"Destroyer 025 - Sweet Dreams.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"I don't know. It would be tough to sell," said the fence. "Does it come with directions?"
Hooks allowed as how he didn't know and the fence turned him down because that special television would be too easy to trace since apparently it was the only one of its kind.
This outraged Hooks Basumo. If it was only one of a kind it had to be worth more. He looked menacingly at the little man. He hinted about how little men could get hurt late at night. He noticed what a fire hazard the fence's home was.
"Hooks," said the fence, "I can get your bones broken for eighteen dollars. Get out of here."
Hooks raised a finger in obscene contempt and left muttering about the fence's lack of masculinity because if anyone ever gave Hooks the finger like that, they'd frigging get their frigging head handed to them.
At a newsstand, he waited for someone to drop a dollar for change, then snatched it and ran. You could get away with that if the owner really was blind. It was those sneaks who were only partially blind who could cross you up. They could see the outlines of hands moving.
But Hooks knew his newsstands. A man of respect was always careful. It was the punks who were careless. At a Dunkin Donut, he got a jelly filled and a cup of coffee light. He also picked up twenty-three cents in tips someone had carelessly left under a soggy napkin.
A black Cadillac Seville waited outside with
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two men staring at Hooks. They had faces like pavements but with less warmth.
They had bulges in their silk suits. They did not smile.
When Hooks left the doughnut shop, the black car pulled up next to him on the curb.
"Hooks, get in," said the man next to the driver.
"I don't know you," said Hooks. The man in the front seat didn't say anything at all. He just stared at Hooks. Hooks got into the back seat.
They drove out of St. Louis proper on a route paralleling the Mississippi, fat with spring waters, wide as a lake. The car entered a fenced-off marina and Hooks saw a large white boat moored solid to a pier. The man in the front seat opened the rear door for Hooks.
"I didn't do it, I swear," said Hooks. And the man nodded him toward a gangplank.
At the top of the ramp, a round-faced man, sweating from the effort of keeping his fat supplied with blood and oxygen, nodded Hooks into a passageway.
"I didn't do it," said Hooks.
Hooks went down steps, his legs weak.
"I didn't do it," said Hooks to a man in a black tuxedo.
"I'm the butler," said the man.
When Hooks entered the room, and when he saw who sat on a large couch, he found himself unable to deny guilt. This was because the room spun around him and his legs were not_ beneath him and he was looking up. If he were looking up, he reasoned, his back must be on the floor. And who was giving him water?
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Don Salvatore Massello himself. That's who was pressing a glass of water to his lips and asking if he were all right.
"Oh, Jesus," said Hooks. For now he was sure this was Massello. He had seen pictures in the newspapers and on television when Mr. Massello, surrounded by lawyers, had declined to talk to reporter?.
There was the silver hair, the thin haughty nose, the immaculate dark eyebrows and the black eyes. And they were looking down at him and the lips were asking him if he were all right.
"Yes. Yes. Yes sir," said Hooks.
"Thank you for coming," said Mr. Massello.
"My pleasure and anytime, Mr. Massello, sir. An honor."
"And it is an honor to see you also, Mr. Basumo. May I call you Donald?" said Mr. Massello, helping Hooks to his feet and sitting him in a stuffed velvet chair pnd personally pouring him a glass of thick, sweet yellow Strega.
"Donald," said Mr. Massello, "we live in dangerous times."
"I didn't do it, sir. On my mother's sacred heart, I didn't do it."
"Do what, Donald?"
"Whatever, sir. I swear it."
Mr. Massello nodded with a tiredness that suggested the wisdom of the world.
"There are things men of respect must do to survive and I respect you for whatever you have done. I am proud to call you a friend, a brother."
Hooks offered to knock off any newsstand in the city for Mr. Massello, owned by a sighted person or not.
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Don Salvatore Massello expressed gratitude for the most gracious offer but there was more important business at hand.
And he asked questions about the television set Donald had tried to sell to a fence. Had Donald seen it? Where was it? How did Donald hear of it? And getting an answer, Don Salvatore Massello asked about the girl, Janet Hawley, where she lived, where she worked and all manner of things concerning the girl.
"She don't mean shit to me, sir," said Hooks.
Mr. Massello understood that Donald was too serious a person to let his life be ruined by a skirt. Mr. Massello said this with a knowing smile. Mr. Massello led him to the door, assuring young Donald Basumo his future was secure. He would be a rich man.
And to show his good faith, he provided Donald with a room aboard the yacht that night. And two servants. They followed every instruction Hooks gave them, from bringing in booze and food and a young girl, except one request. Hooks wanted to take a walk in the fresh air. That they could not allow.
"You got everything you want right here. You're not leaving."
During the night, they awakened him and told him he could have his fresh air now. He didn't want it now. They told him he was taking it now.
It was 4:15 A.M. and quite dark. Hooks sat in the back seat of a car again and when they were well down the road headed toward St. Louis, he saw the marina lights come back on. He had left in darkness.
The car left the asphalt road and drove to the
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yard of a small construction firm. Hooks was surprised to see Janet Hawley waiting for him. She wore a bright yellow print dress covered from the waist up with mud. She was resting. At the bottom of a ditch, with a very big dent in her head.
Hooks started to question the servants about this when one of them interrupted by banging a baseball bat into Donald (Hooks) Basumo's auditory cortex in his temporal lobe. It went crack. And made a very big and final dent in his skull.