"Edghill,.Rosemary.-.SS.Collection.-.Murder.By.Magic.v1.0.txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill Rosemary)

Laura Resnick
Laura Resnick is the Campbell Award-wining author of several fantasy novels, including the upcoming In Fire Forged, and more than forty sf/f short stories. She is also the award-winning author of a dozen romance novels published under the pseudonym Laura Leone. In her copious spare time, she wrote A Blonde in Africa, a nonfiction account of her journey across the continent. You can find her on the Web at www.sff.net/peopleAaresnick.


t wasn't no surprise that Skinny Vinny Vitelli got rubbed out. I mean, hey, I'd nearly whacked him myself a couple of times. So had most guys I know. Not to speak ill of the dead and all that, but he was an irritating bastard. Vinny could pick an argument with a plate of pasta. He could piss off the Virgin Mother. He could annoy the deadЧso it wasn't exactly a big shock when he became one of them.
A couple of nuns taking a cigarette break found his body in an alley early one morning. He'd been done with four slugs straight to the chest. Which was a little strange, actually, because Vinny always wore the bulletproof vest he got the time he whacked that fed.
It's not what you're thinking. It was personal, not business. Vinny caught the guy in bed with his underage daughter. The vest was lying right there on the floor, and after Vinny impulsively emptied a whole clip into the guy's torso, he decided the vest as A Sign. (Did I mention he was a pretty religious guy?) See, Vinny had always been afraid of dying exactly the way he'd just killed the fed who'd been stupid enough to take off his bulletproof vest before humping a wise guy's seventeen-year-old daughter right there in her father's house. (Feds. They breed 'em dumb.)
So Vinny picked the vest up off the floor, put it on, and never took it off since. I mean never. Just ask his wife. Well, if you can find her. She hot-tailed it straight down to Florida before the corpse was cold and ain't been seen since. She was making plans for her new life right there at Vinny's funeral, yakking on her cell phone with her real estate agent while the casket was being lowered into the ground.
"It's a funny thing," I said to Joey "the Chin" Mannino while the grieving Mrs. Vitelli kicked some dirt into her late husband's open grave with the toe of her shoe while telling her real estate agent she expected to be in Florida by nightfall.
"Huh?" Joey didn't really hear me. He was stroking his scarred chin as he stared lovesick at the Widow Butera. She was glaring back at him. A very beautiful woman, even at forty-five, but bad news for any guy.
"Give it up, Joey," I advised.
"I can't." He shook his head. "I've asked her to marry me."
I slapped my forehead. "Are you nuts?" One of the mourners frowned at me, so I lowered my voice. "She's had three husbands, and they're all dead. Don't that tell you something?"
"She's been unlucky."
"Her husbands have been unlucky. All three of them. So I'll lay odds that number four is gonna be real unlucky, too."
"It's not her fault, Vito."
"No, but being married to her is so unlucky it crosses over into dumb."
Her first husband got hit just because he was having dinner with Big Bobby Gambone at Buon Appetito the night Little Jackie Bernini decided to kill Bobby and didn't feel too particular about who else he sprayed with his Uzi. That was the start of the first Gambone-Bernini war. Well, a beautiful woman like that couldn't stay widowed forever. So three years later, during the second Gambone-Bernini war, she married a hit man from Las Vegas whom the Gambones brought into town to teach the Berninis a lesson. But then the Berninis brought in their own hit man from Boise to deal with him, and ain't nobody tougher than those Boise guys. So the Widow was widowed again. Then, maybe because she was tired of marrying Gambones who got whacked out, the Widow shocked everyone by marrying Bernini Butera, who was everybody's favorite pick to head the Bernini family nextЧuntil Joey clipped him last year. That hit pretty much ended the third Gambone-Bernini war. But from the way the Widow Butera was glaring at Joey across Skinny Vinny Vitelli's grave now, it didn't look like she had forgiven Joey for stuffing her third husband into a cement mixer in New Jersey.
"What'd she say when you asked her to marry you?" I asked Joey.
"She told me she'd rather fry in hell." He shrugged. "She'll come round."
I shook my head. "Joey, Joey, Joey . . ."
He gave a friendly little wave to the Widow Butera. She hissed at him. The priest, Father Michael, smiled vaguely at her and said, "Amen."
So, to take Joey's mind off the Widow, I said, "Anyhow, like I was saying before, it's a funny thing."
"What's a funny thing?"
"About Vinny."
"No, no," Connie Vitelli was saying into her cell phone as she shook Father Michael's hand, "the condo's got to have an ocean view, or no deal. Understand?"
"Funny?" Joey said. "Oh! You mean about the vest, right?"
"Yeah." I shook my head when Father Michael gestured to me to throw some dirt onto the coffin. Hey, 1 didn't kill Vinny, so no way was I doing the work of deep-sixing him. Not my problem, after all. "Why'd Vinny take off that vest for the first time in five years? It ain't like him. He was a religious bastard."
"I think you mean superstitious." Joey's an educated guy. Almost read a book once.
"Okay, superstitious. Vinny always thought he'd get killed if he ever took that thing off. And, sure enough, look what happened. So why'd he take it off? It don't make sense."
"You mean you didn't hear, Vito?"
"Hear what?"
Connie was shouting into her cell phone. "Speak up! Are you driving through a tunnel or something? I'm getting tons of static!"
Vinny's daughter, now twenty-two years old and reputedly still a virgin, stepped up to the grave, made a face at her fathers coffin, and then spit on it.
"Poor Vinny," said Father Michael, who looked like he'd taken a fistful of Prozac before coming here. "He will be missed."
"Not by anybody I ever met," muttered Joey.
I said to Joey, "What is it that I didn't hear?"
"Oh! The strange thing is, Vito, Vinny was still wearing his vest when they found his body."
"Huh? So how'd four slugs wind up in his chest?"
Joey shrugged. "It's a mystery. No holes in the vest. No marks at all, like it was never even hit. But as for Vinny's chest . . ."Joey grimaced.
While I thought about this, Connie Vitelli said, "But how big is the master bathroom?"
"So, Joey, you're saying that someone clipped Vinny, then put that vest back on him? For what? A joke?"
Joey shook his head. "That vest never came off him, Vito."
"Of course it did. How else did four bullЧ"
"The cops said the fasteners on Vinny's vest were rusted and hadn't been disturbed for years."
"Jesus. So it's true what Connie said. Vinny even showered in that thing!"
"Uh-huh."
I frowned at Joey. "But what you're saying ... I mean, how did the bullets get past the vest and into Vinny's chest?"
"That's what's got the cops stumped."
"And why'd the cops tell you this?" Cops don't usually say nothing to guys like us besides, "I'll get you into the witness protection program if you cooperate."