"Robert Rankin - They Came and Ate us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

I knew Hyde Park when it was a flowerpot! Hugo Rune

At two thirty in the afternoon of 16 August 1977 the telephones on the desk of police chief Sam J.
Maggott of Memphis PD rose against him. Spitting Big Mac, Sam snatched up the noisiest protester
and shouted' Yo' into it, the way one does. The not-too-distant voice of a junior officer poured a
stream of incoherent gibberish into Sam's ear. This concluded with the words 'you'd better get
over here quick, chief.

'You wanna run that by me again, boy?' Sam swept the other jangling phones into an open desk
drawer and slammed it shut. 'You are telling me what?'

'He's dead, chief. Elvis. And there's some deep shit going down here.'

'Goddamn!' Sam Maggott held the handset at arm's length and regarded it as he would a negro come
to propose marriage to his teenage daughter. 'You pulling my pecker, boy?'


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'I swear to God, chief.'

'Someone shoot the son-of-a-bitch?' The phone was back at Sam's ear.

'Seems like he had a heart attack or something. He's lying in his bathroom. His security are all
over the place

11

going crazy. You gotta be here ... oh shit . . .' The line went brrrrrrr.

Sam voiced certain words to the effect that the junior officer's cranium was in fact a male
reproductive organ and flung the handset aside. Elvis Presley dead. The paperwork . . .

Dragging his prodigious bulk from its reinforced chair he waddled across the room, perched cap
upon head, clipped badge upon breast, jammed handgun into calf-skin holster. As he turned the door
handle he also turned a fleeting glance back to his fetid office. The walls were made gay with
forensic blow-ups of murder victims, mugshots of rapists and serial killers, samples of human hair
in small plastic packets. The threadbare carpet was scarcely to be seen beneath discarded burger
boxes and crumpled beer cans. The water cooler steamed gently and spent Camel butts formed
suitably Egyptian pyramids above invisible ashbowls. Sam sighed deeply. Home sweet home.

'I'll be back,' said Sam. And indeed he would, eventu-ally. But not before the world as he knew it
had turned into something far beyond his wildest imaginings.

I kid you not at all.

Enter Wed 2 June 1993.