robert asprin - myth-taken identity
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- Название:myth-taken identity
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The inspector recovered his aplomb faster than Woofle had, but, then, tax people had to have ice water in their veins.
"The Mall is not empowered to issue tax identification cards. You must apply in person at a licensed Flibber Revenue Office."
"Really?" I asked, my eyes wide with innocence. "We weren't informed of that fact."
"Any business, especially demon-owned, must have proper documentation," Dota snapped out. "And that information is part of the language of any commercial lease issued anywhere in this dimension, so I am sure you were informed. So I have to ask myself," he continued, leaning toward me, his eyes slitted dangerously, "did you skip over reading all of the fine print in the papers you signed, or did you decide you might... get lucky? Maybe we wouldn't... notice?"
"Of course not," I replied smoothly, coming around the counter and dropping an arm onto his shoulders. He cringed. I held on. "Inspector, I am sure that we can work this out to everyone's satisfaction. Naturally we want to be law-abiding members of society—"
"Hey! Let us out!" a shrill female voice howled.
"The door's stuck!" two more voices joined in, as the two-headed woman added her complaint.
I looked innocently at the inspector's frown. "Malfunction in the dressing room. We'll take care of it in a minute."
"You're going to have to close down," the inspector gritted.
"Sure!" I agreed. "At the end of the day. You see, we're not really—"
"No. Now."
Eskina moved up, protest in her eyes. I shook my head surreptitiously.
"Excuse me a minute."
"What'll we do, sugar?" Massha asked in an undertone.
I leaned over to her and Eskina. "Go shut them up if you can. Let Chumley take the register. I'll take care of this." I turned back to Dota. "Now, about that card—like I was trying to tell you, we're not really businesspeople trying to run a store." "No kidding," the inspector replied, with the air that he'd heard this story before. I felt my temper rising, but I pushed on.
"Look," I stated flatly. "We're interdimensional investigators tracking down a ring of dangerous thieves in this Mall. My colleague over there has a badge from the dimension of Ratislava. All we need is a few days."
Dota interrupted me. "Even if such a wild story was true, it's not my jurisdiction. You ought to have applied for the correct credentials in the first place. You can't operate this place without it. I'm padlocking this place until you fill out the correct paperwork."
"What?" I bellowed. "No!"
At that moment, the door of the dressing room exploded outward.
The shoppers in the store scattered, screaming, and the inspector's two sides of beef hit the floor and rolled, coming up with cocked and loaded crossbows, not unlike Guido and Nunzio's Iolo Specials, but the tips of these quarrels were glowing.
"The door was locked," the shark explained coyly, swimming on the air rapidly toward the exit.
The two-headed woman minced beside her, holding a handful of tasteful, pink, pocket-sized grenades. Out of her open handbag peeked a black satin legband and a stack of rectangular cards.
"Clear the store!" Inspector Dota shouted. "You, ladies, out the door. Now!"
The two impostors were happy to oblige, making for the door as quickly as they could.
"Stop those two!" I yelled. "They're stealing our merchandise."
I shoved toward them. Dota's muscle grabbed my shoulders and yanked me back.
"It's illegal to operate here," the inspector insisted. "Let them go."
'The hell I will," I snarled, shaking their hands off me. The two had nearly made it to the door. "Massha! Cire!" Cire flung himself out of the alcove and leveled his hands at the two females, who doubled around a display. The rest of the customers still in the store started screaming. Cire let fly. The thieves doubled around a rack near the doof. The orange ball of flame hit the rack head-on. It blew up, sending garters flying everywhere. The thieves found themselves pressed against the backs of frantic shoppers, all trying to get out of the store at the same time. Massha took to the air, her hands fumbling for a necklace pendant.
The shark tried to wiggle her way into the crowd. Now was not the time for niceties. With a flattened hand I chopped upward at the wrist of one of Dota's goons. The crossbow went flying. I seized it out of midair and leveled it at the shark's tail. She saw me and went low. I took a bead on the two-headed broad. She shoved hard into the crowd.
BZZZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZZZ!
The alarm around the door went off. All the customers jammed there started screaming and slapping at themselves as the theft-control bees installed on the unsold garters realized they were being stolen and went into action. The frauds couldn't escape now. Grinning fiercely, I dropped the crossbow and dove after them.
And hit the ground sprawling with a ton of weight on my back. I wrenched my head around. One of the goons was sitting on me. Dota came around to loom over me.
Chumley saved the day. In two quick strides he reached the doorway and grabbed each of our subjects by the nape of the neck.
"Let 'em go," Inspector Dota ordered.
Chumley turned his moonlike eyes disbelievingly toward the tax man. "Huh?"
Dota nodded to his goons, who leveled their crossbows on him.
"Let 'em go now," he repeated, in a voice of quiet menace.
At that range the quarrels could not miss, and whatever the glowing arrowheads meant, it couldn't be good. Very reluctantly, Chumley released our prisoners.
Dota turned to point at Massha and Cire. "The rest of you employees, freeze!"
"But they're ripping us off!" I protested from the ground. "I, er, want them to come back and pay for those items."
Dota was unmoved. "It would be an illegal transaction. You can't be selling this merchandise anyhow until you have an identification certificate."
I gave in and flopped on the purple carpet. "How long's processing time?"
"Three to four weeks."
'Three or four what?" I bellowed.
The jam at the door cleared. The shoppers fled, most of them dabbing at stings. The shark and the two-headed broad paused just long enough to wave sweetly at me before disappearing into the usual thick crowd wandering The Mall's corridors.
Dota's goon got off of my back. I didn't bother pursuing the two impostors. We'd lost that round. I turned to the inspector.
"Look, we're investigators trying to clear up a ring of thieves in this Mall. We've got the cooperation of the administrators and half the shopkeepers here. This is our best shot at capturing the criminals!"
"You'll have to find some other way to do it," Dota insisted. He glanced at his enforcers. "We're done here. Have a nice day."
Massha settled down next to me.
"It's not your fault, Hot Shot. Moa must have forgotten to mention the tax forms. He's not the finance guy."
I felt steam shoot out of my ears. "But Woofle is. I bet he deliberately kept the facts back. I'm going to have a word with him."
Chumley patted me on the back. "Forget about it, Aahz. You can't prove it. Really, it's my fault, what? I could have read through all of those documents in full detail, but truthfully I would still be there now if I had tried. I thought I had noticed all of the important provisions."
"We will find another way to catch them," Eskina assured me.
I looked around at the shop. Most of the displays had been torn down by the hysterical crowd. The dressing room had been destroyed. What was left of the merchandise was scattered across the floor. Acrid smoke rose from the burning rack near the door. The place was ruined.
"What the hell else could go wrong?" I asked.
"Hello?"
Marco Djinnelli floated through the buzzing doorway.
"What happened here?" he asked, sympathetically.
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