Net Force - Tom Clancy [59]
Johnny the Shark was holding Sampsons place until he returned.
If he returned. Whatever was going on with that, it stunk, and Genaloni didnt like it a damn bit.
Yes?
Hey, Ray. Nobody we can touch has anything to say about Luigi. We put some serious money on the table, reached out to everybody who owes us favors, nothing. Hes invisible.
Keep looking. At least one fed was going to be sorry about this business, although there was no way to tell when the guy was going to buy it. The Selkie took his time, and it didnt do any good to try and hurry him.
The intercom cheeped.
What?
Its your wife again.
Jesus. Im not here, okay? And I forgot my cell phone, too.
Yes, sir.
Genaloni shook his head. He looked at Johnny, who was smiling.
Smiling. Jesus. Youre married, what, a year and a half?
Two years, come December 14th, Johnny said.
Still on your damned honeymoon. Come back and see me in fifteen years and lets talk about women.
That brought another grin.
Genaloni shook his head. Johnny was twenty-four, which meant he still knew everything. Genaloni was old enough so that he realized he knew less every year that went by. You study any history?
It was my minor.
Genaloni did know that, but it never hurt to let the help think you were a little slower than you actually were. And he was something of a history reader himself, when he had the time. He said, You know who Mary Katherine Horony was?
Johnny searched his memory. Frowned. Doesnt ring a bell.
She was Hungarian, a hooker, went by the name of Big Nose Kate.
Oh. Doc Hollidays girlfriend?
Good to see that degree means something. Kate was a whore, a drunk, a brawler. She screwed and drank and fought her way across the Old West, ran with Holliday, the Earps, some other real dangerous dudes.
Johnny nodded. Uh-huh.
She could have quit once she hooked up with Doc, but she couldnt settle down. She kept going back to the life, even while she and Holliday were together. And even when she was at home, she wasnt your shy and demure type. She broke him out of jail once after he gutted a man with a Bowie knife, and she clubbed a guard half to death to do it. She had a whorehouse in Tombstone in the 1880s, first one in town. Did it in a big tent, ran a dozen girls and sold a lot of cheap whiskey. People used to fight and get shot up there all the time. Plus she and Doc also used to beat the shit out of each other-and he didnt always wind up on top.
After Holliday croaked from TB, old Kate kept whoring around for years. Got married, left her husband, moved around, kept kicking her heels up until she wound up in a nursing home. Died in 1940. She was ninety years old.
Fascinating, Johnny said. He raised an eyebrow.
So, here was this woman, a whore-which in those days was a damned dangerous job-with these hardcases all around her whod just as soon shoot you as look at you. A woman who used to punch out Doc Holliday, one of the stone-coldest killers ever, and she was living in neighborhoods where you could get raped and murdered and nobody would blink.
And your point ?
Kate outlived them all-the job, Holliday, the killers, the booze, the bad towns, everything. Genaloni smiled. She died of old age. He paused, then said, You know what the cavalry men used to say out in Dakota when they were trying to wipe out the Sioux? If youre captured by the Indians, dont let them give you to the women.
A woman can cut off your nuts, cook em with onions and make you eat them-and smile the whole time shes doing it. Remember that. No matter what your bride says, no matter how good she is in bed, you keep your business to yourself. The prisons are full of guys who blabbed shit to their women and then pissed them off. Women are good for a lot of things, but you dont trust one with your life. Never.
Ill remember that.
Good. Now go find out why the feds are hiding Luigi. After the kid had gone, Genaloni smiled to himself.