Necroscope: The Plague-Bearer Read Online Free PDF Page A

this same capo’s young prostitutes had made him more than a mere nuisance; badly beaten high-price girls do not attract high-roller customers.
    No more than a year in the Old Country—and no sooner established, albeit shakily—and already Mike Milazzo had become a problem. He had seemed ungovernable, quite beyond the control of his uncle; so that finally the elder Milazzo had asked the advice of the Francezcis, who despite their apparent youth were his “Godfathers” in everything but name.
    Their response had been quick in coming—they would “talk” to the wayward young thug—but they had demanded carte-blanche in his handling, in whatever advice or punishment they found it necessary to hand out. Wholly sick of his nephew’s often threatening behaviour even towards his superiors—which included the elderly capo himself!—Vito Milazzo had agreed readily enough. Frankly, he didn’t give a damn what the Francezcis did to Mike; Mike was already dead where his uncle was concerned. A man offers a helping hand to the undeserving, no account, illegitimate son of a brother long gone the way of all flesh in America, and this jumped-up bastard should immediately take advantage, start muscling in around the territories, crapping all over his benefactor’s business and generally fucking him over at every opportunity? No, Mike deserved whatever he had coming—but not from his uncle. No way! Forget about it! Family values, and all that shit. But, as Vito’s cousins in America would probably have it: “What are you gonna do?”
    All of which had occasioned Mike’s first visit to the Francezci citadel in the Madonie mountains, which was something he would never forget; though from the brothers’ point of view it might appear that it was already forgotten. Hence this second summons, or so Mike suspected, but only in part correctly.
    Now, driving his car up the winding mountain road, fearful and apprehensive in the knowledge of his most recent misdemeanours, as his headlights lit up the luminous arrow warning signs at the hairpin bends, Mike once again remembered in detail that first visit. And vampire that he now was, still he shivered uncontrollably…
    Then too the time had been approaching midnight. The Francezcis had this complaint apparently, this photophobia: an aversion to light, especially sunlight. They saw no one and were seen by no one during daylight hours. Chauffeur-driven in their black limo—whose specially tinted windows were opaque to the glances of curious passers-by—their presence might be suspected or even observed by night in Palermo, Bagheria, or some other town more local to their place in the mountains. For there in comparative privacy, in secluded rooms or on the reserved balconies of some of the island’s finest restaurants, the brothers would hand out advice, share invaluable intelligence, and discuss business concerns with Sicily’s top Mob bosses…but never in daylight.
    There were of course excellent reasons why they restricted such outings, meetings, and conversations to the dead of night, one of which the arrogant, overly self-assured, quick-tempered Mike Milazzo—as he had been then—had been about to discover for himself…
    In the courtyard of Le Manse Madonie, Mike had been met by two Francezci henchmen who had frisked him rather sloppily. One of them, who stank of too much costly aftershave, had taken his automatic. Then they’d ushered him inside the ancient, mazy old mansion, and left him in a dimly lit, marble-floored room whose walls were decked with rich tapestries and gilt-framed pictures and whose furniture was of mahogany and old but supple leather. The big oval table at which Mike was left seated was of marble, gold-rimmed, with a wonderful mosaic of multi-hued marble chips so arranged as to display a two-metre map of Sicily. As for the tapestries and paintings: When Mike’s eyes had grown partly accustomed to the shadowy gloom, he had seen that the former hangings