"Cook, Glen - Garrett 10 - Angry Lead Skies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

upper lip rises up and twists and begins to shimmy and quiver like
a belly dancer’s fanny. “I save the good sermons for people whose
characters would appear to offer some teeny little hint of a
possibility that there’s still hope for their salvation.”

Over in the small front room the Goddamn Parrot cackled like he
was trying to lay a porcupine egg. And that amusement stuff was
polluting the psychic atmosphere again.

The dark planets were shagging their heinies into line.

Playmate preempted my opportunity to deploy one of my belated
but brilliantly lethal rejoinders. “This is my friend Cypres Prose,
Garrett.” Cypres Prose was a whisper more than five feet tall. He
had wild blond hair, crazy blue eyes, a million freckles, and a
permanent case of the fidgets. He scratched. He twitched. His
head kept twisting on his neck. “He invents things. After what
happened this morning I promised you’d help him.”

“Why, thank you, Playmate. And I’m glad you came over because I
promised the Metropolitan that you’d swing by the Dream Quarter
to help put up decorations for the Feast of the Immaculate
Deception.”

Playmate glowered. He has serious problems with the Orthodox
Rite. I gave him a look at my own second-team sneer. It don’t
dance. “You promised him? For me? That’s what friends are for,
eh?”

“Uh, all right. Maybe I overstepped.” His tone said he didn’t think
that for a second. “Sorry.”

“You’re sorry? Oh. That’s good. That makes everything all right,
then. You’re not presuming on my friendship the way Morley Dotes
or Winger or Saucerhead Tharpe might.” I would never presume
on them. Not me. No way.

The scrawny little dink behind Playmate kept trying to peek around
him. He never stopped talking. He strengthened his case
constantly with remarks like, “Is that him, Play? He ain’t much. From
the way you talked I thought he was gonna be ten feet tall.”

I said, “I am, kid. But I’m not on duty right now.” Cypres Prose had
a nasal edge on a cracking soprano voice that I found extremely
irritating. I wanted to clout him upside the head and tell him to
speak Karentine like a man.

Oh, boy! After closer appraisal I saw that Prose wasn’t as old as I’d
thought.