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

“princely.”
If some company wanted to buy them all out to build a shopping mall or
supermarket, then the Club would intercede on the part of the homeowners, making
sure they got more than market value for their homes.
 The last time Fala had worked this was Dallas, where it turned out the
scumbag trying to screw the older folk using the letter of the law hadn’t been
Preston at all, but some local Preston-clone who’d gotten the nasty idea all by his
little self.
The Club hadn’t put him out of business, but they had made certain that he
didn’t get his pennies-on-the-dollar initial sales. He also got several write-ups in the
papers and on local TV stations talking about his unethical but totally legal business
practices.
The difficult part of this was that the Club often made money in these
transactions. Whenever the Club interceded, it did so for a percentage: People,
particularly older people, mistrusted things they got for free. The Club always made
money on the resale of the property purchased for the advance man, like the
pawnshop Fala bought. The Club would wait until the neighborhood started its
transition, then sell the property for much more than the Club initially paid for it.
Club members paid themselves salaries, and plowed the money back into the
organization, but still felt uncomfortable making profits. Money, to every member of
the Club, was the root of all things Preston—another legacy he had bequeathed
them.
Fala leaned back in her chair. In three days, Preston would know his house of
cards was collapsing when no one showed up to sign the final paperwork and pick
up checks.
With luck, he’d learn nothing until then. The teams would help the older folks
stay silent—saying that Herbert, Steinman, and Wilkes wasn’t exactly on the
up-and-up, adding credence by bringing local banks in on the Club’s side, and
working quickly to make people a lot of money instead of screw them.
But there was always the possibility that someone would talk.
Fala’s only job these next three days was to monitor the phone lines and the
computer systems, to make sure nothing leaked. Or if it did, that it seemed like an
isolated incident, one that Herbert, Steinman, and Wilkes could handle.
****
At the craps table, Preston had been slightly drunk. He had switched from
beer to Coke just before the women arrived, but he still swayed slightly as he pushed
his chips onto the come line.
Fala and Tess pretended they knew nothing about craps. They let him explain
the game, and they followed his lead, squealing like schoolgirls whenever they won.
He didn’t recognize them, of course. Sometime during the night, his hand
migrated down Fala’s back to her ass. She moved away, but he always managed to
touch her, to squeeze, brush, and fondle.
 Once she sent a help-me look to Tess, who glared at her, as if reminding her
to keep at it. Fala could barely hide her revulsion. She kept finding reasons to move
away from Preston, but somehow he always ended up beside her, groping and
rubbing as if he had the rights to everything, including her soul.
The game finally ended at five A.M. when he declared himself hungry. Fala
was up five hundred dollars and Tess had made even more. (“Just not enough to
pay me back for all the court costs,” Tess later said, bitterly.) They accompanied
him to one of the nearby restaurants and ordered breakfast.