Read Online The Viper Squad by J.B. Hadley - Free Book Online

Harvey wouldn’t hurt him.
    Chips Stadnick had a list of thirteen known aliases for this guy, so he preferred to think of him by no name rather than a
     useless one. The guy came out of McDonald’s and crossed the bridge toward the Tea Party ship.
    I can’t believe this shithead, Chips was thinking. Next he’ll be going to the aquarium and then maybe Paul Revere’s house.
    The Tea Party ship was tied to a small wharf that was at right angles to the center of the bridge. The guy passed the entrance
     to the wharf and continued across the bridge. Stadnick hurriedly’ left the car and followed on foot.
    The man walked around the southern end of the Federal Reserve Building, a huge metal box on metal legs that always reminded
     Chips of the walking fortresses in the second
Star Wars
film that they tripped with steel cables towed by those little flying saucers. He had taken his son … Enough of that. The
     weirdo was walking along Summer Street toward South Station—maybe he was going to take the train back to New York after his
     breakfast at McDonald’s! Instead, he ducked into the Red Line subway. Stadnick ran.
    He stood on the platform in his rumpled raincoat, reading his
Wall Street Journal,
with his formal umbrella tucked under one arm. When the train came, Stadnick entered the same car as his quarry, at the other
     end. Bozo was too deep in his stocks-and-shares news tonotice much. Stadnick was not greatly surprised when he got off the train at Harvard. He followed him as he walked hurriedly
     from the subway station to the Harvard Coop. He followed him inside the store. He looked around for him. He wasn’t there.
    Once inside the Harvard Coop, Harvey Waller rushed to an alcove display of sweatshirts and T-shirts, pulling off his raincoat
     as he went. He dropped the coat, umbrella and newspaper behind a display case and rapidly pulled on a wig of wavy brown hair
     and stuck two heavy brown mustaches to his upper lips. He heard a giggle behind him.
    A young salesclerk at a cash register had seen everything, and she was very amused. Harvey grabbed a wine-red sweatshirt with
     a white Harvard crest on its front and brought it over to her.
    “Your right mustache is crooked,” she said.
    He looked in the mirror next to her and quickly adjusted his appearance.
    “That’s a
little
better,” she said.
    “It doesn’t have to be perfect,” Harvey answered.
    “It doesn’t look very real. And this sweatshirt has to be at least three sizes too small for you.”
    “I’ll take it anyway,” Harvey said. “Can you wrap it in a hurry?”
    She did and he paid.
    “Do me a favor?” he asked.
    She smiled.
    “Gift-wrap my umbrella.”
    She laughed and wrapped it in store paper when he brought it to her.
    “Don’t forget your coat and newspaper,” she called after him.
    “I’ll be back for them in five minutes,” he said. “I’ll tell you what this is all about then.”
    “Okay.” She guessed it would be some corny joke, andthis guy was old enough to be a professor. But she knew all about
them.
    Harvey deliberately strolled right in front of the poor dumb bastard from the FBI, who had lost his cool and was running this
     way and that searching for him. But Harvey was now a longish-haired, heavily mustached college type with no coat and two parcels.
     He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes or more to while away.
    Walking away from Harvard Square, along John F Kennedy Street toward the bridge over the Charles River, he turned down some
     steps into the Boathouse Bar. Crossed oars, racing skulls and insulting remarks about Yale hung about the place. A few solitary
     jocks sat along the bar, glowering into their beer. Maybe Harvard was having a bad year.
    Harvey at one time would have been intimidated by a university atmosphere, thinking he was too stupid to open his mouth—or
     even if he knew what he was talking about, he would be afraid of sounding stupid because he didn’t know the right words to
     use. He