"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 1 - Labyrinth of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

he was connected up with organized crime -- even loan sharking in this part of town
didn't get you a fifty-thousand-dollar Mercedes sports car and a house in the
exclusive suburb where he lived -- and probably was into more, but we didn't have
much to do with him. Brandy knew that it was Little Jimmy who'd suggested her
dad to the Reverend Billy.
Little Jimmy dressed fairly conservatively, but the suits were hand tailored and
only of the best material, I think he had three people on the staff just to get
rid of scuffs on his shoes. His voice was abnormally high and silky, but very
cultured, sort of as if Stepin Fetchit had gone to Harvard. We just stared at
him, surprised he'd even walk into a dump like the office without sending ahead
a squad of cleaners and shampooers.
"I hear you're closing down," he oozed, sounding for all the world like a black
Don Corleone.
"Too bad. I mean, the little lady's daddy's last legacy and all that."
"Yeah, well thanks for the sympathy, Nkrumah," she responded, bitterness now in
her tone. "You sure tried to help things along."
"If you're referring to the unfortunate outcome of your father's case, I can
only say, as I always said, that I was really trying to do him a favor. I owed
him one, but that's another story. I was truly distressed at how it all came
out, but who would have thought that anybody could be that much of a straight
arrow? Meaning no disrespect, but your daddy was handed a golden opportunity
late in life on a silver platter. All he had to do was take it, and money, fame,
and political connections would be his."
"He was too good for the con," Brandy shot back. "He really believed in the
Reverend Billy."
"To be so naive at his age and experience was the cause of his downfall. I
offered him the golden platter; he chose his own fate. It was no doing of mine
that he did so."
Brandy was losing her temper fast. "Some folks would rather be dead than turn
into house niggers like you!"
The insult stung, but only briefly. Little Jimmy wasn't paying a social call.
"What do you want here, Nkrumah?" I asked him. "If you're gonna offer to
bankroll us to keep us afloat, forget it. You got your own boys to do your dirty
work, and we couldn't afford your interest."
"It isn't the interest I'm worried about, it's the principles," the loan shark
replied. "Are you like your daddy, or are you interested in some real gold, no
strings attached, if you don't mind getting a little dirty in the process."
I looked at Brandy and she looked back at me, and both of us had identical
frowns and shrugs. "Go on," she said to him. "It don't cost nothin' to listen."
Little Jimmy smiled, which was not a reassuring gesture. When Little Jimmy
smiled, you felt like the worm just about to be dropped in the river.
"Would the potential of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars and no con
job like the one they pulled on your daddy make you interested?"
It was my turn to gulp. Considering the pay at Ocean Estates, he was talking
fifteen years' wages at least. "Keep going. You can kill half of Camden and part
of Philadelphia with that kind of money, even now," I noted.
"Someone has absconded with two and a quarter million dollars of money that I
was responsible for," Little Jimmy told us. "The finder's fee on the money is
ten percent."
I sat down on the floor and found Brandy already there.