Hooligans

by William Diehl

  Chief Walters was fifty pounds overweight and had bloodshot eyes, a nose full of broken blood vessels, and a neck that was two sizes too big for his collar. He looked like a man who sweats easily.

  "I must have missed something," he said, in a fat man's labored voice, heavy with bourbon. "What the hell's so funny?"

  "You had to be here, Herb," said Dutch.

  "Obviously you weren't," Walters said. "Maybe we better talk about this in the morning."

  "We can talk about it right now," Dutch said with more than a touch of irritation as his smile faded.

  "Right now I think I'd better join my people," Walters said, leaning on the "my."

  Dutch defused the situation by introducing Walters to me, earning me a damp, insecure handshake.

  "Dutch can obviously use all the help you can give him, right, Dutch?" he said.

  "Why don't you go over and give the boys in homicide a pep talk," Dutch said.

  "If I can help you in any way, Kilmer, just pick up the phone. I answer all my calls personally."

  "That's wonderful," I said.

  As he walked away he added somewhat jovially, "At least you can't say we've got a dull town here, right, Kilmer?"

  I began to wonder if the whole damn police force had been recruited from some funny farm for old cops.

  "Well, you've met the chief," Dutch said, "now you can forget him."

  "Twelve in Stizano and this guy with the hat," the Stick cried out, returning to his self-appointed task of counting bullet holes in dead people.

  Callahan was last to arrive, wearing a three-piece gray suit with a rose in his lapel. He got out of his car and looked around. No comment. While we were counting bullet holes and scratching our heads, Callahan vanished into the park and returned five minutes later with a whiskered, filthy relic wearing the dirtiest trench coat I've ever seen. You could smell his breath from across the street.

  "Don't anybody light a match," Salvatore said as they approached.

  "Saw something," Callahan said, explaining the bum in tow.

  The drunk sniffed a few times, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  "D'wanno trouble," he mumbled.

  Dutch leaned over him, his hands stuffed in his pants pockets and an unlit Camel bobbing in his mouth. "I'll tell you what," he said. "You don't spit it out, you'll have more trouble than a constipated goose."

  The bum looked offended at first, until it dawned on him that he was, for the moment, the center of attraction. Suddenly he started singing like a magpie.

  "I was down in the park near the pond, see, grabbing forty on a bench, and, uh, first thing I know, see, I hear a lotsa like clicks. Sounded like, uh, m'teeth." He hesitated and laughed but the laugh turned into the worst cough I've ever heard.

  "Keep talkin', pops," Dutch said. "You're doin' fine. Just don't cough up a lung before you're through is all I ask."

  The bum's Sterno eyes glittered feebly. "What's in it fer me?" he demanded. Then, looking around, he said, "Got a butt?" to everybody in earshot.

  The Stick gave him a cigarette, steadying the old man's hand while he lit it.

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "J. W. Guttman," he said proudly. "My friends call me Socks." He grinned and pointed to his feet. He wore no shoes but his toes wiggled through holes in a pair of rancid, once-white sweat socks.

  "Okay, Socks, so you were on your favorite bench down there, you heard somebody's teeth clicking," Dutch said.

  "That's what it sounded like." He flicked his uppers loose with his tongue and rattled them sharply against his lower plate. "Tic-tic-tic-tic, like that."

  "Fine," Dutch said, rolling his eyes.

  "And then all them lights down to the movie start blowin' up. Sounded like the Fourth of Julahrrgh." He coughed again, cutting off the end of the sentence.

  "Did you see anything?" Dutch asked him.

  He gathered his breath together and sighed. "Been tryin' to tell yuh—seen, uh, this car."

  "Where?"

  "On Pelican Avenue, goin' toward the beach."

  "What kind of car?" Dutch demanded.

  "Just a car. They all look alike."

  "Did it have a color?" Dutch asked.

  "Uh, well, it was a dark car."

  "Verdammt," Dutch said.

  "Black?" the Stick asked. "Two-door, four-door?"

  "Tol' ya, it was dark. Coulda been—" He stopped and thought hard for several seconds. "Blue, right? Sure enough, in the dark there, see, coulda been blue. Dark green, maybe . . . "

  He hunched up his shoulders, coughed, shivered, and did a little jig. Something under the stack of rags he was wearing was gnawing on him.

  "Anybody know what's he talking about?" Dutch said.

  "Maybe he thinks it's a test," Salvatore said.

  "Somethin' else," J. W. Guttman said, when he had regained his breath.

  "Don't make me beg," Dutch said.

  "Had funny wheels."

  "Funny wheels," Dutch said.

  Guttman nodded vigorously. "That's right."

  "What kind of funny wheels?" Dutch asked, and, turning to me, said under his breath, "I'm beginning to feel like a straight man for this old fart."

  "Big floppy wheels. I could hear them . . . flop, flop, flop, up there on Pelican."

  "What the hell's he talkin' about?" the Stick asked.

  "Beats me," said Dutch. "Floppy wheels, huh, J. W.?"

  "Popeta, popeta, popeta. That's what it sounded like."

  "Maybe somebody had a flat," I suggested.

  Socks smiled grandly, a man suddenly thrust into the limelight by tic-tic-tic and popeta, popeta, popeta.

  "That's it?" said Dutch.

  "It was dark," J. W. Guttman whined.

  "I know it was dark," Dutch snapped.

  The little man cowered.

  "Five people get blown away and the best witness we can muster up is a whacked-out dipso," Dutch said, shaking his head. "Go back to your bench, Mr. Guttman."

  "Socks."

  "Socks." Dutch started to walk away and Socks grabbed his sleeve. "Look, Cap'n, how 'bout takin' me in, maybe you could, uh, book me for like a material witness. Cap, I ain't had a square meal since Saint Patrick's Day."

  Dutch took out a tenspot and motioned one of the patrolmen over.

  "Take Socks here over to the lunch counter, buy him a decent meal, and stay with him until he eats it," Dutch said.

  "Me?" the cop said in disbelief.

  "Who d'ya think I'm talkin' to, God?" Dutch growled. "Just do it."

  "Right."

  He started to lead Guttman away.

  "Cap'n?"

  "What is it now?"

  "Can I get a pack o' butts, too?"

  "Get him a pack of butts, too," Dutch said to the policeman.

  "Yes, sir."

  "God bless ya," Socks said, and stuck out his hand. Dutch recoiled in horror. "Take that thing away from me," he said to Socks, and to the cop: "Make him wash his damn hands before he eats; he's liable to poison himself."

  Salvatore and Callahan returned to the fold with half a dozen brass buttons in tow.

  "Just did the park. Nothin'," Callahan said, in his Western Union parlance.

  "Had to be the car," said Salvatore.

  The Stick was standing across the street, near the entrance to the park, looking back at the marquee. He waved us over and pointed at the front of the theater. Light bulbs had been blown out across the front of it. Wires hung down, spitting at each other. Several of the letters were blown out.

  What was left of the sign spelled SO—LONG—

  49

  WHO'S NEXT?

  The shootout at South Longbeach had attracted most of the SOB's and others were on the way. Only Kite Lange and Cowboy Lewis failed to show up for the festivities. While the hooligans were gathering, I grabbed a minute with Stick.

  "Anything new on Nance and Chevos?" I asked.

  "Nothing on Nance yet," he said apologetically. "No, nothing
new but Kite Lange is still staked out at the marina where Chevos lives."

  "I wonder how come Stizano didn't make the wake?"

  "He did. He and his entourage left early, I guess to catch the flicks. "

  As far as I was concerned that still left Nance in the picture. I wasn't kidding myself or trying to conceal my joy.

  Charlie One Ear was next to appear, as dapper as ever in tweeds although he had replaced shirt and tie with a turtleneck sweater.

  "God, what a mess!" was Charlie One Ear's reaction.

  Callahan said, "Take a look, other end of the park."

  "why asked Charlie One Ear. "Is it worse down there?"

  "Line of fire," said Callahan, in his abbreviated English.

  "Also we got a witness, thinks he saw a car," Salvatore added.

  Charlie turned his back on the police gala in front of the theater and said, "Let's get off the firing line, shall we, gentlemen? I've got a bit of news I'd rather not share with the masses."

  Dutch led us to the hot dog stand, where he ordered two dogs suffocated by chili, kraut, mustard, and raw onions. The rest of us settled for coffee, which was strong enough to poison a whale. Charlie One Ear ordered tea. We moved down the street for a powwow.

  "So far it's a goose egg," he began. "Nobody knows anything, nobody's heard anything. I cruised the hotels out on the Strip, spent the afternoon at the track, and didn't see a face that worried me. I got on the horn, checked the network . . . "

  He counted them off on his fingers.

  "New Orleans, New York, Cincy, Detroit, Saint Looey, Chi, Vegas, L.A. What I got from that was bupkus. As of this minute, I'll stake my pension there aren't any outside guns in this town. At least none I can connect to this little hurrah."

  "Maybe we should just sit back and wait a day or two more," Salvatore said. "There won't be anybody left and we can forget it. "

  "If this was an outside mob moving in, somebody would know about it," Charlie One Ear said. "That kind of information moves faster than a dirty joke at a wedding reception."

  "Any of these insiders of yours try a guess as to the why of it?" Dutch asked.

  Charlie One Ear shook his head. "No, but the word is about. The Taglianis, or what's left of them, are very nervous. Apparently they haven't got the foggiest either."

  Dutch moved away from the group and stood on the curb, shaking his head, then turned suddenly and threw his cup at the wall. Coffee showered all over the sidewalk.

  "What a bunch of sheiss kopfes," he growled to himself, "and I lead the parade. Twelve people! We had eyeballs on them all, they still get shot right out from under us!"

  Frustration shimmered around him like an aura. He turned and looked down at me, his blue eyes burning fiercely behind his glasses.

  "I'm goddamned embarrassed, if you want to know the truth," he said. It was one of the few times I heard him use profanity in English.

  "Don't take it personally," I said. "These people have much more experience taking care of each other than you or I. If they can't keep themselves alive, it's not our fault."

  "Look, I'm really sorry, old man," Charlie One Ear said, "but I may have a consolation prize for you. I'm not sure whether it ties in or not, but a chap I know is carrying a rather large snow monkey. He says the coke market's been dry for more than a month, but the local snowbirds are dancing in the street. The word is, the drought is about to end."

  "Harry Nesbitt mentioned that," I said.

  "When's this snowstorm going to happen?" asked Dutch.

  "Imminently."

  "Does this snitch know who the importer is?"

  "I wish you'd refrain from calling them snitches," Charlie One Ear said. "Some of these people take a great deal of pride in working for me. It's rather like a public service for them."

  "Charlie, all canaries sing alike. Does he know who the distributor is or not?"

  "He only knows his own street connection."

  "Want a guess?" I said. "Bronicata. It's his game."

  "That makes sense," Stick said. "Unless maybe it's Longnose Graves."

  The Mufalatta Kid broke his silence. "Nose don't touch hard stuff," he said.

  "Times are changing," I countered. "This place is ripe for toot; it's wallowing in heavy rollers."

  "I ain't stickin' up for the dinge," the Kid said. "On the line, he ain't nothin' but a shanty-ass, nickel-dime nigger, say. He just don't fuck with heavy drugs, man. Ain't his style."

  Dutch stepped in. "Any idea how much coke we're talking about here?"

  "Rumors vary. I would say fifty kilos, pure."

  "Gemütlich!" Dutch rumbled under his breath.

  Salvatore whistled softly through his teeth. "We're talking bucks here," he said.

  Charlie One Ear took a thin, flat calculator from his shirt pocket and started adding it up.

  "Let's see. A hundred and ten pounds of stuff, which they'll likely kick at least six, perhaps eight, to one. Let's say roughly eight hundred pounds, which is roughly thirteen thousand ounces, which is roughly three hundred thousand grams. At eighty dollars a gram, that would come to twenty-four million dollars along the Strand. Roughly."

  That stopped conversation for almost a minute. Stick broke the silence.

  "Well, that'll cover the old car payment," he said.

  Dutch turned to me again. "You're the one knows these people," he said. "Do you think they'd snuff each other over twenty-four million bucks?"

  "Hell, I might kill them for twenty-four million bucks, Dutch. The question is, does it make sense? My answer is no, it doesn't. They deal in bigger numbers than that every week."

  Salvatore added his thoughts:

  "I agree. It could happen if there was some rhubarb over territory, somebody in the family got his feelings jacked off, personal shit like that. Then, maybe. I don't see them cuttin' each other up over some dope deal either." He shook his head vigorously. "That don't come across as a possibility."

  "So we're back to square one, and we got five more corpus delictis on our hands," Dutch said.

  "I'll keep digging, of course," Charlie One Ear said, and went off to the other side of the park with Salvatore and Callahan to look for car tracks.

  They returned ten minutes later. Charlie stood with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, rocking on his heels. After a proper dramatic pause he said, "It's highly likely the damage was done from the other end of the park. We found what could be tire tracks. Actually it looks like someone may have wrapped burlap or some other heavy material around the wheels so they wouldn't leave any identifying tracks."

  "How far is it from back there to the theater?" Dutch asked.

  "About a furlong," Callahan said, and when we all stared dumbly at him, he added, "Two hundred yards, give or take a few feet."

  "An M-16 with a good scope could handle that," said the Stick.

  "Isn't that comforting," Dutch said.

  I took Callahan aside and told him about the game at the Breakers Hotel and Thibideau dropping over fifteen grand.

  "Interesting," said Callahan. "Disaway'll go off, twenty, thirty to one tomorrow. It rains, pony wins, Thibideau can buy the Breakers."

  "Maybe I'll come to the races tomorrow afternoon," I said.

  "Back gate, one o'clock. I'll wait ten minutes." And he drifted back with the gang.

  Dutch walked over and joined me.

  "Twelve people blown out from under us," he said, "and all we've done so far is provide airtight alibis for every good suspect we got . . . at least the ones that are still alive."

  "All but one," I said.

  "Who's that?" Dutch asked.

  "Turk Nance."

  "You sure got a one-track mind," he said, drifting off to talk to the Kid and Zapata. I checked the time. It was half past twelve. I sought out Stick.

  "How about a nightcap?" I suggested.

  "Sure. Want to meet at the hotel?"

  "Ever been to a place called Casablanca?" I asked.

  His eyes widened. "I've been
to almost every place in town at least once," he said. "Once was enough for that place."

  "We'll take my car," I said, ignoring his comment.

  "Done," he said with a shrug. As we headed for my rented Ford, Stick tossed his car keys to Zapata.

  "Take my heap back to the Warehouse, will you, Chino?" he asked. "And keep it in second under forty, otherwise it'll stall out on you." And then to me, "Let's go to the zoo."

  I was about to find out what he meant.

  50

  CASABLANCA

  I didn't talk a lot on the way to the place. I was thinking about the Kid's itching-foot story, which led me to murder, which led me back to the Kid.

  Maybe I was wrong about Nance. Maybe the killer was closer to home. Could it have been Salvatore? or Charlie One Ear? Callahan?

  Almost any one of the hooligans could have done the jobs, except Dutch, who was with me when Draganata was slain, and Mufalatta and Zapata, who were at Uncle Jolly's when Stizano got his.

  Of the group, Salvatore might have a reason, perhaps something related to his mafioso father and Philadelphia. I was thinking about the why, not the motive. The itching foot.

  I let it pass. I didn't like the idea.

  Casablanca was on the downtown waterfront, a scant fifteen minutes from the scene of the crime. I parked on the promenade overlooking the river and we walked down a circular iron staircase to the river level. The Stick and I were quite a pair, me in my narc Windbreaker and boots, Stick in a suit that looked at least a decade old, a tie that defied time, and his felt hat balanced on the back of his head.

  The nightclub was perched on the edge of a pier. The windows had been taken out for the summer and replaced by shutters, all of which were open. A rush of music and heat hit us as we entered it.

  "Welcome to Mondo Bizarro," said the Stick.

  The place looked like it had been designed by an interior decorator on LSD.

  None of the tables and chairs matched.

  Gigantic stills from the Bogart film covered most of the walls. Towering up one was a gigantic blowup of Bogart, with cigarette and snarling lip, standing in front of Rick's nightclub in his white tux. Nearby, Peter Lorre leered frog-eyed at a fezzed and arrogant Sydney Greenstreet, while on another wall Claude Rains, dapper in his uniform and peaked cap, peered arrogantly at Conrad Veidt, who looked like he had just swallowed some bad caviar.