by Peter Gent
The coed prostitute was never missed, and Tiny Walton didn’t have to use his alibi. The killing was a favorite of Tiny’s, and he often recounted to the brothers how he had explained to the hooker what was planned and how she had reacted.
A.D. Koster’s confrontation with the Cobianco brothers that morning in his apartment parking lot was “about various financial obligations assumed on Mr. Roster’s part that were not forthcoming as promised.” That was how Don put it, and it sounded very sinister coming from inside a black limo full of thugs.
“Listen, I know the rent is late,” A.D. started saying, “but you got to remember the two guys I live with ain’t the most dependable sons-a-bitches in town. They’re jocks, for Chrissakes! You can’t image what it’s like to get money out of them, but I’ll get on it.” A.D., hunched up like he was cold, was shifting from foot to foot with his hands jammed in his pockets. Don held up his hand for A.D. to stop talking.
“You owe us money on baseball, you cocksucker,” Johnny, the youngest, snapped and accidentally spit on himself.
“I’ll get that money too.” A.D. leaned over and helped Johnny brush his own saliva off his coat. Johnny knocked his hands away. Tiny smiled at both of them.
“What we heard, A.D.,” Don said, “was that you lost all your money, plus another grand you don’t have, playing cards all night with fraternity boys. Isn’t that what you guys heard?” Don asked his brothers. They both nodded.
“Well, that’s all bullshit!” A.D. started shuffling again. The three Cobianco brothers watched and smiled. “I didn’t lose the money in no card game. It’s those two turkeys I live with; they just won’t come up with the money.”
“Do you think we should speak with them?” Don said quietly. “Maybe we can impress on those boys the necessity of honoring commitments. We are doing business here. They can’t be exempted just because they are big football stars. Maybe our associate, Mr. Walton, should talk with them.”
Tiny’s smile was unchanged. He looked at his manicured hands. Big, thick fingers and knuckles, the perfect fist.
“No! Wait!” A.D. stepped back; he again considered flight. “They aren’t here. But I’ll get them today for sure and make them pay up.”
“That’s fine, A.D.,” Don smiled. “I know I can count on you for the baseball money too. I wonder how that story about you having a thousand dollars in IOUs over at the Deke house ever got started?”
“The price of fame, I guess,” A.D. said. “People like to make up stories about you and include themselves. You know how it is.” He tried to smile.
“No, we don’t know how it is,” Don said. “We’re just three flat-nose Italian guys who had to work downtown for their money. We don’t know about Park City or the University, the big time or fame or being a big celebrity. Do we, guys?”
The two other Cobianco brothers shook their square heads.
Tiny was studying his heavy gold, twelve-carat diamond pinkie ring. The setting was in the shape of a gold horseshoe. He had taken it off a bookie who disappeared down a Fort Worth well in 1968.
“We’re so stupid, we believed the fraternity boys’ story about your IOUs,” Don said. The eyes stayed on A.D., who kept his head down and shuffled from sneaker to sneaker. Don Cobianco’s voice rolled and filled with anger.
“We were so dumb, me and my two brothers, that we let those fraternity boys sell us those IOUs. That’s how stupid we are. I don’t mind the money,” Don Cobianco said, “but I can’t stand to look that stupid. You know what I mean, A.D.? Like letting some fast nigger beat you in front of eighty-five thousand people. You got to intimidate him. Right on the next play. Show whose field it is, you know? When somebody makes us look that stupid, they are gonna get intimidated. You understand that, don’t you. A.D.?”
“Ah. Yeah. I understand that.” A.D. shuffled and shivered like he was cold.
“I didn’t hear what you said, A.D.,” Don said loudly. “Did you guys hear him?”
The brothers in the front seat shook their heads again.
“What did you say?” Don leaned forward, gripping the window frame with his thick fingers. The huge knuckles were white from the tension in the grip.
“I said I understand,” A.D. said slightly louder. He kept his eyes on his blue sneakers.
Tiny smiled at his huge horseshoe ring.
“Now we got to go make those fraternity boys understand. Let’s go, Johnny.” The window started up and the Lincoln roared out of the parking lot.
A.D. Koster never moved from the lot. It took the Lincoln one and one-half minutes to circle the block and pull back into the parking lot of the apartment building.
Johnny wheeled up alongside A.D. and rolled down Don’s window. Don stayed back in the seat and said, “You want to get in and talk about it?” The voice was soft and disembodied.
A.D. nodded his head, but did not move.
“Better help him, Johnny.”
Johnny Cobianco got out from behind the wheel and pulled at A.D.’s arm. A.D. Koster peeled free from the pavement and stepped woodenly into the big black car.
Johnny closed the rear door and got back behind the steering wheel.
“We got some jobs for you to do, A.D.,” Don said.
“What kinds of jobs?” A.D. found his voice. “How long will they take?”
“All kinds, A.D., and they’ll take a long time. A long time.”
Taylor Rusk steered into the parking lot two hours after A.D. Koster had ridden out in the back of the Cobianco brothers’ Lincoln.
A.D. had not returned.
Taylor stopped the car; everyone began to come awake.
“This is where I get out,” Taylor said. Wendy Chandler lifted her head from the pillow of his jacket. She leaned over against the passenger door and kept her eyes closed.
“Bye,” she said softly, her face finely wrinkled and red from sleep.
Buffy stretched out in the backseat. Simon slipped behind the wheel and Taylor clapped him on the shoulder.
“You and Buffy can live with us if you want. We pay three-quarters of the goddam rent anyway.”
“Thanks, we may do that for a while,” Simon said. “But first I’m dropping Wendy back at the Pi Phi house. Then Buffy and I are going straight to the Longhorn Motel and get some sleep.” Simon turned his head to check traffic, then drove away.
THE TEN TOP ONIONS
AT MIDNIGHT THAT night Taylor walked across the deserted drag and onto the campus, tossing a small onion from hand to hand. Reaching the statue of an Indian warrior of undetermined tribal affiliation, Taylor heard something behind him.
A giant apparition, at least seven feet tall, lunged out of the shadows of the new economic-geology building, scuffling and snickering, with a long loping stride, closing on Taylor quickly.
Taylor squared off, tensed himself and waited.
The seven-foot-two-inch-tall apparition was Terry Dudley, grinning and laughing at Taylor. He had been All-American center on the University basketball team five years before and had played professionally for San Antonio.
A B.S. in poly sci, Terry Dudley was back at the University to finish his law degree.
“Jesus, man, you sure got a small onion.” Dudley ruffled Taylor’s hair and slowed his seven-foot gait so six-foot-five-inch Taylor wouldn’t have to strain to match it.
“You mean how big the damn thing is matters?” Taylor shook his head. “What the hell ... ?”
“Bigger onion is sweeter.” Dudley reached up and casually plucked leaves off a branch that was at least nine feet off the ground. “I imagine we’re gonna have to eat it, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t think. I don’t think.” Taylor was becoming doubtful about the whole evening.
“Oh, that’s right. You never joined a fraternity.” Dudley was a Sigma Nu. “You and your two Park City pals have your own little group.”
“They never force me to eat onions,” Taylor said.
“Tonight it’ll be the same old frat-rat bull
shit,” Dudley said. “You bring the bra and panties?”
“No.” Taylor looked up scornfully at Dudley, who let out a long sigh.
“Aaah. The big boys are out tonight and the whole campus is tingling with energy,” Terry Dudley teased. “Can’t you just feel the whole contact high? Thirty-five thousand other students waiting on tonight’s ritual. Who? Who is somebody? Tonight we find out. Little hearts a-pounding ... loins inflamed ...”
“What’s this guy Lem Carleton like?”
“Three?” Dudley seemed surprised. “They picked Lem Three?”
Taylor shrugged. “I heard that.”
“He’s Junior Carleton’s kid. That’s probably why they picked him. He’s IFC. Lem Three just wants to get along with everybody.” Dudley pointed at the Tower. “He’s a fair politician. Not as good as I am, though. Not as good a compromiser as me ... get along ... go along.”
“You are misinterpreting Sam Rayburn and the value of a good fight as a negotiating device,” Taylor said. “I prefer to fight rather than agree.”
“What if the other guy agrees with you?”
“Then I’ll change.”
Terry Dudley was the player who kept finding the money in his shoes after games. The cash totals always worked out to five dollars a rebound and two dollars a point. Terry figured the ratio out quickly. What he couldn’t figure was how the money got in his shoes so fast.
“I had to call the campus police last night again,” Dudley said. He was tearing a leaf into strips.
“Another girl?” Taylor tossed his onion and looked up at Dudley.
“Two,” Dudley said. “They were already nude and in my bed when I got home. They came in through the bathroom window.” Dudley looked down at Taylor. “That’s never happened to you?”
Taylor shrugged. “I’ve always lived off campus and I keep my windows locked.”
“I live on the fourth floor.”
“I’ll bet that cuts down on the fat girls.”
“You’d be surprised. I’ve met some determined fat women. It drives me crazy,” the basketball player said. “I mean, shit, one of those gals last night was pretty good-looking. I know this has to be wreaking terrible damage to my sensibilities as a human being, not to mention as an artist.”
“I know what you mean.” Taylor flipped his onion behind his back and caught it over the opposite shoulder.
“No you don’t.” Dudley stopped. “You didn’t even know about eating the onion. We have different souls and destinies, Taylor.”
“Yeah.” Taylor nodded slowly. “And you are a lot taller.”
“And I’m a lot taller,” Dudley agreed.
Dudley walked again, turning thoughtful. He snatched another leaf out of the upper branches of a live oak. They passed the big statue of the Old Cowboy, heading toward the iron bridge.
“Anyway, it’ll be the usual hazing horseshit. I know most of the guys who are in Spur now. They aren’t too bad. I don’t think any of them are dangerous.” He paused. “But of course they never are at this stage, are they, Taylor?”
“Ask me a question I can answer, for Chrissakes.” The quarterback was getting progressively hostile. He didn’t like surprises, but he was prepared to deal with them. He rolled the onion over his heavy knuckles.
They reached the bridge. Taylor stopped, held his long finger to his lips and leaned over the rail, listening to the water run over the rocky riverbed.
“Beautiful sound, isn’t it?”
“Comes right out of the ground like magic.” Terry Dudley began walking again. “The Comanches thought it was magic.”
Dudley suddenly made a gentle fake and took a short jump shot at an imaginary basket. He retrieved the imaginary ball from the net and dribbled over to Taylor. “Did A.D. lose as much money playing cards at the Deke house as I heard he did?”
“Probably.” Taylor pressed his thumb and forefinger against the scar tissue between his eyes, making his nose ache. “Don’t tell me how much you heard. I don’t want to know.”
“It was big, big, big, I heard.” Dudley took another fake and hooked toward the basket, which had mysteriously moved. Dudley made a swishing sound. He seldom hit the rim.
“I told you not to tell me,” Taylor moaned.
“I didn’t tell you. There’s big and there’s big.”
“You said big, big, big.”
“I know, man.” Dudley moved into Taylor’s face but kept the imaginary ball on his fingertips, low and away. He wanted the drive.
“Christ, where’s he gonna get that kind of money?”
“I’m just telling you because the president of the Deke house will be here tonight. I didn’t want him to know more about it than you. A.D. lost big.” Terry Dudley dropped his shoulder, dribbled off the bridge and slam-dunked into the crotch of a tree twelve feet off the ground.
“I was afraid about the rent money. It was more than that?” They walked along together again.
“The rent, the milk and egg money, Grandpa’s watch, Grandma’s silver and the baby’s shoes,” Terry Dudley said.
“Shit. What am I doing here? A.D. is in trouble and on the loose. We’re talking Richter-scale disaster looking to happen. I better ...”
“Too late.” Dudley grabbed Taylor’s arm. “Much too late. You may need tonight for an alibi and these Spur assholes are witnesses.”
“I was never a joiner....”
“Come, Taylor. Your fate is waiting over in that green dildo.”
The Tower, lit up with green lights for the special occasion, glowed above the trees directly ahead of them. It was a few minutes after twelve. “Let’s just stick together,” Terry Dudley said, “and let me do all the talking when we get there. I’ll get you out of a lot of the shit. I do believe my future will eventually be in politics, you just watch.” Dudley grinned.
“We’ll do a lot of pick and roll and short dump-offs on these guys. Okay, Taylor?”
“I follow you,” Taylor agreed. “You’re the tallest.”
“Hold it scum!” a voice bellowed from the interior shadows of the Tower. Green lights glowed against the monolith.
“See what I mean?” Dudley whispered. “Let me do all the talking.”
“Did you bring your onion, scum?” said the voice from inside the Tower. Terry Dudley grinned; he recognized the voice. The ornate heavy oak door was opened slightly.
Normally the Tower was kept locked, because it was such a favorite spot for suicides and snipers. That night the door was ajar and the reedy, vicious voice demanded to see the onions.
“Let me see that onion, scum.” The voice attempted strength but broke. Taylor could see a flickering of candlelight through the arched granite doorway. Taylor Rusk held up his onion.
“Where are the bra and panties, scum?”
“We are wearing them,” Dudley said. Then he whispered to Taylor, “There isn’t a son of a bitch in there gonna want to check on that after I do my entrance. Now, key on me.”
“You are two and one-half minutes late, scum. Stop whispering.”
Terry Dudley paused, then said slowly, “We were discussing psychotic behavior and obligations.”
The voice didn’t quite know what to do with that, and there was some loud whispering inside the glowing, throbbing Tower.
“Okay, scum,” the voice finally said, “you may pass to join your fellow scum already gathered and waiting above. When you pass through, keep your eyes down and don’t look in our faces.”
Taylor was thinking there would have to be some pretty tall faces inside for him and Dudley to look down and not see them. But before he could think more, Terry Dudley grabbed the first person he saw inside the Tower, the student commander of ROTC—who topped out at five feet eight—and went berserk. Seized by his uniform lapels, the ROTC student flopped around like a rag doll.
“Don’t you ever call me scum again, you little sawed-off Nazi dog turd, or I’ll kill you.” Taylor could hear the guy’s brass rattling. “I got pride, you hear me?
P-R-I-D-E.” Feigning madness, seven-foot-tall, 250-pound Terry Dudley shook the student soldier like a dirty mop.
In the flickering candlelight Taylor Rusk squinted into the dark corners of the octagonal first floor of the Tower. He could see humanoid shadows, motionless, stunned to inaction, paralyzed by the immense ferocity of the angry giant, the nine other outgoing members of Spur turned to furniture.
“You understand, Jack? Pride is why I’m here.” Dudley stopped shaking the man as suddenly as he had begun, his voice flat, calm. “Now, I assume you are going to want to discuss other virtues, like dedication, loyalty, honesty.”
“Don’t forget height,” Taylor added, still watching the motionless nine look at their shoes.
“Well, I’ll be glad to talk about them rationally upstairs.” Dudley was now brushing off the man’s coat and straightening his medals. “I’m sorry, buddy. I sort of lost it there ... pride, you know?”
Dudley pointed up the winding staircase. “You say the other scum are up there?” The small shattered man nodded dumbly. “Hey, you okay? I’m sorry. You just sort of got to me. Let’s go, Taylor.” Dudley strode over and mounted the staircase. “Geez, man, I’m really sorry, but it’s like a trigger with me, my pride. I’m thoroughly embarrassed. I hope this doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, maybe do this more often.”
As soon as Terry Dudley and Taylor Rusk disappeared above the first level of the Tower, frenzied whispering broke out on the ground floor.
“I doubt they’ll be fucking with our pride anymore tonight,” Dudley snickered. “What are they going to do, throw us out? I imagine we’ll be exempted from everything, especially having to swim in the fucking river in the dark.”
Terry and Taylor stood off to the side and watched that night as the Spur initiates were tormented by the outgoing ten: ritually humiliated, tossed fully clothed into the river, forced-fed onions and generally degraded until the morning sky turned pink.
It was a wonderful ritual to watch. It had a lot of little nuances that Dudley was always quick to point out. The outgoing ten were particularly cruel to Wendy Chandler’s fiancé, Lem Carleton III, reminding Three that since he was a freshman he had run for some office and lost every year. The insult made Lem cry.