Greenhouse Summer Read Online Free PDF

him easy access to certain pretentious circles where they were still considered social pariahs.
    Thus the deal to make him a prince.
    Once he had made his bones, no problem.
    There was hardly a sovereignty in which it was illegal to
call
yourself a prince, and plenty competing to sell you a title at cut-rate prices. Bread & Circuses handled the launch, and once a staple of the society gossip forums and spa circuit, Prince Eric Esterhazy was a nice name to have fronting a casino in Lille or a whorehouse in Amsterdam.
    Prince Eric strolled with apparently aimless indolence through the bamboo grove, now gaining on Gauldier, now losing ground, now heading toward him, now away, approaching him in an indirect manner, so that the momentary crossing of their trajectories would seem like a random event, both to the target and to any observer who might chance to see the hit.
    Nor was he the only faux boulevardier engaging in this sort of charade on such a sunny afternoon, the Tuileries Bamboo Boudoir being a well-known venue for reasonably priced but not entirely uncomely or tastelessly costumed whores of various genders, promenading about displaying their wares for the custom of an equally varied potential clientele pretending not to be inspecting the merchandise.
    Pierre Gauldier was a known regular in the Bamboo Boudoir, all too well known by those who plied their trade therein as a cheap chiseler who used his position as a prefect in Force Flic to extract freebies, often after the fact of the act. Indeed, the word from the birds was that playing the corrupt cop extorting free fucks in the nearest thicket from honest working girls was the nature of his pervo game.
    The solo entrepreneurs in the Bamboo Boudoir were not citizen-shareholders in Bad Boys, and the relationship between Bad Boys and the Parisian police syndic was in general admirably symbiotic, so in the ordinary course of events dealing with a pest like Pierre Gauldier on their behalf would have been a contract that the syndic would have found it prudent to refuse.
    M. Gauldier, however, had of late taken to the running of similar freelance extortions of funds rather than fucks from certain enterprises, which, though not actual Bad Boys operations—no one was stupid enough to try that—
had
purchased insurance contracts from the syndic.
    Serendipitously, the whores of the Bamboo Boudoir had gotten up a collection to secure Gauldier’s removal and had offered the contract to Bad Boys at about the same time that Bad Boys had begun remonstrating with Force Flic about his violation of their cozy concordat.
    Relations between Bad Boys and Force Flic being what they were, and this, after all, still being France at least in a cultural sense, the response was a Gallic shrug, and a suggestion that gallantry indeed required Bad Boys to come to the rescue of these Ladies of the Evening in distress. But do not be so obvious about it as to force us to investigate such a public service. Which we would be compelled to do for the sake of our own morale if it appeared that a police official had actually been murdered.
    Thus had Prince Eric Esterhazy been offered the opportunity todo the good deed and been provided with the ridiculous instrument presently distending the drape of his jacket in such an unfortunate manner.
    Contrary to hoary folklore, this had not been an offer he could not refuse. As a citizen-shareholder in Bad Boys, one might enhance one’s career progress and secure large bonuses in return for occasional special services rendered.
    Well, actually one.
    Alas, the time had not yet passed when the removal of certain recalcitrant individuals was essential to the fiduciary health of the syndic cause. But the syndic charter forbade wage employment, and granting citizen-shareholder status to full-time professional killers did not seem like a swift idea.
    Much better to be able to call upon citizen-shareholders engaged in other full-time occupations to perform the occasional