Sweetheart by Andrew Coburn Read Free Book Online Page A

sheets. “How the hell would you know that?” he demanded, and Thurston’s voice came through like fluid.
    “Believe me, I know.”
    Wade was silent. He dropped the pencil and rubbed an eye, making it sore.
    Thurston said, “I’ll pretend you never made this call.”
    • • •
    Two weeks later Special Agent Blodgett stood stocky and blunt-shouldered in a public phone booth in Hyde Park’s Cleary Square, his back to the slow grind of winter traffic. “I think it’s going to happen. I’d bet my last dollar.” He placed his lips closer to the mouthpiece. “Five got into a car. Blue followed them as far as the Mass Pike.”
    “Five?” Russell Thurston was on the other end. “That seems like overkill.”
    “Victor Scandura’s there with two heavies — Ralph Roselli and a kid I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ve seen him before, just haven’t figured out where yet.”
    “That’s good. That’s beautiful. The kid could come in handy sometime. Who are the other two?”
    “I was saving that for last.” Growing excitement animated Blodgett’s usually bland face. “Looks like Gardella and his sister are going along for the ride.”
    “Beautiful,” said Thurston. “Absolutely beautiful.”
    “I guess you want to rethink this now.”
    “No,” Thurston said firmly. “They get one whiff of us, it won’t go down.”
    “Sir, this is a gift from God. We could grab a chopper and get to Greenwood before they do. We could — ”
    “You didn’t hear me, Blodgett. Nor do you understand. I don’t want only Gardella and his sister. I want the whole operation. I want the biggest bust Boston’s ever seen. Cops, politicians, bankers, everybody Gardella deals with. You hear me now, don’t you?”
    Blodgett made a small sound.
    “I want it on the national news and Ted Koppel talking about it on
Nightline
, me there, along with Webster. Get the picture?”
    “Yes, sir,” Blodgett said and cut the connection.
    • • •
    The roadhouse was an oasis of jagged neon on a country thoroughfare bordered by heaped snow. The evening sky was clear and full of stars. In the plowed lot, pickups and cars surrounded the roadhouse, a rusted Thunderbird among them, also a dark Cadillac, not the Eldorado but an old one, nondescript. In the back seat, sitting with her brother, Rita O’Dea unwrapped a cold chicken sandwich dripping with mayonnaise, and Gardella told her to be careful. He shifted away from her. “You got a napkin, I hope.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
    Gardella leaned forward and murmured to Victor Scandura, “They might stay in there for hours.”
    “I don’t think so.” Scandura twisted around. He was in front between the inert shapes of Ralph and Augie. “They try to score with the girls, but they don’t know how. So they get mad and leave.”
    Time dragged. Rita O’Dea finished her sandwich and cleaned her fingers with fierce licks, annoying her brother in a way she had as a child. It made her feel closer to him. She crumpled the wrapper and stuffed it into an ashtray, another annoyance. She whispered something to him, and he answered mechanically, his eye trained on the entrance of the roadhouse. People had gone in, but no one had come out. Finally two shuffling figures did. “Well?” he said.
    Scandura squinted through his spectacles. The figures seemed to float up. One weaved. Then, near the corner of the building, they abruptly anchored themselves with stiff stances, their mackinaws thrown open. Scandura said, “That’s them.”
    Gardella’s breath caught.
    Rita O’Dea watched them poison the snow and whispered, “Pigs.”
    “You’re sure?” Gardella said to Scandura in a tightly controlled voice, and Scandura nodded.
    “Definitely.”
    The taller of the two moved off toward the Thunderbird. The other one was slow to follow, still busy. Rita O’Dea said, “Shake it good, buster. That’s the last piss you’ll ever take.”
    The Cadillac, Augie at the wheel, cruised