Ex-fighter, had to be.
He was wearing ragged jeans, a faded and nicked denim battle jacket, no shirt under it, and a pair of cowboy boots that must have set him back five hundred bucks. The headband he wore had to be for show—he didn't have enough dishwater-blond hair left to bother with. He also had a gold tooth, right in the front of his bridgework. I was to find out later that he was a former Golden Gloves middleweight champion, a West Coast surfer, and, for ten years, a bounty hunter for a San Francisco bail bondsman before he went legit and joined the police.
Salvatore appeared through the bright lights, nosing around.
"I thought you were gonna check out Stizano," Dutch said. "What the hell are you doin' here?"
"A look-see, okay? Where's Stizano gonna go anyway? He's an old fart and it's past ten o'clock."
"You don't think the whole bunch ain't hangin' on by their back teeth at this point? Somebody just wasted their king."
"They're on the phones," Salvatore said confidently. "They're jawin' back and forth, tryin' to figure out what the hell to do next. What they ain't gonna do at this point is bunch up. Jesus, will you look at this!"
I was beginning to get a handle on Dutch's hooligans, on the common strain that bonded them into a unit. What they lacked in finesse, they made up for with what could mercifully be called individuality. There's an old theory that the cops closest to the money are the ones most likely to get bent. Dutch went looking for mavericks, men too proud to sell out and too tough to scare off. Whatever their other merits, they seemed to have one thing in common—they were honest because it probably didn't occur to them to be anything else.
"First Tagliani's wife gets whacked," Lange said. "And the old man's grandson almost got it here."
"This here don't read like a Mafia hit t'me," Salvatore said. "Killing family members ain't their style."
"Maybe it was a mistake," the Stick volunteered.
"Yeah," Dutch said, "like Pearl Harbor."
"More like a warning," I said.
"Warning?" Lange and Dutch asked at the same time. A lot of eyebrows made question marks.
"Yeah," I said, "a warning that he or she or it—whoever he, she, or it is—means to waste the whole clan."
"Tell me some more good news," said Dutch.
"So why warn them?" Lange said.
"It's the way it's done," said Salvatore. "All that Sicilian bullshit."
"Now we got four stiffs, and we're still as confused as we ever were," Dutch said. "Hey, Doc, you got any idea what caused this?"
The ME, who was as thin as a phalanx and looked two hundred years old, was leaning over what was left of the old man. His sleeves were rolled up and he wore rubber gloves stained red with blood. He shook his head.
"Not yet. A hand grenade, maybe."
"Hand grenade?" the Stick said.
"Yeah," the ME said. "From up there. He was blown down here from the terrace. See the bloodstains?"
"There were two," Lange said.
"Two what?" the ME asked.
"Explosions. I was sittin' right down there. The first one was a little muffled, like maybe the thing went off underwater. The second one sounded like Hiroshima."
"Woke ya up, huh," Dutch said.
The ME still would not agree. He shook his head. "Let's wait until I get up there and take a look. The pattern of stains on the wall there and the condition of the body indicate a single explosion."
"I heard two bangs," Lange insisted.
"How far apart?" I asked.
"Hell, not much. It was like . . . bang, bang! Like that."
I had a terrifying thought but I decided to keep it to myself for the moment. The whole scene was terrifying enough.
The woman screaming uncontrollably inside the house didn't help.
"Homicide'll clean this up," Dutch said. "I'm just interested in the autopsy. Maybe there's something with the weapons'll give us a lead."
The homicide man was a beefy lieutenant in his early forties dressed in tan slacks, a tattersall vest, a dark brown jacket, and an atrocious flowered tie. His name was Lundy. He came over shaking his head.
"Hey, Dutch, what d'ya think? We got a fuckin' mess on our hands here, wouldn't ya say?"
"Forget that Lindbergh shit, Lundy. This isn't a 'we,' it's a 'you.' Homicide ain't my business."
Lundy said with a scowl, "I need all the help I can get."
Dutch smiled vaguely and nodded. "I would say that, Lundy."
"Can ya believe it, Dutch," Lundy said, "that little kid almost bought it!"
It occurred to me that nobody had expressed any concern for Grandpa Draganata, whose face was all over the side of the house. I mentioned my feelings quietly to the Stick.
"What'd you expect, a twenty-one-gun salute?"
"Four stiffs in less than three hours," Dutch mused again. "This keeps up, I'll be out of work before morning."
"Yeah, and I'll have a nervous breakdown," Lundy said.
I looked over the entire scene. The pool was directly adjacent to the rear of the house; then there was a terrace with a carousel, a miniature railroad, a gazebo, and three picnic tables. Beyond that, the land rose sharply to the dunes above, maybe a hundred yards behind and above the house.
"I'm gonna take the Stick and have a look-see up on the terrace," I told Dutch. To the Stick I said, "Get a light."
A young patrolman came down the hill and said, "There's a couple of Draganata's goons up there, acting like they own the place. "
"We'll talk to them," the Stick said. "Let me bum your torch a minute."
"Three gets you five they ain't sayin' a word about what happened. It's that damn wop salad code of theirs," Dutch growled. Lundy went back to the scene.
"Want to come along?" I asked Dutch.
He looked up the hill and laughed.
"In a pig's ass. Call collect when you get there."
The Stick and I went up to the terrace and looked around. One of Draganata's bodyguards approached me. He was no more than six four or five and didn't weigh a pound over two hundred and fifty, with a face that would scare the picture of Dorian Gray.
A finger the size of a telephone pole tried to punch a hole in my chest.
"Private property," he said.
I stared him as straight in the eye as I could, considering the eye was four inches above me.
"You jab me once more with that finger, I'll break it off and make you eat it," I said in my tough-guy voice.
The goon looked at me and smiled.
"Sure thing."
"I'm a federal officer and you're obstructing the scene of a crime. That's a misdemeanor. You jab me again, asshole, that's assaulting a federal officer, which is felony. Can you stand still for a felony toss, sonny?"
He shuffled from one foot to the other for a moment or two, trying to work that out in whatever he used for a brain. While he was sorting through my threat, the other gorilla came over.
"Don't take no shit, Larry," he said. He was just as big and just as ugly.
"You two already fucked up royally once tonight," I said. "How's it feel, knowing you screwed up and your boss got his head handed to him."
Larry's face turned purple. He made a funny sound in his throat and took a step toward me. But before he could raise his hand a fist came from my left and caught him on the corner of the jaw. The top part of his face didn't budge; the bottom part went west. His jaw cracked like a gunshot. He was so ugly, it was hard to tell whether the look on his face was one of pain or surprise. A second later his eyes did a slow roll and he dropped to his knees.
He made a noise that sounded like "Arfroble."
The Stick was standing beside me, shaking out his knuckles.
The other tough went for the Stick and I pulled my .38 from under my arm and stuck the barrel as far up his left nostril as the gunsight would permit.
"Don't you hear good?" I said.
He stared at the gun and then at me and then back at the gun. The Stick kicked him in the nuts
as hard as I've ever seen anybody kicked anywhere. He hit the ground beside his partner; his teeth cracked shut, trapping the cry of pain. It screeched in the back of his throat. Tears flooded his eyes. He fell forward on his hands and threw up. The other one was shaking his head, his jaw wobbling uselessly back and forth.
"Gladolabor," he said.
I thought about what Cisco had told me, about how Stick was young and not too jaded, and about how I might give him a few pointers on due process. Now was hardly the time. He was doing just fine. I put my artillery away and smiled.
"Y'know," he said, "we got a pretty good act here."
"Yeah. Maybe we should tighten it up a little, take it on the road," I agreed.
Stick and I checked over the terrace, ignoring the two stricken mastodons.
"Obstructing the scene of a crime," he mused. "Where did you come up with that?"
"It sounded good," I said. "Did it sound good to you?"
"I was convinced," he said. "Cisco says you're a lawyer; I figured you should know."
He stepped into the gazebo and threw on the lights. The calliope music started, but the merry-go-round was destroyed, tilted on one side like a bloody beret. It was eerie, the mutilated horses frozen in up-and-down positions, heads blown away, feet missing, while the calliope played its happy melody.
"Cisco likes to tell people I'm a lawyer, to impress them," I said. "I never practiced law."
"How come?" he asked.
A bloody horse's head, with flared nostrils and fiery, bloody eyes, lay at my feet. I lifted it slightly with the toe of one shoe and peered under it, as though I expected to find some important bit of evidence under there.
"I had the stupid notion it was still an honorable profession," I said.
He laughed this crazy laugh, his eyes dancing between the lids, his mouth turned down at the corners instead of up. It could have been mistaken for a snarl.
"I knew better than that the first time I was briefed by a prosecutor. He as much as told me to perjure myself."
"And what'd you tell him?"
"I told him to get fucked. It didn't happen the way he wanted it to happen and that was that. He ended up plea-bargaining the case away rather than taking a shut with the true facts."
"Just after I took the bar I was interviewed by this big law firm in San Francisco," I said. "This was one of the most prestigious law firms in the city. The old partner who did the interviewing spent an hour explaining to me how fee splitting works. Nothing is ever said between two opposing lawyers; they just exchange D and B's on the clients and decide how much they can milk them for. When the well's dry, they reach a settlement. When I left, I was so disgusted I almost threw up. I wandered around the hill for a while, then went down and joined the police force."
"But you felt good about it," he said, flashing that crazy smile again.
"No, I felt like shit if you want to know the truth," I admitted to him. "Three years in law school and I end up driving a blue and white."
The Stick listened to the music for several seconds and finally flicked the switch off. I looked above us, up to the top of the dunes.
"Up there," I said.
We huffed and puffed through the sand to the top of the sharp embankment and found ourselves staring at the ocean far below. It twinkled in the moonlight.
"What're we looking for?" the Stick asked.
"You were in the army," I said. "What makes a discharge when it's fired and another one when it hits?"
"Mortar?"
"Too close."
He snapped his fingers. "Grenade launcher."
"It fits," I said.
We checked the trajectory from the hill to the pool. The terrace could be seen only from the very edge of the dune. It didn't take us long to find a scorched place in the grass on the back of the dune with a smear of gun grease behind it.
"Right here," I said. "Whoever killed the old man lobbed his shot from here, right onto the terrace. He couldn't even see him; he lined up his shot with some point on the pool and it blew up right in the old man's lap."
I flashed the light around the dune, looking for footprints.
"There," the Stick said, pointing to several depressions in the side of the dune leading toward the ocean.
We looked closer.
"Looks like Bigfoot," the Stick said. The depressions were fairly shallow and about the size of a small watermelon. There was no definition to them.
I pointed the light to the hard sand at the bottom of the dune. The tide was almost full. Ridges of foam lay near the foot of the dune.
"Great," I said. "The tide's in. There goes any tracks on the beach."
"Knew what he was doin'," the Stick said. "A blind shot like that and the timing was perfect."
"This took a little planning. He had to know the setup. He knew when high tide was. And with those two goons down there, he only had one shot. Confident son of a bitch. We better not make too many tracks; forensics may turn something up."
"One Ear," the Stick said.
"Right. Let's get him over here."
We went back down and told Lundy what we had found and he sent two men and a photographer up the hill.
"Those two gorillas up there may need some medical assistance, too," the Stick said. "They give you any shit, book 'em for assaulting an officer."
Lundy's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Yeah, thanks," he said with a touch of awe.
"I'm goin' inside," said the Stick. "See if I can raise Charlie One Ear."
I joined Dutch, who was leaning on the corner of the house gnawing on a toothpick. He was obviously impressed.
"You guys weren't gone long to be so busy," he said with a grin.
I looked at my watch. It was past ten and my stomach was telling me it hadn't been fed since noon.
"I've gotta fill Mazzola in and get something to eat," I said. "Then I'm calling it a night."
"I could use some food too," the Stick said, rejoining us. "Charlie's on his way and not too happy about it. I told Lundy to keep people off the hill."
The Stick produced a small tan calling card.
"You ever need me," he said, handing me a card, "my home number's on the back. There's a machine on it. If it rings four times before it answers, I'm there, just takin' a shit or a shower or something. Leave a number, I'll usually get back to you in a coupla minutes. If it answers after one ring, I'm out."
"Meet us at the Feed Mill," Dutch said to Stick. "Jake can drive down with me."
I was grateful for that.
As we walked back to the cars I said, "We can throw in with you on this. I think we can assume the weapon was a grenade launcher and that's an illegal weapon and that makes it federal."
"Gee whiz," Dutch growled. "Ain't due process grand."
12
FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, ARRIVAL
The first ten days: First off, I was a replacement. I sat around the Cam Ranh Bay repo-depot for about ten days before they sent me down to Third Corps HQ and from there over to Phouc Binh which is where I pick up my squad. I'm only five weeks out of Advanced Infantry school, I don't know shit and I am plenty scared.
I can tell you this, flying in to Cam Ranh I look down and it's really gorgeous, I mean this is some beautiful place except you have all this beautiful green jungle and then you have mortar holes everywhere. It was like, you know, paradise going to hell and gone.
Anyway, while I'm in Cam Ranh waiting to get a squad, I hang out with this potato farmer from Nebraska they call Spud, because of the potatoes and all. He doesn't like it much but he doesn't complain either. That wasn't too bad because we were both, you know, newcomers, so mostly we talked about what it's like back in the world—the States. Except this Spud, he was really scared. His hands shook and everything. Then he gets shipped into Indian country, and after that I meet up with this kid from Wisconsin—a short termer with only two months left to go who is off the line a couple days to come see his brother who got wounded and is in the hospital. We hook up in this
sorry ass lean-to they call a bar. First off I tried striking up some talk with a sergeant but he just looks at me with these dead eyes, I mean eyes like hunks of coal, no feeling, no nothin'. He was scarey. I says "hi" and he looks at me and gets up and leaves, and that's when this kid from Wisconsin, who is sitting down the way from me, pipes up and says, "He's a CRIP, they don't socialize much." And I says, "What's a CRIP?" And he says, "Jeeze, how long you been over here?" And I says, "Less than a week," and he says, "Shit, you got it all ahead of you," and just shakes his head but he doesn't say anymore about CRIP; I learned about that later.
Anyway he got off the line to see his brother, only it turns out he's been there three days and hasn't been to the hospital yet and when I ask him why he says, "No guts." Finally after a couple of beers I walk him down to the hospital and I wait outside in the hall and there's some guy screaming the whole time I'm waiting. It gives me the crawlers. I wanted to just up and leave but that wasn't right so I sat there and after awhile I put my hands over my ears so I couldn't hear it anymore. Then the kid from Wisconsin comes out and he's crying and he's like, you know, hysterical or something, and we get outside and sit down near the hospital and this kid, he's really torn up. But I don't ask him anything, I just wait, because already I'm learning about not asking questions.
About five minutes after we sit down for a smoke this Huey comes over and settles down almost on the ground and they dump out half a dozen body bags, just like that, plop on the ground and whip off again. I never saw anybody dead before. I started getting sick and the kid from Wisconsin is sitting there staring at the bags and finally I says, "Let's get out of here," and we go down to this other hooch and have a couple more beers.
The kid gets pretty drunk and finally he starts talkin'. Real fast, it just comes bustin' out. He says, "Bobby says to me, 'Christ, how am I gonna tell Arlene, [that's his girlfriend, Arlene,] how'm I gonna tell her I ain't got any balls left,' and I'm sittin' there thinking, Jeeze Bobby, you don't have any fuckin' legs left!' Ah, shit, it don't make no never mind anyways. Arlene married some asshole from over at the paper mill at Christmas and she never even wrote him or anything. You think I'm gonna tell him that? There's a lot of Arlenes in the world but Bobby, he only has two legs and two balls. Now he ain't got neither."