"P. N. Elrod - Vampire Files 06 - Blood On The Water" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elrod P N)

It was war, then. The quiet kind that you notice only as an impersonal paragraph in the paper you read
over the morning coffee or in the evening relaxing, after work. Bold black letters might spell out "Shooting
Victim Found," and then go on to give some sparse details of the person's age, where they lived and
died, and that the police were following some promising leads. Most of the time you never learn if they
turned up anything or not. Life moves forward and new paragraphs on other casualties appear in the
paper. New, but with a dreary similarity to all the others, as in any war.

In my case I might not even get that much of an epitaph. Vaughn Kyler's enemies tended to simply
disappear. Without an inconvenient body to trip over, the cops couldn't be expected to make an arrest.

I gripped the wheel more tightly to control the tremors in my hands and took a second look in the
rearview mirror. The Cadillac was still there and following close enough to make it obvious that the men
inside wanted me to know about it. The side windows were smoked over, but I could make out four
vague figures through the windshield, though little else. Maybe one of them was Kyler but that wasn't
very likely. The wide streets of Chicago, even at night, were far too public for him.

Last August he'd taken control of the Paco gang, and since Frank Paco himself was confined to a lunatic
ward and his brothers and cousins were missing and probably dead, no one was around to object. In six
months Kyler had doubled the earnings and spread the profits around so his position was that much more
secure, but he was always on guard against any threats to his authority, which, unfortunately, included
myself.

In no uncertain terms he'd ordered me to leave town or die. His attitude at the time indicated that he
didn't really care about my choice as long as one or the other removed me from his sight. I suppose from
his point of view he was giving me a better break than I deserved. That or he was just being careful.
Sooner or later he could overstep things enough so that the cops would no longer ignore the situation and
be forced to officially notice him.

But last night's many events had crowded his threat right out of my mind and I hadn't left, much less even
thought of alternatives. On the other hand, he'd had a long full day to recover from that particularly busy
evening and decide what to do about me. Sending some of his boys in one of his Caddies to play tag had
to be part of it.

I made a few turns just to be sure and the big black car echoed my course in a leisurely manner. They
had enough power under that hood to make mincemeat of anything my humble Buick could do. If I
wanted to get away with a whole skin, it would have to be with brains and not speed. I just wished that I
felt smart instead of scared. Kyler had that effect on me.

They didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to push the issue. I could figure that they'd planned out what
to do and were only waiting for me to make it easy for them with a wrong move. They didn't quite hug
my back bumper, but kept close enough to edge up my nerves. Not a good idea on their part; a nervous
man is liable to do anything. It would have been far better to tail me at a discreet distance until I'd arrived
at the Top Hat Club and then pick me off as I left the car. They wanted to frighten me before moving in;
Kyler apparently had no reservations against letting his boys have some fun.

Even as the thought occurred, my hands abruptly stopped shaking. I drew a short breath, releasing it as
a brief, taut laugh that flushed away my vague fears. I suddenly knew exactly how to handle them and
had only to find the right spot for it.

The setup was important. I'd have to let them think they'd succeeded in rattling me. Shifting into the right