"Destroyer - 004 - Mafia Fix" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"If you had 'em, you'd get a call for 'em."

"But I don't have them."

"Why doncha?"

"Cause I don't get any call for them."

And the radio-"It's definitely four containers. And there are three men in the hold looking around. Well-dressed."

"Hey, I asked for two, not four." "Sorry. Two, right?" "Right. With onions."

"I don't have onions. What do you want from me?"

"Onions. You know everybody's got onions. You're the first guy in here what deals from a truck that don't have onions."

"I don't have onions."

The longshoreman's face reddened. "I know you don't have onions. I'm saying you oughta get 'em 'cause customers like 'em. I'd pay five cents more for onions if you had 'em. Some people just like onions. It ain't against the law. Nobody says you gotta have mustard and kraut on your dogs. Hey! Whaddya doing?"
"What?" said Vincent Fabia.

"Whaddya doing? I didn't order no mustard or kraut."

And the radio-"Number two going up, those men staring at it. They're involved. Maybe we can get them with the telly. Whoops."

"Mustard and kraut, right?" said Vincent Fabia. "Blow it out your ass."

Vincent Fabia shrugged as a hot dog salesman would shrug, and he leaned down into the corner of his small truck as if to get more mustard. He whispered into a small microphone. "Did you pick up the deck with the telly?"

"Somebody just passed. That was close. I'll let you know when there's something new. Everything's too close."

Vincent Fabia sold 174 hot dogs that morning and eighteen more by 4 p.m. that afternoon. He was literally soaked with sweat. His tee shirt looked as if it had been hosed, and his trousers were two shades darker than normal. His hair hung limply in wet strands; his eyes were red. He felt as though he could neither lift his hands nor his feet; just keep his balance by great strength of will. But when the four loaded tractor trailers with the emblems on them- Ocean Wheel Trucking Company-began to roll off Pier 27, he knew suddenly that he could climb Mount Everest if he had to.

He leaned into the corner of the cab, flicked a switch, and said very loudly:

"Pickles. Pickles. I'm going to get pickles. Got to get pickles. Pickles."

And the signal beginning the close of the trap was out. He shut the flaps of his truck, and for the first time in three weeks did not bother to close the lid on the big mustard jar beneath the counter, from which he filled the small dispenser jar.

He stuffed the .38 calibre police special into his belt and toyed with a line that he might deliver at some communion breakfast-about youngsters having a choice between right and wrong, and no ethnic group being particularly addicted to any special offense, and maybe even how too many people remembered only the Italian gangsters who were caught, not the Italian detectives who caught them.

It was the Mafia and the people who dealt with them who were the fools, not the majority of hardworking Italian-Americans and other Americans.

Vincent Fabia did not get a chance to deliver his speech about who had brains and who didn't. His brains were found splattered on the seat of the cab of his hot dog truck at 3 a.m. the next morning, parked near the cemetery on tree-shaded Garfield Avenue in Hudson, New Jersey. Powder burns surrounded the remnants of an eye socket and slivers of his skull were imbedded in the back of the seat.

Just before quitting time, two longshoremen had been crushed to death beneath a container that slipped its rigging and plummeted down onto them in the hold.

And two office workers, who were photography buffs at an office at Pier 27, left work without taking their camera. They never came back for it. Which was all right with the management, because it never got much work out of them anyway.

The state and local police stayed on alert until midnight and, finally receiving no signal, checked with the Treasury Department.