Sleeping Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the front of the car as the driver eased the big Rolls into the curb. Mario had formulated a notion of taking the two of them somewhere and shooting them. But then Lucchi came up on the right side of the car behind the driver, and his right hand appeared from behind his thigh, and there was a gravity knife already open, and the hand went inside the open window, and when Lucchi drew it back it was bloody. Then Lucchi had the back door open and was inside the car doing the other one. The man had managed to clamber into the back seat and unlatch the door, but Lucchi was already on him. He was already dead when Lucchi grasped his ankles and hauled him back inside.
    Then the little Sicilian walked casually ahead of Mario and Baldwin back toward the racetrack. But Talarese had caught the look on Lucchi’s face as their eyes met. When Mario was a child on Long Island, his dog had caught the scent of a rabbit in the field and run off after it, interpreting Mario’s calls as some kind of exhortation to greater speed. Then the dog had brought the broken, limp thing back with him in his mouth, his eyes looking proud and hopeful, returning for the approval he knew he had earned. Lucchi’s eyes had looked like that.
    Baldwin leaned close to Mario as they followed Lucchi. “Ferocious little bastard, isn’t he?” Talarese nodded. Lucchi was dangerous. He was something Mario had never anticipated, a throwback, a Sicilian like the ones who had gotten off the boat at Ellis Island before the First World War, lean, cunning, ambitious and utterly without compunction or reluctance.
    Mario decided to let the implications of his discovery wait until the day was over. He was operating on his own already. The Carpaccio brothers would have no idea who the man was. When it was over Mario would be the only one in a position to take advantage of the accomplishment, and he would be transported to the United States and raised to the heights appropriate to young men who had initiative and decisiveness. Lucchi would be a fond memory.
    “Come on,” Mario said. “Now that he can’t leave, he’s ours.” He walked out from the side of the shop onto the street, and he could hear the others’ footsteps following. He didn’t look back. He concentrated only on moving through the crowds of people toward the racecourse, where the Butcher’s Boy—Jesus, that was the best part; he must be forty by now—would be sitting in the grandstand with his girlfriend, never suspecting that the forces he had set in motion years ago had already stripped him of his soldiers and cut off his only means of escape. It was like that Shakespeare play they made everybody read in tenth grade. The bastard felt like a king, sitting there in the sunshine with a woman who wore the kind of jewelry a queen might have. Well, today was the day that Birnam Wood was coming to Dunsinane. The trees were closing in on the bastard. Mario smiled, and felt an impulse to say something about it to the others, but of course it would have been pointless. Baldwin was English but probably hadn’t made it to the tenth grade, and Lucchi wouldn’t even know who Shakespeare was.
    Margaret Holroyd was fighting disappointment. She looked out across the field to where the beautiful horses were being steadied and reassured by jockeys and trainers. They were festooned with silks in gorgeous, gaudy colors, and the jockeys wore oddly clashing combinations, probably cut from the same ten bolts. They were so far away that she could see very little except the tiny spots of emerald, pink, crimson and gold. What in the world was she going to do without Michael? He had been gone for only ten minutes, and already she missed him and was feeling angry with him. She couldn’t go on playing with him much longer. Soon she would begin to get little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes like Aunt Caroline, and then she would have to be responsible and act as though she’d never had a time like this in her