"Keith Laumer - Future Imperfect" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

Or would they? There was no necessary connection between the dead man's story and the real
reason for the hunters on his trail. For all I knew, he might have been an escaped maniac, and the
men in the unmarked suits might have been CBI boys, with orders to shoot on sight. The shots they
had fired at me might have been a simple case of mistaken identity; maybe they were not expecting
anyone but Jack the Ripper in the ruined streets of Greenleaf.
And maybe I was Shirley Temple. No CBI man that ever packed a badge was as lousy a shot
as the clowns I had gunned down, or as unschooled in the basics of alley fighting. They might, for
reasons known to the inner circles of bureaucracy, wander around in suits with empty pockets and
no labelsтАФbut even a Federal man moving in for a hot pinch would not blaze away at a stranger on
sight.
It was a futile argument, and I was losing both sides of it. I switched off the light, punched the
pillow into shape, and made myself a promise that first thing in the morning I would scale the coin
out over the breakers and channel my efforts to matters of more immediate concern to my futureтАФ
such as locating a serious poker game to replenish my reduced resources. I was picturing a
succession of inside straights and four-card flushes when the phone rang.
"MalтАФfunny thing. Your stamp collectorsтАФthey're stirred up like an Elk's smoker tipped off
to a vice raid. Your friend Sethys left by the front door two minutes ago; he's standing out on the
drive in the rain giving the garageman a hard time about bringing out his car. Now, he says. Hell,
it's probably buried in the stacks somewhere down on level fourтАФ"
"I'll be down," I told him. "Get me a carтАФany carтАФbefore he has his."
Six minutes later by my cuff-link Omega I slid into the seat of a low-built foreign job that
Anzio had pulled around to the side in the shelter of a screen of hibiscus.
"For cripe's sake get it back in one piece, Mal," he hissed at me, squinting against the drizzle.
"It belongs to some big oil bird in the tower suiteтАФ"
"If they nab me, I stole it." Another fifty cees changed hands. At this rate that game had better
be soonтАФpreferably with a couple of Maharajahs with just enough IQ to raise into a pat hand.
The turbos hummed at me when I touched the go pedal; there was plenty of power under the
squat black hood. I eased her out, watched Sethys get into the back of a heavy maroon Monojag
with three other coin collectors. They gunned off down the drive and I let them take a hundred-yard
lead, then slid out behind them.
Old Miami was a town I had known well once, a lot of years ago. It had not changed much in
the decade since I had last seen itтАФexcept for the recent scars of storm and flood. The high tides set
up by the tremors that rocked the Gulf floor had swept it, east to west, half a dozen times, scoured
away topsoil, lawns, shrubbery, felling twenty-year-old royal palms, sweeping to well-deserved
oblivion the older, flimsier construction that dated back to post-boom times. But the main portion of
the cityтАФthe famous two-hundred-story luxury hotels, the downtown streets of high-priced shops,
the walled and remote residences, each on its manicured acre that made up the wealthiest suburbs
north of RioтАФthey were unchanged.
I followed the Monojag along Flagler under the multiple spans of Interstate 509, west into a
section of massive concrete warehouses and gaunt steel food-processing plants, the ugly spawn of
the South American import trade that had been building to boom proportions before the onset of the
catastrophes. Now they were run-down, rust-streaked, their yards grown high with rank weeds
sprouted since the last high water a few weeks before. There were fewer polyarcs here; the Jag's
headlights cut diamond-white swathes through flat black shadow.
My quarry was moving slowing now, creeping along at ten miles per hour. Once or twice the
wan beam of a hand-flash probed furtively at a dark side street, flicked over a sign post. I kept well
back, showing no lights, my turbos flicking over at minimumтАФjust enough to keep my bumper rails
off the blacktop. Ahead, the car stopped; I slid to the curb and grounded. Two men hopped out
briskly, casting long, awkward shadows in the light of a block-distant pole. They ducked to confer
briefly with their driver, shot a look my way which missed me in the shadows, then stepped off into