[GK]Moby Dick - chapter 4

Ogata scanned the street, as if he were being watched.

The town was little more than a clutch of shabby cottages with stooped straw roofs, strung along a single street of hard-packed mud, littered with horse shit and fish bones that emitted a nasty odor in the sun. This was a settler's town, the last refuge for the poorest Russians driven from their homes to scratch a life from this hard ground. Probably the most decent buildings here were those that served the railway, simple and grim establishments that catered to the coal miners. And they wanted only a few things.

A voice cut through the air with impatience. "Ya coming in or not?" The bouncer spread his hands and waited.

Ogata's gaze lifted, fixing on a wart that perched on the man's nose. He willed himself not to track its movement. His hand went to his pocket, fingers closing around a few thin kopecks. The take from the loot he'd fenced at the grocery store was almost gone. But a man's choices get narrow out here.

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