"Destroyer - 011 - Kill Or Cure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

‘Now. Anytime.’

‘I see. Look at that boat behind you. Out there, in the Atlantic. Look.’

Bullingsworth saw the boat, placid and blinking in the vast darkness.

‘I don’t believe you,’ said the man with the heavy lilac cologne and the foreign accent, and then Bullingsworth felt a sharp sting in his right ear, and saw nothing else. But, in the vast nothing that is death is often infinite wisdom, and in his last thought he knew that his killer would face an awesome force that would grind him and his cohorts into waste material, a force that was at the very center of the universe. Of course, all of this meant very little to James Bullingsworth, former assistant vice-president of the Greater Miami Trust and Investment Company. He was dead.

In the course of normal, morning, beach-cleaning operations, Bullingsworth’s body was discovered with what appeared to be a wooden tool handle in his ear.

‘Oh, no,’ said the sweeper and decided immediately he would not act like some hysterical woman. He would walk calmly to the nearest telephone and call the police, giving them exact details and other useful information.

This resolve to discipline lasted three steps on the sandy beach, whereupon it was discarded for an alternate course of action.

‘Help. Arggghh. Dead. Help. Body. Help. Someone. Police. Help!’

The sweeper might have stayed rooted, screaming until he was hoarse, but an elderly vacationer spotted him and the body from her hotel window and phoned the police.

‘Better bring an ambulance too,’ she said. ‘There’s a hysterical man down there.’

The police brought more than an ambulance. They brought photographers and reporters and television crews. For something had happened during the night to make the death of this man a very important matter, important enough to call a press conference where James Bullingsworth’s doozy of an idea—his belief in a federal government plot to infiltrate local governments and jail key officials—got a public airing.

Waving the Bullingsworth notes before the heavy lights of TV camera crews, who were paid overtime for the pre-dawn work, a local politician of minor rank talked ominously of the ’most treacherous act of government interference in the history of our nation.’


CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he intended to interfere with local government very much. He intended to make it do its job.

He rested his toes in the brick crevices, and with his charcoal-blackened hands pressed flat against the rough brick, kept his balance outside the window. He could smell the heavy fumes of Boston. He could feel the vibrations of the traffic down below in the dampish night street through the building wall, and he wished he were in some place warm and sunny, like Miami Beach. But his assignment was Boston. First things first.

A passerby, fourteen stories below in front of the hotel, would never see this figure pressed into the wall, for he wore black shoes, black pants and black shirt, and his face and hands were blackened with a charcoal paste given him by the man who had taught him that the side of a building could be a ladder if the mind knew how to use it as one.

Voices came from the open window near his right kneecap. The window should not have been open, but then the two detectives and plainclothesmen hadn’t done their job very well from the beginning.

‘You’re sure I’m okay here, fellas?’ asked a man in a rough, rock voice.

That was Vincent Tomalino, Remo knew.

‘Sure. You got us with you all the time,’ said another man. Must be one of the cops, Remo thought,

‘Okay,’ said Tomalino, but his voice lacked conviction.

‘Wanna play some cards?’ asked one of the cops.

‘No,’ said Tomalino. ‘You sure that window should be open?’

‘Sure, sure. Fresh air.’

‘We can use the air conditioner.’