"these people who live round here, they're worse than pigs."

epub or mobi

They approached a coffee bar where some beatniks were being turned out at closing time. Only hips, crutch and facial hair distinguished male from female. All had on tight, straining, shrunken jeans. Penes and mounds of Venus were clearly and proudly outlined. The two Sergeants might have been creatures from another planet. The place is heaving, full of blue smoke and a smell of dirty sweat. A juke-box in a corner looks like an over-elaborate altar and sounds like a pneumatic drill augmented by a scream of a hundred hopeful virgins. All the males look the same, except that some haven't any shoes and the manager is fat, bearded and scruffy as opposed to thin, bearded and scruffy. The girls are scruffy and of various shapes. Wate signals to the manager to switch off the jukebox and he does so from behind the bar, an obsequious smile folding up the flab of his face. All the bedraggled bodies shuffle round and all the bleary or pin-point eyes focus on the two blue uniforms. The only girl wearing a skirt - who had been lying back on a bench with two heads resting on her bare thighs - pulls down her skirt as she sees Strange's eyes light on her pants.