Procession of the Dead by Darren Shan Page A

list.
    Ford smiled. “Kid, would I send you in if there was any real danger?”
    “Without even thinking,” I pouted.
    He laughed and clapped my back. “It’ll be OK. He’ll growl a bit but it’ll be bluster. Stand firm. Let him rant. Don’t show fear or apologize. In the end he’ll calm down and you can talk.”
    “About what?” I asked.
    “Sound him out. Ask him how he plans to expand. What’s in it for us? Whose turf is he after? Will he create problems we don’t want to deal with? Is he going to be a threat to our friends? Ask questions, make him talk, find out as much as you can. This is the first of many meetings. You don’t have to pump him dry.”
    “Any chance he’ll attack me?” I asked.
    Ford shrugged. “He knows we’d come after him if he did. But he’s a mad Cuban Mick. Who can tell?”
    “Should I take a gun?”
    He shook his head. “You take a gun into a dark alley with Johnny Grace, and things go wrong, you’re fucked. Without a gun he’ll just kick the shit out of you if he loses his temper. But if he sees a piece…” He didn’t have to finish.
    Adrian and I dressed for the occasion in the Skylight. We’d been fitted for new suits earlier that week and eased ourselves into them.
    “I feel like a pimp,” Adrian complained.
    “You look like a pimp,” I comforted him.
    “Do I
have
to come?” he asked. “I’m just your chauffeur. I’m not paid enough to get involved with crap like this. Why can’t I just drive, like I normally do, and sit it out in the car?”
    “I want you there,” I told him. “I might need you if things go wrong.”
    “If things go wrong with the Grace Brothers, I won’t make the slightest difference and you know it.”
    I stopped trying to knot my tie. He was genuinely upset and I couldn’t blame him. “Adrian,” I said softly, “you’re the only friend Ihave, the one person I can rely on. This is a big day for me and I’m about a hair’s breadth away from losing my nerve and bolting. I need somebody to hold me in place. You don’t have to come. I won’t force you. But I’m asking, as a friend, will you help?”
    He considered it. “No,” he said, then laughed and pulled up his socks. “You’ll owe me big for this.”
    “I’ll see that you never want for anything again,” I promised. “Neither in this world nor the next.” I paused. “Which might not be as far away as we’d wish.”
    We picked up Vincent in the lobby. He was coming along to observe me in action. He acted as if we were off to the movies. He lay in the back of the car and made us feel at ease with cute little stories. Like, “I saw Johnny Grace chew a man’s balls off once. No kidding. He stripped him, went down on him and gnawed the fuckers off!” And, “Don’t look at his feet. He’s clubfooted and hates it when people stare. You let your eyes drop below his knees, he’ll come at you like a pit bull.”
    The meet was on neutral territory in a northern section of the southeast. The streets were narrow, clogged with uncollected garbage, refuse from street traders, burned-out cars. Every window was boarded over. The kids were dressed like Third World latchkey children, thin and mean.
    We arrived first. Parked at the head of the alley, paid a few local teenagers to guard the car, and ambled down a dark, rat-infested stretch of street. It was day, the sun bright in the sky, but few rays penetrated the overhanging roofs and clothes-strewn washing lines.
    Adrian and I stood against a wall while Vincent examined the layout. His hand kept going to the space at his side where his gun would normally be. I bet he would have brought one, regardless of orders, if they’d come from anyone other than Ford Tasso.
    “You’ve never been on a gig like this?” I asked Adrian.
    “Hell no,” he said. “I’ve only been in this business a couple of years. And it’s only temporary. A year or two more and I’m out of it. Out of this job, out of this city. I’ve only stuck