"Laura Resnick - The Vatican Outfit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

Vicious rumors start so easily.
"If Corvino says there's going to be an attempt on your life, Your
Holiness, then I believe that there will be. If anyone could be considered an
unimpeachable source of underworld information, it's my Uncle Vito's, um,
associate."
"So, Albino," I said. "I can call you Albino, can't I? This is the
situation. It's not just that we've gotta avoid the hit; we've also gotta take
out the boys who are involved in it. All of them, Al, even if that means
whacking your _consigliere_."
"Whacking?" the Pope said.
"Assassinating, Holy Father," Angie said. These college boys!
Well, Luciani looked pretty shocked. I could see it was time to lay out
the deal for him.
"Al, come on, we're all men of the world here. Let's be frank," I said.
"This is a very big outfit you got here, and you've had some very tough boys
working for you over the centuries. But now, times have changed, and you've
all grown a little soft. Your income is good, you hardly got any trouble with
the feds, you got pretty good public relations, and you got soldiers like my
nephew here joining up almost every day. You got a good thing here. But let's
be honest, Al." I looked him right in the eye. "When war comes, and it is
coming, it's usually the good who die young."
Luciani thought it over. "If I accept your assertion that I'm in danger
of being assassinated -- "
"_If?" _ I said. "Al, you'd better not wait too long to start believing
it, or you're gonna find yourself with a bullet between the eyes and a quick
trip to the Pearly Gates. And then I'm gonna have to tell Mr. Corvino that
Angie and I failed here. And Mr. Corvino don't like it when his boys fail."
"Wait a minute!" Angelo said. "I'm not -- "
"Quiet, kid," I ordered.
Well, Luciani was hard to convince, but the fear of death has a way of
making any man reasonable. Particularly since that night, I figured out how
they was planning to ice him.
Angie convinced him to let the two of us hide in his suite of rooms to
protect him. Luciani had been pretty grumpy ever since our little
conversation, but I had the feeling that he secretly liked me, so I was
patient with him. After all, no boss likes to hear from a _capo_ from some
other outfit that he's gone soft.
So there we were, late at night, prowling around the Pope's bedroom,
when I remembered something Mr. Corvino said after Crazy Vinny Vitelli's body
was found decomposing in a perfume shop on West 56th Street: "If you want to
whack someone without getting caught, learn his habits." You see, Vinny used
to slip behind the counter at this shop to pinch the sales girls, and the
Matera family, whose turf Vinny had violated, knew about this. I bet Vinny
never even knew that the last ass he pinched before croaking belonged to a
transvestite hit man from the West Coast who the Materas brought in special
for that job.
When I saw the glass of medicine on the Pope's bedside table, I knew.
"Al! Wait!" I hollered, just as he was lifting it to his lips. He paused long
enough for me to grab it from him. "You take this stuff every night?" I asked.
"Yes. It was prescribed by my -- "