Hooligans

by William Diehl

  "I love con games," Zapata said. "Did you ever wonder who dreams them up?"

  Charlie One Ear stared at Zapata for a moment or two, then said, "No, I never really thought about it before."

  "I also saw Digit Dan out there," I said.

  "Ah, now there's a man with talent," said Charlie One Ear. "Fastest hands I've ever seen. Nobody works the shoulder bump like Dan."

  "The shoulder bump?" Zapata said, his sense of wonderment continuing to grow as Charlie One Ear showed off.

  "He works crowds, bumps the shoulder of the mark. Usually the mark will touch his wallet to make sure he hasn't been boosted. That does two things for Digit. One, it tells him where the mark's wallet is. Two, the next time he bumps him, the mark is too embarrassed to check his belongings. Bingo! The wallet's gone and so is Dan."

  "You don't miss a trick, there, Charlie," Zapata said, shaking his head.

  "The thing about Digit Dan that's remarkable," said Charlie One Ear, "is that he always hits somebody who's well heeled. He has that talent. He can look at a mark and tell how much money he's got in his kick."

  "Amazing," Zapata said, shaking his head.

  "He'll be working the track tomorrow," Charlie One Ear said. "We'll nail him. Now, about your problem. Perhaps we can give you something there."

  That didn't surprise me.

  "A pimp named Mortimer Flitch, alias Mort Tanner," he continued. "A wimpy sort and not too flashy. Handles high-class clientele, usually four or five girls at most. He calls Saint Louis home. He also has a thing for ladies of means."

  "Rich broads, you mean," Zapata said.

  "Yes, Chino, rich broads."

  "A gigolo, eh?" said Stick.

  "I hate to give him that distinction," said Charlie One Ear.

  "Where'd you see him at?" Zapata asked.

  "Out on the Strip, a week or two ago. This Turner thing came up and I never followed through."

  "It's Tagliani," said Salvatore.

  "What's he look like?" Zapata asked.

  "Tallish, a little under six feet. Slender. I'd say one forty, one forty-two. Wears three-piece suits. Lightweight for the climate. Goes in for colored shirts and has atrocious taste in ties. Flowers, lots of bad colors, that kind of thing. Brown hair and not a lot of it. Combs if over his forehead to stretch it out. Brown eyes. Always wears black boots."

  "Quirks?" Zapata asked.

  "Bites his fingernails."

  Zapata turned to me. "You want this guy?"

  I wasn't sure what I'd do with him, but I said, "Sure, it's a start. "

  "Thirty minutes," Zapata said. "Wait here. Come on, Salvatore, I need company," and they were gone.

  "Zapata's amazing," Charlie One Ear said, watching them rush out the door. "Nose like a bloodhound."

  "Looks more like a waffle iron," I said with a laugh.

  "True," said Charlie One Ear. "But that doesn't impede his instinct for finding people. He's unerring."

  I got the impression maybe Zapata had been hit one or two times too many on the soft part of his head. Later I learned that he was as streetwise as any cop I've ever known. He may have been short on Shakespeare, but he was long on smarts.

  "He was a middleweight contender, you know," Charlie One Ear continued. "Got full of patriotism, volunteered for the army, and spent a year in Vietnam. Then he came back and joined the Hell's Angels. I've never quite understood why."

  "You seem to have a nice team going," I said. "You spot them, Zapata finds them, and Salvatore sticks to them."

  "Like flypaper," said Charlie One Ear.

  Stick excused himself to go call the coroner and see if there were any autopsy reports yet. When he left, I leaned over the table toward Charlie One Ear.

  "I've got to ask you something," I said. "It's a personal thing."

  "Yes?"

  "I heard your father was an English lord and your mother was a Ute Indian. Whenever your name comes up, somebody says that. "

  "Only partly correct. It was my grandparents and she was a Cree. I inherited my memory from my father and my instincts from my mother. Thank God it wasn't the other way around. I'm quite flattered you've heard of me."

  "Charlie Flowers, the man who smashed the Wong Yang Fu opium ring in San Francisco almost single-handed! You're a legend in your time," I said with a smile.

  "I really enjoy this, y'know," he said, grinning back. "I have an enormous ego."

  "Is it true you once busted so many moonshiners in Georgia that they threw together and hired a couple of Philly shooters to do you in?"

  "Actually it was four, including Dancing Rodney Shutz out of Chicago, who was reputed to have killed over sixty people, a lot of whom didn't deserve the honor."

  "And you got 'em all?"

  "Yes. Without a scratch, I might add. They made a mistake. They all took me on at once-I suppose they thought there was safety in numbers." He paused for a moment and then flashed a twenty-dollar smile. "Dancing Rodney was so aghast I don't think he realizes to this day that he's dead." We both broke out laughing.

  "So what're you doing here?" I asked.

  His smile stayed but got a little brittle. "Well, I don't share Dutch Morehead's consternation with condos. My wife and I enjoy ours quite a lot. Beautiful view. We're near the water. The climate's wonderful . . . " He paused. He could have let it drop there, but he went on. "Besides, I couldn't get a job anywhere else. "

  "What!"

  He took out one of those long, thin Dutch cigars, lit it, and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. "I was working internal affairs for the state police out in Arizona a couple of years back. There had been a lot of killing and they suspected it was dope-related. The main suspect was a big-time dealer named Mizero. They sent me in, undercover, to check it out. It was Mizero's game all right, but he had an inside man, a narc named Burke, who was very highly situated. What they were doing, Mizero would make a big sale. Maybe a hundred pounds of grass. Then Burke would step in, bust the buyer, confiscate his money and goods, tell him get lost and he wouldn't press charges. If the buyer got antsy, Mizero would push him over. Then they'd re-sell the dope.

  "I got too close to the bone and blew my cover. So Burke decided he had to get rid of Mizero. The trouble was, it went the other way. Mizero dropped Burke. The locals made a deal with the state to keep Burke out of it. It was an election year and this was a big case. Nobody wanted to deal with a bad-cop scandal.

  "I was a key witness for the prosecution. They knew they couldn't muzzle Mizero, so they wanted me to testify that Burke was working undercover with me. I said no, I won't do that. Some things I'll do, but I won't perjure myself for anyone, particularly a bad cop. Next thing you know, they ship me out of state so the defense can't call me, and put out the word I'm a drinker, a big troublemaker. And, get this, they put it out that I committed perjury! For over a year everybody in the business thought I was a drunken liar. And I don't even drink."

  "How about the Feds?" I said.

  "They didn't want me back. I was always too independent to suit the bureaucrats. Anyway, Dutch heard about it. I was living in Trenton working a security job and he showed up one day, didn't ask any questions, just offered me a job. After I took it, I said, 'I don't drink and I've never told a lie under oath in my life,' and he says, 'I know it,' and it's never come up since."

  Then he leaned across the table toward me. "That's my excuse, what's yours?"

  "I know the rest of the Cincinnati Triad is here. I just want to dig a hole under all of them. I don't care where they fall, but I want them to drop."

  "Is it because you couldn't nail them up there?"

  "That's part of it."

  "And the rest of it's personal?" he said.

  I nodded. "Absolutely."

  He gave me another big smile. "Splendid," he said. "I truly admire a man who's strongly motivated." He offered me his hand. "I think Zapata and I will have a go at finding this Nance chap."

  "I'd like that a lot," I said.

  A minute or two l
ater Stick came back to the table. "Zapata just called," he said. "They've already spotted Tanner. He's at the Breakers Hotel eating breakfast."

  "See what I mean about Chino?" Charlie One Ear said with a grin, and we were on our way.

  21

  MEMORANDUM

  Okay, Cisco, you're always complaining that I don't file reports. So I have a thing about that. I can't type and it takes me forever to peck out one lousy report. Also there are never enough lines on the forms and I can't get the stuff in between the lines that are there. If you want to know the truth, it's a royal pain in the ass. But if I were going to write a memorandum, it would probably go something like this:

  I've been in Dunetown less than twenty-four hours. So far I've witnessed one death, seen three other victims, fresh on the slab, been treated like I got smallpox by Dutch Morehead and his bunch of hooligans, and seen just enough of Dunetown to understand why they call it Doomstown. It's an understatement.

  Due process? Forget it. It went out the window about the time Dunetown got its first paved road. As far as the hooligans are concerned, due process is the notice you get when you forget to pay your phone bill. Most of them think Miranda is the president of a banana republic in Central America.

  Stick understands the territory but he's kind of in the squeeze. He has to go along with the hooligans so they won't tumble that he's a Fed. On the other hand, he's smart enough to know that any evidence these guys might gather along the way would get stomped flat at the door to the courthouse.

  What we're talking about, Cisco, is education. Stick is a smooth operator. The rest of Dutch Morehead's people would rather kick ass than eat dinner. Yesterday I tried to discuss the RICO statutes with them and Chino Zapata thought I was talking about a mobster he knows in Buffalo.

  The only exception is Charlie "One Ear" Flowers, who knows the game but doesn't buy the rules. He's like the rest of these guys-they've been fucked over so much by the system that they walk with their legs crossed. I'm not making any value judgments, mind you. Maybe some of them deserved their lumps.

  Take Salvatore, for instance. He was up on charges in New York City when Dutch found him. The way I get it, Salvatore was on stakeout in one of those mom and pop stores in the Bronx. It had been robbed so often, the people who owned it took out the cash and put it on the counter every time somebody walked into the store. The old man had been shot twice. Classic case. It's the end of the year and Salvatore is behind two-way glass and this freak comes into the store and starts waving a Saturday night special around. Salvatore steps out from his hiding place, says, "Merry Christmas, motherfucker," and blows the guy into the middle of the street with an 870 riot gun loaded with rifle slugs. The police commissioner took issue with the way Salvatore did business. Now he's down here.

  One thing about them, they don't complain. Between you and me, I'm glad they're here.

  You can add this to everything else: every time I go around a corner I get another rude shock. Like going out to the beach today. I wasn't ready for that. The traffic should have been a clue. It got heavy about a quarter mile from where the boulevard terminates at Dune Road, which runs parallel to the ocean. See, the way I remember Dune Road, it was this kind of desolate macadam strip that merged with the dunes. It went out to the north end of the island and petered out at the sea; one of those old streets that go nowhere in particular.

  Now it's four lanes wide with metered parking lots all over the place. There are three hotels that remind me a lot of Las Vegas, and shops and fast-food joints one on top of the other, and seawalls to protect the hotel guests from the common people. Two more going up and beyond them condos polluting the rest of the view. And the noise! It was a hurricane of sound. Stereos, honking horns, and hundreds of voices, all jabbering at once.

  La Cote de Nightmare is what it is now.

  See what I mean about rude shocks? The Strip, that's one rude shock.

  Anyway, I'm on my way out there with Stick and Charlie One Ear followed in his car. Going anywhere with Stick is taking your life in your hands. He doesn't drive a car, he flies it. He can do anything in that Pontiac but a slow roll and I wouldn't challenge him on that. I ought to be getting combat pay.

  Without boring you with details, Salvatore and Zapata made this St. Louis pimp named Mortimer Flitch and we went out to have a chat with him.

  He was hanging out on the Strip and before I go any further with that, let me tell you about the Strip. The first thing I noticed when we got there, the hotels are almost identical triplets. Take the Breakers, for instance. The lobby is the size of the Dallas stadium. It would take about five minutes to turn it into a casino. I could almost hear the cards ruffling and the roulette balls rattling and the gears cranking in the slot machines. When Raines pushed through the pari-mutuel law, he promised there would never be any casino gambling in Dunetown. Well, you can forget that, Cisco. They're ready. It's just a matter of time. I'll give them a year, two at the most. What we're looking at is Atlantic City, Junior. About fifteen minutes told me all I wanted to know about the Strip.

  When we got there, the pimp, Mortimer, is sitting in a booth in the coffee shop looking like he just swallowed a 747. Salvatore is sitting across from him, kind of leaning over the table, grinning like he's running for mayor. One thing I left out: Salvatore carries a sawed-off pool cue in his shoulder holster. It's about eighteen inches long and it's always catching on things, which doesn't seem to bother him a bit. Zapata is standing by the door. That's their idea of backup.

  When we arrived, Zapata split. He's on the prowl for Nance and Chevos. That makes me feel real fine, because if Chevos and Nance are within a hundred miles of here, Zapata will find them. I'll make book on it.

  We join Salvatore and Mortimer at the table and then I see why this Mortimer Flitch has got that screwy look on his face. Salvatore has his pool cue between Mortimer's legs and every once in a while he gives the cue a little jerk and rings Mortimer's bells.

  "Tell him what you told me there, Mort," Salvatore says, and bong! he rings the bells and Mortimer starts singing like the fat lady in the opera.

  "I got in a little trouble in Louisville about two months ago and- "

  Bong! "Tell 'em what for," says Salvatore.

  "Beating up this chippie. She had it coming- "

  Bong! "Forget the apologies," says Salvatore.

  "Anyway, the DA was all over me and- "

  Bong! "Tell 'em why," says Salvatore.

  "It, uh, it—"

  Bong!

  "It was my fifth offense. Anyway, I give a call to a friend of mine, does a little street business in Cincy, and he says forget it out there, things are real hot, I should try calling Johnny O'Brian down here. So I did and he sends me the ticket."

  Mortimer stopped to catch his breath and Salvatore gave him another little shot.

  "Tell 'em about the hotel and all," he says.

  "Look, O'Brian did me all right. I could get blitzed over this."

  Bong! "Tell 'em about the fuckin' hotel, weed."

  "He gets me a suite here in the Breakers, gives me two G's, and says I got a couple of weeks to line up some ladies. It's a sixty-forty split. He gets the forty."

  Salvatore looked over at me and smiled.

  "What else you want to know?"

  "Did you bring any ladies with you?" I asked.

  "Uh- "

  Bong!

  "Yeah, yeah. Two."

  "That's the Mann Act," I said.

  "Look, could we maybe meet somewhere else if we're going to keep this up?" Mortimer pleaded. "I could take a boxcar ride just talking to you guys."

  "How many pimps does O'Brian have working down here?" I asked.

  Mortimer looks at Salvatore wild-eyed and says, "Swear to God, I don't know. I got the hotel, that's all I know."

  "This is your territory exclusively?" Charlie One Ear asked, and Mortimer nodded vigorously.

  "Okay," I said. "Finish your breakfast. We wanted information; we're not going to tell any
body about our chat. Don't screw up and leave town."

  He shakes his head. Salvatore pockets the cue, and we split.

  "Can we use this?" Charlie One Ear asks on the way out.

  "No," I said, "but it's nice to know."

  "Coercion, huh?"

  "Yeah. "

  Now I know why Salvatore carries a pool cue. He calls it his sweet nutcracker.

  See what I mean about due process, Cisco?

  22

  DRIVE-IN

  Stick drove intelligently on the way back. Neither one of us had much to say. About halfway to town he wheeled into a drive-in and got us each a hamburger and a beer. He pulled around behind the place and parked under some palm trees in the parking lot and we opened the doors to let the breeze blow through.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  "Sure, why?"

  "I figure maybe you got the blues."

  "How come?"

  "You got that look in your eye."

  "I'm doing fine."

  "I know the blues when I see them." He looked at me with that crazy sideways smile. "I just thought I'd let you know I'm a good listener and I got an awful memory."

  "It's nothing you haven't heard before," I said.

  "I'm only thirty-one," he replied. "You'd be surprised what I haven't heard yet."

  "I'll keep that in mind."

  There was a lot of activity in the parking lot; a lot of young girls wearing just about as little as the law allowed and young men with acne and cutoff jeans making awkward passes at them. The beer was ice cold and it tickled the tongue and made the mouth feel clean and fresh, and the hamburgers were real meat and cooked just right. So I hunkered down in the seat, bracing my knees on the dashboard, and took a long pull on my bottle. It had been a long time since I had spent lunch watching pretty young girls at play.

  "Just look at that, would you," Stick said wistfully.

  "I'm looking," I said, just as wistfully.

  After a while two girls in a TR-3 pulled in and parked near us. One of them got out and threw something into the trash can. She was wearing thin white shorts that barely covered her bottom and a man's white shirt tied just under her breasts, which were firm and perilously close to popping out. She stood by the door of the TR-3 for a minute, flirting with Stick, and then she got in and leaned over and whispered something to her friend. When she did, the shorts tightened around every curve and into every crevice and you could see the lines of her skimpy bikini through the cotton cloth and see the half-circles of her cheeks.