"Destroyer 029 - The Final Death.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"Then get one," the big cowpuncher said.
"Walk in the water until it covers your head," Remo said.
"Hold on a minute, skinny. You telling me you ain't giving me a cigarette?"
"I'm telling you I wouldn't give you a cigarette if I was P.J. Lorillard. Now go eat a cow."
"You too skinny a sumbitch to talk to me like that," the cowboy said, hitching up his belt.
"Right," Remo said.
"I'm too big to have to listen to that kind of crap from you."
"Right," Remo said. He heard footsteps coming down the stone corridor toward the cell.
"I'm gonna bust you up good."
"Sure. Swell, right, okay," Remo said.
The cowboy drew back his right arm and threw a punch at Remo's face. But the fist never landed. It found itself wrapped around by one of Remo's hands, and then there was pressure and the cowboy could feel the bones clicking, almost mechanically, as they were broken by the steady squeezing pressure of Remo's hand. Click, click, click came the fractures. The cowboy started to scream. Remo's
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other hand covered his mouth to silence the scream, then touched a clump of nerves on the left side of the man's neck, and the big cowboy slipped down on the floor, unconscious.
A policeman walked up to the front of the cell.
"All right, you stewbums," he said. "This is the order. Masterson, then Boffer, then Johnson" ... he kept reading out all 10 names.
Remo walked to the front of the cell. "I'm Boffer. Take me first. Masterson's still sleeping it off."
He pointed to the big cowboy sprawled out on the floor.
The guard looked at the big man, then at his list, then nodded. "Okay. Let's go, Boffer. The judge doesn't like to be kept waiting."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Remo said.
The guard unlocked the cell, let Remo out, then carefully relocked the door behind him.
"This way," he said, and as he walked with Remo down the corridor, he asked, "You don't seem like the regular kind of drunk. What are you doing here ?"
"Just lucky I guess," said Remo.
"If it makes you happy to be wise ass with me, you go ahead," the guard said, his feelings hurt. "But dontcha try that with the judge or you'll be spending the rest of the year making little ones out of big ones."
"Tough judge, huh?" asked Remo.
"The toughest."
"I always heard he was kind of easy on the big boys. You know, people with money to spread around."
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The guard went on his defensive. "I wouldn't know anything about that."
"I would," Remo mumbled.
The court session, held in a high-ceilinged room on the second floor of the police station, was perfunctory. The two policemen stood before Judge Ambrose, a shiny-headed bald man with big shoulders and thick lips, and told how they had apprehended the perpetrator tearing hubcaps off cars on Madison Street at 3 a.m.
Judge Ambrose nodded. He looked at Remo with a measuring cold eye.
"Do you have anything to say before the court pronounces sentence?"
"Sure do, old buddy," said Remo.
He jauntily moved forward a few steps until he was standing right before the judge's bench. He reached into a vest pocket and drew out a small piece of paper and handed it up to the judge.
Judge Ambrose leaned over the paper as Remo moved back. The judge opened the paper. It was a note. It read: "Let's talk in your chambers."
Wrapped inside the note was a ten thousand dollar bill, the first one Judge Ambrose had ever seen.
Ambrose looked up and met Remo's eyes. The man's eyes were the blackest Ambrose had ever seen, almost as if they had no pupils.
The judge swallowed, then nodded. He crumpled up the paper and the bill and stuffed it into the pocket of his long judicial robe.
"I want to talk to this man in my chambers. Court is recessed for 15 minutes," he said.
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"Twenty," said Remo.
"For 20 minutes," Judge Ambrose said.
Inside the judge's chambers, Ambrose sat behind his desk under an ornamental gem-cut crystal chandelier and looked across at Remo who sprawled in a leather lounge chair facing him.
"All right, Mr. Boffer. What's this all about?" he asked, waving the $10,000 bill at Remo.
"Call it survivor's benefits," Remo said.
"Survivor's benefits? I don't understand," Judge Ambrose said.
"You will," said Remo. "Nice chandelier."
"Thank you."
"That's the one you got free from Light City for deciding their way on a zoning case, right?"
"Who are you?"