"Дон Пендлтон. Chicago Wipe-Out ("Палач" #8) " - читать интересную книгу автора

where I was headed."
Bolan said, "Well damn it."
"I guess you could take me to a police station," she suggested in a
frightened voice. "I could ask for protection."
He shook his head. "That wouldn't buy you a thing. Not if these people
decide to get to you."
"Then take me home," she said, suddenly flaring with defiance. "I live
in Elmhurst. I'll call the club and tell them what happened, and I'll just
go on as though nothing had happened. If the mobsters come to me, I'll just
tell them exactly how it was. And they can like it or lump it."
Bolan was obviously neither liking nor lumping it. His face was etched
with trouble lines, and again he said, "Well damn it."
Perhaps he was remembering the gruesome remains of what had been an
equally beautiful and innocent girl, left behind in a New York morgue; or
maybe he was thinking of an exotic French actress who had offered him Eden
on the Riviera and who had found in return nothing but an echo of Bolan's
hell - or a valiant little Cuban exile who had given her blood for his in
Miami and died in agony with a blowtorch at her breasts. And perhaps he was
viewing the entire procession of beloved dead.
He turned tortured eyes to the latest most likely candidate and told
her, "like it or not, Foxy, you're a part of my jungle now."
It was all Bolan needed to make his job doubly impossible... another
defenseless ally to worry over. He jerked the wheel viciously into the exit
to an east-west arterial and left Lake Shore Drive behind. He had found his
orientation.
This new development called for a change in the battle order.
And Bolan knew precisely what had to be done next.

3
The deal

"For God's sake, Pete, where you been? I been looking all over for
you!"
The king of the highways, Pietro D. (Pete the Hauler) Lavallo regarded
his "Executive Vice-President" with a superior smugness and a condescending
smile. "While you been running around looking for me," he replied, "I been
out nailing down a deal." He went on to his desk and dropped, tiredly, into
a massive chair. "So what's your problem, Rudy? What're you so lathered-up
about, huh?"
Rudy Palmer (nee Colombo Palmeiri) was swaying nervously from one foot
to the other. His eyes went to the wall behind his boss's head as he said,
"I don't know just how to tell you this, Pete. I got some bad news."
"Well just tell it and let me figure out how bad it is, huh, Rudy?"
"Louis Aurielli is dead."
"Did you say dead ?"
"Yeah. He's dead, Pete."
Pete the Hauler's eyes shaded into a dull gaze while the message tried
to locate a level of acceptance in the gray matter behind those eyes.
Disbelief registered there even as he was replying, "Hell, I warned him. I
told him those pains were trying't' tell him something. You mean he's really