"Robert F. Young - Hologirl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

Robert Young's new story is a brisk and entertaining tale about D. D. Rinehart,
alias Nancy Drew, a futuristic private eye who takes on an offbeat case involving
doppelgangers and call girls.

Hologirl
by ROBERT F. YOUNG
We are looking for girls with Zing, Zest and Zowie to help promote our clients' products on
3V
Talent Associates
Sespol Bldg., Suite 1400
Idealia
I handed the clipping back to my caller. Before tossing it onto my transparent desktop, he'd informed
me that he had good reason to believe that Amos Kurilman, who, in conjunction with his wife, ran the
agency, was a pimp.
"You think it's a front for a call-girl operation?"
Sespol nodded his peruked head without removing his gaze from where it had been ever since he'd
sat down opposite me тАФ on my legs. "An egregious front, Ms. Rinehardt. The girls even have the gall to
live right on the premises. And there must be hundreds of them! The lobby's equipped with an electronic
surveillance system that comes on after dark, and the same faces never show up on the tapes more than
twice. The Sespol Sky-Rise is a respectable office building, restricted to respectable businesses. During
the day, girls go up to Suite 1400 where, presumably, they are interviewed; they then come back down
again and depart. Fine and dandy. But if my other renters ever get wind of the other girls who come and
go after hours, they may not renew their leases. Worse, they may even cancel them."
"So you want proof of what the other girls are doing so you can cancel Kurilman's lease."
" тАШFlagrante delicto proof,' if I may be so bold as to coin a term. Something tangible I can show him
that will cause him to slink off into the night, dragging his tails behind him, so to speak (ha-ha!), without
the incident making the media. In a word, a hard-core porno-photo."
"My fee is $300 a day, plus expenses," I said in the brusque Philip Marlow tone of voice I reserve
for such occasions. "$700 in advance."
"That's pretty steep for snapping a dirty picture."
"It's not that simple. Before I snap it I have to find out what the score is, and that means legwork.
Incidentally, that V-shaped cicatrix on my left kneecap you seem so fascinated by is a mememto of an
overnight hike I went on when I was a brownie and fell on a beer can."
He raised his pale-blue eyes to my face. He gave a little giggle. Then, abruptly all business, he stood
up, counted out fourteen fifties from his shoulder purse and arranged them on my desktop. "I hope you're
as good as they say you are."
"I'm better."
D. D. Rinehardt, Private Investigator, it says on my office door. If I can't find out what you
want to know, nobody can.

The Sespol Sky-Rise rises like a glass phallus from between two inflated electricar-domes that
suggest a pair of gonads. I found a parking slot for my Blue Jay in one of the latter, entered the building
proper and took the main elevator to the fourteenth floor. Psychedelic walls, knee-deep pile carpeting,
gilt doors with bas-relief lettering, a genuine antique fireman's ax hanging in a recessed glass display
case.... The door I sought proved to be a double one. Talent, the lettering on the left one said;
Associates, on the other. They opened to my touch, and I stepped into a commodious reception room.
More knee-deep pile carpeting. Comfy-chairs arranged artfully along luminous walls. A long, low
center-table imbricated with popular periodicals. A mahoganoid desk with a big brown female sitting
behind it. A nameplate reading Cecily Sturmi Kurilman. An inner door just to the desk's left.
The hour was early (9:30, or thereabouts), but already most of the chairs were occupied by