Paradise Man Read Online Free Page A

bitch no one had heard about until today? The best Mafia piece man would have done it for free in honor of his padrone. And they had to reach for Holden. Because they couldn’t get near the wild man, Red Mike, and his brothers.
    “Swiss,” Holden said through that wind in the wire. “We have a problem. I can’t go in wearing a mask. The daughter will see my face and tell the district attorney.”
    “No harm in that, Holden. He won’t disturb whatever angel brings her out.”
    “What about the other side? I’ll have a family of crazies on my back once it’s finished.”
    “That family doesn’t have much of a future. The garbagemen will go to their graves. The daughter’s the ticklish thing. We can’t have her damaged. We need some custom work.”
    The wind cracked in Holden’s ear and the line went dead.
    He didn’t think about daughters-in-law. Not even the Pinzolos he’d have to kill. He thought about the man with Andrushka, eighty years, and that Swisser would outlive Holden.
    He tapped his video machine and Dietrich’s face unfroze. She was round and lovely, not like that twig he’d married. Destry Rides Again.

4
    H OLDEN GOT OUT OF BED at noon. He didn’t need a file card on Red Mike Pinzolo. He’d had target practice with Mike and his brothers, Eddie and Rat, a month ago. They used the old police range at Rodman’s Neck. An Italian detective was always smuggling them in. Mike was the family’s main enforcer. He controlled half the garbage routes in Queens. He’d walk into some restaurant and kill a rival with thirty men and women eating around him. All the witnesses went dumb. Abruzzi couldn’t indict him. But Mike’s father, a kindly old man who fed Holden gnocchi he’d made with his own hands, was caught trying to strangle a bartender who happened to be an undercover dick. Red Mike considered that unfair. Two of his sisters had been fingerprinted and shoved inside a detention cell. Mike wanted Abruzzi to understand the insult of having your father and your sisters fondled by cops.
    A neighbor had once stolen Mike’s parking spot. He brooded for a month and then shot the man’s home with a submachine gun. It was this romantic, Red Mike, who had the district attorney’s daughter-in-law.
    Holden began seeing her picture in the papers. Fay Abruzzi, who’d gone to Swarthmore College with Abruzzi’s boy. She was a year younger than Holden, thirty-six. She’d been a sociologist until she had her second child. Red Mike had plucked her off the streets of Manhattan. The Post called her the Vanishing Ph.D.
    She wasn’t Holden’s type. She wore eyeglasses and her figure was much too full. He almost sympathized with Red Mike. But it was a stupid act. Crooks should leave civilians alone.
    Holden went to his spies. It took six days to uncover Red Mike. The idiot had brought Abruzzi’s daughter-in-law to a house in Far Rockaway, a half-deserted stretch of summer bungalows. Holden didn’t have to wonder why he’d found Red Mike. The cops and all the Mafia families were helping his spies. It should have been a honeymoon hit. But he was too damn fond of Mike.
    He rode out to the Rockaways in a Lincoln that was registered to a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. Goldie had come along. He was Holden’s package man. He provided guns as well as silk ties. Holden couldn’t trust some kid with a suitcase of hot guns to sell. Goldie’s guns came out of a freezer that couldn’t be traced. They were assembled for Holden, custom-built. Goldie himself buffed and filed each grip. Because Holden’s life would depend on how he pulled.
    He had to go against three crazy brothers, and Goldie had given him a Llama .22 long, just like the Parrot wore in Queens. It was a good sheriff’s gun, accurate and swift to the touch. Holden always took his target practice with a .22 long.
    “It’s not Eddie and it’s not the Rat,” Goldie muttered. “It’s Mike. Mike will smell us from the beach.” His mouth began to