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

corporation is big but no Fortune Five Hundred affair. It never lacks for money
or credit, though, so there's somebody big behind it. I didn't have time to run
down the corporate officers -- it's officially a Delaware corporation, although
that's just a mail drop -- but there was nothing immediately dirty or suspicious
about them. The home office is actually in Iowa, with branches for the west,
central, east, and south. They sell a lot of stuff, but they make most of their
money with their regional phone hookups. They take orders for just about
everything from just about everybody."
She sighed. "Yeah, I know it's a long shot that they would run there. There's no
reason for them to run there, I guess. Still, it's the only thing we got. What
about contacts?"
"A few phone numbers of people out there, mostly in California. Nobody had much
for Oregon. I had to use pay phones for all of this, so we'll have to do most of
our follow-up once we're there. A P.I. in Oakland and a couple of contacts who
were associated with our friends down on Sansom." Those were long shots, of
course, just in case this Oregon thing was as blind as it seemed to be.
I had called the feds from our apartment the night before, and they'd gone to
the north Philly address and done their thorough job. Kennedy, in fact, had
actually called back, quite pleased with what he was getting from me, and given
me another of those crazy facts. They had found only three clear sets of
fingerprints in the apartment among, of course, the thousands of smudges and
useless partials. One set was mine, one was Brandy's, and the third was
undeniably Whitlock's. That satisfied them, but left us with even more of a
problem.
"Did she wear gloves all the time or something?" Brandy wondered aloud. "I mean,
if his prints were there, and he was only there some of the time, then hers just
had to be there, too. I could take it more if they'd found hers but not his."
It bothered me, too. I was dead certain now that we were after two people,
Whitlock and this Curry woman or whatever her real name was. There were enough
signs in the background information we'd developed and the witnesses we'd
interviewed and even in the apartment itself, not to mention that two people had
taken that San Francisco flight. Everything pointed to there being two, and to
an incredible scheme to make it seem like there was only one, a scheme totally
out of character for Martin Whitlock IV, and not one he was likely to have come
up with on his own. Yet, too, there was that closet of women's clothes in his
house that Minnie had seen, and that album showing him dressed as a girl through
a fair portion of his life. None of it made sense, and the prints made even less
sense. They expected to be long gone and buried in new identities and locales by
the time anybody discovered that apartment, if anyone ever did. Why weren't her
fingerprints all over, more so than his, in fact?
The flight out wasn't much fun, either. These discount carriers were more like
cattle cars with wings than real airlines, to begin with, and that was only the
start of it. I sat up forward in nonsmoking, while Brandy sat near the back
smoking away again, and every time I'd look back she was surrounded by guys,
mostly young, black, and handsome and full of muscles, and she seemed to be
having a wonderful time.
Okay, okay, so call me jealous. I guess it's more a deep-down insecurity. She's
young and cute; I'm a decade older, white, balding, and paunchy. Everybody was
real solicitous to the old guy, meaning me, but I mostly growled and sulked.
We took off late and we landed later, but at least neither of us had to wait for