"Simon Hawke - The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

house, though its square footage wasn't all that much less than Paulie's home. As far as apartments went,
these were pretty classy digs. I made a quick walk-through inventory. Big living room with a nice fireplace,
two bedrooms, large bath, separate kitchen, dining room, large balcony. The carpeting was thick, wall-to-wall,
brown pile, and fie furnishings looked as if they'd all been bought at once. It was the kind of thing a decisive
man who didn't want to waste a lot of time would do. Went in, knew what he wanted, picked up a set.
Everything matched, and most of it looked reasonably new. Big, brown leather and mahogany, sturdy kind of
stuff, built for comfort with lots of room to stretch out. None of that steel and glass crap. One of the end
tables held an honest-to-God Remington bronze that had to be worth a fortune. There were no paintings on
the walls, but there were several large, nicely framed Civil War prints by Don Troiani. Again, not cheap. And
again, revealing an old-fashioned, manly kind of taste that would give a decorator fits. I noticed a couple of
guns hanging on the wall. Antique, black-powder, cap-and-ball revolvers. Navy Colts, by the look of them. I
wasn't an expert, but I read a lot, and Paulie had a taste for American history, as well. One of the bedrooms
had been turned into a study, with bookshelves and a large oak desk stained dark walnut, with a comfortable
leather swivel chair behind it. The desk held a computer, a pipe stand, and a cork-lined humidor, and there
was a nice residual smell of cavendish tobacco in the air. Another old-fashioned and outmoded habit. There
was no sign of a woman's touch anywhere about the place. Definitely bachelor digs. Warm and comfortable
and tidy, with no concessions to style or fashion.
"Milk, straight up, in a saucer," Solo said, putting the dish down as I sauntered back into the living room.
"Place meet with your approval?"
"Sorry about that," I said. "Didn't mean to be nosy. It's an inbred trait."
"It's okay," he said. "You hungry? I'm afraid I don't have any cat food, but I can go out and pick some up."
"Thanks, but I'm okay for now," I said.
"You got any preferences?" he asked. "I mean, like particular brands?''
"Hey, man, I spent most of my life rooting around in the garbage for food," I told him. "I'm not a fussy guy. I'll
eat just about anything except birds. I hate birds."
Solo grinned and sat down on the couch. "Well," he said, a trifle awkwardly, "here we are."
"Yeah, here we are," I said, taking a seat on the carpet. I didn't know the rules yet, so I had no idea if the guy
had a thing about animals on the furniture. When you're a guest, you try to be polite.
I guess neither one of us really knew what the hell we were supposed to do. It wasn't exactly your normal sort
of situation. Hey, buddy, do me a favor, take care of my cat after I'm gone. It was pretty obvious that I wasn't
your average cat. Hell, I wasn't even your average thaumagene. I had plenty of rough edges. I didn't even know
if Solo liked cats.
"So, how do you feel about cats?" I asked him, figuring that at least one of us had to start somewhere.
Solo shrugged. "I don't know really. I've never had one. I guess I'm not really a cat person. Not that I've got
anything against cats, you understand, I've never had a dog, either. And I'm not too crazy about birds, myself.
Had a hamster once, when I was a kid."
"A hamster, huh?"
"Yeah. It died."
"Sorry to hear that."
"I felt sorta sorry for it, sitting in that cage all the time, and I used to let it out to run around. One time, it got
away from me and scurried off somewhere. My mother found it. She sucked it up into the vacuum cleaner."
I tried, but I just couldn't make it. I managed to keep it down for about five seconds, and then I had to laugh. It
just started coming up, and there was nothing I could do to hold it in. The thing is, my laugh sounds a whole
lot like a hairball coming up. It starts with this wheezing, hacking kind of sound, and then settles down into a
sort of rhythmic snorting, and for a second, Solo looked alarmed, thinking maybe I was choking. Then he
realized that I was laughing, and he started laughing, too.
"Actually, it was a pretty traumatic experience for me, as a kid," he said, when we'd both run out of steam.
"I guess it was, at that," I said. "Sorry for laughing, but..."
"Yeah, I know," he said. "Freaked out my mother pretty badly, too. I mean, one second she's just vacuuming
the rug, and then there's this soft, funny sort of chunking sound-"