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

"I've checked all the evidence," Mousy Mary's mother said in a professional tone. "There's some tiny little scratch marks around the keyhole of the back door. It's obvious that the lock's been picked."

"That so?"

"Happens all the time. They'll probably have to call out the SWAT team." Mousy Mary's mother's voice was dry, unemotional.

In time the police arrived, and after they talked with Mousy Mary's mother for a few minutes, one of them went up on the front porch and knocked. Mousy Mary answered the door immediately and let them in, but she closed the door quite firmly in her mother's face. In a fury the dumpy little woman scurried around the house, trying to look in the windows.

After a while the police came out and drove away. Mousy Mary's mother stomped up onto the front porch and began pounding on the door, but Mary refused to open it.

Eventually, the dumpy woman returned to her car and continued her surveillance.

"Couldn't you at least look into it, Raphael-for me?" Frankie's lower lip trembled.

Raphael, sitting in his chair on the roof where they were talking, rather thought he might like to nibble on that lip for a while. He pushed that thought away. "I was a student, Frankie," he said. "I can still do that. I don't need both legs to study."

"Our records show that you were a worker in a lumber mill."

"That was a summer job back home when I was in high school and junior college. It wasn't a lifelong career."

"I'm really going to get yelled at if I don't get you into vocational rehabilitation," she told him. "And there are support groups-people to see and to talk to."

"I've got a whole street full of people to see, Frankie." He waved his hand at the intersection. "And if I want to talk with somebody, I can talk with Tobe and Sam."

"But they're just a couple of old alcoholics. We gave up on them years ago."

"I'll bet they appreciated that."

"Couldn't you at least consider vocational rehab, Raphael?"

"Tell you what, Frankie." He smiled at her. "Go back to the office and tell them that I've already chosen a new career and that I'm already working at it."

Her eyes brightened. "What kind of career are we talking about here, Raphael?"

"I'm going to be a philosopher. The pay isn't too good, but it's a very stimulating line of work."

"Oh, you," she said, and then she laughed. "You're impossible." She looked out over the seedy street. "It's nice up here." She sighed. "You've got a nice breeze."

"I sort of like it."

"Wouldn't you consider the possibility of shoe repair?" she asked him.

That was startling. He remembered the Goodwill store and the girl with the dwarfed arm. Coincidence, perhaps? Some twist of chance? But the prophet on the downtown street had said that there was no such thing as chance. But what had made the words "shoe repair" cross Frankie's trembling lips? It was something to ponder.

It was not that they were really afraid of him. It was merely that there was something so lost, so melancholy about his dark face as he walked with measured pace and slow down the shabby streets that all sound ceased as he passed. They did not mention it to each other or remark about it, but each time Patch, the one-eyed Indian, walked by, there was an eerie hush on the street. They watched him and said nothing. Even the children were still, suspended, as it were, by the silent, moccasin-footed passage of the dark, long-haired man with the black patch over one eye.

Raphael watched also, and was also silent.

And then in a troop, a large, rowdy group of more or less young men and, with a couple of exceptions, younger women moved into the big old house from which the tattooed Indian girl and her black boyfriend had been evicted.