Destroyer 009 - Murder's Shield

VIP免费
2024-12-24 0 0 192.3KB 72 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
THE DESTROYER #9: MURDER'S SHIELD
Warren Murphy
Pinnacle books. First printing, April 1973. Second printing, March 1974. Third printing,
March 1975. Fourth printing, April 1976. Fifth printing, April 1978. Sixth printing,
April 1979. Seventh printing.
ISBN: 0-523-41224-X
For Steve and Chris-our friends, gee!
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"THE WRONG SIDE?"
"Something is bothering you, my son," said Chiun.
Remo nodded. "I think I'm going to be on the wrong side."
Chiun's frail parchment face became puzzled. "Wrong side? What is a wrong side? Will you
cease to work for Doctor Smith?"
"Look, you know I can't explain to you who we work for."
"I've never cared," said Chiun. "What difference would it make? You are a pupil of the
Master of Sinanju and you perform your assassin's art because that is what you are."
"Dammit Chiun, I'm an American, and I do what I do for other reasons. And now, they've
told me to get up to a peak right away, and I find out I'm going against the good guys."
"Good guys? Bad guys? Are you living in fairy tale, my son? There are killing points,
nerve points, hearts and lungs and eyes and feet and hands and balance. There are no
good guys and bad guys. If there were, would armies have to wear uniforms to identify
themselves?"
With that, Chiun was silent, but Remo paid no attention to his silence. He was angry,
almost as angry as he had been that day a decade before when he had recovered from his
public execution, waking up in Folcroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound. He was angry at
the thought of his new assignment.
He had to kill his fellow cops!
CHAPTER ONE
Big Pearl Wilson sent the white fox into the bedroom to get him two handfuls of money.
He eased his $185 Gucci slippers into the ankle-high white rug that circled to his bar
and around to the drape-covered windows. The drapes were drawn, separating his lush pad
from the decaying, teeming Harlem streets-a touch of paradise in Hell. The curtains
separating the two were fireproof, somewhat soundproof, and had cost him $2,200. He had
paid in cash.
"Have a drink, officer?" said Big Pearl, moving his slow easy majestic way to the bar,
the slow and easy way that foxes sniffed.
"No, thank you," said the detective. He looked at his watch.
"A snort?" offered Big Pearl, pointing to his nose.
The detective refused the cocaine.
"I don't snort myself," said Big Pearl. "You waste yourself a little bit every time you
use it. These cats on the street live baddest a year, and are broke or dead or forgotten
before they see the weather change. They beat on their women and one of 'em talks and
it's off to Attica. They think it's a big game with their flashy cars. Me. My women get
paid, my cops get paid, my judges get paid, my pols get paid and I make my money. And
I've been ten years without a bust."
The girl came bustling back with a manila envelope, unevenly stuffed. Big Pearl gave the
insides a condescending glance.
"More," he said. Then he sensed something was wrong. It was the detective. He was on the
edge of the deep leather chair and getting up for the package, as if he would be glad to
take it with less just to get out of Big Pearl's pad.
"A little extra for you personally," said Big Pearl.
The white detective nodded stiffly.
"You're a new man at headquarters," said Big Pearl. "Usually, they don't send a new man
on something like this. Mind if I check with headquarters?"
"No. Go right ahead," said the detective.
Big Pearl smiled his wide, glistening smile. "You know you got the most important job in
the whole New York City police department tonight?"
Big Pearl reached under the bar for the telephone. Taped lightly to the inside of the
receiver was a small Derringer which slipped neatly and unseen into the palm of his
large black hand as he dialed.
"'Lo, Inspector," said Big Pearl, suddenly sounding like a fieldhand. "This is yo' boy,
Big Pearl. Ah got somethin' heah Ah just want to check out. The detective you send down,
what he look like?"
Big Pearl stared at the white detective, nodding, saying, "Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yassah.
Okay. Much obliged." Big Pearl hung up, returning the Derringer with the phone.
"You white," he said with a big smile, wondering how much of the needle the detective
would understand. "You feel all right. You look kind of nervous."
"I'm all right," said the detective. When he had the money, he said, almost as if
following orders:
"Who's your contact for Long Island housewives? We know she's a white woman in Great
Neck. Who?"
Big Pearl smiled. "You want more money? I'll give you more." It was Big Pearl's cool
that enabled him to keep the smile when the white detective drew his .38 Police Special
and pointed it at Big Pearl's eyes.
"Hey, man. What's that?"
The white girl gasped and covered her mouth. Big Pearl raised his hands to show there
was nothing in them. He wasn't going to try to shoot a cop to protect some paleface in
Great Neck. There were other ways, ways that kept you alive.
"Hey, man, I can't give you that stuff. What you need it for anyhow? You New York City.
And she pay off in Great Neck."
"I want to know."
"Do you know that if she dry up in Great Neck, the honey machine dry up? No more classy
white housewives from Babylon and the Hamptons and all the places where I get my real
class. If the honey stop for me, it stop for you. Dig, baby?"
"What's her name?"
"You sure the inspector wants this?"
"I want it. You've got three seconds and it better be the right name, Big Pearl, because
if it's not, I'm going to come back here and mess up your face and your pad."
"What can I do?" said Big Pearl to the frightened, white chick. "Hey, don't worry,
honey. Everything works out. Now, you just stop crying."
Big Pearl waited a second and asked again if the detective wouldn't take, say $3,000.
The detective wouldn't.
"Mrs. Janet Brachdon," said Big Pearl. "Mrs. Janet Brachdon of 811 Cedar Grove Lane,
whose husband ain't really all that successful in advertising. Let me know when you
shake her down and for how much. 'Cause I don't want her jacking the bill on me. I'm
gonna pay it anyhow. You just driving out to Great Neck to get what comes from her
anyways."
Big Pearl's tone was heavy-seeded with contempt. Save him from the idiots of the world,
Lord, save him from the idiots of the world.
"Janet Brachdon, eight eleven Cedar Grove Lane," repeated the detective.
"Thass right," said Big Pearl.
The gun cracked once and Big Pearl's black face had a hole in it between his eyes. The
dark hole filled with blood. The tongue stuck out, and another shot immediately went
into the falling face.
"Oh," said the girl weakly, and the detective drilled her in the chest, sending her into
a backward somersault. He took two steps to the writhing form of Big Pearl and put a
shot into the temple, although the big black pimp was obviously dying. He finished off
the girl who was lying clay stiff while her thorax bubbled up red. A shot in the temple
also.
He left the apartment. The deep white rug was soaking up great quantities of human
blood.
At 8:45 that night, Mrs. Janet Brachdon was serving a roast according to the tenets of
Julia Child. The potatoes had not just been mashed; they had been blended with homegrown
herbs as Julia had suggested on her television show. Two men, one white and one black,
entered the front door and blew Mrs. Brachdon's brains into the blended potatoes as her
husband and eldest son looked on. The men apologized to the boy, then shot both the
father and son.
In Harrisburg, Pa., a pillar of the community was preparing to address the Chamber of
Commerce. His topics were creative financing and how to deal more effectively with the
ghetto. His car blew up when he turned on the key. The next day, the local paper
received an unusual press release. It was a detailed analysis of how creative the pillar
of the community had been.
He could afford to lose money in erecting Hope House for addicts, the news release
pointed out. He made enough in heroin sales to absorb the loss.
In Connecticut, a judge who traditionally showed appalling leniency toward people
reputed to be members of the Mafia, was taken to his backyard pool by two men with drawn
guns. He was asked, under pain of death, to demonstrate his swimming prowess. The
request was rather unfair. He had a handicap. His nineteen-inch portable color
television set. It was chained to his neck. It was still chained to his neck when the
local police department fished him out three hours later.
These deaths, and a half-dozen others, all went to the chairman of a Congressional
subcommittee who, one fine bright autumn day, came to the inescapable conclusion that
the deaths were not mob warfare. They were something else, something far more sinister.
He told the U.S. Attorney General that he intended to launch a Congressional
investigation. He asked for the help of the Justice Department. He was assured he would
have it. But that did not give him total assurance. Not in his gut.
Outside the Justice Building, in the still, warm Washington Street, Representative
Francis X. Duffy of New York City's 13th Congressional District, suddenly remembered the
fear he had experienced when he dropped behind the lines in France for the OSS in World
War II.
It was his stomach that suddenly lost all feeling and sent the signal to his mind to
block out thoughts of anything other than what was around him. Some men lost touch with
their surroundings when frightened, and tried to shut out reality. Duffy closed off
emotion instead. Which was why he returned from World War II, and some of his colleagues
didn't. It was not a virtue that Duffy had perfected. He was born with it, just as he
was born with a heart that pumped blood and lungs that took oxygen from the air.
The kind of stomach-rotting fear that most other people experienced came to Francis X.
Duffy when he couldn't manage his son, or in a close election, or when his wife went
into St. Vincent's Hospital for an operation. That was when his stomach jumped, his
palms sweated, and he had to fight for control of himself. Death was another matter.
So here it is, said Frank Duffy's mind. So here it is coming at you. He stood before the
Justice Building, a fifty-five-year-old man, his fine, neatcombed hair graying, his face
lined with the marks of life, his briefcase filled with reports he was sure he would
never use. And what amazed him was how well his body remembered to prepare for the
possibility of death.
He strolled to a bench. It was speckled with fallen red, yellow, and brown leaves; he
brushed them aside. Some youngsters must have spread them there because leaves did not
fall that heavy, least of all in Washington in late October.
Things to do before death. The will was all right. Two. Tell Mary Pat that he loved her.
Three. Tell his son that life was good and that this was a good country to live it in,
maybe the best. Nothing too heavy, though. Maybe just shake his hand and tell him how
proud he was of him. Four, confession. That would be necessary, but how could he
honestly make his peace with God when he had used methods to have only one child,
methods not approved by the Church?
He would have to promise to amend his life, and it seemed dishonest to promise such a
thing when the promise didn't mean anything any more. He knew full well that he would
not have more children if he could now, so the promise would be a lie. And he did not
wish to lie to God, not now.
God had been a problem since his arguments with the sisters at St. Xavier's, extending
all the way through the formality of joining the Knights of Columbus because Irish-
Catholic politicians from the 13th C.D. all belonged to the Knights of Columbus, just as
the Jews sprinkled themselves on hospital boards and social agencies. The religions met
at Muscular Dystrophy.
Duffy smiled and breathed the autumn in Washington. He loved this city to the very depth
of his being. This crime-ridden brothel on the Potomac where the best hope of mankind
still legislated its tortuous way toward a system where people could live safely and
justly with other people. Where the son of an Irish bootlegger could rise to congressman
and vote with sons of oil millionaires, paupers, farmers, cobblers, racketeers,
clergymen, hustlers, and professors. That was America. What the radicals of both the
left and right hated about it was its very humanity. They wanted to model America on
some abstract purity that had never existed and would never exist. The right with the
past; the left with tomorrow.
Duffy looked at his briefcase. In it were reports on the deaths of a pimp, a female
recruiter of prostitutes, a heroin dealer, and a judge who had been obviously earning a
tidy profit from acquitting people he shouldn't have. And in that briefcase were the
signs of great danger to the beautiful country that did exist. America. What to do? The
Attorney General had been a good first step, but already it could be dangerous. Could
Duffy trust the Justice Department or the FBI? How far had this thing gone? It was big
enough to kill a halfdozen people already. Was it national? Did it infect the federal
agencies? How far and how deep? On that question depended how long he would live. His
enemies might not know it yet but they would kill a congressman if need be. They could
not stop at anyone now. They had cut themselves free from reality, and now they would
destroy what they sought to preserve.
What to do now? Well, a little protection from someone he could trust would do for a
starter. The toughest man he knew. Maybe the toughest man in the world. Mean on the
outside and mean on the inside.
That afternoon with a pile of change in front of him, Congressman Duffy dialed a long
distance number from a pay phone.
"Hello, you lazy sonofabitch, how are you, this is Duffy."
"Are you still alive?" came back the voice. "That candy-ass life you lead should have
put you in the grave long before this."
"You'd know on national television or the New York Times if I were dead. I'm not a
nobody police inspector."
"You wouldn't have the brass for police work, Frankie. You'd only live three minutes
with your weepy West Side liberalism."
"Which brings up why I called you, Bill. You don't think I'd just want to say hello."
"No, not a big-shot faggy liberal congressman like you. What do you want, Frankie?"
"I want you to die for me, Bill."
"Okay, just so long as I don't have to listen to your political bullshit. What's up?"
"I think I'm going to be a target very soon. What say we meet at that special place?"
"When?"
"Tonight."
"Okay, I'll leave right away. And Fag-Ass, do me a favor."
"What?"
"Don't get yourself killed before then. They'll make you into another martyr. We got
enough of those."
"Just try to read the map without moving your lips, Bill."
Frank Duffy delayed telling his wife he loved her and his son how proud he was of him
and God that he was sorry. Inspector William McGurk was another two weeks at least.
Guaranteed. Maybe even a natural death.
He drove into Maryland to escape the heavy liquor tax and bought ten quarts of Jack
Daniels. Since he would not be stopping at any other stores, he also purchased some soda
to go with it.
"A quart," said Congressman Duffy. "A quart of club soda."
The clerk looked at the row of Jack Daniels bottles and said, "You sure a quart's what
you want?"
Duffy shook his head.
"You're right. Make it a pint. One of those little bottles."
"We don't have little bottles."
"Then, that's okay. Just what's here on the counter. Hell, make it an even dozen."
"Jack Daniels?"
"What do you think?"
Duffy drove to the airport and loaded the Jack Daniels onto his Cessna, making sure the
bottles were flat and even, a central weight on the plane. Not that they would make that
much difference, but why take chances? There were old pilots and bold pilots, but no
old, bold pilots.
Duffy landed that night in a small private airstrip outside Seneca Falls, New York. A
car was waiting. McGurk had driven from New York City. The cold night, the unloading of
the plane, and the meeting with McGurk, reminded Duffy of the night in France when he
had first met the best weapons man he would ever know. It had been early spring in
France and although they knew an invasion would come soon from England, they did not
know when or where because high risk people are never given information that the
upstairs would not want to see in enemy hands.
It was a weapons drop in Brittany. McGurk and Duffy had been assigned to distribute and
teach the use of said weapons in a manner consistent, and with a degree of skill
commensurate with, the practical use of such weapons in the field of operations. That is
what their secret orders had said.
"We gotta show the frogs how not to blow their feet off when they fire these things,"
said McGurk.
He was taller than Duffy and his face was surprisingly fleshy for a man so thin, a moon
of a face with a button of a nose and rounded soft lips that made him appear about as
incisive as a balloon.
Duffy yelled out in French that each man should carry one case and no more. There were
three cases left and a young Maquis man tried to hoist one of the extras.
"Bury them," said Duffy in French. "There's no point in your dropping off because you're
tired. I'd rather have one case and one man than no case and no man."
The young Maquis still attempted to carry two. McGurk slapped him in the face and pushed
him toward the line that was wending its way to the night-shrouded forest near the
field.
"You can't explain things to these people," said McGurk. "The only thing they understand
is a slap in the face."
In two days, McGurk had taught the French Maquis some basic skills with their new
weapons. His instructional method was a slap to get attention, then a demonstration,
then another slap if the student failed. To test their proficiency, McGurk asked Duffy
to stage a preliminary raid, before the Maquis received their first real combat order.
Duffy chose a pass in which to trap a small Nazi convoy that regularly plied its way
from a Wehrmacht army base to a major airfield.
The convoy was ambushed at noon. The battle was over in less than three minutes. The
French drivers and the German guards came pouring out of the trucks with their hands
raised in surrender.
McGurk got them in a line. Then he motioned to the worst marksman among the Maquis.
"You. Go fifty yards up that hill. Kill someone."
The young Maquis scrambled up the hill and without catching his breath, fired off a
shot. It caught a German guard in the shoulder. The other prisoners fell to the ground,
covering their heads with their hands and bringing their knees up into their stomachs.
It looked like a road littered with grown fetuses.
"Keep going," McGurk yelled up the hill. "You'll fire until you kill him."
The next shot went wild. The shot after that took out part of a stomach. The next shot
after that was wild. The young Maquis was crying.
"I don't want to kill like this," he yelled.
"You kill him or I kill you," said McGurk and raised his carbine to his shoulder,
pointing it up the hill. "And I'm no crummy frog marksman. I'll take out your eyes."
Crying, the young Maquis fired again, catching the downed German in the mouth. The head
was nearly severed from the neck.
"All right, goosy fingers, you got him," McGurk yelled. He lowered his carbine and
turned to another Maquis who had been firing rather poorly in practice. "You're next."
Duffy sidled up to McGurk and said in a hushed voice:
"Bill. Stop this now."
"No."
"Dammit, this is murder."
"That's very right, Frankie. Now button your lip, or I'll put you in the shooting line
too."
The German guards were dispatched in short order and only the French drivers were left.
McGurk waved another Maquis up the hill. He refused to go.
"I will not kill Frenchmen," he said.
"I don't see how you little shits could tell the difference if it wasn't for the
uniforms," said McGurk.
Suddenly, a Maquis standing nearby raised his carbine and walked it into McGurk's lean
stomach.
"We will not kill Frenchmen."
"Okay," said McGurk. A sudden broad grin appeared. "Have it your own way. I was just
testing you."
"We are now tested and you know we won't kill Frenchmen like dogs."
"Hey, I didn't mean to be too rough on you. Hell, it's war," said McGurk warmly. He
draped an arm over the Maquis as the carbine lowered. "Friends?" he said.
"Friends," said the Frenchman.
McGurk shook hands and scrambled up the hill, pushing an angry Frank Duffy before him.
Eight seconds later, the Maquis with the carbine was cut in half by the explosion of a
grenade on his belt. McGurk had pulled the pin when he embraced him. From the top of the
hill, McGurk unloaded his carbine at the French truckdrivers who were still curled on
the road. Bam. Bam. Bam. Heads exploded. No misses. There was quiet on the noon road as
the bodies lay motionless; the Maquis band looked up in terror at this maniac American.
"All right, let's pull out," yelled McGurk.
That night, when McGurk was bedding down, Duffy threw a punch at his head, knocking
McGurk into a wall. McGurk bounded back and Duffy caught him with a knee, square in his
moon face. McGurk shook his head.
"What was that for?" he asked.
"Because you're a sonofabitch," said Duffy.
"You mean because of shooting the prisoners?"
"Yes."
"You know, as your leader, I could have you shot right now with incredible
justification?"
Duffy shrugged. He didn't plan on living through the war anyway. McGurk must have sensed
this, because he said, "Okay, we'll go cleaner in the future. Hell, I don't want to kill
an American." McGurk staggered to his feet and offered his hand.
As Duffy reached forward for it, he kept going into McGurk's stomach. McGurk emitted a
gasp. He backed away, putting his hands in front of him.
"Hey, hey, I meant it, friend. I gotta have someone I can't kill. Now, stop it."
"You can't take it, can you?" Duffy said arrogantly.
"Can't take it? Kid, I could wipe you up in a second. Believe me. Just don't come at me
again. That's all I ask."
Either from youthful wildness or contempt, Duffy went for McGurk again. He remembered
throwing one punch and he awoke with McGurk pouring water on his face.
"I told you I could take you, kid. How do you feel?"
"I don't know," said Duffy, blinking. Throughout the war, Duffy remained the one person
McGurk could not kill. Despite logic and moral training, a deep affection grew in Frank
Duffy for Bill McGurk, the man who could not kill him. He came to look upon McGurk's
cold passion for death as a sickness and, as with any friend who was sick, he felt sorry
for him; he didn't hate him for it.
Duffy became wary of picking up slights from anyone, lest McGurk find out about it and
shred the person. After the war, it was the same way. When Frank Duffy was running for
assemblyman, some hecklers began shaking the speakers' platform. McGurk, then a
uniformed sergeant in the police department, formally arrested the offenders for
disturbing the peace. Later, they were also charged with assaulting a police officer. On
the way to the station house, out of sight of the political rally, the offenders did
attempt with hand and fist to strike Officer McGurk about the head. The offenders were
admitted to Beth Israel Hospital with fractures of the cranium, facial contusions, and
hernias. McGurk was treated for bruised knuckles. McGurk was godfather to Duffy's boy.
The two families even managed to get along well enough to share a cabin outside Seneca
Falls, New York, where Duffy on this early autumn evening had landed with the dozen
bottles of Jack Daniels and a very big problem.
Driving to the cabin in the stillness of the dark countryroad, the United States
congressman opened one of the bottles, took a swig and passed it to the Inspector in
charge of Manpower Deployment for the New York City Police Department. McGurk took a
swig and passed it back to Duffy.
"I don't know where to begin, Bill," said Duffy. "It's monstrous. On the surface, it
looks like a benefit to the nation but when you understand what's happening, you realize
it is an incredible danger to everything America stands for."
"Communists?"
"No. Although they're a danger too. No. These people are like Communists. They believe
the end justifies any means."
"Sure as hell does, Frankie," said McGurk.
"Bill, I need your help, not your political philosophy, if you don't mind. What's
happening is this. A group of people are taking the law into their own hands. Massive
vigilantes. Very thorough, almost military. Like those police in South America a few
years ago. Trying to fight liberal politicians and lenient judges with bullets."
"Judges here are too lenient," McGurk said. "Why do you think decent citizens can't walk
the streets? The animals have taken over. New York City is a jungle. Your district too.
You ought to go down and talk to your constituents some time, Frankie, You'll find them
hiding in their caves."
"Come on, Bill, let me finish."
"You let me finish," McGurk said. "We opened the doors to the ape house in New York and
now decent people venture onto the streets at their own risk."
"I'm not going to argue politics or try to cure your racism, Bill. But let me finish. I
think policemen are doing the same thing in America now that they were doing in South
America a couple of years ago. I think they're organized."
"You got an informer?" asked McGurk. He took the bottle as he turned onto a dirt
driveway. The car bounced over the dirt road as McGurk refused to be intimidated by the
narrowness and unevenness of its surface.
"No," Duffy said.
"Then why do you think police are doing it?"
"Good question. Who's getting killed? The people that the policemen ordinarily can't
touch. I recognized the name of Elijah Wilson. You told me about Big Pearl yourself.
Remember years ago, you said the law couldn't touch him?"
"Yeah. Everybody knows Big Pearl."
"Everybody in your business, not in mine. Well, that got me thinking. Even a racist like
you admits that a man like Big Pearl is smart. He doesn't put himself in a position
where he's going to be killed. The average pimp lasts two years. He was going for
fifteen. How? By making it profitable for people not to kill him. So the motive had to
be something other than profit, right?"
"If you say so, Sherlock," said McGurk.
"Okay. Then we get the financier in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Maybe he made enemies. In
heroin, that's possible."
"Right."
"But he operated like Big Pearl. He paid. And made it unprofitable to kill him. And the
judge in Connecticut was another one on the take. His life was very profitable to the
Mafia."
"Maybe he took and didn't deliver," said McGurk. He wheeled the car sharply into the
darkness and stopped. He turned off the lights and an outline of a small cabin could be
seen from the car.
Duffy grabbed two bottles and McGurk grabbed two bottles and they stepped gingerly over
the rock-strewn earth to the cabin entrance. McGurk turned on the lights and Duffy got
the ice.
"You look at the judge's record," Duffy said. "He always delivered. The Mafia had a good
reason to keep him alive."
"Okay. It wasn't the mob. Maybe it was some nut." McGurk twisted the plastic ice cube
tray, sending ice skittering across the formica table top. He gathered handf uls of the
ice and filled two large mugs Duffy brought forth.
"Nuts don't work that well," Duffy said. "I know that. Fill the tray. We're going to be
out of ice soon if you don't."
"Oswald didn't work that well. Sirhan Sirhan didn't work that well. There are two dead
Kennedys because of nuts who didn't work well. I'll fill a couple on the next tray."
"Those were one-hit affairs, Bill. These things aren't. There's a string of them. Bam.
Bam. Bam. They get in. They get out. Over and over. That's not nuts; that's competence
any way you want to slice it. Fill the tray now."
McGurk raised his mug and smiled.
"To two dumb donkeys-us," he said.
"To two dumb donkeys-us," said Duffy.
They clinked mugs and drank and walked into the living room, letting the remaining ice
cubes melt in the tray.
"I'd have two choices for who's doing these killings," said Duffy. "Soldiers or cops.
Somebody professional."
"Okay, soldiers or cops," said McGurk.
"Cops," said Duffy. "Soldiers couldn't find their rectums if not located near toilet
seats."
McGurk smiled broadly.
"Okay, cops. Why haven't there been identifications? Cops' faces are known around their
cities, especially in cities under a half-million."
Duffy leaned forward on the torn leather couch. His face broke into a grin, one former
professional making judgment on current professionals.
"That's the beauty of it. I figure it's reciprocal hits." He put his mug down on the
wooden floor and reinforced his explanation with his hands. He put them out wide to
either side, then crossed them to the far sides. "New York cops make a hit in
Harrisburg. Harrisburg makes a hit in Connecticut. Connecticut cops make a hit in New
York or what have you. The locals set it up; the outsiders hit. It's foolproof. You know
the hardest thing in an assigned hit is finding the sonofabitch of a target. If it
weren't for the Maquis that knew France, we couldn't have found our way into Paris."
McGurk shook his head.
"You Fordham guys were always so fucking smart. We could always tell a Fordham guy. He
read books."
"So what do you think?" asked Duffy.
"I think you're right. What do you have to do with this?"
"I'm going to be on the list for hits soon. I don't want to die."
McGurk looked puzzled. "Frankie, you're a congressman. An honest congressman. We've been
talking about the scum of the earth. Pimps. Heroin financiers. Whore recruiters. Crooked
judges. Mafiosi button men. Where does that come up to you? Where does that even come
close to you? What the hell is the matter with you, Frankie?" McGurk's voice became
throbbing angry, a pleading disgust. "Look at the facts, dammit. You're not some cocka-
doodle-doo broad out of a consciousness-raising session where they come in looking to
jerk themselves off. You're a liberal but you think. You deal in facts. But this time,
you've got nothing. No facts. You might as well be out in a street screaming slogans.
Stop the killing. Stop the killing. Stop the killing." McGurk's voice hit the rhythm of
the streets, the mindless chanting of demonstrators. But there was no smile on Duffy's
face, as McGurk had expected when he made a good point. Suddenly, surprisingly, there
were tears and Frank Duffy was crying for the first time in McGurk's memory.
"Oh, Jesus," said Frank Duffy and lowered his head to his hands.
"Hey, Frank, what's wrong? C'mon, stop that. Stop that, will you? C'mon," said McGurk.
He comforted his friend with his arm.
"Oh, Jesus, Bill," said Duffy.
"What's the matter, dammit? What's the matter?"
"Mafiosi button man is the matter."
"Yeah?"
"I never mentioned Mafiosi button men. I never mentioned one. So you killed him, too.
You had your people kill him too."
McGurk threw his mug across the room where it shattered against the pine wall with a
splat. He rose in anger, punching the palm of his hand.
"Why do you have to be so smart? Why do you Fordham guys have to be so frigging smart?
Frankie, why do you have to be so smart?"
Duffy saw the ice cubes and water begin to stain the wooden floor. He rose and tapped
McGurk on the back.
McGurk jumped, then said, "Oh," when he saw the offer of Duffy's mug.
"What are we going to do?" asked Duffy.
"I'll tell you what we're going to do, smart Fordham guy. You stop your investigation
and if any of the people come near you, I'll powder them like sugar cubes is what we're
gonna do."
"You knew about the investigation?"
"And other things. We're good and we're growing. We're gonna give this country back to
the decent people. The hard-working people. The honest people. This country has been
turning into a cesspool long enough. We're just gonna get rid of the crap."
"Impossible, Bill, you can't do it. Because you start with crap and then you move onto
anyone else who gets in your way. What's going to be the check on you? What happens when
your people start taking money to miss? Or start free-lancing?"
"We'll take care of them too."
"It's the we who'll be doing it, and who's to stop them?"
摘要：

THEDESTROYER#9:MURDER'SSHIELDWarrenMurphyPinnaclebooks.Firstprinting,April1973.Secondprinting,March1974.Thirdprinting,March1975.Fourthprinting,April1976.Fifthprinting,April1978.Sixthprinting,April1979.Seventhprinting.ISBN:0-523-41224-XForSteveandChris-ourfriends,gee!CONTENTSCHAPTERONECHAPTERTWOCHAPT...

展开>> 收起<<
Destroyer 009 - Murder's Shield.pdf

共72页,预览15页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：72 页 大小：192.3KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-24

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 72
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注