"Shadow - 351015 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Bombproof Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

He spun the dial.
Exactly six minutes later, he was on the street hailing a cruising taxi to
the curb. His red-headed secretary, slightly breathless, was beside him.
"I still don't seeЧ"
"Get in. The meter's running," Big Tim suggested.
Grace got in. The laundry was a Brooklyn address. The cab started
downtown, in the direction of the bridge.
"So what goes on in Brooklyn?"
"A war," Noonan rumbled.
"AЧhuh?"
"A war. Laundries for trenches. There's a protection racket gang starting
its stuff, from what this Mr. Horner tells me. The old Chicago game. He
don't want to play."
"SoЧenter Noonan?"
Big Tim stared out the window beside him.
"I wouldn't know. That takes more confab with Horner. So far, there ain't
any case. Only crank notes. We're going over to have us a look."
The redhead sighed dismally.
"I ask for excitement, and what do I get? A peek at a set of Brooklyn
valentines!"
That finished the Horner caseЧfor fifteen minutes. And then the lid blew
off. Literally blew off.
The cab had no better than turned the corner at the end of the block
occupied by Horner's Home-Way Laundry when the explosive roar fanged into the
silence, vicious, deafening.
"HolyЧcat!"
A delivery truck had just nosed into the street from the doors of the Horner
garage.
One second, it was edging cautiously forward. The next, it seemed to lift
into the air. Its sides buckled out. Its roof tore open like the top of a burst
balloon, and shredded.
Along the opposite curb, a curtained black sedan had been cruising slowly
as the track appeared. Now, springing into sudden swift motion, it hurtled forward,
headed toward the far intersection.
Tim was onto his driver's neck like a striking rattlesnake.
"After Сem!"
The cab shot ahead. But the quick movement seemed almost simultaneous
with the shrill, tortured scream of jammed brakes. Swerving, they brought
up abruptly at the curb.
Into their path. swinging crazily to block off the entire street, the shattered
truck had careened like a spinning top. There, miraculously on all four wheels,
it jerked to a standstill.
Around the distant corner, the escaping sedan whipped out of sight into the
maze of city-bound traffic. Swearing softly, Tim leaped the taxi's running
board.
From the laundry, shouting employees were racing for the bombed
truck as Grace sprang after him.

The private office of Nicholas Horner overlooked the street in which the
sudden attack of a quarter hour previous had taken place. As he finished his