by James Dargan
“Nothing’s legit, Earl, I thought you knew that already?”
Bowen sniggered, then said:
“So, where you taking ‘em tonight?”
“Socrates and then The Mousetrap.”
“Am I invited?”
“No... This is my business.”
Bowen walked away.
Like any business, you had to trust the people you were working with - it didn’t matter if it was a local garage or a multinational concern or a deal between two close friends: the t-word was everything. Clearwater had gambled BIG: Purcell was dead because of it. Bowen, along with Carl Bellamy and James Long, were the guys ‘in on it’ with him at the plant.
“Turn around!” Clearwater chased after Bowen. “Where you going?”
“You’ve gone too far, Chase.”
“Have I?”
“Yeah. You were told to keep it between brothers.”
By brothers, Bowen meant their southern brethren.
Though white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, Clearwater had never gone with that bullshit – he was a free spirit, open to making money by any means, disregarding the political and moral intent involved. Like Purcell, he loved the greenbacks.
“Come tonight, then,” Clearwater answered, “but don’t tell the others.”
“So what time ya’ll meeting at the Socrates?”
“Eight sharp.”
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The Mousetrap was the best place in town for a dance and a blowjob. Clearwater had chosen it for the simple reason he was paying by the hour for a private room at the back of the club and it was both cheaper for drinks and the girls were more laid back than the bitches who always refused to suck his balls at the Lust Palace on McKinney Avenue.
Dimissio and the boys got there after ten, full from a hearty meal at the Socrates. Clearwater had reserved a private room. Quatrocchi had decided to lay low in his hotel room.
“What do you think, boys?” Clearwater said. He hated them. He wanted them dead. They were his nemeses.
“Nice joint,” Dimissio commented as he sat down on the couch.
“The girls will be here in a minute,” Clearwater said, laughing nervously.
There was a brief chit-chat which was all jolly enough until four girls – who were all beautiful and under twenty years of age – entered the room.
“Hello, gentlemen,” the girl ahead of the rest, a blonde with sharp green eyes, announced in a squeaky, fervent voice. “My name’s Sonia... And this is Billie, Cassandra and Ann!”
“Come over here, baby,” Mazzia said to Cassandra. The Quatrocchi Family soldier had a thing for Latinas – his girlfriend back in Brooklyn, Pura, who was Puerto Rican, made him feel good on his off days. A Mexican señorita could easily replace her for the time being.
“What’s your name?” Cassandra asked as she approached him.
“Andy... And yours?”
“Cassandra.”
“You wanna sit on my lap?”
“Of course I do.”
The night was going well as far as the Brooklyn boys were concerned, but Clearwater, on the other hand, thought spending cash on boneheads who would soon put a bullet in the back of his head was a stupid idea.
Mazzia and Silvestri had gone into separate rooms with two girls apiece, leaving Dimissio and Clearwater to talk business. The capo had his orders from Quatrocchi:
“You know what we want, and we want it all.”
“I don’t understand?” Clearwater said.
Dimissio gave a smile before his facial expression turned mean:
“This thing you got going, it’s ours, fuck-head. For the taking. Better get used to it.”
Clearwater’s mind went somewhere else again to the point when Purcell got whacked and the blood spray covered his face and chest and many other parts of his body. This was it. He was really fucked. All the greed and corruption he had overseen was now at the gate, impatient as hell and waiting to get in.
“I know. Killing my friend sort of told me that.”
“Don’t get smart, cowboy.”
“I’m not.”
“Well from where I’m sitting, it sure sounds like it...”
*****
“A soda water, please,” Randall said at the bar.
“Don’t feel like drinking?” the barman asked.
Randall had never visited this sort of establishment in his career as a cop and virtuous family man. The sight astounded him, not all in an unpleasant way.
“No.”
“Are you from outta town?”
“Yep.”
“Which state?”
“Guess?” Randall said with a smirk on his stone face which equalled a rebuke.
Randall walked away from the bar.
The Mousetrap had been named after Agatha Christie’s eponymous play by the owner, Cecil Reed, who had seen it on its opening night in Nottingham, England in 1952 and had loved it.
Randall scanned the place for the familiar faces he recognized from the Tucson boneyard and the airport – namely Dimissio and his cronies. None present. Not surprising, really, as they were all hidden away from view in private rooms.
“Well how you doing, Earl?!” the barman said as Bowen walked into The Mousetrap with two burly rednecks, all of them wearing Stetsons.
“Is Clearwater in here?”
“Yeah. In the back... Who are them greasers anyways?”
“I-talians, goddamn it.”
*****
“Who the fuck is that?” Dimissio said to Clearwater after they had discussed business. He was getting a blowjob off Billie, a hot ginger from Little Rock, Arkansas, when there was a knock on the door.
“I don’t know,” Clearwater answered as he was exploring Ann’s impressive cleavage.
KNOCK. KNOCK.
“Open the fucking door,” the mobster ordered Clearwater.
The Texan tutted, got up and opened the door.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Clearwater said.
“Aiyn’t you gonna let me in?” answered Bowen.
“Um, err, well-”
“Who the fuck is this, Chase?” Dimissio asked.
“Yeah, who is it?” Billie the hooker said, wanting the Brooklynite to cum so she could get a nice tip and move on to her next client (whoever that happened to be).
“A friend.”
Dimissio had his gun at the ready, just in case.
“Well invite him in.”
“You better come in,” Clearwater said to Bowen.
“Well, if it aiyn’t fucking Yosemite Sam,” said Dimissio with a laugh. Bowen wasn’t amused.
Clearwater knew about Bowen’s Ku Klux Klan connections but had always turned a blind eye to them. He also realized Dimissio didn’t want to antagonize Bowen as he had an unholy temper.
Bowen walked in after he had told his two ‘helpers’ to go and get themselves drinks at the bar. Clearwater closed the door.
“Howdy, ladies, howdy partner,” Bowen said, taking off his hat, playing the cowboy card to momentarily entertain the stranger from out of town.
“I’d like you to meet Earl Bowen,” said Clearwater.
Dimissio was confused: he wasn’t expecting guests, and he needed to ask some serious questions:
“And who are you?” He pulled the whore off him. “And I don’t mean nothing personal by it.”
“As my friend said. Earl Bowen,” said Clearwater.
“And what, Earl Bowen, do I owe the pleasure?” Dimissio said just before he pulled out his Browning pistol.
The two whores screamed.
“Now looky here,” Bowen said calmly, “there’s no need for that.” He placed his hands in the air. “Put the gun down, son.”
“I aiyn’t your son, motherfucker... Chase, open the door for the ladies, will you?”
Billie and Ann vacated the room faster than Clearwater could say ‘go’. They wouldn’t say shit. They had seen enough violence and blood in The Mousetrap to know when to say someth
ing and when to keep their mouths shut.
“Listen, guys, I think we should talk this through,” Clearwater said. Bowen still had his hands in the air. “Otherwise I can only see this ending violently...”
*****
In the bar, Randall was eyeing up the clientele: cowboys, hookers and Texan oddballs, for the most part. Little did he know that Bowen’s cohorts, Bud Casper and Myer Smith – hardcore members of the Ku Klux Klan – were sitting right next to him, talking about a movie Smith had seen with his wife the night before:
“Was it really that bad?” Casper asked, wide-eyed.
“Yeah – fucking goddamn subtitles.”
“And what was the flick called again?”
“La Doka Vica... La Poka Vita... I dunno, some shit like that.”
“I think you mean La Dolce Vita. Federico Fellini. He’s an Italian director,” Randall butted in. He hadn’t seen the movie yet, but he had read an extensive review of the film in the Arizona Daily Star.
“Whatcha say?” Smith, an imposing man, said as he turned his head to the stranger sitting to his right.
“The movie you were talking about. It’s called La Dolce Vita. Just saying, fellas.” Randall smirked. “I’ll leave you alone now.”
“Goddamn Yankee,” Casper said to his friend.
The two men returned to their conversation.
Bowen, now sitting opposite Dimissio, still had the gun pointed at him but the mood was slightly better than sixty seconds before. Clearwater was standing in the middle, the memory of Purcell’s violent death the foremost thing on his mind as he tried to think of a way to get out alive.
“You’re his partner?” Bowen asked Dimissio.
“Yeah.” Bowen was stoned-faced. True men from Texas had to be. They had no other choice: Gary Cooper made them that way. “And who the fuck are you?”
“Earl Bowen, like I said.”
“I know that, but I mean who are you?”
“I think you better tell him, Chase,” Bowen said to Clearwater.
*****
Bowen’s two guys had moved away from Randall and were sitting at a table next to the stage, oblivious to the fact their boss had a gun pointed at his head. Mazzia and Silvestri - who had had their fun - were now themselves at the bar, sipping on cocktails. Randall had been watching them since they had come in. They didn’t look right. They weren’t cowboys. The world-weary ex-cop knew mobsters when he saw them – they looked too out of place: olive skin, dark eyes, well-dressed, unlike the checked-shirted cattlemen in their ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots.
*****
“What are you going to do with him?” Clearwater asked Dimissio.
“I dunno.”
“You wanna kill me, dontcha?” Bowen said. He felt confident: he was in his own city and state, around people that would back him up. “Yeah, I can see it in your eyes.”
“What the fuck?!” Clearwater called out as Dimissio started pistol whipping Bowen with his piece.
“Doing what the prick deserves,” Dimissio said as his hand went up and down on Bowen’s face. A minute later Dimissio was off Bowen’s corpse, blood splatter on his face, the White supremacist’s skull split in two, a hole now where his nose used to be, one eye protruding from the socket, the other down deep within his massacred head. “Did you like that?” Dimissio said, wiping his face of the blood. Clearwater had found a place behind one of the couches. He was cowering, sobbing. If Dimissio didn’t kill him, Clearwater would be having bad dreams forever. “Well say something then, you prick?”
“I don’t want to die!”
“Is that all the fuck you can say?” The mobster glanced at Bowen’s body, cringed, then turned back to Clearwater. “Is it?”
“Don’t kill me, please.”
Quatrocchi had given him his orders: Clearwater was a pawn to use for the business: he must be kept alive... for the time being at least.
But he knew he couldn’t just let a man who had witnessed him beating a man to death live. That would be stupid...
After he had cleaned the blood off his face, Dimissio quickly left the room and joined Silvestri and Mazzia at the bar.
“Where the fuck you been?” Mazzia asked as Dimissio put his arm around him.
“Let’s go, boys,” answered Dimissio.
They knew by his eyes he had done something to warrant a quick escape. Outside The Mousetrap, they broke into a parked car and drove away.
Randall had witnessed their exit but thought nothing of it until a commotion erupted from the back of the club. Within minutes of that the Dallas Police was on the scene.
“Can you tell me what’s happening, Officer?” Randall asked a cop on the sidewalk.
People in. People out. Police sirens. Nervous activity on the streets. Bowens’ two heavies had been the ones to discover their chief’s and Clearwater’s bodies and had called it in.
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir.”
“I’m an ex-cop with the Tucson PD... I know who did it. I was in there when it happened.”
“Come with me, sir,” the cop then said. Inside the club, Detective Lieutenant Giles Jansen was busy talking to witnesses. “Lieutenant, this man wants to talk to you about the murders.”
“And your name?” Jansen asked Randall.
“Phillip Randall. I’m a retired police detective of the Bayside City and Tucson Police Departments, respectively, sir.”
“Sit down.” The two men talked. Randall told Jansen what he had seen. The cop didn’t like ex-cops from out of town stealing his glory – it wasn’t good for his image as the best crime buster in Dallas County. “So, you’re telling me it’s a mob hit?”
“Yeah... Heard of Joseph Quatrocchi?”
“Yeah – of the Quatrocchi crime family.”
“He’s involved.”
“Thanks for the info.” Jansen looked around. His Detective Sergeant, Warren Gee, put his thumb up and winked. “It’s time for me to go, Mr... um-”
“Randall, Phillip Randall.”
“Have you gotta contact number I can getcha at if I need to ask you any further questions?”
Randall hadn’t used business cards since he left the TPD.
“I can write you my number down... Have you got a pen?”
“Thanks,” Jansen said as he put the napkin with Randall’s number into his pocket.
Randall left The Mousetrap and took a cab to the Greater Southwest International Airport to catch a plane back to Tucson.
CAP IN HAND
When Dimissio told his boss what had happened with his newest business partner, Quatrocchi was livid: Clearwater and his cars were going to be a minor financial stream in the Southwest – who knew, maybe a serious one in the future. Now Quatrocchi would never know, because one of his men with a slippy trigger finger had whacked him.
“I had to boss, I had to,” Dimissio said, with a ‘cap in his hand stance’ and his head to the floor. Quatrocchi said something in Sicilian. “I know, sir,” Dimissio said after his boss had finished.
Now Dimissio had a problem – he had promised Parrino fifty percent of his share of the Purcell/Clearwater action. That was now dead in the water.
“Parrino’s gonna want-a... compensazione, capisce?”
“Yeah, boss.”
You motherfucker, Dimissio thought as he stared hard at Quatrocchi right in the face, you motherfucker... I killed for you, I’ve always done your bidding, and you tell me the cocksucker Parrino wants ‘compensazione’... What about my compensation for protecting your sorry old-country ass for setting up the deal for you in the first place, you prick?”
“And what’s your-a proposal-a?”
Although as Italian as pizza and proud of the fact, Dimissio hated the way his father and Quatrocchi and the countless other immigrants from the old country vowelized their ‘A’s’ for almost every ending of a word. It was an irritant, a topic of conversation for the American generation of mobsters who spoke, maybe not English perfect per se, but at least the non-rho
tic kind that gave them legitimacy to the average native-born American.
“What do you propose, sir?”
Just then, Quatrocchi’s wife came in with the espresso and, as usual, the Italian biscotti cookies.
“Put ‘em on the table there, dear,” Quatrocchi told his wife. Fay Quatrocchi did as she was told, as always, then, compliantly, as always, left the room. “What were you saying?” Quatrocchi added.
“My next move, what is it?” Dimissio asked with bated breath.
“I don’t know, Franco, what do you think-a?”
“How much money do you think he’s gonna want?” Quatrocchi told him: Dimissio wasn’t happy with the figure: “What in the hell, boss?”
“It’s my-a estimation.”
“And if I disagree?” Dimissio said.
Dimissio didn’t give a fuck that Parrino’s old lady was dead: dough was dough – there was no way he was giving the cocksucker the money he had worked hard for just like that.
“But you won’t, will you?” Quatrocchi answered.
Dimissio felt safe Parrino wouldn’t try anything ‘special’. There was a code to follow, one that went back centuries to the Old Country. Respect was a serious business. Break it and your life – and that of your family’s – was in peril.
The meeting ended. The tone lightened: thoughts of baseball, the dry, hot Arizona weather and Quatrocchi’s family overtook proceedings.
BENSONHURST, 9.30 P.M
Parrino was furious: he had just found out Dimissio wasn’t going to give him a penny from the Clearwater deal.
“Where you been?” Parrino asked Todaro as he was getting into Parrino’s Chevy Impala.
“The movies. I saw Spartacus. Great shit.”
“So, what’s this motherfucker gotta say for himself?”
Todaro was drenched. A violent rainstorm was falling over NYC.
“It aiyn’t good news, boss,” Todaro said to his capo, his face and hair dripping wet.
“Here,” Parrino threw a copy of the Daily News to his underling, “dry yourself off.”
“Thanks.”
Parrino had heard Dimissio’s refusal to pay off Silvestri. Neither Quatrocchi nor Quatrocchi Junior knew what was going on.