The Last Good Paradise

Начало книги

A 7.1 tremor had been felt throughout the Southland that morning, the epicenter somewhere out in the hinterlands of Lancaster, unnerving residents, but the offices of Flask, Flask, Gardiner, Bulkington, Bartleby, and Peleg were seemingly immune. Ten floors up in the sybaritic conference room, the air conditioner purred; the air was filtered, ionized, and subtly scented of cedar. Ann looked out the plate-glass windows at the expansive, gaseous hills of West Los Angeles as a contemplative might look out of her meditation temple. Smoke was pouring from a Spanish Colonial Revival house halfway up a nearby manicured hill, and as she watched, toylike candy-colored fire engines curled up the narrow canyon roads to put it out. The glass was proofed; no siren sound reached her. She was protected from the ninety-degree heat outside, the fume-laden gridlock below, the merciless sunlight above that leeched color from the landscape.

Читать дальше →