"Laura Resnick - Under a Sky More Fiercely Blue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

his eyes as he decided whether or not to kill me.
Finally, perhaps seeing how harmless I was, he lowered the pistol.
"What's your name?"
"Toto."
"Short for Salvatore?" When I nodded, he smiled beguilingly and said,
"That used to be my name, too."
"Used to be?"
He nodded. "Salvatore Lucania. But I changed it." He stuck the pistol
into the waistband of his trousers, at the small of his back where it was
hidden by his dull brown jacket. "Where are we, Toto?" he asked.
I stared at him without responding, for nothing is given away lightly
in Sicily, least of all knowledge.
"Jesus," he muttered at last. "Welcome home, Charlie."
He sat down on a rock, pulled out a packet of cigarettes, and lit one.
I crept closer and looked at the packet.
"Want one?" he asked.
I shook my head but said with interest, "American cigarettes."
His eyes went cold again, and I looked down rather than be caught in
his web. A moment later he laughed softly, startling me. "Yeah, I know. Not
too smart, if I get caught with these on me. But fuck it. Nobody is pushing me
out of a goddamned airplane and dropping me into fucking Villalba without a
pack of cigarettes."
"This isn't Villalba."
"Well, they weren't just going to drop me into the main piazza for all
the Germans to watch, kid." He inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then asked,




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"How far away are we?"
I shrugged.
"Fucking typical." He looked disgusted. "Look, I'll make it simple for
you. If you started walking right now, how long would it take you to get to
Villalba?"
I shrugged.
"Guess!" he snapped.
"A long time, I suppose. I heard once that Villalba is almost thirty
kilometers from Caltanissetta, which is already a long walk from here."
"What?" He looked at me strangely. "What is the name of your village?"
I looked away again, for I knew better than to answer anyone's
questions, particularly the questions of a stranger. But then, he was not just
any stranger. He had fallen out of the sky to land at my feet, and he had
chosen not to kill me.
"My village is Serradifalco," I said at last.
"_Porca miseria_!" He threw his cigarette to the ground and put his
head in his hands. "Can't those assholes get anything right?"
"They were supposed to drop you near Villalba?" I guessed.
He nodded. "Goddammit! And people wonder why it took those bastards
twenty years to catch me! Hell, they didn't even catch me -- the motherfuckers