"Ward Moore - It Becomes Necessary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Ward)

"See?" All menace had been tucked back behind the folds and lines of his face. "I knew you were a
good American deep down. Just a little misunderstanding."

"That's right," she replied, thinking of Sol and refusing to think of Sol.

"Pardon, m'sieu, 'dame."

Two men had paused by their table in a delicate balance between part of the sidewalk used
exclusively by pedestrians and that occupied by the caf├й. The older, paunched, wattled, bald, with a
William Howard Taft mustache, was trying to pull the younger away. Except for heavy, decayed teeth,
the young man had the face of one of Pope Gregory's angels: blond, blue-eyed, straight-nosed,
pink-cheeked. His lips were red and full, but firm.

The man opposite Maggie set the front legs of his chair soundlessly on the pavement again and put his
hands on the table edge, ready for action.

"Yes?" she inquired.

"American, no?" The red lips retained the perfect circle for a perceptible instant after the question
was finished.

"No," said the big man. "Non. Pas du tout. Kenya. Dominion brittanique. Aim├й├йe de
FranceтАФcawmprah?" His accent was as pure Cedar Rapids as she had ever heard. He pulled out a
booklet and flipped the pages in front of their eyes.

"Oh yays. Africain. Vairy nice for England, too bad for France. Ah, ah. A joke, is it not? And
madame?"

"Are you a cop?" she asked.

"Pardon?"

"Un flic?"

He breathed nastily into her face, his chiseled features subordinate to his bad teeth. They can laugh all
they want about American toothpaste, she thought, but I'd rather smell peppermint any time than
yesterday's pot-au-feu. "You insult!"

"Beat it, Chester. I have no passport to show you and I wouldn't if I had. Call a gendarme if you
want action; meanwhile leave us alone. See?" She drank some of her beerтАФPepsicola might have been
an improvement after allтАФignoring them until the older man finally succeeded in coaxing the younger to
leave.

"That wasn't bright," remarked the agent, tilting his chair again.

"Wasn't it?" she asked indifferently. "I just happen to be fresh out of phony documents."

"The bottom dropped out of the hero market during the war," he said. "Glory was running in the
streets. If you'd been home you'd have died with the rest of the eagle scouts. We're in business to survive
now, not to sing 'God Bless America' and run up the flag on the Eiffel Tower. But I can see you're our