"Charles de Lint - Someplace To Be Flying" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

salute in response, middle finger extended, fingernails painted black.
When he realized Hank wasn't hassling him, he only shrugged and kept
on walking.
A few blocks farther, Hank pulled the cab over to the curb. He
keyed the speed-dial on the cell phone and had to wait through a
handful of rings before he got a connection.
"You never get tired of that crap, kid?" Moth asked.
Hank turned the tape deck down.
"All I've got left is that six o'clock pickup," he said by way of
response. The only thing Moth considered music had to have a serious
twang-add in yodeling and it was even better-so there was no point in
arguing with him. "Have you got anything to fill in the next couple of
hours?"
"A big nada."
Hank nodded. He hated slow nights, but he especially hated them
when he was trying to raise some cash.
"Okay," he said. "Guess I'll head over to the club and just wait for
Eddie outside."
"Yeah, well, keep your doors locked. I hear those guys that were
jacking cars downtown have moved up to Foxville the past couple of
nights."
"Eddie told me."
"Did he say anything about his people dealing with it?"
Hank watched as a drank stumbled over to the doorway of one of
the closed clubs and started to take a leak.
"Like he's going to tell me?" he said.
"You got a point. Hey, I hear that kid you like's doing a late set at
the Rhatigan."
Hank almost laughed. Under a spodight, Brandon Cole seemed
ageless, especially when he played. Hank put him in his mid-to-late
thirties, but he had the kind of build and features that could easily go
ten years in either direction. A tall, handsome black man, he seemed to
live only for his sax and his music. He was no kid, but to Moth
anybody under sixty was a kid.
"What time's it start?" he asked.
He could almost see Moth shrug. "What am I, a press secretary
now? All I blow is Dayson's got a couple of high rollers in town-jazz
freaks like you, kid-and he told me he's taking them by."
"Thanks," Hank said. "Maybe I'll check it out."
He cut the connection and started to work his way across town to
where the Rhatigan was nestled on the edge of the Combat Zone. The
after-hours bar where Eddie ran his all-night poker games was over in
Upper Foxville, but he figured he could take in an hour or so of Cole's
music and still make the pickup in plenty of time.
Except it didn't work out that way. He was coming down one of the
little dark back streets that ran off Grasso-no more than an alley, really-
when his headlights picked out a tall man in a dove-gray suit, beating
on some woman.
Hank knew the drill. The first few times he took out the spare car,
Moth had stopped him at the junkyard gate and stuck his head in the