Damage Radius. Don Pendleton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ The men with whom he needed to meet were already waiting for him in the outer office with his secretary, but the Irishman decided to let them wait a bit longer. They all needed to sweat a little, wondering exactly why they’d been called in to see him. So, while he let their anxiety rise, McFarley decided to take a few minutes to reminisce.

      The Irishman let his mind drift back to his teenage days in Northern Ireland, when his only interests were boxing and women—not necessarily in that order. He had won Ireland’s golden gloves heavyweight division four years running, then opened his own gym. But it had been around that time when he’d also gotten involved with the then very active PIRA— Provisional Irish Republican Army—the last faction of the IRA to quit bombing and shooting the British invaders. His interest in the organization, however, had not been political. He had found that more money could be made in one evening of smuggling guns, dynamite and C-4 or Semtax plastic explosives than he made in a year at his gym. Drug smuggling had come as a natural extension to his business, which meant even more money. And more money meant more women, so soon he had established a successful “call girl” service to supplement both his own seemingly insatiable urge for sex and his overall income.

      It was about that time that Tommy McFarley realized just how small Northern Ireland really was. And that realization spawned his interest in immigrating to the U.S.

      A frown crossed McFarley’s face as he remembered his first attempts to gain his green card. It had not been as easy as he would have expected, since Great Britain was not considered to be a repressive nation—even to the Northern Irish. But a few clandestinely taken photos of a U.S. congressman visiting London—engaging in some rather unusual sex acts with two of McFarley’s women—had convinced the man to push the Irishman’s immigration papers through personally. And he had passed his citizenship test five years later with flying colors.

      “Hurray for the red, white and blue.” McFarley laughed out loud as the memory crossed his mind.

      McFarley leaned back farther and clasped his hands behind his head, staring at the various boxing trophies and other awards around the room. He had found, just like the Mafia and South American drug cartels before him, that energetic civic work was not only a good cover for his real pursuits, it endeared him to the people. And public opinion had a huge influence on politicians, be they senators, congressmen or district attorneys. The Irishman caught himself grinning again at a “Citizen of the Year” award on his wall from the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce.

      There was not another city in the U.S. known for as much corruption and graft as the Big Easy. And Hurricane Katrina had disrupted things to an extent where bribes and leverage worked on the politicians and police even better than before the storm.

      McFarley leaned back against his desk chair and chuckled aloud. What more could you ask for than television news footage that showed uniformed police officers pushing shopping carts through stores and looting them just like the rest of the citizenry? The Big Easy had become a Disneyland for criminals, so New Orleans had been the natural site for McFarley to base his operations.

      Over the past few years those operations had been both legal and illegal. His string of weight-lifting gyms now rivaled both Gold’s and World’s, and each rep the “muscle heads” performed on the bench press or preacher curl stand put more money in his pocket. He also had boxing operations in most major cities across the country, and every punch that struck a bag or chin made him money as well. But these were fronts for his true revenue operations. His real money still came the “old-fashioned” way—he stole it. Although he, himself, was thoroughly insulated by several layers of employees, his illegal activities included gunrunning to the Shining Path in Peru and the FARCs in Colombia, call girl services and massage parlors in most major cities, and some blatantly outright brothels. Like the one he was presently sitting atop.

      The penthouse of the old antebellum mansion, which faced Lake Pontchartrain, had been turned into McFarley’s offices. There was little secrecy about what happened on the four floors below. Police and other cleanup workers—still trying after all these years to get the Big Easy up and running once more—had more pressing business than pursuing misdemeanor prostitution arrests.

      The Irishman chuckled again. Besides, he thought, the top brass of the New Orleans PD and the district attorney’s office were some of his best customers.

      McFarley leaned forward, crossed his arms on the desktop and thought briefly about the one last thing he had to do before Matt Cooper arrived for dinner. Even thinking about performing such a task would have sent many men running to the restroom to throw up, but to McFarley, it seemed to come naturally. He had done similar things many times in the past, and he felt no emotion about them one way or another. It was all business, he thought, as his mind returned to his overall empire of crime once again.

      In addition to the weaponry he sent south, he brought cocaine and heroin north into the U.S. for the Mexican and South American cartels. Of course, his favorite activity was still fixing boxing matches in the smoky clubs where his fighters fought. Although the gambling money he made from these fights was small compared to his profits in the other areas, he hung on to it as a nostalgic link to his past.

      McFarley’s smile turned suddenly downward. Once in a while, a fighter or his manager didn’t go along with his wishes to take a dive. That had happened less than a week ago.

      Which was why that fighter and his manager were no longer around. And never would be again. And why Cooper had been hired to take the manager’s place, and was consequently on his way to the brothel to meet McFarley.

      Slowly, and somewhat reluctantly—because part of him rebelled against the racing technology taking over the world— McFarley twisted his chair to the left and faced his computer. He knew very little about the machines, but he had found email to be an effective addition to his business. So, calling up a message he had already read through once, he hit the properties icon, set the computer to print in fast draft mode, then hit Print.

      A moment later, the printer sputtered to life and a single sheet of paper came sliding out of the machine.

      The Irishman looked up and down the page. He had used one of his New Orleans PD contacts to have a background check run on Matt Cooper. And as he stared at the page, he saw that the man had been arrested for some of the very crimes that were nothing more than a day’s work for McFarley Enterprises. And these arrests had been effected all over the world.

      But there was one thing that impressed the Irishman far more than the arrests. Matt Cooper had absolutely zero convictions. In fact, none of the crimes had even gone to trial. All of which meant Cooper knew how to play the law, much as McFarley did.

      His reminiscing had come full circle, and McFarley decided it was time to finish the last item of business for the day. Lifting the telephone again, he tapped on the intercom and said, “Grace, send the men in, please. And you can go home.”

      A moment later, the door opened and a square-shouldered man lumbered in. His suit coat was too small, and it gaped at the back of the neck. His crooked nose leaned to the left, which tended to make him look cross-eyed. He had once been a light heavyweight with over a hundred wins in the clubs. But he had never come close to the big time. So when he’d finally grown too old to fight, McFarley had given him a job as one of his personal bodyguards. Looking back, McFarley realized that had been a mistake.

      Jo-Jo Gau was the man’s name, and while he didn’t know it yet, he was about to hit the canvas for the last time.

      Gau was followed by two other men. Razor Westbrook and Felix O’Banion. O’Banion was a fellow Irishman who McFarley had brought to the U.S. when he was first establishing his operation. He had been a mediocre middleweight in Ireland but was smarter than the average fighter. Most of all, McFarley СКАЧАТЬ