by James Dargan
“What can I getcha, sir?” the young woman said behind the counter of the diner to Randall.
“Just a coffee to begin with.”
Big Boy Bob's was empty.
“Are you staying here or do you wanna sit down?”
“I'll sit down.”
Randall sat down at a table and opened the menu card. As he did, a car pulled up. The man walked into the diner, saw a table he liked and sat down. The waitress went over to him. They talked for a moment and she left.
Randall was deliberating over whether to have the cheeseburger and fries or the steak, onion rings and sweet potato. As he was mulling over the decision, another car drove into the parking lot. The man got out and entered Big Boy Bob’s.
“Sit down,” Purcell said to Clearwater as he approached him.
“Did we have to meet so far from Tucson?” Clearwater asked.
“Sit down,” Purcell said again, this time with more impatience. “Do you wanna order something?”
“Just a strong coffee.”
The two men talked.
“You ready to order now, sir?” the waitress asked, standing over Randall's table again.
“A cheeseburger and fries, please.”
“Anything cold to drink?” the waitress said as she scribbled the order down on her pad.
“Maybe an iced tea.”
“Right away, sir.”
Randall was watching the two strangers across from him, mainly because they were the only other two people in the joint.
“So, these cars, when do you want them for?” Clearwater asked as two black Buicks pulled up outside the diner.
“As soon as possible.”
Dimissio and Silvestri got out of the one, Danello with Mazzia from the other.
The bell above the door rang out. Randall looked at them as they walked in – he knew something was up. Clearwater glanced at them momentarily before he returned to the conversation with Purcell.
The four mobsters went to the bar. Dimissio ordered four coffees while they sat down. Purcell turned to Dimissio. The two men looked at each other.
“I'm just going to the restroom,” Purcell said, standing up.
“Take your time,” Clearwater replied. He was in a good mood. He was going to make even more money.
Purcell walked past them and disappeared into the restroom.
Randall suspected something big was going to happen, like a mob hit or something equally terrible. He put his hand up. The waitress came over.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I'd like to pay the check... And,” Randall then said as he pulled the woman down, so he could whisper something in her ear, I need you to get into the kitchen...”
It took him all of twenty seconds to tell her, and his serious demeanor, cop-like face full of veritable wisdom, persuaded her he knew what he was talking about. She went behind the counter, and into the kitchen to Mack, the short-order cook, and said to him quietly:
“We gotta get outta here, Mack. There's gonna be a shooting.”
Rio Rico hadn't had a murder in over twenty-five years, but the two diner workers were in no mood to see the first one in that time. They ran out the back of the kitchen and hid behind the two dumpsters next to Mack's red '48 Studebaker truck
Randall, meanwhile, got up himself, and slowly walked to the door, looking at Clearwater and the mobsters in an unobvious way while doing it. He got into his car, checked in his glove compartment for his gun, and drove away – but not too far, mind you, just out of the parking lot to a small dirt track that ran parallel to the diner. He cut the car lights and got out again, gun in his hand, and walked twenty yards to some shrubs that gave him good cover from being spotted but also enough of a vantage point to see what was going on inside.
Purcell was sweating profusely as he sat on one of the toilets in a cubicle. He had sentenced his good friend to death. Suddenly the door opened to the restroom. Somebody knocked on the cubicle door:
“Are you in there, Purcell?” It was Dimissio.
“Yeah.”
“Getcha ass outta there and come inside.”
Shaking, Purcell left the cubicle, expecting to be shot in the face. It didn't happen.
“What's going on?” he asked Dimissio.
“Your friend's waiting for you.”
They left the restroom. Around the table with Clearwater were Silvestri, Danello and Mazzia, all smoking and in a convivial mood – except for Clearwater, who was terrified, for obvious reasons.
“Who are these men, Bernie?” Clearwater asked his friend. Purcell, ashamed, just looked away. “Well fucking say something?!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Dimissio then said. “Hey, guys, where's the service in this place... I'm starved.”
Mazzia got up to check things out. He went into the kitchen, checked outside briefly, then came back in:
“They've split.”
“Make me a ham sandwich,” he ordered. Mazzia disappeared once again into the kitchen to make Dimissio a sandwich “What's your name again?” he asked Clearwater.
“Chase. Chase Clearwater.”
“And you know why you're here, Chase Clearwater?”
“No.”
“Don't bullshit me, asshole. Tell me?”
“I don't know.”
“Heard of a Mr Quatrocchi?”
“No.”
“You made some deal with him, didn't you?”
“I've never heard the fucking name in my life.” And on that point Clearwater was telling the truth – the name Quatrocchi meant nothing to him. “What the fuck did you do, Bernie?!”
Purcell just couldn't look at Clearwater.
“You, me and your fucking friend here are gonna go for a ride, you hear... Get up.”
Silvestri pulled his gun out from under the table he had had there pointed at his victim for the last few minutes, got up and ordered Clearwater to do the same.
“Shit!” Randall said as he fell to the ground to avoid detection.
Purcell and Clearwater had their hands in the air, behind them the four mobsters - with guns pointed at their targets – followed.
Dimissio and Silvestri got in the car with Purcell. Danello and Mazzia – who had made the sandwich for Dimissio – got in their ride with Clearwater.
They were on their way to the Military boneyard at the Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, more than an hour from Rio Rico to meet Quatrocchi and his son for a serious discussion.
“What are you gonna do with us?” Purcell asked in the back of the car, Dimissio next to him, puffing on a cigarette and munching on his sandwich.
“We just wanna talk to the two of you... Don't worry, I'm sure we're gonna come to some arrangement.”
“What's going to happen to me?” Clearwater said to Mazzia. The wiseguy had his gun pointed at him and he was grinning in a depraved fashion.
Dimissio wanted to shoot them both, but Quatrocchi had given him his orders – bring them to him. Dimissio was still angry at the boss of the Family: the whole shit with the Buicks had started with him trusting Purcell in the first place. The rift it had now caused between him and Parrino could cause a civil war in the Family. The other four Families of New York - as well as the mobs of Kansas City, New Orleans, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Chicago would take advantage of it if they saw they could.
BONEYARD REVISTED
“Whatcha gonna do to 'em, Pops?” Quatrocchi Junior asked the old man as they were waiting by the car inside the boneyard. As usual, Quatrocchi had been given his clearance inside the place by military men he had in his pay.
They were with Raymond Todaro, Parrino's soldier and close friend. Consigliere Fortunato had pushed for his representation on Parrino's behest. If it wasn't sorted out on this night, Parrino was coming after Dimissio, even though he knew he couldn't kill a 'made guy'.
“I don't know-a yet,” Quatrocchi answered.
Quatrocchi was known for his level-headedness and calm outer appearance. His wife, Fay, had had so
me influence on that. Quatrocchi had said many times that if he hadn't met his wife when he had, he could have ended up like so many other Sicilian mobsters – dead from a bullet and in the gutter.
“Why you so calm about all this, Pops?” Quatrocchi Junior asked, frustrated. He wanted to break some heads. Shoot somebody for no reason.
“I'm fucking-a freezing. Bring me my coat!”
The fall in Tucson at night could catch you unaware and was bitterly cold sometimes.
Quatrocchi Junior rushed to the car and brought his father his coat.
Car lights pierced the darkness up ahead as the three mobsters stood to attention.
“I think they're here, Pops?” Quatrocchi Junior said, throwing down his cigarette and taking out his gun.
“Be careful,” Quatrocchi exclaimed as his son escorted him behind the back of the car. Mob bosses could never be sure.
“Here are the pieces of shit,” Dimissio said as Purcell and Clearwater dropped to their knees in front of Quatrocchi, a gun each pointed at their heads.
“I'm disappointed in you, Bernard,” Quatrocchi said.
“I'm sorry.”
“You motherfucker, you cheated me, Bernard!”
“I know. And I'm sorry... Please, for God's sake, don't kill me, don't do it!” Clearwater screamed.
“Can't I just put a slug in him?” Todaro asked Quatrocchi.
“You see, Bernard, this guy wants to kill-a you... Whatcha think of that-a, motherfucker?!”
“Let me explain everything!”
Quatrocchi didn't care much for Purcell: he was expendable. Clearwater, on the other hand, was the kind of guy Quatrocchi liked to do business with.
Purcell begged his case for an hour, but it was too late for him.
“Get rid of his body,” Quatrocchi ordered Silvestri, after they had murdered him.
“Please, Mr Quatrocchi, don't kill me, please... I'll do anything you say,” Clearwater begged.
It always ended like that. Quatrocchi knew a business partner when he met one.
“So, this Buick factory you manage, how many cars do you produce yearly?” Quatrocchi asked Clearwater.
Numbers and statistics. Production values. Return on Investment. Profit and loss. The machinations of the automobile production line...
Clearwater thought they were going to kill him. He mumbled and sobbed his way through his ad-hoc presentation, close to defecating.
“Stop with that shit, you motherfucker,” Dimissio said to Clearwater before he slapped him with the back of his hand around the face. That caused Clearwater to weep even more.
Witnessing all this (and Purcell's murder) was Randall - who had snuck in the boneyard because he had a pair of wire cutters handy. He had been in two minds whether to tail Silvestri and Mazzia, who had thrown Purcell's body in the trunk for disposal, but in the end thought keeping his tabs on Quatrocchi and his goons would be his best bet. One thing was for sure, though, Quatrocchi and his associates were going down if they didn't kill him first.
Two decades had come and gone. Bayside City was now a better place than it had been in the thirties when he had been in law enforcement. The Irish mobsters had all but disappeared. The Poles extinct. The Jews held a minority stake in anything illicit. The Italians were still there, naturally, but had been under the influence of The Commission over recent years and had lost most of the autonomy Massimo Bertoni and his mob once cherished. But it was still the Italians. Randall had escaped the East Coast for the warmth of the desert, but now, somehow, they had followed him out here. During the years as a private detective in Arizona, Randall's investigations had been innocuous by the standards of his former home: insurance fraud, divorce cases regarding infidelity, conducting background checks on potential business partners, investigating arson crimes, safeguarding business locations, locating and recovering stolen property, and interrogating witnesses in some crime ad nauseam. He had always been paid well for those things, but now, it was for free and serious. Quatrocchi didn't fuck about. If they caught him, they wouldn't show him any mercy.
Randall mused about going out with all guns firing to end Quatrocchi's life. That thought lasted all of five seconds until he realized he was outmanned and outgunned.
“What are you going to do with me?” Clearwater asked after Danello had pulled him up by the shirt collars.
Quatrocchi had already told him how it was going to be, but he wanted the scare factor to work on Clearwater.
“Shall I just whack this fuck of a flea?” Dimissio instigated, his Colt 1911 pressing against the bulging vein in Clearwater's right temple.
Quatrocchi said something in Italian to his man and Dimissio lowered his piece.
“Chase, are you with me?” the mob boss asked.
“Yes-sir-yes-sir-I'm-with-you,” Clearwater snapped in a staccato beat which contained a poetry of fear.
Quatrocchi approached Clearwater, who expected the bullet. But Quatrocchi did something that Clearwater was never expecting: he kissed him on the cheek.
“What's that for?” Clearwater asked, confused and still shaking.
“We are gonna be-a the best of friends-a...”
CACTUS JACK'S REVISTED, TOO
Randall had followed Quatrocchi back to his Catalina Vista home in Tucson from the boneyard. He had already thought about going to the cops – but the Tucson Police Department was probably already in his pay. He didn't trust them. They were full of Patrick Mannings, that was for sure.
No, he was going to go after the man and his organization himself. If he died while trying, he died – that would mean he would meet his beloved wife sooner, rather than later.
“And how are you today, Mr Randall?” Joan with her poodle asked as she passed Randall, who was sitting on the veranda.
“Fine,” he drawled.
Randall didn't have his habitual bottle of Coca Cola half full of vodka – now he had a strong black coffee in his hand. If he wanted to do what he had set out to do, he needed a clear head – he had a meeting with an ex-colleague from the TPD, Detective Jack Lyson.
*****
Randall was at Cactus Jack's at noon. The bar hadn't changed much since the late 1930s, when he and his family had first arrived in Tucson. Randall had had many a great night with Dick Devereux in the place, before Devereux's tragic demise on 6th June 1944 – D-Day - at the hands of Charles Ryder, a felon they had been chasing for over two months.
“How you doing, Phil?” Lyson said as he joined Randall at the table.
Pat Boone's Don't Forbid Me was playing on the jukebox. On the next table from them, two drunk buddies were talking about the Oakland Raiders drafting the first Hispanic man in pro football, Tom Flores. At the bar, two hookers - whose faces were powdered like Marie Antoinette in here heyday at court - were working on a fat and sweaty suit on his lunch break.
“Fine. What you drinking?”
“Just a soda.”
“On duty?” Randall asked with a smile.
Randall had a coffee in front of him.
“Yeah, you know how it is.”
“What have you got on Quatrocchi at the precinct?” Randall asked, back from the bar.
“Quatrocchi, whatcha wanna know about that Wop piece of shit?” Lyson said, nearly choking on his soda.
“Listen, I'm going to tell you something now you're not going to believe... But you've got to keep this shit between me and you, understand?”
“What is it?” Randall told Lyson what he had seen. “And you're sure it was Quatrocchi and his crew?” Lyson then asked.
“Yes, goddamn it.”
Lyson knew how powerful Quatrocchi was in Tucson – all the petty criminals along with their bigger brethren owned him an oath of fealty.
“And how many people has he whacked back east?”
“I don't know.”
“And what are you asking me to do?”
Randall had only got to know Lyson the last few years before his wife got cancer, which had forced him to take ea
rly retirement. But of all the cops in the department, he trusted him the most. He saw a lot of himself in Lyson: he saw how he had started out as a young cop in Bayside City, trying to fight crime in an honest way.
“Join me to kill these cocksuckers.”
“Now hold on, Phil,” Lyson said, putting down his soda, “this is a big thing you're asking of me here now, buddy, and-”
“But just listen!” Randall broke in. “Just listen.” He slammed his fists down. The two drunk buddies on the next table – now discussing the civil rights of Negroes in their state - turned around:
“Can you please lower the level? Me and my pal here are trying to talk.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Randall said.
Order was resumed.
“I dunno, Phil, I really dunno.”
“Can I ask you a serious question, Jack?”
“Aiyn't all your questions serious, Phil?” Lyson said dead pan. He lit a cigarette. “But go on?”
“Why did you become a cop all them years ago?”
“Um, shit, Phil, are you gonna give me the lecture again?”
Randall had always been into sermonizing others on their moral ineptitudes and digressions – nothing had changed in almost twenty-five years.
“No, I'm just asking you a question.”
“Okay... umm... Well, like I've told you before, and like you've heard off me more than a dozen fucking times,” he took a long drag of his smoke, “because I wanted to change the world, like you already know.”
“So, try to change it now, join me.”
“Like some vigilantes, you mean?”
“We wouldn't be that – we're cops.”
“Cops aiyn't always on the right side of the law.”
“That's a matter of opinion.”
“It's a matter of fact.”
“So, you won't join me?”
“I didn't say that.”
“Then what did you say?”
“I said it's a matter of fact.”
“What is?”
“What you said.”
“And what did I say?”
“That it's a matter of opinion that cops aiyn't always on the right side of the law.”