"Dibdin, Michael - Aurelio Zen 02 - Vendetta UC - part 02" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dibdin Michael)

silenced trail bike, the squeal of brakes, the strident
discord of horns in conflict.
At the corner of the block the newsagent was adding the
final touches to the display of newspapers and magazines
which were draped around his stall in a complex over-
lapping pattern. As usual, Zen stopped to buy a paper, but
he did not even glance at the headlines. He felt good,
serene and carefree, released from whatever black magic
had gripped his soul the night before. There would be time
enough later to read about disasters and scandals which
had nothing whatever to do with him.
Across the street from the newsstand at the corner of the
next block was the cafe which Zen frequented, largely
because it had resisted the spreading blight of skimmed
milk, which reduced the rich foam of a proper cappuccino to
an insipid froth. The barman, who sported a luxuriant
moustache to compensate for his glossily bald skull,
greeted Zen with respectful warmth and turned away
unbidden to prepare his coffee.
'Barbarians!' exclaimed a thickset man in a tweed suit,
looking up from the newspaper spread out before him on
the bar. 'Maniacs! What's the sense of it all? What can they
hope to achieve?'
Zen helped himself to a flaky brioche before broaching
the chocolate-speckled foam on the cappuccino which
Ernesto placed before him. I." was only after they had been
meeting in the bar each morning for several years that Zen
had finally discovered, thanks to an inflamed molar re-
quiring urgent attention, that the indignant newspaper-
reader was the dentist whose name appeared on one of the
two brass plates which Giuseppe burnished religiously
every morning. He congratulated himself on having resis-
ted the temptation to look at the paper. No doubt there
had been some dramatic new revelation about the Burolo
affair. Hardly a day went by without one. But while for the
dentist such things were a form of entertainment, a pretext
for a display of moral temperament, for Zen it was work,
and he didn't start work for another half hour. Idly, he
wondered what the other men in the bar would say if they
knew that he was carrying a video tape showing the
Burolo killings in every last horrific detail.
At the thought, he put down his coffee cup and patted
his coat pocket, reassuring himself that the video cassette
was still there. That was one mistake he certainly couldn't
allow himself. There had already been one leak, when
stills from the tape Burolo had made showing love scenes
between his wife and the young lion-keeper had been
published in a trashy scandal magazine. Such a magazine,
or even one of the less scrupulous private TV stations,
would be willing to pay a small fortune for a video of the