Without remorse - Tom Clancy [264]
He had to think this one through, Morello told himself urgently. He might just have it all figured out. Henry was manipulating them. Henry was manipulating the outfit. A jig was trying to outthink them.
And succeeding. Probably he whacked his own people. The fuck liked to shit all over women - especially white ones. That figured, Morello thought. They were all like that. Thought he was pretty smart, probably. Well, he was pretty smart. But not smart enough. Not anymore. It wouldn't be hard to explain all of this to Tony. Eddie was sure of that. Make the transfer and drive back. Dinner with Tony. Be calm and reasonable. Tony likes that. Like he went to Harvard or something. Like a damned lawyer. Then we work on Henry and we take over his operation. It was business. His people would play. They weren't in it because they loved him. They were in it for the money. Everybody was. And then he and Tony could take the operation over, and then Eddie Morello would be a made man.
Yeah. He had it all figured out now. Morello checked the time. He was right on as he pulled into the half-empty parking lot of a diner. The old-fashioned kind, made from a railroad car - the Pennsylvania Railroad was close by. He remembered his first meal out of the house with his father, in a place just like this, watching the trains go past. The memory made him smile as he finished the cigarette and flipped it onto the blacktop.
The other car pulled in. It was a blue Oldsmobile, as he'd been led to expect. The two guys got out. One carried an attache case and walked towards him. Eddie didn't know him, but he was well-dressed, respectable, like a businessman should be, in a nice tan suit. Like a lawyer. Morello smiled to himself, not looking too obviously, in his direction while the backup man stayed at the car, watching, just to be on the safe side. Yeah, serious people. And soon they'd know that Eddie Morello was a serious man, too, he thought, with his hand in his lap, six inches from his hidden revolver.
'Got the stuff?'
'Got the money?' Morello asked in return. '
'You made a mistake, Eddie,' the man said without warning as he opened the briefcase.
'What do you mean?' Morello asked, suddenly alert, about ten seconds and a lifetime too late.
'I mean, it's goodbye, Eddie,' he added quietly. The look in his eyes said it all. Morello immediately went for his weapon, but it only helped the other man.
'Police, freeze!' the man shouted just before the first round burst through the opened top of the case.
Eddie got his gun out, just, and managed to fire one round into the floor of his car, but the cop was only three feet away and couldn't possibly miss. The backup officer was already running in, surprised that Lieutenant Charon hadn't been able to get the drop on the guy. As he watched, the attache case fell aside and the detective extended his arm, nearly placing his service revolver on the man's chest and firing straight into his heart.
It was all so clear to Morello now, but only for a second or two. Henry had done it all. He'd made himself, that was it. And Morello knew that his only purpose in life had been to get Henry and Tony together. It didn't seem like much, not now.
'Backup!' Charon screamed over the dying man. He reached down to seize Eddie's revolver. Within a minute two State Police cars screeched into the parking lot
'Damned fool,' Charon told his partner five minutes later, shaking as he did so, as men do after killing. 'He just went for the gun— like I didn't have the drop on him.'
'I saw it all,' the junior detective said, thinking that he had.
'Well, it's just what you said, sir,' the State Police