the
microphone and kept notes. I cleared my throat, and the woman at the desk glanced at me as if I were a
window shade moving in the breeze, just something that distracted her now and then. The guy never
moved. He was settled into his chair like a lump of clay. His round, fleshy head was nearly bald, but
where I could see them below the rolled-up sleeves of a glaringly white shirt, his arms looked as if they
were covered in black carpeting. I had been right about not liking the cigarette smoke.