King Con Read Online Free

would name their kid Demo?
he thought, forgetting that his parents had named him Texaco. The van circled the block with the window mercifully slipstreaming cold, fresh air.
    “Pull up there,” Tommy said.
    The Jamaican pulled the van to the curb while Tommy studied the fire door; then he started paging through a set of photocopied building plans.
    “Gotta old dumbwaiter, goes all the way up. Gotta gas enjin’. It’ll be too loud to run the damn thing. If I can fit in the fucking box, you think you could pull it up fourteen floors?” Tommy said, looking up at Texaco, who nodded … glad he wasn’t being asked to get in the dumbwaiter with Tommy.
    “Okay then, that’s the plan. Demo, you stay right here, keep the motor running. And Texaco, once I clear out them brown hats, I want you up there to help sanitize the place. Okay? You’ll hear ‘em hit when they come down.”
    “Okay,” Texaco said, looking at the cleaning kit in a Gucci leather suitcase beside him.
    “I don’t know about the garage. Far as I can see, they got nobody in there, but you gotta hold my back,” Tommy added. “I don’t wanna be up there hosing offthese assholes and have the elevator deliver me up a new squad of uniforms.”
    “Nobody will be coming up the elevator,” Texaco assured him, and Tommy looked hard at his huge accomplice, pinning him with blue pig eyes that suggested Texaco was the worst fuck-up on earth. There was electricity in his look but also dead malice and timeless evil. They were the eyes of a prehistoric lizard.
    The whole operation had to be fast and clean. Tommy had decided not to use a contracted cleaning crew. On some hits a crew of “sanitation specialists” would follow in right behind to wash the crime scene down with detergents and vacuum the carpets, eliminating trace evidence. The crime scene would be purged … no prints, no blood spatter, no hair or fiber. Problem was, you had to know the cleanup team was solid. It was a new specialty and Tommy had never used one; he would rather not have anybody left behind who could rat him out. Texaco was risk enough. He knew the big, ugly steroid jockey was just smart enough to figure that Tommy would kill him inch by fucking inch if he ever rolled.
    Tommy picked the lock on the fire door; then he and Texaco went into the darkened building. The dumbwaiter was still located in its shaft, and once they pried the small door open they could see that the old rope was frayed and dusty with spider webs. Tommy easily fit in the little box. He sat on the metal tray with his knees up under his chin and looked out like a psychopathic child. Texaco pulled the rope, lifting the dumbwaiter fifteen feet, testing the strength of the line. It held. Then he continued to lift the dumbwaiter. Texaco had to grip the rope and ease it up hand-over-hand. By the time the huge ex-linebacker had the box seven stories high, his forehead and massive arms were dripping with sweat. Friction blisters were beginning to form on his palms. Itoccurred to him that he could make a giant contribution to mankind by simply letting go of the box, sending the little Sicilian maniac on a seven-story ass-pucker ride in the free-falling dumbwaiter. But Texaco didn’t have the guts to do it. He knew Tommy would survive the fall, like Wile E. Coyote. Somehow he’d come back and kill Texaco, “inch by fucking inch,” just like he’d always promised.
    On the fourteenth floor, Tommy slowly and quietly opened the door of the dumbwaiter and, when he didn’t see anyone, slipped out into the hall. The building was musty. Ornate ceilings and faded green-and-red-patterned carpets framed the columned hallway. He could hear the two deputies talking in low tones around the corner from where he was standing. He moved silently to a maintenance closet and slipped inside. He needed to listen to the sounds on this floor to determine how many people were up here. Standing with hanging mops and Lysol bottles, he waited