"Destroyer 036 - Power Play.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"Of course."
"But why? Who are you anyway? To come in here and talk about killing?"
"Just another overworked wage slave," Remo said.
"But who?" Winstler asked again.
"It's a long story," Remo said.
"I've got time," Winstler said. If he could get his knee free, he could bolt from the table. In the crush of bodies on the dance floor he'd be safe.
"No, you haven't," Remo said. "All right, three minutes. See, there was this cop in Newark, New Jersey. His name was Remo Williams. That was me. He got framed for a murder he didn't do and got sent to an electric chair that didn't work and then he woke up after everybody thought he was dead and they put him to work for a secret government organization. It's called CURE."
"What do they do?" Winstler asked. The grip was still a vise on his right knee.
"What do they do? They give a guy more work than he can possibly handle. Next thing they'll be handing me a broom for my butt so I can sweep the streets on my way."
"Besides overworking you," Winstler said.
"Yeah. Well, this organization works outside the Constitution to take care of people that hide behind the Constitution. Criminals. Troublemakers. Like that. People like you. We preserve the Constitution by violating it, in a way."
"And what do you do?" Winstler asked. "Remo Williams?"
"Right. Remo Williams. I'm the assassin. The only one. Of course, there's Chiun and he's an assassin too.
"That's fascistic," Winstler said.
"Sounds about right," Remo said agreeably. "Anyway, it shouldn't surprise you. You've been saying that for years. Even when I was a cop, I read about you. You were always calling America a fascist state."
"That didn't mean I believed it," the lawyer said. He was hoping. If he could keep this Remo talking, he might just stay alive. He remembered an old story about a court magician who fell out of favor with his king and was sentenced to death.
"Too bad," the magician told the king. "I was just going to teach your horse to fly."
Upon hearing that, the king lifted the death penalty and gave the magician a year to teach the horse to fly.
That night, a friend asked the magician why he had said that to the king. "A horse can't fly," he said. "Why'd you do it?"
"A lot of things can happen in a year," the magician said. "I might die. The king might die. Or, who knows. I might just teach that goddamn horse how to fly."
If he could only keep this Remo talking, he might yet be able to escape with his life.
"Time's up," Remo said. "I've got to go now."
"You can't just come in here and kill me," Winstler said. "It's not... it's not right."
"I don't want to hear about that," Remo said. "Everybody's always telling me what I can and can't do. I'm tired of that."
"But you can't. You can't just kill me."
Remo leaned closer and smiled at Kenroth Winstler. "You know what?" he asked.
"What?"
"I just did," Remo said.
The fingertips pressing into the kidney were so fast that Winstler never really felt pain. Remo wiped his right hand on the table cloth and stood up. He let Winstler's head slump forward softly on the table cloth and walked away.
Fascist, Winstler had called him. That annoyed him and Remo didn't believe it for a minute. Fascist. If it weren't for lawyers like Winstler who spent so much time and effort and other people's money getting criminals off, there would be no need for Remo and people like him. He wished he had not killed Winstler so fast, so he could tell him that.
Fascist? Remo? It was laughable.
He still wished he could remember something else he was supposed to do that night. It nagged at him.
On his way out, he tapped the waiter on the shoulder.
"Yes sir," the waiter said as he turned. He recognized Remo and his eyes frosted over. "What is it?" he said.
"That man at my table?" Remo said.
"Yes. Mr. Winstler."
"Well, he's dead."
"What?" the waiter said. His eyes peered toward the table where Winstler slumped forward, his hands under his face.
"I said dead," Remo said again. "I killed him. And if you don't do something about this noise in here, I'm coming back for you."
The waiter looked away from the table to Remo. But the thin man in the black T-shirt was gone. The waiter looked around, into the crowd, but saw no sign of him. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up.


Downstairs at the party, they had only marijuana, and speed and LSD and snow and horse and fairy princess and HTC and amyl nitrate and aspirins in Coke and opium lettuce and Acapulco Gold and Tijuana Small and Kent Golden Lights so it was really a drag and Marcia went up on the roof with Jeffrey because he had some good shit and he didn't have enough to share with everybody else.
On the roof of the small apartment building in the east seventies, they unwrapped the package of Lightning Dust, following the careful directions Jeffrey had been given along with the drug by a guru with an eighth-grade education that qualified him to be a spokesman for the eternal power of the universe, which meant drug dealing.
They had to inhale a puff of the powder through the left nostril and exhale their breath through the right nostril. Then they had to inhale through the right nostril and exhale through the left nostril. Then, while humming their mantra, just hard enough for their vocal cords to vibrate, they had to touch their tongue to the powder on the small square of paper, wet it with saliva, swallow it down, and then lie back to wait for ecstasy.
The exact sequence was very important, Jeffrey had been told. They followed it precisely, then lay on the sharp-pebbled roof, waiting for bliss. It was longer in coming than they expected, which was not surprising because Jeffrey had spent sixty dollars for a quarter ounce of powdered milk, mixed one-to-one with powdered vitamin C. Its total cost to the dealer had been three-tenths of a cent. Its caloric content was higher than that.
Jeffrey interlocked his fingers with Marcia who lay alongside him, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the stars were still shining brightly in the dark night sky. He glanced from side to side. Nothing. He had been promised light shows and sonic booms and celestial pyrotechnics, but nothing.
"You getting it yet?" he asked Marcia.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't think so. Everything's the same."
They raised themselves into a sitting position, propped against the brick wall around the roof, and tried another dose. Left nostril, right nostril, tongue, saliva, swallow.