"Lavie Tidhar - Midnight Folk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tidhar Lavie)

beer and premature ejaculations intermingled with the furtive smell of Algerian hash.
Pushers would stand in the broken toilets and offer you juice in a veiled language that
had more signs in it than the Highway Code. They always latched on to me, smelling
in their rat-like way my desperation and desire, the convulsions of my soul for the
sweet olтАЩ death they were offering so cheaply.

IтАЩll get back to that.

So I was sitting at my apartment counting bricks and waiting for the sunset. It
was business as usual. Or rather, no business, as usual.

One day Little Mo disappeared. His office was left like an insipid cocoon
devoid of its occupant. I doubted Little Mo has become a butterfly, however. I
made a quick search for money, found none, and got the hell out. A large corpse
was found some weeks later drowned in the Thames, discovered strangled in the
reeds by an old couple out for a walk. It could have been his.

I didnтАЩt care. By the time Big Ben chimed twelve for the fourth time, I was in
business for myself.

Sal Paradise, Private Investigator. It sounded good. Real good. The kind of
good you only get after spending a mad night in the Mexican wilderness smoking tea
and whoring and drinking booze in the baking hot sun, and running amok in a
whorehouse with the beautiful young girls with the dark enchanting skin and the eyes
that hide the depths of the desert in them while the cops outside smile and nod and
dig everything. I had a fifth in the drawer, my name on the door, and there was still
hope for a flashing neon light outside the window.

I was waiting for the clock to chime, and turning in my mind the thing Lola
said to me the night before.

тАЬFriend of yours came by earlier,тАЭ she shouted to me over the din of the
crowd. We were at the bar of the Purple Rose. It was about three oтАЩclock, and just
as busy as if it were midday in Oxford Street. тАЬDidnтАЩt know you had any!тАЭ

Neither did I. IтАЩd left my old friends behind me when I left the States, and now
they were either respectable or dead, and a long way away in any case.

тАЬDid he give a name?тАЭ I had to repeat myself twice before the words travelled
through the noise, like bees between lonely flowers, and settled at LolaтАЩs ear.

тАЬNo.тАЭ she leaned forward and spoke directly into my ear, her breath warm and
sexy on my skin. тАЬFunny bloke, he was. Yank, like you, and fancied himself a bit of
a ladyтАЩs man I reckon. Gave me a right once over, I could feel his eyes slithering all
over my body.тАЭ But she smiled when she said it, and my heart suddenly beat with an
urgency I thought I had lost forever.

тАЬDid you see his thumb?тАЭ I asked, trying to contain my mounting excitement.

тАЬThumb? No, I didnтАЩt. Anyway, he said heтАЩll be back tomorrow night.тАЭ She