Hooligans

  "We all showed up at city pier together, no more than thirty minutes ago," he told Dutch. "Kite there was following Bronicata, and Cowboy was on Chevos. I had Costello. Zapata was there, too, doing something, I don't know what. All of a sudden all four of us are watching each other and the three of them are tooting out into the bay on Costello's boat."

  "Cute. So right now we're standing on empty, that it?" Dutch said.

  "Well, Zapata powdered. I don't know where he went. One minute he was there, the next minute he wasn't."

  "We woulda followed Costello and them but we couldn't find a rowboat to rent," Kite Lange said.

  "Hilarious," said Dutch. "You auditioning for the Comedy Hour?"

  Charlie One Ear burst through the door.

  "What's bugging you?" Dutch asked.

  "A security guard over at the Breezes just called. That's where Harry Raines and his wife lived. He says Jake Kilmer and the Raines woman were attacked leaving the place and were shoved in a car at gunpoint."

  "When?" Dutch roared.

  "About two minutes ago."

  "Jake Kilmer was with Doe Raines?" Dutch said.

  "That's what the man said. It's a late Eldorado, cinnamoncolored, too far off to get a license. They headed east on Palm."

  "Did you get an APB out on that?" Dutch demanded.

  "You want to stop every Cadillac in town?" Charlie One Ear asked with surprise.

  "How the hell many cinnamon Eldorados do you think we got in town?" Dutch yelled, snatching up the phone and calling central radio.

  The Stick was next to appear in the doorway.

  "What the hell's going on?" he asked.

  "It appears that Nance and his bunch have lifted Jake Kilmer and Harry Raines' widow," Pancho Callahan said.

  "Nance kidnapped them?"

  "It don't sound like no scavenger hunt," said Lange.

  Charlie One Ear said, "It sounds straight. Jake's car is still out there. Apparently it's permanently imbedded in the security fence. The security man checked the license for me. I've got a blue and white on the way to make sure somebody isn't giving us the finger."

  "Speaking of fingers, right now we ain't got a finger on anybody in the mob, that right?" Stick exclaimed.

  "Chino and Salvatore are still on the range somewhere. Shall we try to raise them?" Charlie One Ear replied.

  Dutch slammed down the phone. "Okay," he said. "There's gonna be a lot of pissed-off Cadillac owners in town, but maybe we'll luck out and nab them before they get too far."

  Five minutes later Zapata answered his page. Stick snatched up the phone.

  "Chino, it's Stick. Where the hell are you?"

  "Outside one of these strip joints on Front," he answered.

  "What are you doing there?"

  "Watching Silo Murphy, the one they call Weasel."

  "You got Murphy in sight right now?" the Stick said.

  "Yeah. He didn't go on the boat ride, so I stuck with him. Salvatore's still trying to get a line on that fuckhead Nance."

  "I'm on my way," said the Stick. "If he leaves, follow him and keep me cued through central. What's your number?"

  "Seventy-three. What's goin' on?"

  "Ten minutes. Tell you when I get there," said Stick. He slammed down the phone and headed for the door.

  In Dutch's office the rest of the SOB's were also wrestling with the problem,

  "How about the traffic chopper," suggested Cowboy Lewis. "Maybe we can run down Costello's cruiser."

  "Good idea, get on it," said Dutch. "So where do we stand right now?"

  "Salvatore and Zapata are still on the street," said Charlie One Ear. "Mufalatta's on the range rounding up the rest of the Graves gang. The rest of us are here."

  "Where'd the Stick go?" demanded Dutch.

  "He's checking on Chino," said Charlie One Ear.

  "Not anymore," said Callahan. "He just went out the door like his underwear was on fire."

  "Sheiss, what next!" cried the Dutchman.

  I came around with elephants thundering in one ear and out the other and the bitter-salty taste of blood in my mouth. I was stretched out on a fairly comfortable Naugahyde sofa. Doe was sitting beside me, bathing my aching head with a wet cloth.

  "Oh, thank God!" she said as I opened my eyes.

  "You okay?" I asked.

  "I'm fine. It's you they knocked out."

  "Where are we?"

  "I'm not sure. They blindfolded me," she said. "We're near the water, though, I can smell it."

  My nose had been knocked out of commission along with half of my other senses. I couldn't have smelled my hair if it was on fire.

  "How long did it take to get here?"

  "Twenty minutes, thirty maybe. I've never been very good about time and I don't have a watch on."

  "My God, how long have I been out?"

  "Another ten."

  "They must've hit me with a poleaxe."

  "Actually it was a little black stick one of them had strapped to his wrist."

  "Just a plain old-fashioned sap," I said. "Just like me."

  I sat up slowly, so my head wouldn't fall off, got my feet on the floor, and sat very still to keep from vomiting. Eventually the nausea went away. The room was small and tidy and looked like a doctor's office, without the medical journals and four-year-old National Geographics strewn everywhere. The only light in the room came from a table lamp made from a wooden anchor with "Saint Augustine, Florida, 1981" hand painted on it. The room had two windows, both heavily draped, and there was a TV monitor camera mounted high in one corner.

  I decided to see if I could stand up. That brought some activity from the other room. The door opened. I could tell from the silhouette that it was Nance. I didn't realize how badly I had beaten him until he turned sideways and the light from the other room fell across his face. Both eyes were swollen to slits, he had bruises and gashes down both sides of his face, he was limping, and there was a cut that had swollen to the size of an egg on the corner of his mouth, surrounded by a blue-gray bruise that spread almost to his ear. He was a wreck. I felt better when I saw him.

  "Hi, Nance," I said. "Been a real shitty day for you, hasn't it?"

  He made animal noises in his throat and started toward me but a hairy paw against his chest stopped him. Arthur Pravano, the one they called Sweetheart, stepped past him.

  "Don't make any more trouble," he said to Nance. Sweetheart leaned on the doorjamb and stared at me.

  "Well, well," I said, "the pool's getting full."

  "You talk awfully big for a man with his balls in the wringer," said Nance.

  "Go on outside," Pravano said, and Nance bristled for a second, then turned and vanished from the doorway.

  "You ought to do something about him," I said, "like give him a brain transplant for Christmas."

  "Big-mouth Fed," he said, shaking his head. "You got about as much time left as an ice cube in a frying pan."

  "No less than you," I replied, although I was sorry the moment I said it. They were all in it up to their eyeballs. Murder, kidnapping, arson—all could be proven, regardless of whether or not we broke down Cohen, Donleavy, and Seaborn and opened up the pyramid. They were all smart enough to know you can only hang once. One or two more murders couldn't have bothered them less, so I cut the smart talk and hoped that Doe wouldn't figure it out too.

  "So why are we here?" I asked.

  "It's a scientific experiment," Pravano said. "We want to see how long it takes for a Fed to wet his pants."

  "There's a lady in the room," I said.

  "She's got rotten taste," he snarled.

  "Your dance partner's no trophy winner," I snapped back.

  He let it pass. "Don't try nothing spectacular, okay, to impress the lady, like the thing with Turk back there in town. Keep away from the windows. Don't make no racket, bust up the furniture, start no fires, that kind of shit. We got people outside and people watching that." He jerked a thumb toward the monitor. "You fuck with that, I'll le
t Turk come in and blow off your goddamn balls, if you got any."

  He left.

  "Who was that!" Doe cried.

  "One of the Seven Dwarfs," I said, and tried a chuckle. It sounded more like a dirge.

  Zapata was sitting sidesaddle on his hog, smoking a Fatima and watching the traffic go by, when Stick got there.

  "He's in that strip joint over there, drinking Scotch and checking crotch," the Mexican said. "What the hell's going on?"

  "Costello and his bunch ditched the boys. They're out pleasure cruising on Costello's boat."

  "I know. I been watching this Weasel 'cause I heard him and Nance were, y'know, kinda tight, if that psycho has any friends. Anyways, he don't go on the boat. So I figure maybe he's gonna meet Nance and I shag him. He comes over here. Is that what it's all about?"

  "Dutch wants to have a talk with Weasel," Stick said. "Let's go over and see can we ease him out of there without starting a riot."

  The girl on stage was all legs. Legs and purple hair with a white streak, front to back, dyed on one side; a punk strapper who looked about as sexy as a stuffed flounder. Weasel Murphy was sitting at the bar, as close to the action as he could get without getting his nose caught in her G-string. A pair of worn-out speakers were thumping out a scratched version of "Night Life" as the punker peeled off her bra and let her ample bosom flop out. The Prussian army could have marched in and Murphy would have missed it. He had eyes only for the Purple People Eater.

  "Wanna just put the arm on him?" said Chino.

  "Dutch says try to avoid a ruckus," Stick said.

  "What do we do?"

  They sat down at a table the size of a birdbath near the door to think it over. Purple People Eater was snapping her bra like a slingshot in Murphy's face. He stuffed a five-dollar bill in the tip glass and she kneeled down in front of him, pulled her G-string down to the bar, and let it snap back. He tucked a twenty in the string, dead center. She ended her performance by seducing an imaginary pony, complete with squeals of delight and instructions to the invisible animal. Murphy was wired so tight he was humming.

  One of the B-girls slid a chair over to the table and sat down backward. The runs in her hose looked like black varicose veins. This one had orange hair, no streak. It looked like it had been cut with pruning shears. She ran a finger along the brim of Stick's hat.

  "Love it," she said. "I didn't think anybody wore those anymore."

  "It was my grandfather's," Stick said. "How'd you like to make an easy twenty?"

  "We're not allowed to do that," she said coyly. "Just have a drink with the customers."

  "You don't even have to do that," said Stick. "See that dude at the bar, the one who's sweating so hard?"

  "You mean the one that looks like a possum?"

  "Close enough. See, what's happening, we got this bowling club and we just voted him in but he don't know it yet."

  "You're into bowling?" she said. She made it sound like child molestation.

  "Yeah. Anyway, see, we're gonna put the snatch on him, take him out to my boat. The rest of the guys are out there waiting and we're gonna surprise. him, tell him he's in, y'know."

  "Sounds like a real great party," she said, and yawned.

  "What we'd like, see, all you have to do is get him out the side door there, onto Jackson Street. We'll take it from there."

  "This ain't some kidnapping or something?" she said suspiciously. "I mean, I ain't goin' to the freezer for some snatch job."

  "Look at him," Zapata said. "His own mother wouldn't kidnap him."

  "So how do I get him outside?" she asked.

  "For twenty bucks, you can write the script. When he goes through the door, you get the double saw."

  She thought about it for a minute.

  "He's a big spender," she said. "The boss might get pissed with me."

  Stick took out a twenty and wrapped it around his little finger.

  "When's the last time the boss laid twenty on you for walking to the door?"

  She eyed the twenty, eyed Murphy, who was catching his breath between acts, and looked back at the twenty.

  "I'll see what I can do," she said.

  "The Jackson Street entrance. The twenty'll be right here on my pinky."

  She giggled. "Pinky! Jesus, I haven't heard that since I was in the fourth grade."

  Stick and Zapata went outside and Stick pulled his car around the corner and parked near the door.

  "This seems like a lot of time and money when we could just bust his ass and haul him in."

  "Dutch doesn't want a fuss."

  "Yeah, you told me. How do we do this? We just cold-cock the son of a bitch or what?"

  Stick took out a pair of thumb cuffs.

  "When he gets outside, bump into him and knock him into me. I'll grab him from behind, get his arms behind him, and thumbcuff him, throw him in the car."

  "My hog's around the corner."

  "I'll see you out at the Warehouse."

  "Okay, but it seems like a lot of hassle."

  They waited about five minutes; then the door opened and the orange-haired punker and Murphy came out. He was wrapped around her like kudzu around a telephone pole. Zapata bumped into them and the girl stepped back and Stick grabbed both his elbows and jerked them back, slid his hands down Murphy's arms to his wrist, and twisted both of Murphy's hands inward. Murphy hollered and jerked forward, and as he did, Stick snapped the tiny cuffs on his thumbs, twisted him around, and shoved him into the back seat of the car. The girl saw the wire-caged windows.

  "Goddamn it, you're the heat, you goddamn lying—"

  Stick dangled the twenty in front of her. She snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it down her bosom.

  "Better than busting up the place, ain't it?" Zapata said as Stick tipped his hat, jumped into his car, and sped off

  "He's like that," Zapata said, walking toward his hog. "Impetuous."

  "What d'ya mean, you snatched Weasel Murphy?" Dutch bellowed after Zapata had finished his story.

  "He said you wanted we should hustle Weasel outta that joint and bring him out here on the QT. So that's what we did. He shoulda been here by now, he got two minutes' head start on me."

  "Maybe it's the international Simon Says sweepstakes," Kite Lange said.

  "Will you stop with the wisecracks, Lange," Dutch grumbled. "Things're bad enough without you imitating Milton Berle. What I wanna know is, where the hell's Stick and Murphy?"

  "Perhaps I should put out an all points on Parver's vehicle," Charlie One Ear suggested.

  "Why don't we just bust everybody in town," Callahan said. "We can put them in the football stadium and let them go one at a time."

  Dutch buried his face in his hands. "What is it, is the heat getting everybody?" he moaned. "I shoulda known when I was lucky, I should of stayed in the army."

  74

  CHRISTMAS CREEK

  The thirty-horsepower motor growled vibrantly behind him as Stick guided the sailboat out of the mouth of South River and into the bay. Buccaneer Point was two miles away. Five miles beyond it was Jericho Island, where a sliver of creek, two or three hundred yards wide and a quarter of a mile long, sliced the small offshore island into Big Jericho and Little Jericho. Stick set his course for Jericho.

  Clouds played with the face of a full moon and night birds chattered at them as the sleek sailboat cruised away from land, its sails furled, powered by the engine. Stick flicked on the night light over his compass. It was 8:45. He would be there in another fifteen minutes. He checked his tide chart. High tide was at 9:57. The bar would be perfect.

  Weasel Murphy, was crunched down against the cabin wall, his thumbs still shackled behind him.

  "I already told you," the rodent-faced gunman said arrogantly, "I don't know nothin' about nothin'."

  "Right," said Stick.

  "I get seasick; that's why I didn't go along on the boat. You can't understand plain English?"

  "You start getting sick," said the Stick, "you bett
er stick your head over the side. Puke in my boat and I'll use you for a mop and throw you overboard."

  "Fuck you," Murphy growled, but his arrogance was less than convincing.

  "Cute," Stick said. "I admire your stuff."

  "How many times I gotta tell you," Murphy said, "I don't know nothin' about snatching no Fed, or the Raines dame. That's all news t'me."

  "Where's Costello heading on that schooner of his?"

  "I told you, I don't fuckin' know! They was just goin' out to have dinner and get away for a few hours. We was all tired of looking up some cop's nose every time we turned around."

  He shifted slightly.

  "Where the hell are we going?" he demanded.

  "Up the lazy river," Stick said.

  "You're a full-out loony, you know that. You need about fifty more cards to fill out your deck."

  "Big talk from a man who can't even scratch his nose," Stick said.

  "Look, these things are killing my thumbs," Murphy said. "Can you at least loosen them a little? My whole damn arm's goin' to sleep."

  "I want to know where Kilmer is and where Costello's going. You just tell me that, we turn around and head for home."

  "Shit, man, how many ways can I—"

  "You already have," the Stick said. "You're beginning to annoy me. If you won't tell me what I want to know, keep your mouth shut or I'll put my foot in it."

  They went on. The only sound now was the bow of the boat slicing through the water, and the occasional slap of a wave as it rolled up into a whitehead and peaked. Stick was using running lights, although occasionally he snapped on a powerful searchlight for a look around. Otherwise he watched his compass and smoked and said nothing.

  At 9:05 he passed the north point of Big Jericho, swung the trim boat in toward land, and followed the beach around to the south. A minute or two later the moon peered out from behind the clouds and in its gray half-light he could see the mouth of Christmas Creek. He turned into it, cut back the motor, and switched the spotlight on again. He swept it back and forth. Murphy straightened up and peered over the gunwale. A large heron thrashed its wings nearby and flapped noisily away. Startled by the sudden and unexpected sound, Murphy slumped down again.