"Robert F. Young - Hologirl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

 "His girls are operating in my girls' territory. That's bad. Very very bad. But what is worse is their
wholesale pricetags. My girls charge $600 per night, of which I take only a modest 33 and 1/3 percent.
But his girls charge only $400 per night, which means either that he is operating at a loss or taking 50
percent of their earnings. I do not think they would stand for this, which leaves only one conclusion to be
drawn: he is operating at a loss with the intent to drive me out of business."
"It's a well-known fact," I said, "that all the call girls of Idealia swear fealty to you. That being so,
where does he get his from?"
An eloquent elevation of the hands. A sad shake of the periwigged head. I knew instantly that he was
lying when he said, "I have no idea." A grim grin supplanted the disarming smile. "But wherever he is
getting them," he went on, "I am going to crumble him. Personally. Which is why I do not want a pretty
private eye like you getting in my way, because then I will have to crumble her too." He swallowed
surreptitiously, the grim grin dissolved and the disarming smile came back. A hand crept over like a
puppy dog and nuzzled my right thigh. "Please do not force poor Gino to disfigure so flawless a work of
art. Is it not bad enough that one Venus lost both arms?"
I shooed the puppy dog away. "Get out of my car, you fucking Calabrian bastard!" I said.
The smile sort of froze in place as its owner did my bidding. In my rearview mirror I saw him rejoin
the Three Bears. The smile was still there when I pulled out of my parking slot, so wide it filled the whole
mirror. Late-morning sunlight pouring down upon the Goldilocks peruke caused a halo to form above it.
The illusion was as ephemeral as it was ridiculous. I put it out of my mind, joined the traffic flow and
headed for the Orchard.

They have sanctuaries for birds, don't they? And for koalas, seals and hippopotamuses. Why not,
then, a sanctuary for wineheads?
Thus, apparently, went the ratiocination of the designers of Idealia when they decided to reserve a
tract of land in the center of their model city for those of its dwellers who might someday find themselves
at odds with reality and in need of a place to withdraw. The tract happened to be an apple orchard,
which was how it got its pop name and which was why, when I stepped through the force-field gate after
parking my Blue Jay, I smelled apples.
Rotten ones.
A footpath wound willy-nilly among the trees; I set forth along it. The trees had so many suckers you
could hardly see the limbs they grew out of. The rotten apples still clinging to the branches and those
littering the ground were the size of acorns.
I passed occasional cottages constructed of thrown-away tar paper and scrap lumber, with wine
bottles planted in their front yards. The first native I came upon lay sound asleep across the path. I
stepped over him and went on. The next one I came upon was sitting under one of the trees. This one
was alive. "Good afternoon," I said politely. "I'm looking for a resident named Thomas Wentworth. Can
you direct me to his place of abode?"
The native blinked. He was sober, but his vacant eyes left little doubt that the last of his brains had
boiled away quite some time ago. "Grwk," he said.
I went on. Another native. Walking. Wearing a slouch hat, a trenchcoat and a pair of toe rubbers.
The trenchcoat had moss growing on it. "Kind sir," said I, "are you by any chance acquainted with a
fortyish gentlemen of mechanical bent named Thomas Wentworth?"
He was staring at my lead-veined handbag as though he could smell the two pints of Muscatel I'd
picked up after leaving the Precinct 2 parking lot. "Thomas Ooh?"
"Never mind," I said and proceeded deeper into the Orchard.
I had better luck with the fourth native I met. "His house is in the holler," he told me.
I had no idea where the "holler" was, but I figured if I kept following the path I'd eventually come to
it, and eventually I did. A creek purled over pebbles and broken glass, habitations of various shapes and
sizes squatting at sporadic intervals along its bottle-littered banks. Following the creek, I came upon a
native washing his socks, but he wasn't the one I was looking for. He was a newcomer (who but a