"Robb, J D - In Death 10 - Loyalty in Death (1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robb J D)

mug with dingy foam sliding down the sides.
The Brew specialized in cheap drinks and stale beer nuts. Its clientele ran to
grifters down on their luck, low-level office drones and the cut-rate licensed
companions who hunted them, and a smaller of hustlers with nothing left to
hustle.
The air was stale and overheated, conversation scattered and secret. Through the
smeared light, several gazes slid to Eve, then quickly away.
Even without Peabody's uniform beside her, she whispered cop. They would have
recognized it in the way she stood -- the long, rangy body alert, the clear
brown eyes steady, focused, and flat as they took in faces and details.
Only the uninitiated would have seen just a woman with short, somewhat choppily
cut brown hair, a lean face with sharp angles and a shallow dent in the chin.
Most who patronized The Brew had been around and could smell cop at a dead run
in the opposite direction.
She spotted Ratso, his pointy rodent face nearly inside the mug as he sucked
back beer. As she walked toward his table, she heard a few chairs scrape shyly
away, saw more than one pair of shoulders hunch defensively.
Everyone's guilty of something, she thought, and sent Ratso a fierce, bare-
toothed smile. "This joint doesn't change, Ratso, and neither do you."
He offered her his wheezy laugh, but his gaze had danced nervously over
Peabody's spit-and-polish uniform. "You didn't hafta bring backup, Dallas. Jeez,
Dallas, I thought we was pals."
"My pals bathe regularly." She jerked her head toward a chair for Peabody, then
sat herself. "She's mine," Eve said simply.
"Yeah, I heard you got you a pup to train." He tried a smile, exposing his
distaste for dental hygiene, but Peabody met it with a cool stare. "She's okay,
yeah, she's okay since she's yours. I'm yours, too, right, Dallas? Right?"
"Aren't I the lucky one." When the waitress started over, Eve merely gave her a
glance that had her changing directions and leaving them alone. "What have you
got for me, Ratso?"
"I got good shit, and I can get more." His unfortunate face split into a grin
Eve imagined he thought cagey. "If I had some working credit."
"I don't pay on account. On account of I might not see your ugly face for
another six months."
He wheezed again, slurped up beer, and sent her a hopeful look out of his tiny,
watery eyes. "I deal square with you, Dallas."
"So, start dealing."
"Okay, okay." He leaned forward, curving his skinny little body over what was
left in his mug. Eve could see a perfect circle of scalp, naked as a baby's
butt, at the crown of his head. It was almost endearing, and certainly more
attractive than the greasy strings of paste-colored hair that hung from it. "You
know The Fixer, right? Right?"
"Sure." She leaned back a little, not so much to relax but to escape the puffs
of her weasel's very distasteful breath. "He still around? Christ, he must be a
hundred and fifty."
"Nah, nah, wasn't that old. Ninety-couple maybe, and spry. You bet The Fixer was
spry." Ratso nodded enthusiastically and sent those greasy strings bobbing.
"Took care of himself. Ate healthy, got regular sex from one of the girls on
Avenue B. Said sex kept the mind and body tuned up, you know."
"Tell me about it," Peabody muttered and earned a mild glare from Eve.