"Hiaasen, Carl - Basket Case" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hiaasen Carl)

"That's right, darling, we're a hot item, me and Cleo. Tonight we're going to a rave and later we're getting a suite at Morgan's. Tell that to your mom. Please, Carla, I'll pay you."
When Carla laughs she looks just like Anne, her mother. And Anne laughing is one of my all-time happiest recollections.
Carla asks if Cleo Rio is dead.
"No, it's her husband," I say.
"Oh, that's right. She got married," Carla nods. "It was in Ocean Drive."
Carla keeps track of all local and visiting celebs. At seventeen she is a wily veteran of the club scene and a regular pilgrim to South Beach, where she keeps current on music, movies, dietary trends and fashion. Carla is a key source; my only reliable link to modern youth culture.
"So what has Cleo done to make herself semi-famous? What exactly is she?" I ask.
"More specific please. You mean her sexuality? Nationality? Personality?"
"Carla," I say, "in about twenty minutes I've gotta sit down with this woman and drag three decent quotes out of her. This will require first-class bullshitting."
"She's a singer."
"That helps. What kind of singer?"
"Angry," Carla says, "wounded but not hardened."
"Alanis clone?"
Carla shakes her head. "Cleo's definitely going for a more precious effect. You know the type-the suddenly fuckable former fashion model."
Carla is not trying to shock me. She's talked this way since she was twelve.
"Tell me some of her hits," I say.
"Hit singular, Jack."
"So everything you're giving me is based on one song?"
"Plus the video," Carla says.
"Certainly."
"Directed by Oliver Stone."
"Who else."
"Supposedly she flashes some pubes. That's how she got her name in Spin," Carla reports. "Personally, I don't think it was even Cleo on the video. I think they used a double."
"For pubic hair?"
"Show business, Jack. Hul-lo?" Carla, who has come under the suspicious gaze of the store manager, now pretends to arrange some color slides on the light table for my inspection.
"What was the name of Cleo Rio's one and only song?" I ask.
" 'Me.' " says Carla. "That's all. Just 'Me.' "
"And it charted?"
"Only because of the pube hype."
"Gotcha. Thanks, darling."
"Where's the big interview?"
"Her place."
"I expect a complete debriefing."
"Of course. Hey, you ever hear of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies?"
Carla arches an auburn eyebrow. "They new?" She's afraid she's missed something.
"Nope. Old as the hills."
"Sorry, Jack."
Before leaving the drugstore, I can't stop myself from asking: "So how's your mom?"
"Good," says Carla.
"Really?"
"Really good."
"Shit," I say.
Carla laughs fondly. The fact that I still miss Anne buoys her opinion of me.
"Tell her I said hi."
"You're quite the dreamer, Jack."

Jimmy Stoma's condo is on the nineteenth floor of an eyesore skyscraper at the southernmost tip of Silver Beach. Twenty minutes she keeps me waiting in the lobby, Jimmy's widow, but truthfully I'm surprised she agreed to see me at all. From the briefness of the death notice, it would seem that the family doesn't want much attention.
The door of 19-G is opened by a squat, bald, neckless man with two small platinum hoops in each earlobe. Straight from Bouncers-R-Us, this guy, down to the bomber jacket and the understated armpit bulge. Wordlessly he leads me through the hazily lit condo to the living room, where Mrs. Stomarti is standing before a wraparound bay window.
I have indeed seen her face before, on the cover of a couple tabloid-style celebrity magazines to which I subscribe for professional reasons. (I clip and file some of the juicier profile pieces in case the celebrity subject someday expires within our circulation area.)
"I'm Cleo," says Mrs. Stomarti. "Jimmy's wife."