"Casey Daniels - Pepper Martin 01 - Don of the Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniels Casey)

Betty turned toward where I pointed. "He who?"

"He. Him." For a second, I wondered how the practical joker (whoever heтАФor sheтАФwas) had
convinced the Heights Lutheran Senior Citizens League to go along with the gag. Just as quickly, I
decided there was no way. They couldn't be bullshitting me. Not all of them. Not Lutherans.

"GusScarpetti . The mobster." This time I didn't just point, I stabbed, the gesture broad enough so that
evenChester , the guy with the thick glasses who stood at Betty's side, could see it. "GusScarpetti isтАФ"

My stomach hit bottom, then bounced up again and lodged in my throat.

Because that's when I realized that nobody else saw the guy.
"Crazy." The word escaped me on the end of a gasp of 100 percent pure panic.

Didn't it figure, theScarpetti figment of my imagination noticed. Smiling, he stepped back and settled his
weight against one foot. "You know what to do, doll baby," he said, his voice smooth and satisfied. "Tell
them all about me."

It's not like I had a lot of options. Being a tour guide at Garden View might not be the most ideal job in
the world, but it paid better than the barista job at Starbucks that I'd tried and hated. It also didn't involve
typing and filing (at least not much), like the phone company job I'd been told I didn't have enough
experience for. So it wasn't Saks. Or even Nordstrom. I'd applied at both those places, too, but until I
heard back from them (ifтАж when) or figured out some other way to handle the monumentalscrewup that
was my life, this was all I had.

Besides, I had to get the tour over with and get out. Fast. Before I convinced myself that the crack-up
I'd been waiting for had arrived, not only in living color but wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit.

"GusScarpetti . Born in 1921. Got his start with theNew York mob. Tried to take over somebody else's
territory. Forced to leave town. Came here toCleveland . Died."

Even before the last word was out of my mouth, I turned and walked away from the mausoleum.
"Follow me and we'll see the grave of famous entrepreneurтАФ"

"But isn't there more to the story?" Betty's question stopped me dead in my tracks. "Aren't you going to
tell us all that interesting stuff? You know, about how he was killed?"

With a sigh of surrender, I turned back to the group. And to GusScarpetti , who looked pretty satisfied.
Like he'd just won the first round and I was the down-for-the-count loser.

I sucked it up and scrambled to remember my tour script. "One summer night thirty years ago, Gus
walked out of his favorite restaurant."

"And that's when he was killed, right?" A man in the front row asked the question. "He was shot to death
by a mob hit man."

No way could that guy know how grateful I was. Now that everyone knew the not-so-happy ending to
the story, I didn't have to tell them. That meant we could get out of Dodge. Ibackstepped my way
toward the street where the tour bus waited for us. "No one was ever arrested," I said. "But the cops are
sure that's what happened."