"Mallory, Michael - Just Because You're Paranoid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mallory Michael)

JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID
By
Michael Mallory

It was a little after two, which meant the lunch crowd had already left La Burrito, the Mexican dive on the lower level of the Encino strip mall that also houses my office, leaving me the only customer. I was waiting for the check and contemplating the pictures of the Virgin Mary and Selena on the wall when the tomato walked in. It wasn't easy for her. She had to squeeze her bulging, ripe, red sides through the glass-and-chrome door.

"Are you Dave Laurent?" she asked, approaching my booth. For a tomato, she had a great voice.

"Uh, yeah," I replied, somewhat dumbstruck.

"The receptionist at the dentist's office next door to yours said I could probably find you down here. I need an investigator. Can we go up to your office?"

I threw a ten on the table and escorted her out. As the girl in the tomato suit struggled up the concrete steps, I dashed ahead to unlock my door, and noticed that the gold letters spelling Law-Rent Investigations were beginning to flake off. You get what you pay for.

"I have to tell you," she said, while I fumbled the key, "you don't look like the image I had in my mind of a private investigator."

I'd heard that plenty of times before. Truth is, I look more like a funny dad from an Eggo commercial. Fortunately, they don't use looks as a criterion for a P.I. license.

It took both of us to shove her through the door. Once inside, she wriggled out of the tomato suit, under which she wore a bright red body stocking that left very little to the imagination. She was young, probably college age, with slightly kinky red hair and a freckled face that was striking and intelligent rather than beautiful in the California bimbo sense. She sat down in my client chair.

"I noticed your sign as I drove to work this morning," she said.

"You work in a tomato suit?" I asked. "Where's your workplace, on Vine?"

I thought it was funny, anyway.

"If you walk just a couple blocks down the street," she said, unsmiling, "you will also see people dressed like a hamburger patty, an onion, a pickle and a bag of fries, all promoting the new Burger Heaven that just opened up. My name is Caitlin Keaney and I'm really a journalist with the Valley Veritas."

"Aha," I muttered. The Valley Veritas was one of those smeary-ink alternative newspapers that sandwiched unbearably smug assaults on pop culture in between hard-core sex service ads.

Caitlin went on: "I'm doing an undercover investigation of the Burger Heaven chain. You know who owns it?"

"Billy Graham?" I said. It was just a guess.

"The Order of Hermetosophy," she said, indignantly. "You've heard of them, haven't you?"
[[ I have it on good authority that "Hermetosophy" is pronounced "Herm-a-TOSS-o-fee." -- Nefarious Editor (N.Ed.) a.k.a. Ned. ]]
Anyone who's been in Southern California for two quakes or longer knows about the Order of Hermetosophy, which is one of the oldest and hardiest of the pseudo-religious, self-help organizations that turned spiritual philosophy into a cash cow. Throughout the 1980s the Order was in the real estate business, buying up buildings in every one of the cities that hive together to make L.A. But over the past decade, a steady stream of lawsuits from former members coupled with the widely-reported deaths of two young initiates in the Hermetosophy detox program encouraged the organization to adopt a much lower profile.

"I've been investigating the Order for six months but I'm afraid they're finally on to me," she said. "I need someone they don't know to help me collect evidence."

"Evidence of what?"

"Of what Burger Heaven is really selling."

"And what is that?"

"I don't know yet," she confessed, "that's why I need help. We have to get a sample of the food from Burger Heaven."

Already it was we. "If I helped you, would I have to dress like a vegetable, too?" I asked.