"Destroyer 004 - Mafia Fix.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"Pietro," said Don Dominic. "I have loved you like a father. I give you, with utmost respect, some advice."

"The Scubisci family always welcomes the advice of Don Dominic Verillio."

"As I told the others, if you don't sell high at first, you can establish your control. I say this for your own good."

"That is good advice if there is a second shipment."

"Is there something that makes you believe there won't be?"

"I am an old man, Don Dominic. Who knows if I live to a second shipment?"

"That is not what worries you," Verillio said.

"If I tell you what causes me concern, you laugh. As I laugh. I think it not worth your ears."

"Anything you say is worth my ears."

The old man nodded slowly. "My Angela, she believe in the stars. The stars this-the stars that. She plays her games. I listen. You know how she said you gonna get married. And you did. And how your wife die. And, may I bless her memory, she did. You know how she says you be capo of all capos. And you are. Maybe it an accident. She also say you get fine daughter and you no have children, so you knows what the stars say?"

Don Dominic's grip tightened on the old man's shoulders. But as soon as it tightened, he caught control of himself and loosened.

"Well," continued Pietro Scubisci, rolling his greasy pepper bag in his fingers. "She come up a crazy this time. I tell you last year, this thing maybe is not the best thing. But I go along."

"Yes?" said Verillio.

"You know how Angela say this day is not the day and to wait and she says wait forever, so you don't wait at all. But I go along because stars are stars and business is business. But this time Angela is frightened. She say . . . you must promise no laugh. She say you going against a god."

Don Dominic could not control the laughter, and he apologized as he guffawed.

"You see, it is nothing," said Pietro.

"Tell me about this god."

"Well, it's not like a god, like a saint. It's like olden times God."

"Zeus. Jupiter. Apollo?"

"Like Chinese," Scubisci said. "A crazy thing. Angela sends away to this old lady in Greenwich Village, because the stars Angela cannot read. And comes back more confusion. What is the word the Jews use when they mourn their dead. Sit on boxes and do not shave and things?"

"Shiva" Verillio said.

"Yah. That's him. Except it sounds like sleeve."

"Shiva? Well, 111 be on the lookout for any eastern gods," Verillio said.

Pietro Scubisci smiled and shrugged. "I tell you it crazy. It's just that sometimes Angela. . . ." and his /voice tailed off as the two men left the shop together and Willie the Plumber made his five thousand dollar purchase.

That night, Don Dominic Verillio made a mental note to look up the god, Shiva, in an encyclopedia.