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


‘Lookit, you guinea stool pigeon, don’t tell us our jobs.’ It struck Remo as amusing that those officers with the heaviest service to the Mafia were always the freest to use terms like ‘guinea’, ‘wop’, and ‘dago’.

Upstairs probably had some psychological report on that. They had reports on everything it seemed, from parking-meter graft in Miami Beach to ex-Mafiosi who were going to be rubbed out because they planned to talk.

Tomalino was going to talk.

On this there were several opinions. The district attorney promised the papers Tomalino would probably spill, but the three policemen had promised the local capo mafioso that he wouldn’t. These opinions were really just opinions because it had been decided in an office in Folcroft Sanatorium in Rye, New York, that Vincent ‘The Blast’ Tomalino not only would talk, but he would tell everything he knew with a pure heart.

‘I want to check the window,’ said Tomalino.

‘Stay where you are,’ said one of the cops. ‘You two keep him on the bed. I’m going to check the roof.’

Remo looked up to the roof. Surprise, surprise—here it came. A rope swooped out in an arch and slapped back against the side of the hotel. It paused there a moment, a head peered over and the rope descended, right past Remo’s knee. He heard the hotel room door open and close, and assumed the officer was going up to the roof to get his payoff immediately after the job was done.

A large body grunted its way over the ledge and using hands and feet like clumsy logs lowered itself down the rope. Remo could smell the man’s meat-eating breath from five feet away. A carbine which could be handled with one hand was strapped to the man’s back. And there was something metallic around his waist. What was it? Remo peered more closely. The man had attached a pulley to his waist so he wouldn’t fall.

Remo couldn’t get the idea of meat out of his mind. He hadn’t had a steak for two years. Oh, for a juicy-fat crisp steak, or rich thick hamburger, or a slice of quivering roast beef oozing its juices from a delicious red center. Even a hot dog would be great. Or a slice of bacon, a magnificent slice of bacon.

The meat-eater’s right foot touched the top of the window and still he did not see Remo. He reached for the carbine on his back and since he seemed to be having trouble, Remo helped him.

‘It’s stuck,’ said Remo, reaching up, but not for the carbine.

He got the pulley with his right hand, snapping it off, and since there was no need for loud unpleasantness, he took out the meat-eater’s throat with a thumb on the way down.

Like a water-filled balloon from a conventioneer’s window, the meat-eater plummeted—arms and legs flailing noiselessly—to the pavement below. Concrete and killer were joined with a muffled splat.

Remo climbed up the rope, which he did not need but thought appropriate for his greeting on the roof.

‘I didn’t hear nothing,’ came the voice from the other side of the ledge. It was the voice of the policeman who had left the room.

‘Hi, there,’ said Remo pleasantly, rising over the ledge. ‘I’d like to borrow your head for a few minutes.’

Blackened hands moved faster than sight. There was a short, wrenching sound on the roof. Then Remo departed through the roof door and scampered down the steps with something in his right hand behind his back, dripping.

When he got to Tomalino’s room, he knocked.

A patrolman answered the door.

‘What do you want?’ asked the patrolman.

‘I want to impress upon you and your charge in the room about talking from a pure heart. I think you will agree with me, after a few moments of explanation, that truth is the most valuable thing we have.’

‘Get out of here. We don’t need religious nuts.’

The door started to close in Remo’s face, but something stopped it. The patrolman opened the door again to get a better slam, but something stopped it again. This time he looked to see what the obstruction was. The religious nut in the black suit with the blackened face and blackened feet was holding only one blackened finger in the way, so the patrolman decided to break that finger by slamming the door with the full force of his body.

The door reverberated against his shoulder and the religious nut pushed it open, and shut it behind himself with one hand. Something dripped red from behind the nut’s back.

The patrolman went for his gun and the hand did indeed reach the holster. Unfortunately, its wrist connection was rather weak at the time, suffering a cracked bone and a severed nerve. The other patrolman, seeing the speed of the hands, flattened his palms upward.