Страница 37 из 37
The book has since gone through many editions as Mona, and one as Sweet Slow Death (don’t ask), and has now finally been reprinted as Grifter’s Game.
After Daigh changed The Scoreless Thai to Two for Ta
Ta
Looking back, it’s hard to believe nobody came up with Ta
Well, nobody thought of it. And if somebody did, would anything have come of it? Probably not, not with Here Comes a Hero just crying out to be used.
Sheesh.
The storylines of Ta
And so it was with Ta
A friend of a friend came back from London with a story. It seems someone asked this rather shady character what had happened to a young woman of their acquaintance. “Well, what do you think happened?” snapped the shady character. “I sold her. I told her that’s what would happen, but she would insist on coming along, so I sold her.”
Sold her into white slavery, that is to say. In Afghanistan.
And, my source reported, it turned out that this was Mr. Shady’s main source of income. He posed as a travel agent, offering fully escorted women-only tours of Afghanistan at an irresistibly low price, and managing to screen out any applicants with close family ties or persons likely to keep tabs on them. Once he had a group of a dozen or so nubile and unattached young women on board, he promptly escorted them to Afghanistan, where he sold the lot of them for whatever the going rate may have been and left them to get on with their lives, or what remained thereof.
“Not a nice person,” said the friend of a friend.
So Afghanistan was more or less handed to me. That was a couple of wars ago, and what I knew about the country you could put in a silk ear. Or a sow’s purse. Or, less metaphorically, in the Encyclopedia Brita
Back then, all I knew about Afghanistan was that it was a hippie destination, because it didn’t cost much to live there. (It was even cheaper if you’d been sold into white slavery.) I knew about the hippies, and I knew about the coats that some of them (not the ones sold into white slavery) were bringing back, very attractive sheepskin garments with colorful embroidery. And I figured they must have at least one 1955 Chevy there.
Well, that was then and this is now. These days, if you want a 1955 Chevy, you’ll have to go to Havana.
Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author LAWRENCE BLOCK is one of the most widely recognized names in the crime fiction genre. He has been named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and is a four-time wi