"Destroyer - 025 - Sweet Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"Remo," Smith said, "I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm alerting you to stay ready in case something comes up on short notice. There hasn't been a meeting like this since Appalachia."

"Well, I don't like to deal with the Mafia anymore," Remo said.

"Why not, pray tell?" Smith asked, his voice even over the telephone a citric acid bath.

"Because I'm perfect and I don't like to dirty my hands on the unworthy."

And for the second time that day, someone laughed at Remo's claim to perfection.

"Funny, huh?" Remo said. "If that gives you a laugh, watch the TV news tonight about the Boston Marathon. I ran the course five times and still won. Let's see one of your dipwiddle computers do that."

"I'll call you when an assignment presents itself," Smith said in a resigned voice.

"Whatever makes you happy," Remo said breezily.

"I liked you better when you were imperfect," Smith said, but Remo did not hear him. He had already hung up and, still wearing his track clothes, trotted away from the street corner telephone booth and headed back toward his hotel.


CHAPTER THREE


Don Salvatore Massello was angry and disgusted with himself.

He sat in the back of his chauffeured limousine as it picked its way through Manhattan's late afternoon traffic, and hid himself behind clouds of cigar smoke and reflected that organized crime looked organized only because everything else in the country was so disorganized. How could one attach the label of "organized" to what had gone on this afternoon?

Massello had been sure of himself as he sat with the twenty-seven other leaders on the Mafia's ruling council in the string of suites in the Hotel Pierre, overlooking New York's Central Park.

And when it had come his turn, he had reported glowingly on the progress the organization was making in the Midwest, and then had turned his attention to the marvelous television invention he had learned about.

What he wanted, he explained, was authorization to spend "any amount of money" to obtain the machine and its inventor.

He had expected routine and immediate approval and was startled when Pietro Scubisci of the New York families, a seventy-five-year-old man with a rumpled collar and a grease-stained suit said, "What amount is any amount, Don Salvatore?"

Massello had shrugged, as if the amount was the least important of things. "Who knows?" he said. "I know it is important that we have the inventor with us, so that we and we alone control this new device. Any amount is a cheap amount, Don Pietro."

"I do not like people who spend their time watching television," Scubisci said. "Too many today, too much time looking at pictures."

The other men around the table had nodded, and Don Salvatore Massello had realized his proposal was in trouble and that he had made a mistake bringing it here to ask approval. He should just have gone ahead and bought the invention himself.

"You know who likes television?" said Fiavorante Pubescio of the Los Angeles family. "Your Arthur Grassione likes television."

"Arthur is a nice boy," said Scubisci with finality.

"He watches television," said Pubescio gingerly.

"Yes, but he is a nice boy," said Scubisci, defending his nephew. "Don Salvatore," he said, "you go ahead for us and try to buy that television picture machine. But any amount is too much. Five hundred thousand is enough for a college professor. And when you go there, take Arthur Grassione with you. He knows all about television." Scubisci looked at Pubescio. "Arthur watches television so he will know what people are saying about us," he said triumphantly.

"I know, Don Pietro," said Pubescio.