"Callahan 04 - Lady Sally's House 01 - Callahan's Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

"Pizza for breakfast at ten, a bowl of chili after the lunchtime rush, six hours later I got stabbed, when the hell do I gee the god damned painkiller?"
Her face backed away. "I'm sorry. Right now." She took a black doctor-type bag from the floor beside the bed, got out a hypo and a small stoppered vial, busied herself loading the needle.
"That doesn't look like much," I complained. "What are you giving me?"
"Well," she said, squinting judiciously at the needle as she purged it of air, "with your history I figure you've built up a heavy tolerance, so it's safe to smack you pretty hard. I wouldn't give this stuff to a civilian. You'll like it." She circled my arm with her big hand, squeezed until a vein came up.
"A-a-l-l right!" I said feebly, looking away. I hate needles. "Thanks. What is it?"
She slid the point home, thumbed the plunger slowly and steadily. "Fifty milligrams of laboratory-pure Placebo in a potassium chlonde/dihydroxide solution." She took out the spike and rubbed the spot with a piece of cotton.
"Wow. Sounds good." The name rang a bell. "Isn't Placebo the Russian word for 'thank you'?" My father spoke Russian.
She coughed loudly into her hand, and bent to put away her gear. "Yeah, it's Russian-made. Experimental. It'll come on like gangbusters in about four heartbeats."
"I can feel it." The pain, and the body in which it resided, moved about two feet to the left of me and stayed there. I could see it pulsing vaguely in the gloom out of the corner of my eye. "Thanks a lot. What's your name?"
"Mary."
"Hi Mary, I'm Maureen." I realized I'd given her my real name, and wondered why.
"Hello, Maureen."
She sat at my bedside while I enjoyed the feeling of being distant from the pain. I noticed vaguely that she was holding my hand, though I could not feel it.
"I had morphine once," I said after a while, "in a hospital, and this is better, you know?"
"Yes. It is."
I rolled my head over and looked at her, focusing with some difficulty. She must have been close to two hundred pounds and she did not look at all like a jolly fat lady, but I got the idea she could be merry when it suited her. "Hey, Mary, where the hell am I, anyway?"
"Lady Sally's house."
"Is that the duchess?"
"Huh?"
"The killer auntie."
"Oh. I think so, yes. Her Ladyship brought you here."
"That's the one. She's got one wild maid, I'll tell you."
"More than one."
"The one I mean was half bald, with his tush sticking Out of a cute little apron."
She laughed. She tried to keep it down to sickroom volume, but it was a pretty substantial laugh. "That's Robin. He belongs to Cynthia, not Lady Sally. Don't worry, he's harmless."
"Tell me about it! The shape I'm in, I chased him out with his tongue between his legs. I mean his tail between his teeth. Boy, this Russian shit is terrific. I always knew rich people had secret dope that was dynamite. You a doctor or a nurse?"
"Neither."
"Somebody fixed me up pretty good. This Lady Sally actually got a doctor to make a house call?"
"Kate's on staff. She said it was nice to do some real medicine again, sew something besides costumes for a change. You'll meet her later."
"Fine by me." Everything was fine by me. I made a mental note to tell Travis about this Placebo stuff. Then I remembered that Travis had gone away somewhere and wouldn't be back for a long time. Then I remembered that I didn't like him anymore anyway, for some reason. Then I discovered that while I'd been pursuing this train of thought, I'd mislaid the room in which I'd left my body and its pain. It was around here someplace. I went looking for it, and got distracted by other moms, with funny things in them. Daddy was in some of them, and Mommy wasn't in any of them. It was fun.


CHAPTER 2 THE HOUSE


When I'd got back to the room I'd started from, sunlight was streaming in the window. Lady Sally was there, in a feathered wrapper, with her hair in curlers and her face scrubbed of all traces of makeup. She still looked regal. Since Daddy was with her, I knew I was still dreaming. He was in bathrobe and slippers, chewing on his pipe. I waved, ignoring the tugging sensation at my side. "Hi, Daddy." I was so glad he had remarried again. And to a duchess!
"Good morning," he said.
His voice was all wrong. I tried to get up on one elbow to look closer, and my side shouted at me. I wasn't dreaming after all. This hurt too much not to be real. I was awake now.
He was not my father, of course. Now that I looked, he didn't even resemble him a great deal. What he looked like was the Hollywood stereotype of the Kindly Older Man, the avuncular figure who would need only five or ten years to become the Lovable Grandfather. I must have frowned at him.
"Good morning, Maureen," Lady Sally said. "This is my very dear friend Phillip. He will not bite you, unless you specifically request it." She still sounded just the least bit tipsy, in that cheery-glow phase.
He kept . . . not staring. Just looking at me pleasantly. Enjoying my company, in no hurry to get the conversation rolling. His grey eyes twinkled. If you had a bad acid trip in Grand Central Station you would thread your way through all the leering gibbering zombies until you found this man, and then you would be all right.
"Sorry," I said. "I was dreaming; thought you were someone I knew. Hello, Phillip. Good morning, Lady Sally. Where's the werebeagle?"
She looked politely puzzled. "I beg your pardon?"
"The one you went up that alley with. I saw him change."
"Ah." She took a closer look at me. "Charles is not here at present. He's gone home. You . . . er. . . did not find his metamorphosis upsetting?'
"To be perfectly honest, I found it terrifying. But friend of yours is a friend of mine."
"Broad-minded of you, child. Good for you."
I realized for the first time that her British accent was bogus, an affectation. She did it well, but if you listened long enough, you could tell. "Thank you for saving my life."
"Think nothing of it, my dear girl. One cannot of course spend one's life hunting pimps; the supply is inexhaustible; but if Fate offers me a chance to assault one without going out of my way, I can only be grateful." We were going to drop the subject of Charles.
I sighed. "Well, I can't say I'll miss Travis, but he did have his uses.