"Molly Brown - Community Service" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Molly)

my nostrils and a terrible chemical taste in my mouth. A man in a white
coat stood at the foot of my bed. "What's your name?" he asked me.
I had to think about that. I noticed a jug by the side of the bed and sat
up to pour myself a glass of water. "Kelly," I said finally. "Nora Kelly."

"And what do you do for a living?"
That was easy. "I'm a police officer."
"Do you remember anything else?"
I suddenly became aware of a throbbing pain behind my forehead. "My father
worked Armoured Vehicle Patrol in West Central," I said, reaching up to
rub my temples. "He was killed on duty when I was just a kid. I entered
the academy the year my brother was shot."
The man shone a narrow beam of light into one of my eyes, which made the
pain in my head even worse. "Then what?"
I raised a hand to block the light. "Six years of boredom in Traffic
Control. What am I doing here?"
"You had a little accident, but you're all right now. Good to have you
back with us, Officer Kelly," the man said.
I was assigned to a small station in the seventeenth sector at Southeast,
which immediately erupted into full-scale war between us and an alliance
of the Cobras and the Blades. I remember the next few months as a blur of
shootings and bombings. The fourth time I was wounded, they gave me a
medal. And then they told me to get myself a set of blue and gold because
I was being transferred to airborne.
I had to go back to Northwest Area, one last time. I had to show them.
I went down to the basement and found myself in a room full of strangers.
A man looked up from his terminal. "May I help you, Officer?"
"I'm looking for someone," I said. "Do you know an Officer James
Rodriguez?"
He shook his head.
I started to wonder if I was in the wrong room. Then I saw the jagged
stripe of mismatched plaster where someone had finally filled in that
crack Jimmy always used to complain about. I mentioned some other names of
people I had worked with.
"Try personnel, on the second floor."
"I'll do that," I said. "By the way, how long have you been working
Northwest Traffic?"
"About eight years."
"Eight years? Here? In this room?"
He laughed. "Sad, isn't it?"
I went across the street to Larry's Bar, but it wasn't there. A squat
prefab stood in its place. A sign above the door read: "Colette's Lounge".

I went inside. No one in Colette's had ever heard of Jimmy Rodriguez.
They hadn't heard of him at his old accommodation block, either.
I spent the long drive home trying to make sense of it all, but I
couldn't.
I got off the elevator at the twenty-ninth floor and opened the door to my
quarters. Though the room was dark, I couldn't miss the outline of that
familiar figure standing in the shadows beside my window. "Jimmy!"