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

Skorich's drawn face twisted in confusion and Remo's heart suddenly became light. "Attaway to go, Billy baby," he thought. "That's it. Beautiful. Nobody remembers a dead man's face. Especially after plastic surgery."

Then Skorich's face lighted up, a smile with it, that quickly turned into shock at seeing a dead man alive. And Remo kriew that Skorich knew.

The last word Detective William Skorich of the Newark Police Department said was not a word. It was the beginning of a name.

The sound was "Re. ..."

Using Skorich's body as a shield, out of view of the prisoner and the other bull, Remo shot a finger into Skorich's solar plexus, driving the finger in deep, up into the heart, rupturing muscles and valves. All in just the time it took to say "Re. . . ."

It was the floater stroke where the hand floated free of the momentum of the body and moved itself. It had the advantage of stopping talk immediately.

Skorich's eyes widened and before he slumped, Remo's hands were in his own pockets with the note pad tucked under an arm. Skorich collapsed into Remo and Remo let himself be knocked to the far side of the elevator, saying, "Watch yourself, buddy."

Skorich brought the prisoner down on him as he fell. The fedora plopped over and the other detective, spinning like the far end of a whipping chain, stumbled onto it and then down onto the prisoner on top of the dead man on the floor of the elevator.

The doors opened on the main floor. Remo regained his balance, brushing himself off and stormed out of the elevator, yelling loudly, "I've been assaulted by a police officer. I've been assaulted right here in headquarters. Is that how you treat the press?"

Remo stood at the entrance of the elevator, pointing to the pile of bodies. The living detective was trying to raise himself and the prisoner both.

"There," yelled Remo. "That's him on the bottom. I want to press charges, right now. He pushed me." It took the desk lieutenant three minutes to ascertain the situation, ten seconds to yell for an ambulance and three minutes with the faggy, pinko magazine writer to convince the writer that he had not been assaulted, but that the detective had fallen into him because he was dead, probably with a heart attack.

"Dead?" said Remo, his mouth open, his eyes wide with terror.

"Yeah. Dead. You know. What happens to us pigs when we try to protect you. Another pig dead, bud-dy."

"I ... I don't know what to say," Remo said.

"Just try looking before you jump to conclusions. That's all. Just try looking. Just a little, fair look."

"I ... I'm sorry," said Remo and there was no act to his sadness. It was very real and when he left the station, he felt very much like a drink, but you do not take a drink when you are on peak, you do not take it even when you come off peak. You treat yourself like an alcoholic because that's the business.

And when you pass a bar and see yourself in the reflection of the window, you're glad you can deny yourself something you want very much. And you hate the face looking back at you and moving along with you.

Because, Remo Williams, you're lower than an animal. You're a machine. An animal kills to eat and live. A man kills because he's frightened or sick or he's told to and he's afraid not to. But you, Remo Williams, you kill because that's what the machine was designed to do.

Remo crossed the street, where the red-headed cop directed traffic with a sure hand born of experience, and walked past a donut store where youngsters jammed around the counter in their after-school gluttony ritual. He would have liked, at that moment, to have Smith in his hands and to break Smith's arms and to say to Smith, "That's what pain feels like, Smitty. That's where it's at, little adding machine." Now he knew why he sometimes hated Smith. Because they were alike. Twin peas in a sick pod. And they did their jobs right.

The youngsters inside the doughnut store jostled playfully. A young black girl and a young white girl, their books clasped firmly to their budding breasts, giggled and looked at a young black man in floppy hat, white twill shirt and flared pants who held something out to them in his fist. He was laughing too, taunting them.

He wiggled his clenched fist and threw back his head laughing. The two girls exchanged glances, then giggled again. The glance said: "Should we?"

The white girl reached out to the black hand holding something. The hand withdrew. She shrugged. The hand went forward again, and opened up. It held a small glassine envelope. The black boy laughed. The white girl snatched the envelope and laughed.

And Remo thought of the picture of the OD that Smith had shown him on the cruise ship. And suddenly, he didn't feel so bad about being a machine.

The mayor and the editor were next.