by James Dargan
The Desert Dago
James Dargan
Published by James Dargan, 2018.
THE DESERT DAGO
Copyright © 2018 by James Dargan
Published by Danny Boy Books
Book Cover Design by Meghan Allbright
Image of Joseph Bonnano is Public Domain courtesy of WikiMediaCommons
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review
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Tiger Dawn
Bullet City
A Napoleon Clancy Book
Lenin's Ghost
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A Neo-Noir Crime Thriller
Pig Killer
Gun Smoke
Butcher Boy
Fat Cat
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Fender Bender
Sputnik Baby
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Dublin Murder Mystery
Spanish Poodle
Standalone
God and the Lonely Emperor
In the Dole-Drums
Portrait of Love Lost and Found in Ukrainian Cornfield
The Miracle at O'Hare's Pub
Mister Blue Sky
Out of the Cage
Master Sisyphus and the Saveloy Men
The Legend of Montpelier Hill
Transatlantic, The Ballad of Thomas Fox
Zombiana Europa, A Zombie Apocalypse Survival Story
Red Corner
Papyrus Comic Hobo
Irish Puns & Jokes
Almost the Best Pun and Joke Book Ever
Carnival Dracula
Mushroom
Old Man Blues
Mojo
Shanghailand
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The Desert Dago
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By James Dargan
COCA COLA AND VODKA
B29s OFFER GREAT SHADE
CHASE CLEARWATER AND THE ARLINGTON BUICK COVER-UP
THE ACCIDENT
BACK TO THE PRICKLY BEAR CACTI
A DAY OUT AT CENTRAL PARK
THE ALTER-EGO OF FRANCESCO DIMISSIO
THE 1706 SALOON
THE WORST HANGOVER IN THE WORLD
BABIES
BIG BOY BOB'S
BONEYARD REVISTED
CACTUS JACK'S REVISTED, TOO
THE GILA RIVER MONSTER
SPECTACLE OUTSIDE THE FOX THEATER
ARLINGTON
AGATHA CHRISTIE
CAP IN HAND
BENSONHURST, 9.30 P.M
REVENGE
THE FUNERAL
INTERROGATION
JUSTIN
THE WRATH
RETROPECTIVE CAMPING
About the Author
COCA COLA AND VODKA
Phillip Randall was advancing in years, and it showed: his skin was scorched and wrinkled from the southern Arizona sun. The years since he had moved from the East Coast had passed by quickly. His wife was dead now, and his two daughters had already left home – one married and living in the City of Angels, the other studying for a postgraduate degree in Chemistry at a college in Texas. Life had changed dramatically from how it had been. His only friend was the loud silence of an empty house. Sometimes it hurt him to still be alive, while his wife was in the grave. Guilt weighed heavily on him – his wife had died from skin cancer. The doctors had said her milky Irish skin in the desert sun had been her downfall. All that didn't matter now, though, as she was gone.
Since he had left the hustle and bustle of Bayside City on the East Coast, a town in a better place now than it had been in the decade just before the Second World War when he had had to escape for the safety of his young family, Randall had changed as a person.
The ex-cop lived in the up-and-coming town of Oro Valley, just north of Tucson in Pima County, a place he and his wife had fallen in love with soon after they had arrived in Arizona. They built their own house and moved into it just after the war. And it was there they had created a happy life together, even when Randall's private detective agency went bust after his partner and friend, Dick Devereux, was tragically killed, sending him into a deep depression. Randall was then forced to join the Tucson Police Department as a detective because of his failed business venture. He did that for some years, gaining quite a reputation as a conscientious cop with high moral standards and an eye for solving a crime. Then his wife got sick and he took early retirement to be her caregiver.
The phone rang. Randall got up from the veranda of his home, where he had been sipping on a bottle of Coca Cola from a straw, and walked into the living room.
“Yeah,” he said into the receiver.
After a brief conversation, he resumed his place on the veranda.
The deep azure of the Arizona sky made Randall happy when he was feeling sad. It made him calm and gave him a contentment he couldn't put a finger on. He whiled away the days doing this because there was nothing else for him to do. There was only so much you could cope with when your best friend was six feet under and your daughters were too busy to pay you much attention, even if they did love you.
He knew the obvious, too, that they loved him – and why not? Randall had been a model father, drinking moderately and not partaking in any whoring as many of his colleagues in the force had done.
But the loneliness was killing him. He wanted companionship, he craved it, but didn't want to hurt the memory of his beloved wife, Monica.
The model father part was all true. The moderate drinking, however, a lie, for Randall now drank like a fish. The habit started after his wife had been diagnosed with her illness. It had been his way of dealing with the tragedy. It was a secret affair. Nobody knew. Not his wife. Not even his two daughters. Nor any of his friends. Even now, as people passed by his house: Mr and Mrs Tressle, Frank Reeson, Joan with her poodle, waving happily to their 'stand-up' neighbour with a bottle of Coca Cola and a straw who had recently lost his wife to the big 'C', they were unaware the soda contained half vodka. Randall, always a stickler for appearances, would have rather died than give up the ghost and admit he was now a functioning alcoholic.
“And how are you today, Phil?” another neighbour, a Jew, Avi Soderberg, 80, asked at Randall's front gate as the ex-cop sipped on his habitual dark concoction from Columbus Georgia and the Slavic lands.
“Fine. And yourself?” Randall asked in his usual dry manner.
Soderberg talked about his day and the fact his back was playing him up. Randall replied with politeness, though he wished he was less so: all he wanted to do was go inside to refill his bottle.
“Well,” Soderberg said, tipping his Fedora, “I'll see you tomorrow.”
This was his life now – greetings and goodbyes. Sucking on his straw in the Tucson heat and Mrs Cabot’s homemade cheesecake. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't utopia, either.
Far from it:
Randall thought he had escaped from the Italian mob when he moved west, but they had just followed him over. Joseph Quatrocchi, head of the Quatrocchi crime family, had bought a home in Tucson and was very active around town – it wasn't uncommon for wiseguys in fine tailored suits and thick non-rhotic accents to be on the streets. Wetbacks,
too, were a constant problem.
Heaven on earth was that place over yonder.
When the sun had gone down Randall got up and made himself dinner. Nothing special, scrambled egg and toast, but he hadn't been a great eater since his wife's death anyway. After that he had a shower and went to bed, like always.
*****
The next morning, he woke up after a dozen nightmares. They had become more frequent these days. He didn't know why. Doctor Davies, his physician, thought it was depression – he had passed him on to a shrink friend, but Randall was unimpressed with the referral and told Davies in no uncertain terms what he thought about it.
“How are you today, sir?” Joe the postman asked Randall, handing him two letters as the fifty-seven-year-old was standing at the door in his housecoat and slippers, his hand over his eyes as the east facing sun blasted solar in his face.
“Fine... Any good news for me today?”
“Two letters. Don't know what's inside 'em, though.”
“Have a good one.”
Randall closed the door and went into the kitchen. He placed the letters on the breakfast bar and made himself a bowl of cornflakes because they 'helped his digestion', as Davies had recommended.
He opened the first letter: an electricity bill: not much to pay in the desert heat of Arizona. He looked at the envelope of the second: this was a letter, addressed to his wife. He read it. It was in his handwriting. That was how far his grief had come – he had started writing letters to his deceased love. He was that far gone in sorrow to think of much else.
B29s OFFER GREAT SHADE
Joe Quatrocchi, the Quatrocchi crime family boss, was now in semi-retirement in the Copper State. Although still king of his empire, he was now taking more of a back seat than some of his colleagues in the Commission were happy with. In Arizona Quatrocchi could be a father and husband without exposing his family to the violence he had grown up with back in Brooklyn and Sicily, respectively.
Franco 'Frank' Dimissio, Quatrocchi's man in Tucson, and a capo in the Family, was off to see his boss for his latest orders at the Military boneyard at the Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, a dozen miles south-east of Downtown Tucson. There was always a little trepidation for Mafiosi when they were called to a meeting at an unknown place – it was natural. All the way from Dimissio's home the wiseguy was trying to come to some conclusion as to what it was he had done wrong. Before he left home, he had dropped into the local Catholic church, the Santa Cruz church on S. Sixth Avenue, to say a prayer for himself, his wife of five years and his two kids. He just hoped he was coming back alive, but the life of a hood was precarious at best. He would just have to keep his fingers crossed.
At the boneyard, standing under a decommissioned Boeing B29 Superfortress bomber to get away from the heat of the day – the only one in the place – was the bespectacled Quatrocchi, holding a water canteen in one hand and a cigarette in the other. With him was an overweight man in his late forties.
Dimissio's '59 white Chevy Impala pulled up at the gates to the boneyard. A soldier in a uniform (a sergeant in Quatrocchi's pay, of course), checked his codename and let him through, telling him to park his ride just inside the gates. Quatrocchi’s minions were all over Tucson and the United States: Bellboys. Waitresses. Politicians. Teenagers with a rough edge trying to make a buck or two. They were everywhere. And nowhere. After doing that, the soldier directed him to where he was to meet Quatrocchi. The sergeant gave the gangster a canteen full of water.
“This way?” Dimissio asked the soldier again, pointing in the direction the sergeant had told him to go.
“Yeah, eight-hundred yards.”
Dimissio went on his way as the sun burnt his head.
“How much longer we gotta wait?” Bernard Purcell, a Tucson Pontiac and Buick car salesman, asked Quatrocchi.
“He'll be here soon. Have patience.” The mobster took another deep drag on his smoke, then said as he looked up: “Wouldn't it be goddamn neat-a to fly in one of these things-a?”
“Yeah, it sure would.”
Purcell could have told Quatrocchi he had been on active service during the war, where he had been a corporal in an Infantry Logistical unit in Italy from 1943 to '44, but he didn't want to reveal too much about his personal life. Purcell knew what Quatrocchi did for a living but saw the Castellammare del Golfo native as an opportunity. A big one. He was putting his whole career, reputation and financial wellbeing on the line for his greed, and if the whole thing went belly up, his life, too.
Dimissio still couldn't help feeling that his final moments on planet earth were going to be in an aviation boneyard, amongst the skeletal remains of some of the greatest airplanes ever built. It was a good ending and a completely ignominious one, but that was life, Dimissio guessed, and being a member of the Mob was life, too, in a sense.
“Franco!” Quatrocchi exclaimed with a smile, seeing his man. They greeted each other as Sicilians did. “Frank, I'd like you to meet Bernard Purcell.”
“Frank. Pleased to meetcha, Bernard,” Dimissio said with a smile, thankful he wasn't lying face down in a pool of his own blood after a bullet in the back of the head, or worse still, a knife in the chest.
“Please, call me Bernie,” Purcell said.
“I've gotta proposition for you, Franco – you interested?” Quatrocchi asked in a tone that wasn't a question but a matter of fact, like he had to be obeyed or else.
“Whatever, boss, yeah.”
Quatrocchi put his arm around Dimissio and gave him the details of what Purcell had told him a week before over dinner.
Quatrocchi had met Purcell at the car salesman's dealership on E. Broadway Boulevard not too far from his home. Quatrocchi had been after a new car for his other half. Eventually, he had bought a brand-new sky blue 1960 Ford Thunderbird off Purcell. Quatrocchi's wife, Fay, fell in love with it. Quatrocchi went to visit the car salesman again after the purchase to tell Purcell the good news. The two men struck up a ‘friendship', which wasn't too deep, but there was something there, at least on Quatrocchi's side, probably because Purcell had made his wife happy, which meant a lot to Quatrocchi. The poor kid from western Sicily had little in common with the Methodist from Midland, Texas, who had moved to Tucson after the war to start his car dealership when he inherited a substantial amount off his grandfather's will. Purcell had heard rumours around town about the wise guy from the East Coast and found it hard to believe when one of his employee's, Nathan Redfearn, let him know who the New York Sicilian was.
“I gotta proposition for you,” Purcell said as they were having dinner in Purcell's favourite Chinese restaurant in Tucson, The Forbidden Palace. Quatrocchi realized that since the Apalachin debacle three years earlier J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI were following him like a seagull to popcorn on Coney Island, so he had to be careful.
“What kinda proposition, Bernie?” Quatrocchi asked with a smirk.
“Cars.”
“What about cars?” Quatrocchi said, lowering his cutlery. The four-letter word had piqued his interest.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Course I can.”
“Okay, here's the deal,” Purcell began after he had lit Quatrocchi's cigarette and his own, “I got some cheap cars coming in. Real cheap. More than two hundred of the sonsofbitches. Take ‘em off my hands for half the price... You interested?”
Quatrocchi was taken aback: he didn't expect Purcell to say what he had. But business was business, and the Sicilian was always after the next deal.
“So whatcha trying to tell me?”
“As I said: you buy ‘em off me. Two hundred and two Buick Electra hardtops, the company's newest car.”
“So, what's the catch?”
“There aiyn't one, Joe, that's the beauty of it.”
“How much?”
“They cost $1,400 apiece, new. Unit price, as you're a friend, I can do 'em for $1,200, individually. Take all of 'em off me and you get 'em for a fraction over a hundred gees, at $10
1,000. That includes my mark-up.”
“So how much is that per unit cost?”
“You'd be paying $500 per car...”
This was the kind of deal that Quattrocchi loved.
“There's gotta be a catch?”
“No, Joe, there ainy't one, I promise you.”
Quatrocchi had been round long enough to know when he was being taken for a schmuck, and for some strange reason, he wasn't feeling it with Purcell. Maybe he thought the white Protestant from west Texas was too law-abiding and honest to pull a fast one on one of the most dangerous men on the continent.
“I want-a more details... That's not to say I aiyn't interested, I just don't like getting fucked over, that’s all. Capiche, Bernie?”
“Yeah, whatever you say, Joe.”
Dimissio was a trusted member of the Quatrocchi crime family, a capo and friend of Vincent Fortunato, the Family’s consigliere, who was close to Quatrocchi's son, Salvatore 'Bill' Quatrocchi.
“So, you need to talk to Vinny – see if he's up for it,” Quatrocchi said to Dimissio.
The Quattrocchi crime family capo looked Purcell up and down. He didn't trust him, and like most mobsters, trust was a big obstacle in doing business.
“Can I have a word with you for minute, boss?” Dimissio then said.
“Sure.”
Dimissio took Quatrocchi to one side:
“This guy's a cocksucker. I don't trust him.”
“We just need to check him out... Business could be good. Just think about it.”
And it was true: the profit they could earn off the Buicks back east could be phenomenal. They could make triple the price Purcell was offering for the whole two hundred.
“I will, boss... Impressive beast,” Dimissio then commented as he looked up at the B29.
CHASE CLEARWATER AND THE ARLINGTON BUICK COVER-UP
Bernard Purcell had known Chase Clearwater since high school in Midland, Texas. Clearwater was now director of the General Motors car plant in Arlington, just south of Dallas. Since Purcell had moved to Arizona, they saw each other rarely – or at least until Purcell found out his old high school chum had climbed up the ladder in the automotive industry. This was an opportunity he just couldn't let go.