"Spider Robinson - The Magnificent Conspiracy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

"You're damn right I am! Crazy means out o' step with the world, and accordin'
to the rules o' the world, I'm supposed to cheat you out of every dime I smell on ya
plus ten percent an' if you like that world so much that you wanna subsidize it then
you get yer ass outa here an' go see the Dutchman but whatever you do don't you
tell him we sent ya you got that?"
Nothing in the world makes a voice as harsh as the shortness of breath caused by
a run-on sentence. I waited until he had fed his starving lungs and then said, "I want
to see the manager," and he emptied them again very slowly and evenly, so that when
he closed his eyes I knew he was close to hyperventilating. He clenched his fingers
on the desk between us as though he were trying to pull it toward him, and when he
opened his eyes the anger was gone from them.
"Okay, Bob. Maybe Mr. Cardwell can explain it to you. I ain't got the right
words."
I nodded and got up.
"Bob ... " He was embarrassed now. "I didn't have no call to bark at you
thataway. I can't blame you for bein' suspicious. Sometimes I miss my ulcers
myself. It'sтАФwell, it's a lot easier to live in a world of mud if you tell yourself there
ain't no such thing as dry land."
It was the first sensible thing he'd said. "What I mean, I'm sorry."
"Thanks for the ice water," I said.
He relaxed and smiled again. "Mr. Cardwell's in the garage out back. You take it
easy in that heat."
I knew that I'd stalled long enough for the cassette or record or whatever it was to
have ended, but I treated the doorknob like an angry rattlesnake just the same. But
when I opened it, the only thing that hit me in the face was the hot dry air I'd
expected. I left.

II

I went through an arched gate in the plank fence that abutted the office's rear wall,
and followed a wide strip of blacktop through weedy flats to the garage.
It was a four-bay job, a big windowless wood building surrounded with the usual
clutter of handtrucks, engine blocks, transmissions, gas cans, fenders, drive trains,
and rusted oil drums. All four bays were closed, in spite of the heat. It was set back
about five hundred yards from the office, and the field behind it was lushly
overgrown with dead cars, a classic White Elephant's Graveyard that seemed better
tended than most. As I got closer I realized the field was actually organized: a
section for GM products, one for Chryslers, one for Fords and so on, each marked
with a sign and subdivided by model and, apparently, year. A huge
Massey-Ferguson sat by one of three access roads, ready to haul the next clunker in
to its appointed resting place. There was big money in this opera-tion, very
impressive money, and I just couldn't square that with Arden Larsen's crackpot
pricing policy.
Arden seemed to have flipped the cassette to side two of Album 1700. I passed
beneath a speaker that said it dug rock and roll music, and entered the garage
through a door to the right of the four closed bays. Inside, I stopped short.
Whoever heard of an air-conditioned garage? Especially one this size. Big money.
Over on the far side of the room, just in front of a Rambler, the floor grew a man,
like the Wicked Witch melting in reverse. It startled the hell out of meтАФuntil I
realized he had only climbed out of one of those rectangular pits the better garages