"Charles de Lint - Greenmantle" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

-Tanith Lee,
from "Blood-Mantle"

M'91TA, August 1983

By the time Eddie "the Squeeze" Pinelli was five hours dead,
Valenti was on a Boeing 747 halfway across the Atlantic. He
sipped~the beer that the steward had brought him and stared out
the window into the darkness. He usually felt an honest regret
that thirgs had to get as far as they did before he was called in,
but not this time. Pinelli had been a capo in the New York City
Cerone Family, one of Don Cerone's special boys, but now the
sonovabitch was dead and the only thing special about him was
that those famous fingers of his weren't going to put the squeeze
on anyone anymore. That suited Valenti just fine.

Don Magaddino had called the hit-Valenti's own boss. "It's
pewnal," he'd told Valenti. '4That's why I called you, capito?
It's between you and me, Tony. Okay? I want that pezzo di merdc
dead and then we don't talk about this no more."

Eddie had got a little itchy and a lot crazy and put the squeeze
on one of the girls the Don kept on the side. Valenti understood.
It had been personal for him, too. Not so long ago, Eddie had
tried to malce a little time with Valenti's woman, Beverly Grant.
Only Bev wasn't going to get up and walk away like the Don's
girlfriend had when Valenti had walked in on her and Eddie earlier
tonight. Bev had taken a twelve-story drop and what was leR
of her you wouldn't want to see walk away.

Valenti had wanted to take Eddie down so hard then that it
hurt, but the Don wouldn't give him the word and a soldier didn't
take down a capo without an okay from way up. Cosifan tuni-
that was the way of the world. But Valenti was patient. He'd
known that soor;er or later Eddie, being the asshole he was,

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would lose it. All Valenti'd had to do was wait.

After the sweltering oven that was a New York City summer,
the Maltese weather was glorious. The air was so clear that he
could see for miles across the low hills with their tiered fields
being ~eadied for the fall harvest. He had the taxi d~op him off at

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