"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Sweet Young Things" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

dresses in a size 18, and expensive shoes for her tiny feet.
That night, she looked like the CEO of a major corporation, and Fala, in her
baggy jeans and University of Chicago sweatshirt, looked like her ratty kid sister.
“Can you believe it?” Fala whispered. “I’m gonna call the cops.”
Tess grabbed her arm. “It won’t do any good.”
Fala frowned. “You know what he did. We all have proof.”
“Old proof,” Tess said. “I don’t know what the statute of limitations is on
fraud, but I think it’s pretty short. He might not even be wanted anymore.”
“Fat chance,” Fala said. “He hasn’t gone straight. Look at all that money.”
“Tell you what,” Tess said, her voice barely audible over the ping-ping of
nearby slot machines. “Let’s find out what he’s been doing these last few years, and
then call the cops.”
“Maybe round up some evidence?” Fala asked.
Tess nodded.
“Think he’ll recognize us?”
Tess let out a loud snort. “Definitely not me. And probably not you, either.
How many people has he seen over the years, anyway?”
“Still,” Fala said.
“If he does, we haven’t lost anything,” Tess said. “Let’s give it a shot.”
And a fantasy rose up, just for half a second, not the fantasy of conning
Preston, but the fantasy of giving him a different kind of shot—one he wouldn’t live
through.
Then Fala nodded. “All right,” she said. “I got fifty bucks. Wanna play some
craps?”
****
Thirty people had filled out enough information to let Herbert, Steinman, and
Wilkes run title searches on their property. Another forty had taken information and
promised they’d be back. But the list contained twenty more names, none of whom
seemed to have come to the Herbert, Steinman, and Wilkes offices.
It took Fala awhile to figure out why.
In one of the computers, someone had found a neighborhood map. The
property of each person who had filled out information was marked in blue. The
property of each person who promised to come back was yellow. Any properties
that adjoined either of those other two kinds were marked in red for “urgent.” For
Preston’s plan to work, he needed entire swatches of land. Any property owner who
refused to sell or hadn’t approached him at all, and got in the way of a swatch, had
an urgent tag.
Fala downloaded the map as well. She wondered what kind of tactic Preston
had used in other cities to get the urgents to sell. She doubted the tactic was
illegal—Preston didn’t want any charges of fraud to get in the way of this new kind
of profit—but she also had a hunch he skirted the very edges of legality when he
approached these folks.
In the end, it wasn’t her problem. She was the advance man and researcher,
the person who put it all together. The rest of her scheme relied on teams of women
who would visit these elderly sellers and explain their rights, offering to intercede
with them at banks and other institutions.
When the Club had run this operation three times in the past (the three times
that weren’t Preston), most of the elderly took out reverse mortgages after learning
how much their homes were worth. A lot of older people didn’t know that the bank
would pay them to stay in their homes, often at a sum that many older folks called