Hooligans

  "You better be there," he said. "It's a felony in Doomstown to turn down a command performance from the duchess."

  "Just what I need," I said, "a freaking cocktail party."

  "Give you a chance to see how the other half lives," Charlie One Ear said without looking up from his fruit cocktail.

  "I don't like crowds," I said.

  He looked up and smiled. "Perhaps it'll be just the two of you," he suggested.

  That earned him a dirty look from me and a bit of contemplation from Dutch.

  "Well," Dutch said, "you could do worse."

  "Let's forget cocktail parties for the moment," I said, ending the conjecture. "Something's come up. It could be our first real break. "

  "Oh?" Dutch retorted.

  "Johnny O'Brian sent one of his gunmen to see me last night. He wants to have a powwow. Sounds like he could be running scared. "

  "Are you going to meet him?" Dutch asked.

  "Yeah. At ten thirty. Do you have anybody on O'Brian's tail?"

  He nodded. "Salvatore's doing the honors today."

  "Has he reported in?"

  "Do any of these guys ever report in?" Dutch said. "I can check the Warehouse and see, but I can tell you what the chances are."

  "We've got to raise him," I said. "My deal is that I go alone. If O'Brian tumbles onto Salvatore it could blow the whole deal."

  "I'll see what I can do," Dutch said, heading for the phone.

  "Is that real smart?" Charlie One Ear asked.

  "You mean going alone?"

  He nodded. The muscles in his face had tightened up. I knew what he was thinking.

  "Don't worry," I said. "If this is some kind of trap they wouldn't warn me first. They can't be that sure I won't have some kind of backup with me."

  "You know this bunch better than I do," he answered, turning back to his breakfast. "But I wouldn't stray too far from the range, just in case."

  "I appreciate your concern," I said. "The thing is, if O'Brian wants to make some kind of a deal, we can't afford to lose it. I've been down this road before, Charlie. I'll watch my step."

  He shrugged. "You're a big boy now," he said. "I assume you know what you're doing."

  I ordered a light breakfast and doctored my coffee. Dutch was gone about five minutes. He seemed concerned when he got back.

  "Okay," he said. "Zapata was in the Warehouse and he beeped Salvatore. Zapata's going to call me back if he raises him."

  "I thought Zapata was tailing Nance," I said.

  Dutch was scowling. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

  "He lost him," Dutch said. "Followed him out to the docks at dawn. Nance went out on a shrimp boat and left Zapata at the altar."

  I got a sudden chill, as if a cold breeze had blown across the back of my neck. Nance being on the loose was a wild card I hadn't counted on.

  "An awful lot of people know about this gig," I mused.

  "Are you worried about Salvatore and Zapata?" Dutch asked stiffly.

  "No. But I don't want anybody screwing this thing up."

  "Don't worry about it," Dutch replied. "We'll raise Salvatore and call him off, if you're sure that's the way you want to play it. "

  "That was my deal," I said as the waitress brought my breakfast.

  "You want to tell us where you're going?" Charlie One Ear asked.

  "Not really," I said. "You know how it is with these people, Charlie. They spook real easily."

  I decided we had talked enough about O'Brian and changed the subject again.

  "Anything new on the Logeto killing?" I asked.

  Dutch shook his head. "We combed the neighborhood. Nobody saw anybody on the roof or coming down the walls. So far it's a blank. But I do have something for you." He took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Here's that list of drops Cohen made. Cowboy finally got it together for you."

  I opened it up and checked over the list. Most of the addresses didn't mean anything to me. The most significant note was that on two of the three days, Cohen had visited both a branch bank of the Seacoast National and made his usual two o'clock visit to the bank.

  "Have you checked this over?" I asked Dutch.

  He nodded. "I can give you chapter and verse on the drops if you want."

  "I don't have time now," I said. "There's one thing that jumps out. I wonder why Cohen has been hitting the bank twice. On Wednesday and Friday he went to a branch and the main bank. Now why would he do that?"

  "Maybe he doesn't like to carry a lot of cash around for too long," Charlie One Ear suggested.

  "Maybe," I said, staring at the list. "But I don't think so. Unless things have changed, he's used to moving large sums of money."

  "You got another idea?" asked Dutch.

  "Yeah. Maybe he's skimming a little off the top for himself."

  "If he is, he's got more guts than I give him credit for," said Dutch.

  "Or he could be working it with Costello," I said.

  "Wouldn't that be sweet, to catch them in the middle like that," Charlie thought aloud. "We could probably get a whole chorus of canaries out of it."

  "That's if he's playing games," I said.

  "Cowboy's on him again today," Dutch said. "Maybe he'll turn up something new." Then his eyebrows went up. "I'll be damned," he said. "Speak of the devil. See the two guys that just walked in? The one that looks like a football player and the jellyfish with him?"

  The two men sat down at a corner table and immediately began to jabber like two spinsters gossiping. One was Donleavy. The other one was as tall, but slender, and older, probably in his mid-forties, with wavy, graying hair that framed a weak, flaccid face. His manicured hands jittered nervously as he talked, fiddling with the bits of toast on his plate the way a spider fiddles with a fly. Both of them looked like they spent a lot of time in the sun.

  "The one on the left is Donleavy," said Dutch. "The bird in the navy blue suit is the banker, Charles Seaborn. From the looks of things, they're having a lovers' spat."

  "I think I'll just stir the pot a little," I said.

  "What are you going to do?" Dutch asked nervously.

  "Just introduce myself," I said, patting his shoulder as I rose. "I'm not going to bite anybody."

  I strolled across the restaurant toward the table where Donleavy and Seaborn were bickering over breakfast. Donleavy saw me from the corner of his eye. He kept talking, but it was obvious that he sensed I was heading their way and he didn't want to be disturbed. As I reached them, he looked up angrily, trouble clouding his brown eyes.

  "I'm Jake Kilmer," I said before he had a chance to explode. "I think it's about time we met."

  He wasn't sure what to do. The anger in his hard features was suddenly replaced by a wide grin, a car salesman's grin, the kind that makes you want to count your fingers after you've shaken hands.

  "Yes, yes, yes," he suddenly babbled, and jumped up. "Of course." He pumped my hand and introduced me to Seaborn, who looked like he'd just bitten his tongue. Seaborn offered me a hand that was as clammy as it was insincere.

  It was obvious that neither of them was overjoyed at meeting me.

  "I'd like to have a talk with you," I said to Donleavy, "whenever it's convenient."

  "Is it urgent?" he said. "Aren't we going to see you tomorrow night?"

  "Tomorrow night?"

  "At Babs' cocktail party," he said with a lame grin. "You better not forget—she's touting you as the guest of honor. She's got a short temper and a long memory."

  "I'll be there," I said. "But I need a little time alone with you. It's nothing unpleasant. Information mostly."

  He dug a small notebook from an inside pocket and leafed through it. "How about Friday around noon?" he asked. "I'll take the phone off the hook and send out for sandwiches."

  "Sounds like a winner," I said. "I'll buy."

  "Not in my town you won't," he said. His smile had grown more relaxed and genuine. "It's Warehouse. Three, overlooking the Quadrang
le. We have the whole top floor."

  "I'm afraid I won't be seeing you tomorrow evening," Seaborn said. "I have the bank examiners in town. You know how that can be."

  "By the way," I said to Seaborn. "I believe you have a customer I know from Cincinnati. His name's Cohen."

  "Cohen?" he echoed, raising his eyebrows much too high. He looked like he had just swallowed something much too big for his throat, which was bobbing up and down like a fishing cork.

  "Yes. Lou Cohen?"

  "Oh, yes, I believe I've seen him in the bank from time to time."

  "Give him my regards the next time you see him," I said.

  I could almost hear their sighs of relief when I left the table. And I knew enough about human nature to know that Charles Seaborn had more than a casual acquaintance with Cohen.

  Perhaps Cowboy Lewis would confirm my suspicions. In the meantime, I couldn't help wondering why tiny beads of sweat had been twinkling from Seaborn's upper lip. I usually don't make people that nervous.

  When I got back to the table, Dutch still looked nervous.

  "What'd you say to them?" he asked. "Seaborn looked like he swallowed a lemon."

  "I just asked Seaborn if he knew my old friend Lou Cohen," I said with a smile.

  "Verdammt," Dutch said, shaking his head. "You sure do play hard cheese."

  "Is there any other way to play?" I replied.

  On the way out Dutch was paged. He spoke into the lobby phone for a few moments and hung up.

  "That was Zapata," he said. "Salvatore's screaming bloody murder, but he's giving up O'Brian. He thinks you're nuts."

  "I've been accused of that before too," I said.

  "Just so you'll know," Dutch added, "Salvatore knows where O'Brian is. If you're not back in two hours, we're going in with the marines, although I don't know why we should bother."

  "We're just getting accustomed to that ugly pan of his," Charlie One Ear commented.

  It was nice to know they cared.

  37

  LURE

  The fat old pelican sat on a corner post of the deck surrounding the fishing shack, looking bored. He surveyed the broad expanse of bay which emptied into the Atlantic Ocean a mile away to the east at Thunder Point. A warm breeze ruffled in from the sound and the old bird stared, half-asleep, across the surface of the water, looking for the tell-tale signs of lunch. Then, spotting a school of mullet, he flapped his broad wings and soared off the post, climbing twenty feet or so above the water, wheeling over and diving straight in, hitting with a splat and bobbing back up with a fish flopping helplessly in his bucket of a beak.

  The Irishman watched the pelican make his catch. He was making a fishing lure. He had set up a small vise on the edge of a table and was carefully twining and retwining nylon, hook, and feathers, weaving them into a shiny lure. He had stopped to watch the pelican, keeping the line taut so it would not ravel.

  He was a big man with one of those florid Irish faces that would look fifteen years old until he was ninety. A few lines grooved its smooth surface, but not enough to mar his youthful, carefree expression.

  There was very little traffic along the bay. A few shrimp boats had gone out against the rising tide and a weekend sailor was trying, without much success, to get a lackluster wind in the sails of his boat a couple of hundred yards away. Otherwise it was so quiet he could hear what little wind there was rattling the marsh grass.

  This was the Irishman's love, his escape from a business he neither liked nor understood. He felt like a misfit, a Peter Principled gunman forced to act like a businessman. O'Brian liked to settle disputes his own way. Negotiating confused him. But here he was king; he was alone and free, master of himself and his tiny domain, for O'Brian had mastered the secrets of fishing. It was one of the few things he did well, and he loved the sport with a consummate passion.

  When the phone rang, he snapped, "Damn!" under his breath and weighed down the loose end of the lure with a metal clamp before he went into the main room of the cabin to answer it.

  "It's me, boss, Harry," the gravelly voice on the other end of the line said. "He's through eating breakfast. You sure you don't want I should follow him out, make sure he isn't bringin' company?"

  "I said alone."

  "He could bring company."

  "Naw, he won't do that."

  "You never know with these Feds."

  "He don't have nothin' on me," the Irishman said.

  "He's pretty quick, this guy."

  "Just camp out at Benny's down the road. I need ya, I holler."

  "Want I should ring once and hang up when he leaves?"

  "Good idea."

  "Everything calm out there?"

  "No problem. Coupla shrimp boats went by. Nobody's been down the road. There's some jerk out here trying to get his sailboat back to the city marina, which is kinda funny."

  "What's so funny about it?"

  "There ain't no wind."

  "Well, don't take no chances."

  "Don't worry. You just hang out there at Benny's, have a coupla beers, come on in when you see him leave.

  "Gotcha."

  They hung up and the Irishman switched on the radio and walked out onto the deck for a stretch. The sailboat had drifted four hundred feet or so west of the shack, toward the city, and the sailor was trying vainly to crank up his outboard, a typically sloppy weekend sailor in a floppy white hat, its brim pulled down around his ears. The putz, he thought, was probably, out of gas. But he had learned one thing since discovering the sea—sailors heaped each other.

  He cupped his hands and yelled:

  "See if you can get it over here, maybe I can help."

  The sailor waved back. He shoved the submachine gun under his Windbreaker near his feet, took an oar from the cockpit of the sailboat, and began to paddle toward the Irishman. . . .

  38

  FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, THE FIRST SIX

  The twelfth day: Today I killed a man for the first time. I have a hard time talking about this. What happened, we're moving on this village, which was actually about a dozen hooches in this rice field seven or eight kliks downriver. This village was at the bottom of some foothills. There were rice paddies on both sides and a wide road lined with pepper trees and bamboo kind of deadending at it.

  Before we start down, Doc Ziegler, our medic, hands me a couple of buttons. "What are these for?" I ask. "Dex," he says. "Make you see better, hear better, move faster. Just do it." So I popped the speed. It took about twenty seconds to kick my ass. I've never had speed before. I felt like taking on the village all by myself. I mean, I was ready!

  We go down toward it, two squads on each side in the rice paddies, because they make good cover, and we have the Three Squad backing us up in reserve. We go in on the left and the One Squad on the right. They take the first hit. The VC opens up with mortars and machine-gun fire and starts just chewing them up. One guy, the whole top of his head went off. The noise was horrendous; I couldn't believe the racket.

  The lieutenant runs straight toward the village with his head down just below the edge of the ditch and I'm right behind him. The radio man is having trouble calling up the reserve platoon because we're in this little valley and the deception is for shit, so the lieutenant sends back a runner and then he says, "Fuckin' gooks are eating One Squad up, we got to take them," and he goes out of the paddy and runs for this stretch of bamboo which is maybe twenty yards from the gooks and me still right behind him.

  That tips Charlie and they start cutting away at us. They're shooting the bamboo down all around us, just cutting it off. Then I see this VC in his black pajamas and he's got his head out just a little, checking it out, and I sight him in and, ping! he goes down, just throws his hands up in the air and goes over backward. Then another one comes running over and he's shooting as he comes, only he's aiming about ten meters to my left and I drop him. Then I see the machine gun, which is in the dirt out in front of the first hooch, and there's two of them and they're just cutting O
ne Squad to shit, so I run up through the bamboo and get in position and blitz them both, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!

  Next thing I know, the lieutenant and the rest of the squad are running past me and the One Squad breaks loose and then it's all over. Five minutes, maybe. I was thinking, Jesus, I did more in the last five minutes than I ever did in my whole life. I mean, it was such a high. And to still be in one piece!

  There wasn't anybody left. Women, kids, old people, VC. The entire village was blitzed. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to that; it was just business as usual. Then they brought in a flamethrower and scorched the whole place. I didn't look at the civilians, I just looked the other way. I figure, this is the way it's done, but it doesn't change how I feel about it.

  Otherwise we were all feeling pretty good because none of our guys was hurt.

  "You okay?" the lieutenant says after he makes the body count, and I says, "Yeah, I feel good." And I did.

  "You looked okay in there," he says.

  I wasn't a virgin anymore and I was still alive. Jesus, I felt good.

  It took me a long time to get used to it, that I had killed those people and it was okay, that it was what they expected me to do. For a while I kept dreaming they would come at night and arrest me.

  The 38th day: Doc Ziegler doesn't even believe in all this. He's a medic, doesn't carry any weapons. He says he would have gone to Canada but his old man had a bad heart and Doc figured it would kill him if Doc jumped the border. So he said, "Fuck it!" when he got his notice. "I can put up with anything for a year," he says. Among other things, Doc supplies the speed. He doesn't do it himself, says he doesn't need it since he doesn't carry a weapon. But he smokes pot a lot. Morning, noon, and night. Hell, I don't think I've ever seen Doc unstoned. But when there's trouble he can move with the best of them. What the hell, if it makes it easier. He's been on the line a month longer than me and he acts like he was born here.

  Carmody is the best officer I ever knew. All he thinks about is what's out there. He never talks about home, his wife, nothing. Just business and his men. He was a green shavetail when he got to Nam ten months ago. He has a funny sense of humor, like no matter what you ask him, he's got a one-liner for you. I asked him once where he was from.