"Mitchell Smith - Daydreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

... a second, Packwood, who'd lost a fingertip in glass, and another
man in the basement who'd sustained an electrical burn. This man had
refused to come out of the basement work, so the captain assumed the
burn was only minor--one of those flashy zaps that would happen when a
person ripped live wires out of a roasting wall with a steel prybar or
the backhook of an ax.

When this woman kept bothering him-raising her voice, gesturing more
violently-the captain stepped away from her, over the jungle of hose,
gesturing for someone to come deal with her.
One of the patrolmen in the cars had watched much of this-nudging his
partner, who was reading a paperback Western, to make him watch, too.

"Look at this shit," the patrolman said. "-Isn't she a cop?"

As he said it-and out in the street Ellie began to shout, then reached
again for the sleeve of the fire captain's jacket-a fireman climbed down
off Unit #557, came up to the policewoman, and took her by the arm.

I'm a police officer-"

I don't give a shit what you are"-pointing to the fire captain. "-See
that guy you been talkin' to? Well, leave him the fuck alone."

Ellie crossed the street, and thought of going back to speak to the
sergeant-thought of looking for the firewoman ... did, and didn't see
her. She stood at the edge of the marveling crowd, looked way, way up,
and was certain she'd found the window again, it had the recalled small
air conditioner, its side panels crinkled in to fit it to the window's
paint-flaked frame. She looked up at this window, seeing, in her
peripheral vision, a silent column of smoke pouring out thick and slow
from the window two down, on the left.

She stood and stared, feeling foolish, recalling the contempt in the
fire captain's glance, tugged from talking on his radio. She had just
recalled this face, when, looking up, she saw for an instant another one
remembered, tiny with distance, dark brown, barely visible through dusty
glass, peering just over the air conditioner ... gazing at the
spectacle below.

Two, three years old. A baby. Must have climbed on a couch ... a
chair, to look out....

Ellie considered, standing jostled on the sidewalk in the searing sun,
watching the movement, the bright noontime colors of the equipment in
the street, and decided what to do. She ran out of the crowd and across
the swollen vines of hose, behind a fire engine's massive rear bumper,
which--superb, polished, heavy-duty chrome reflected three blurred suns
and the vista of the block in multiples curved in concert with its own
rich curves, reflected her as she ran by, splashed a quick step up from