American Gangster
- Автор: Коллинз Макс Аллан
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Tom Doherty Associates
- ISBN: 978-0-7653-5901-8
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «American Gangster». Краткое содержание книги:
“Mr. Sibota, a pleasure,” Frank said, and extended a hand. They shook, and Frank asked, “What can I get you?”
“From what Charlie tells me,” Sibota said, “a lefthander. Your nephew?”
“My nephew,” Frank confirmed. He tilted his head and risked a grin. “Got an arm on him.”
“Any experience?”
“Just sandlot. Didn’t graduate junior high. But I bet you’re not in the market for a scholar.”
Sibota, relaxing, said, “I’m in the market for a lefthander.”
Frank gave him his patented easy smile. “Well, it’s been Stevie’s dream, all his life, to play for the Yankees.”
Sibota laughed. “A Southern boy likes the Yankees?”
“He has good taste, Mr. Sibota. Plus, he’s good enough to start tomorrow.”
“So I hear.” The scout handed Frank a business card. “You have your nephew come see me. And we’ll give him a tryout.”
“Just a chance. All he asks.”
The conversation continued, about baseball and how the Yankees were doing (not that great — playing .500 ball), but Frank was only listening with one ear. He was picking up on a noisy conversation ten or so feet away, and glancing over there as well.
His brother Huey, in tinted goggle glasses and a polyester pantsuit, was holding court with his wild-ass driver Jimmy Zee, and their fine-looking if coked-up girlfriends, as well as a white cop, a detective whose name Frank couldn’t recall.
The little group was gathered around a glass-top coffee table with a pile of coke on it that hadn’t been among the appetizers Frank’s caterers set out. The brazenness of it irritated Frank, and the grab-ass game Jimmy and the dick were playing made the back of his neck tingle.
The dick was play-acting, flashing his gold shield and patting Jimmy down for a frisk.
“What’s this?” The cop yanked a .45 automatic from under Zee’s jacket. “Oh, that’s it, man, I am takin’ you down for this, I’m takin’ your black ass in.”
Jimmy laughed and batted the air. “You can’t take me in for that shit, motherfucker — I got a license for that.”
“Okay,” the dick said, handing back the gun, which Jimmy slipped back in its shoulder-rig. “Then what about this shit?” The dick gestured to the pile of coke on the coffee table.
“They don’t sell no licenses for this,” the dick said. “In fact, I best confiscate this shit...”
And the cop bent down, and sucked up a line.
The females were laughing like Flip Wilson was performing, and not some thickheaded, bent cop, who was about as funny as a fall down the stairs. Frank, still talking to the baseball scout, was wondering if he ought to get over there and put an end to this foolishness...
Powder on his nostrils, the dick took out his handcuffs and said, “All right, Zee, all right — now I’m busting your ass!”
The women howled with laughter, and Huey and Jimmy were laughing, too.
Huey dug in his pocket and got out a fat money clip and peeled off a C-note. “Let me bail him out, officer — I need the man to drive for me.”
“What is that, a bribe?” the dick demanded in mock indignation. “Now all your asses are under arrest.”
So the dick made a big show of pretend-arresting the group. Frank, with one ear and half his attention, took this in, thinking he ought to shut this high school nonsense down; but Frank was busy with Sibota, and Sibota was Stevie’s ticket to the big leagues, and if the scout wanted to chat, Frank would chat.
So Frank didn’t see what turned the fun into something ugly. He didn’t see the dick pretend-frisking Jimmy Zee’s woman Darlynn and putting his hand all over her right breast.
But Jimmy saw it, all right, and said, “What’s this shit?”
Huey’s opinion (which he later told Frank) was that what really riled Jimmy was that his girlfriend didn’t complain about the grope; but Jimmy considered himself a gentleman, and wouldn’t slap the bitch in public.
Right now the dick was fooling with his handcuffs and playing at taking Huey away, saying, “I gotta take all you evil lawbreakers in!”
But Zee wasn’t having any.
Huey’s skinny mean driver/bodyguard glared at the handsy dick and demanded, “I said, what the fuck was that?”
The dick blinked. Huey stepped away. The dick, innocently, asked, “What was what?”
“Fuck you,” Jimmy said, and then the .45 was in his hand and the report of the weapon in the high-ceilinged space was like thunder.
And the dick was on the floor, right now, clutching at his leg, blooding running through his fingers onto the shag carpet.
“Are you fuckin’crazy?” the dick gasped.
“Man touches my woman’s titty,” Jimmy said, “is crazy. And next time, he’s dead.”
Frank didn’t have to excuse himself, as he moved away from the baseball scout and through his guests, because they were all so stunned and scared...
Jimmy saw Frank coming and held up the gun like it was a party favor and smiled, unconvincingly, as he said, “Aw, he’s all right. I just shot him in the leg, is all.” Jimmy bent over the fallen, bleeding, whimpering cop. “What are you complaining about? You got a health plan, ain’t you?”
Frank approached. “Jimmy — a word?”
Jimmy said, “Aw, Frank, come on, he’s fine. Here...” Jimmy got in his pocket and brought out a wad of bills and dealt C-notes off like a poker hand.
The bills floated down onto the shaking cop, who looked like he might pass out any second.
Jimmy said, “Five hundred, all right, bro? Six?” He dealt another C-note and it fluttered to the floor into a pool of blood. The cop snatched it out before the bill got ruined.
Then Jimmy grinned at Frank, and around at the other guests, saying, “See? He’s feeling better already.”
Frank took Jimmy gently by the arm, and this time he did excuse himself, as the host moved with the man through the partygoers and brought him over to a wall and, finding a nice space between framed modern-art paintings, slammed his misbehaving guest into the wall.
Jimmy was shaking.
Frank got in his face. “You want to take your gun out again? No. Didn’t think so.”
“Frank... honest... I...”
“Shut up, Jimmy.”
Frank hauled the idiot, who seemed on the verge of tears, by the arm and across the room and tossed him at the door. Jimmy thumped into it, then opened it, and scrambled out without closing it.
Frank did.
As Smoky Robinson sang “Tears of a Clown” courtesy of the hi-fi, Frank strolled out among his guests and smiled with every ounce of charm he could summon, and lifted his arms as if in welcome. “No cover charge, folks! Please — enjoy yourselves.”
But Zee had put a damper on the festivities. Frank had Doc take the wounded cop home, where a real doc on the Lucas payroll would make a house call. Within an hour, the penthouse was empty but for Eva — who, still in her gown, was doing her best to clean the blood stain off the rug with salt and soda water — and Frank’s five brothers.
And Frank.
They sat, mostly on a sofa. He paced. Slowly. Like a cat. A big, pissed-off cat.
“This kind of stupidity,” he said, and shook his head, the cold rage obvious in his voice, “I can’t have.”
Looking like the Lone fucking Ranger in those tinted goggles, Huey said, “It was an accident.”
“Accident. You don’t shoot a man by accident, Huey.”
“I... I know, Frank. But Jimmy feels terrible about it.”
“Feels terrible?” Frank planted himself before Huey, stared down at him. “Jimmy don’t feel shit, coked up all the time, way he is. This is who you have drive for you? This is who protects your ass? Get rid of him.”