Tower
- Автор: Бруен Кен, Коулмен Рид Фаррел
- Год: 2009
- Язык: английский
- Год: Busted Flush Press
- ISBN: 978-1-935415-07-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Tower». Краткое содержание книги:
Anyway, the cargo area at the airport was the Wild West with jets. It was its own fucking little world with its own codes and rules. First thing you learned was that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had about as much control of the cargo area as a bull rider has of the bull. The Mob ran the unions and the truckers and the container stations and the warehouses. If you farted near JFK, the Boys got their ten percent.
The low level guys ate their lunches at The Owl. The Owl was a real upscale joint, showed porn movies at the bar during lunch, but they did serve great eggplant parm heroes. The Boys on the next level up fucked their whores at the Jade East Motor Inn on the South Conduit. That’s where Harry had met the blonde cocksucker he’d taken to my cousin Jay’s. You gotta love Uncle Harry, a real class act, but the blonde was right about him, he was smalltime. It was that you had to be in that world to know it. To the Boys, Harry was the fat Jew they tolerated because he earned for them.
That was another thing you learned quick. There was no such thing as friends among thieves. These guys would pat you on the back, drink with you, slip you a c-note every now and then, but it was meaningless. They were cold bastards, but the guineas were sweethearts as compared to the donkeys. Christ, the Irish were real fuckers. At least with the Italians, you knew most of their decisions were based on earning. You had some sense of where you stood with them boys. Was different with the boyos. They strayed from logic a bit too often to suit me. Then again I’ve always been a bit of a moth. Show me the flame and I’m there.
Met Boyle and Griffin through Harry, and Nick met Boyle through me. Harry had all of Boyle’s import/export brokerage. Not that I knew or cared what was in the boxes I trucked back and forth from the City to the warehouse at JFK and back again. It was Boyle who offered me my first real money for my first real crime. Initially it was just driving, then we moved onto “other” things: nothing violent, but always with the rush of potential violence. Never knew when someone would walk in when they weren’t supposed to. Boyle, the Bible-thumping hypocrite, had his own imported boyo to do his violence.
Griffin had the real brogue, not the second generation cartoon bullshit that came outta Boyle’s gob. Not that Griffin talked much. A quiet fucker, he spoke with his fists and pistols, a knife too, if need be. Griffin had the real troubles in him, too. He’d been with the Provos, it was whispered, whoever the hell they were. I knew about the IRA, what did I know from Provos and Protestants? Did I give a shit who wore orange and who wore green and who marched through what neighborhood? Truth be told, Jews took guilty pleasure at the concept of Christians at each other’s throats. Guilty pleasure’s the only kind we know. Kept my eye on Griffin even when Boyle spoke. The level of Boyle’s danger reached only as deep as Griffin’s darkness. That made Mr. Boyle pretty fucking dangerous. I’d seen some of Griffin’s handiwork.
Only once he confided in me was after a particularly brutal job. Guy owned a few hot dog trucks owed Boyle several large and was slow to pay. Big mistake being a late payer. Watched Griffin snap every one of the man’s fingers like they were popsicle sticks. Stopped getting nauseous when he switched to his left hand.
“How do you do it?”
Griffin knew what I meant.
“Violence is violence done for whatever cause. You blow up a car in Derry or you snap some tardy fooker’s fingers, it’s violence. Don’t somehow think the Lord keeps two sets of ledgers. You cross the line, you cross the line.”
Such was the extent of his philosophy.
Suppose I was moving up the ladder and I’d gotten Nick some work with me, mostly petty shit, but then Nick discovered he had a talent for boosting cars. He made Boyle and a lot of Third World bastards happy. Then something happened to put a crimp in my career. My mom exercised her prerogative.
“The heart shuts, The sea slides back, The mirrors are sheeted.”