The Monitors [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONEIt was a warm afternoon in the city. A fitful wind whirled its burden of gaily-colored aspirin and tranquilizer cartons and gum and cigarette wrappers into the faces of the well-fed burghers and their mates who puffed along on bunioned feet, their life-blunted features set in expressions of opaque anonymity, oblivious of the mixed chorus of auto horns, the spirited cries of impatient taxi drivers, and the merry voices of news vendors hawking details of the latest disaster.Ace Blondel stood before a shop window, idly noting the temperature of the pavement through his thinning shoesoles and admiring a display of hand-painted neckties, glossy cardboard shoes and sports coats nattily fashioned of lightweight burlap stiffened with glucose, all marked downaccording to attached placards^from formerly incredible sums in honor of National Easy Payment Week. In the dusty glass he saw the reflection of the busy street, the mismatched building fronts across the way with their clustered signboards thrusting for favored placement like jungle foliage fighting for survival, and, above, a narrow strip of smoke-dimmed blue sky.He turned in time to confront a nubile wench with lust-red lips, bosoms thrast up and forward like fruits offered on a tray, her one-piece pelvis clamped in a corset as rigid ^ armor plate. His tentative smile died at birth, impaled by the kind of look reserved in other cultures for convicted rapists. He sighed philosophically, glanced at his seven-jewel wrist watch, and headed for the painted-over glass door of Hany's Marine Bar and Grill.Inside, a television set above the long bar made sounds like a lovelorn elk, shedding its flickering glow on extinct fishermen's nets, crumbling cork floats, a mummified tuna5