Читать книгу Dead Man’s List - Mike Lawson - Страница 14

“Can you believe this bastard?” Carl said. “Every fuckin’ light, he hits on the yellow.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “You’re gonna lose him. Get up on his ass. It’s the morning rush. He sees the same car behind him for an hour, he won’t think nothin’ of it.”

“Where’s he goin’ anyway?” Carl said. “I thought he worked at the Capitol.”

Jimmy just shook his head. He loved Carl like a brother—you could put his crank in a meat grinder and he wouldn’t talk—but he was always asking questions. Stupid questions. Questions Jimmy couldn’t answer. Questions to which there were no answers. He was going to pull out the guy’s tongue one of these days if he didn’t quit it.

“And why are we following him?” Carl said.

That was it. “Because Eddie said to!” Jimmy screamed. “For Christ’s sake, you heard the same fuckin’ thing I did. Eddie said follow this asshole and if he talks to anybody, find out who and call him. That’s all I know.”

“Yeah, but he shoulda told us why. It’s like we’re mushrooms: they keep us in the dark and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before,” Jimmy said. “And open your window. That goddamn smoke is killin’ me.”

They were approaching another intersection and again the light turned yellow just as this DeMarco guy reached the intersection.

“Goddamnit!” Carl said, and stomped on the gas pedal. The light turned red before their car was halfway through the intersection.

“We should have gotten a transmitter to put on his car,” Jimmy said.

“Aw, we’re okay,” Carl said. Before Jimmy could respond, to tell Carl they weren’t okay, Carl said, “Can you believe these houses, these friggin’ embassies?”

They were on Massachusetts Avenue, in the section known as Embassy Row.

“I wonder if these countries pay for these places,” Carl said, “or if we pay for them. I mean it would really piss me off if my taxes were paying for these fuckin’ mansions.”

Jimmy just shook his head. “Get up on his ass,” he said again. “You’re falling too far back.”

And sure enough, at the next intersection, the damn guy hit another yellow light.

“Son of a bitch,” Carl said, again accelerating to make the light, but the light was already red when he started through the intersection. The car that broadsided them was a cab. It hit the front right fender of the rented Taurus they were driving, spinning the Ford almost in a complete circle. Jimmy’s airbag, the passenger-side airbag, exploded. Carl’s didn’t.

Carl and Jimmy stepped out of their car slowly, shaken, Jimmy gently touching his nose to see if it was broken. The airbag had slammed right into his face. The driver of the cab pried open his door with some difficulty, then came running toward them, his froggy eyes huge and insane behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He was a dark-complexioned man, and Jimmy guessed he was from Afghanistan, Pakistan—one of them Muslim places. The cabbie stopped a foot from Carl, pointed at the stoplight, pointed at the crumpled hood of his cab, and began screaming obscenities in a foreign tongue.

Carl hit the cabbie right between the eyes, breaking the guy’s glasses.

“You terrorist motherfucker,” Carl said.