"George R. R. Martin - WC 5 - Down and Dirty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

boots that added an inch or two to Brennan's height. He wore stained leather
pants and an oversize leather jacket that was draped with lengths of chain. His
spiked hair added several inches to his apparent height, and the scarlet and
black scars crawling on his face added apparent fierceness to his appearance, as
did the bone-a human finger-bone, Brennan realized-that pierced his nose.
The scars that patterned his cheeks, forehead, and chin were the insigna of the
Cannibal Headhunters, a once-feared street gang that had disintegrated when
Brennan had killed its leader, an ace named Scar. Gang members not slain in the
bloody power struggle after Scar's demise had for the most part gravitated to
other criminal associations, such as the Shadow Fist Society.
"What do you want?" The Headhunter's voice was too reedy to sound menacing, but
he tried.
"To see Danny Mao." Brennan spoke softly, his voice pitched in the slow drawl
that he remembered so well from his childhood. The Headhunter bent lower to hear
Brennan over the cacaphony of music, manic laughter, and half a hundred
conversations that washed over them.
"'Bout what?"
"'Bout what's not your business, boy."
Brennan saw out of the corner of his eye that conversation in the booth had
stopped and that everyone was watching them.
"I say it is." The Headhunter smiled a grin he fondly thought savage, showing
filed front teeth. Brennan laughed aloud. The Headhunter frowned. "What's so
funny, asshole?"
Brennan, still laughing, grabbed the bone in the Headhunter's nose and yanked.
The Headhunter screamed and reached for his torn nose and Brennan kicked him in
the crotch. He fell with a choking moan, and Brennan dropped the bloody bone
he'd ripped from his nose onto his curled-up body.
"You," Brennan told him, then slid into the booth next to the blond girl, who


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was staring at him in stoned astonishment. Two of the three men sitting across
the table started to rise, but Danny Mao waved a negligent hand and they sat
back down, muttering at each other and staring at Brennan.
Brennan took his hat off, set it on the table in front of him, and looked at
Danny Mao, who returned his gaze with apparent interest.
"What's your name?" Mao asked. "Cowboy," Brennan said softly.
Mao picked up the glass in front of him and took a short sip. He looked at
Brennan as if he were some kind of odd bug and frowned. "You for real? I ain't
never seen a Chinese cowboy before."
Brennan smiled. The epicanthic folds given his eyes by Dr. Tachyon's deft
surgical skills had combined, as he had known they would, with his coarse, dark
hair and tanned complexion to give him an Oriental appearance. This slight
alteration of his features, his newly grown facial hair, and his western manner
of speaking and dressing all added up to a simple but effective disguise. It
wouldn't fool anyone who knew him, but he wasn't likely to run into anyone who
did.
And the irony of his disguise, Brennan thought, was that every aspect of his new