"Дон Пендлтон. California Hit ("Палач" #11) " - читать интересную книгу автора

"That gun there was your papa's best friend, Little Tony," the old man
liked to remind him. "It's yours, too, you know. That's the blood between
you'n me, and don't you forget it. When I lose the need for your gun, then
we've lost our common bond. You better remember that and you better stay on
your toes. And you for damn sure better keep me alive as long as you can.
'Cause when I go, Little Tony, every damn thing you got in this world goes
with me."
Rivoli was twenty-five when first he heard the whispered story that his
father's death had been, perhaps, an unnecessary event. There had been
tensions in the official family, rivalries, and a jockeying around for
power - pressure from without and stress from within. As the story goes, Don
DeMarco had begun to suspect the loyalty of Big Tony - and he had sent his
house captain and old friend out on a personal hit purely as a test of that
loyalty. And he had sent him into a "set-up" - an ambush from which there
was no possibility of return.
Curiously enough, this rumor served only to intensify Little Tony's
loyalty to the Don - as though he were trying to prove by his own example
that the old man had been wrong about his father. This was supposed to
explain why Tony Rivoli Jr. had become the tiger of the DeMarco palace
guard. Certain members of the official family had their private reservations
about this explanation, and they would quietly express their own ideas about
Tony Rivoli's tigerhood to anybody but the tiger himself. Whatever the
background, Little Tony was elevated to full captaincy in a formal "blood
and kisses" ceremony on the eve of his thirtieth birthday, and he had been
the militant spirit of DeMarco House ever since.
Nobody except Don DeMarco now called him "Little Tony" to his face. The
tag had become a ridiculous one, anyway. The "House Tiger" stood just under
six feet tall and weighed close to two hundred pounds. Hardened gunmen
became nervous under his casual stare, and visiting dignitaries treated him
with cordial respect.
It was common knowledge among the palace guard that Mr. Rivoli had "a
mean streak" - especially concerning his women. He never had any particular
woman more than once, and frequently his "victims" were carried out in the
dead of night - bloodied and whimpering. Only once had an official complaint
been brought against him in this regard, and on this instance the
complainant had failed to show up in court. She had, in fact, failed to show
up anywhere, ever.
At the time of Mack Bolan's smash into San Francisco, Tony Rivoli was
thirty-three years of age, which put the two tigers into roughly the same
age group. Bolan was not much taller and no heavier than the Tiger of
Russian Hill. Each had come into a certain formidable reputation for
ferocity and dedication to a cause. But these similarities met only on the
surface of the men.
Mack Bolan's savagery was directed only upon the savages of his
society. Tony Rivoli's ferocity seemed to be an inherent part of his inner
nature, and it was directed primarily into a defense of savagery as a way of
life.
On that morning following the strike against North Beach, Rivoli's
tiger force was under full alert. The tiger himself had been up the entire
night to personally supervise the defense arrangements, and he greeted the