Procession of the Dead Read Online Free Page B

voice steady, preparing myself to die with dignity. I looked my murderer in the face and grinned. “So you might as well go ahead and shoot, you bastard.” I could have given myself a standing ovation. I was about to die, but I was going in style, head held high, and many a man would have paid a fortune to do the same.
    The granite-faced killer scratched his chin. “He said you’d say that,” he muttered. “That’s what the guy in his dream did. Him and his damn dreams. OK!” He clapped his hands and signaled the milling gangsters back to their cars. “Vincent, you’re with me.” Vincent nodded obediently and spun off toward one of the limos parked against the warehouse walls, hidden in the shadows of the slaughterhouse. “Wain, take care of the money.” He kicked Theo’s case across the floor. “Make sure The Cardinal gets his cut.”
    “What?” Wain’s face puckered. “But I was doing him a favor! We helped him out, damn it. I thought the least he’d do—”
    “You thought wrong,” my captor snapped. “Business is business, Neil, with its right ways and wrong ways. Cutting The Cardinal in— that’s the right way. Shortchanging him is as wrong as you can get, short of pissing on the Devil on your way down the steps to Hell.”
    “OK,” Wain grumbled, picking up the case. “I’ll see The Cardinal right. I’m no fool.”
    “Glad to hear it. I guess we’d better be off then, Mr. Raimi. Would you care to go first?” He beckoned toward the limo which was pulling up beside us. I looked at the man, then the limo, then Neil Wain. I didn’t know where this night was heading or what lay in store for me, but seeing as how things were so far out of my hands, I decided I might as well go along obligingly and enjoy the ride. Pulling my coat tight around my shoulders, shivering from the cold and shock, I stepped into the car.
    We’d been driving through the silent streets of the city for about ten minutes, nobody saying a word. I was starting to feel uncomfortable. The initial spate of shock which had numbed me to Theo’s death was receding, and it was easier to talk than dwell upon the memory of his confused expression and ruby-red blood. Recalling the name Vincent had used back in the warehouse, I cleared my throat to break the silence and asked hesitantly, “Are you Ford Tasso?”
    He looked over in my direction, face expressionless. “Yes.”
    “The famous Ford Tasso,” Vincent snickered. He was driving. “His name a curse in a hundred languages. Come one! Come all! Bow down and—”
    “Shut up,” Tasso said softly, with immediate effect. He’d put up with a lot of Vincent’s nonsense, but only to a point, and Vincent was cunning enough never to push his luck.
    Ford Tasso. The Cardinal’s number two. The strong arm of the city’s unofficial king, feared almost as much as the only man he would ever call master. If The Cardinal was a myth, Ford Tasso was a legend.
    I examined him in the sliding glare of amber streetlights. He was getting on in years, at least in his late fifties. A big man, six-two, bulky like a bear. Thick hair, black as soot. He was sporting a pair of sideburns, relics of the disco age, and a thin mustache. His face was cold and hard. He breathed lightly. Black suit, white shirt, gold cuff links, rings and chains. Dead eyes.
    This was the man who’d run the city with The Cardinal for the last thirty years, who’d killed or bulldozed all in their way. He looked the part. Two words came to mind as I sat back and summed him up. They were
cold
and
blooded
. But I kept them to myself. He’d had a nickname once, when he was young—the Lizard Man. He didn’t like it. The last man to mock him was found dead a couple of days later, his stomach emptied of organs and filled with snakes and iguanas. He’d been plain Ford Tasso ever since.
    They drove me to Party Central. Heart of the city. Home and workplace of The Cardinal. The safest place in the world for the invited. Death