"David Eddings - Losers, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

"Looks good," Raphael decided. "I'll take it." He paid the landlord a month's rent and then went back to the Ridpath to get his luggage and check out. When they returned to the Barton, the driver carried his bags into the room and set them down.

"I owe you," Raphael said.

"Just what's on the meter, man. I might need a hand myself someday, right?"

"All right. Thanks."

"Anytime," the driver said, and left. Raphael realized that he hadn't even gotten his name.

The weather stayed wet for several weeks, and Raphael walked a little farther each day. Quillian had told him that it would be months before his arms and shoulders would develop sufficient strength to make any extensive walking possible, but Raphael made a special point of extending himself a little more every day, and he was soon able to cover a mile or so without exhausting himself too much.

By the end of the month he could, if he rested periodically, cover most of the downtown area. He considered sending for the rest of his things, but decided against it. The room was too small.

Spokane is not a particularly pretty city, expecially in the winter. Its setting is attractive kind of basin on the banks of the Spokane River, which plunges down a twisted basalt chute in the center of town. The violence of the falls is spectacular, and an effort was made following the World's Fair in 1974 to convert the fairgrounds into a vast municipal park. The buildings of the downtown area, however, are for the most part very old and very shabby. Because the city is small, the worst elements lie side by side with the best.

Raphael became accustomed to the sight of drunken old men stumbling through the downtown streets and of sodden Indians, their eyes a poached yellow, swaying in bleary confusion on street corners. The taverns were crowded and noisy, and a sour reek exhaled from them each time their doors opened. In the evenings hard-faced girls in tight sweaters loitered on street corners, and loud cars filled with raucous adolescents toured an endless circuit of the downtown area, their windows open and the mindless noise of rock music blasting from them at full volume. There were fights in front of the taverns sometimes and unconscious winos curled up in doorways. There were adult bookstores on shabby streets and an X-rated movie house on Riverside.

And then it snowed again, and Raphael was confined, going out only to get his meals. He had three or four books with him, and he read them several times. Then he played endless games of solitaire with a greasy deck of cards he'd found in the drawer of the table. By the end of the week he was nearly ready to scream with boredom.

Finally the weather broke again, and he was able to go out. His very first stop was at a bookstore. He was determined that another sudden change in the weather was not going to catch him without something to read. Solitaire, he decided, was the pastime of the mentally deficient. He came out of the bookstore with his coat pockets and the front of his shirt stuffed with paperback books and crutched his way on down the street. The exercise was exhilarating, and he walked farther than he ever had before. Toward the end of the day he was nearly exhausted, and he went into a small, gloomy pawnshop, more to rest and to get in out of the chill rain than for any other reason. The place was filled with the usual pawnshop junk, and Raphael browsed without much interest.

It was the tiny, winking red lights that caught his eye first. "What's that thing?" he asked the pawnbroker, pointing.

"Police scanner," the unshaven man replied, looking up from his newspaper. "It picks up all the police channels-fire department, ambulances, stuff like that."

"How does it work?"

"It scans-moves up and down the dial. Keeps hittin' each one of the channels until somebody-starts talkin'. Then it locks in on 'em. When they stop, it starts to scan again. Here, I'll turn it up." The unshaven man reached over and turned up the volume.

"District One," the scanner said, "juvenile fifty-four at the Crescent security office."

"What's a fifty-four?" Raphael asked.

"It's a code," the man behind the counter explained. "I got a sheet around here someplace." He rummaged through a drawer and came up with a smudged and tattered mimeographed sheet. "Yeah, this is it. A fifty-four's a shoplifter." He handed Raphael the sheet.

"Three-Eighteen," the scanner said. The row of little red lights stopped winking when someone spoke, and only the single light over the channel in use stayed on.

"This is Three-Eighteen," another voice responded.

"We have a man down in the alley behind the Pedicord Hotel. Possible DOA. Complainant reports that he's been there all day."

"I'll drift over that way."

"DOA?" Raphael asked.

"Dead on arrival."

"Oh."