"Goodwin-SmallChange" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godwin Parker)

methods and the lengths to which Snodgrass was prepared to go with price clearly
no object.

At forty, obsessed, neglecting the business he inherited until it failed,
Snodgrass was forced to offer his treasures for sale just to live. Futile and
far too late. Only a handful of collectors specialized in gum wrappers and none
could afford his legendary prizes at a fraction of their worth. He died a broken
man, never losing his pathetic faith in Fleer Flickers, clutching the rarest of
them to his breast as he expired.

Of a sterner breed, Lemming never loaned a penny without the return of two. In
an expansive mood he might tip a waitress nine percent, but such generosity
withered early and died as his love of found money distilled at last to the
Absolute with his retrieval of a damp twenty dollar bill from the unpleasant
floor of a YMCA men's room. Unlike the late Shodgrass, this was not culmination
to I Lemming, but a new door flung wide on vistas shimmering with genius. He
trembled with his vision. On any given day he could find a coin on any street.
Multiply that by whole towns, cities, the entire country: a fortune daily
falling unheeded to pavements everywhere. Today America, tomorrow the world . .
.

If he could somehow sweep up all of it every day. Impossible, of course, but
suppose . . .

The ambition would not fade but grew in Conville Lemming. A vast, untapped grid
of streets, cities, and states where lost coins lay star-scattered over a
concrete cosmos, gleaming in imagination, firing his dreams at night.

Suppose . . .

The wings of Icarus had eventually to pass from fancy to fact; Lemming's vision
must translate from chimera to fait accompli. As Snodgrass was rumored to have
done, he overleaped human possibility to the possible at any cost. From a
retired Satanist who had renounced the black ans to marry and care for an
alcoholic church organist, Lemming purchased a grimoire guaranteed to contain
the spells he needed, an arcane volume bound in foxed pigskin with parchment
folio leaves. Counting her exorbitant price, the erstwhile lady of shadows
offered practical advice.

"Some of these spells are tricky and all are dangerous. When you're ready to
make the call, I recommend a large asbestos mat."

Lemming practiced, Lemming delved, fired by the undeniable truth that while he
learned, sharp-eyed children, bag ladies, unworthy homeless, anyone and everyone
was reaping daily the harvest rightfully his. His first invocations were flat
failures, intermediate stages frustrating. Within his circle he was amazed,
despite technique fast approaching mastery, how often he could summon one entity
and receive another, like Mexican telephone service. Shady stock brokers, real
estate speculators, collection agents, languid and androgynous Californians
committed to health food, even a Scientologist loyal to the movement beyond