"And what it is, you're just doin' this because you're a fine, upstanding dude that does good work, right? Shit, man, what you take me for? I wasn't out pickin' cotton when the brains were handed out."
"Look, I know about your deal with Mr. Stoney and I don't—"
"I ain't got no deal with Mr. Stoney," he said. "He don't deal, man, don't come grubbin' around with his hand out lookin' for part of the action, shit. That ain't his style. Me and Mr. Stoney have an understanding. If I fuck up, I get hammered. If I don't, everything's velvet."
"What I'm saying is, I'm after Tagliani. I don't care how you and Mr. Stoney run the town. It looked pretty good to me in the old days."
"You talked to Mr. Stoney about all this?"
"He'll figure it out by himself," I said. "Personally, I think you're getting suckered into this gunfight with Tagliani."
His smile vanished, but the voice didn't change.
"I don't get suckered, dog lover. That ain't my style."
"You want to listen?" I said bluntly.
He put his leg back on the floor and leaned over the table toward me. "Okay," he said, "we've come this far. Just don't piss me off."
"They need a fall guy for the whole enchilada."
"Who needs?"
"Maybe Chevos. Maybe Costello. Maybe even Bronicata, although I doubt it. Whoever knocked over twelve Taglianis so far this week. Somebody had to go down for it and they're setting you up to be the guy."
He leaned back in his chair, made a church steeple of his fingertips, and stared up at the dark ceiling. There was a lot to sort through, most of it guesswork on my part, and very little of it, if any, could be substantiated.
Without looking down, Graves whispered:
"Also I didn't kill McGee. Man, I was gonna whack that little cocksucker off but somebody else did the job for me."
That one caught me by surprise, although I did my best not to show it.
"I've had my people killed in this thing," he said. "Hard to forget. "
"So why get more killed? It'll just get harder to forget. I understand people went down on both sides."
Pause.
"That's true," he agreed. Then, still looking at the ceiling, "I take the fifth on that cocaine shit. That's federal. Put that motherfucker back in the file."
"You're clean on that one too," I said. "If somebody else lifted the load, you're not guilty of violating anything. Whoever stole and brought it in, that's the guilty party."
He looked down at me and smiled. "You could be in the wrong game, dog lover," he said. "You oughta be a fixer."
"I used to be," I said.
"Well, shit, how about that."
"Can we talk about Leadbetter?" I asked. I wanted to know about the dead police chief. That was another coincidence I didn't believe in. Mufalatta was staring at me, open-mouthed, as I pushed it as far as it would go.
"What about him?"
"Was he giving you any trouble?"
Graves shook his head very slowly. "Him and Mr. Stoney," he said, entwining two fingers, "like that."
"Do you know why he was killed?"
"I heard it was an accident," he said.
"There's one other thing," I said. "Did Tony Lukatis ever do a job for you?"
"Shit, don't be a jiveass. I hardly knew the little motherfucker."
"You didn't like him, then?"
"I didn't think about him one way or the other."
"So he wasn't working for you on the Colombia run?"
"If there was a Colombia run, he wouldn't have been workin' for me, nohow. Okay?"
"Okay."
"So what the hell's the plan, baby? Do we wait for you to tell us the truce is on or what?"
"I need a couple of hours," I said.
"To do what?"
"Cool the situation down. Just stay low, that's all you got to do. "
He stroked his jaw with a large, rawboned hand that sparkled with a diamond ring as big as the house I was born in. He started to chuckle in that whispery, gravel voice of his.
"I don't believe this, y'know. I mean, me trustin' a fuckin' honky Fed. What's your name, man?"
"Kilmer. Jake Kilmer."
"Like the poet?"
"You read poetry?" I said.
"Why not," he said. "I got class."
66
SHOOTOUT IN BACK O'TOWN
"Okay, you got a deal," Graves said, offering me his hand. "We'll stay cool until you get Nance and the rest of them off the street. But they come lookin' for trouble, Kilmer, forget it. I ain't standing still for any motherfucker."
A phone rang somewhere in the darkness of the Church. It kept ringing persistently until it was finally answered. A voice in the darkness said, "It's for somebody named Kilmer. Is that either one of you?"
I stood up, followed by Graves' hard glance.
"I hope this ain't some kind of stand-up, 'cause if it is, man, you go down first."
"Probably my broker," I said, and followed a vague form back to the cash register. The phone was on the wall, an old-fashioned black coin-eater.
"Kilmer," I said.
It was Dutch. "Get your ass outta there now," he told me.
"We're doing fine here," I said.
"Kite Lange just called central from his car. He's following Nance and two carloads of Tagliani gunsels, and they're headed your way."
"Call in some blue and whites."
"I've done that but you got maybe a minute to get out of there before shooting's likely to start."
"Goddamn it," I said, "Nose has agreed to a cease-fire!"
"Then you better get your ass out here and tell that to your buddy Nance, 'cause he's about to come around the corner."
I slammed down the phone and stumbled through the darkness back to Graves' table.
"We got a problem," I said as calmly as I could. "Nance is on his way with two cars."
An S&W .38 appeared in Graves' fist. There was a lot of movement around us. The gun was a beauty, a Model 19 with a four-inch barrel, Pachmar grip, the cocking spur shaved off. Not fancy, all pro.
"What the fuck's goin' down here?" he hissed.
"That was our partner. One of our people spotted Nance and his bunch heading this way. Police cars are coming. Just stay inside, keep your heads down. Let us handle it."
"You ain't goin' nowhere till this gets unwound, dog lover."
An explosion ended the conversation. The front door erupted and yellow flames lashed up the stairwell, followed by bits and pieces of wood and glass that seemed to float lazily in the updraft.
The place shook like an earthquake had hit us.
The Kid dove sideways, out of Graves' line of fire, and pulled me with him. Graves couldn't have cared less about us, though. He dashed toward the door.
Handguns started popping down on the street. Then a shotgun bellowed and somebody screamed.
The Kid turned a service table on its side, smacked a leg off with his elbow, grabbed it like a club, and motioned me to follow him to a side door.
Another explosion. I looked back and saw a gaping hole in the side of the room. Light slashed through smoke and fire, showing me several men with guns, heading toward the front stairs, fire be damned. More gunfire. Another scream. Handguns were popping off all over the place. I could hear several sirens shrieking out on the street.
Heavy artillery boomed behind the door just as we got to it. The Kid kicked it open and came face to face with one of Turk Nance's goons. His Remington twelve-gauge had just blown a hole through one of Graves' men, who was tumbling down the stairs behind him. The Kid jumped back inside as the hoodlum swung the shotgun up. Mufalatta pulled the door shut, and dragged me to my knees beside him as the riot gun blew a six-inch plug out of the center of the door. The Kid counted to three and then slammed the door open again, right into the gunman's face. The shotgun barrel slid through the hole it had just made in the door. The Kid grabbed the barrel with one hand, pulled the door shut again, and wrenched the weapon from the gunman's ha
nds. He reached through the hole, grabbed a handful of the hoodlum's shirt, pulled him against the shattered door, and slammed the butt end of the table leg into his chest. The gangster fell away from the front door, gagging, and the Kid charged out, swinging the table leg like Lou Gehrig, and almost took off the goon's head. The gunman hit the stairs halfway down, bounced once, and piled up in the doorway.
We followed him down the stairs. The shotgun was an 870P police riot gun loaded with pellets, an awesome weapon. At the foot of the stairs we peered cautiously around the corner of the door. One of Nance's cars was parked twenty feet away. They saw the Kid's black face and every gun in the car opened up.
We jumped back as the doorjamb was blown to pieces.
"There's one of 'em outside the car on the other side," the Kid said. "I'm gonna squirrel the son of a bitch and get us a little breathin' room."
Squirreling is a useful trick. Fire a shotgun or any projectile weapon at less than a forty-five-degree angle into anything solid, and the bullet or pellets will ricochet exactly eight inches off that surface and stay at that height. That's just low enough to go under a car. The Kid got the shotgun ready, leaned around the corner, and cut loose twice.
Kow-boom! Kow-boom!
Forty-eight pellets sang off the sidewalk and showered under the car, tearing through the ankle and shin of the man on the other side. He went down screaming. The Kid took advantage of the hiatus to put another blast through the rear window. The car took off, with the wounded thug hanging on to the front door.
Outside, all hell had broken loose.
At least two of Nance's shooters and one of Graves' men were down in the street.
Pedestrians were cowering behind parked cars and in alleyways.
The Church was in the middle of a block with Gordon Street in front of it and Marsh Street behind. Empty lots on both sides. It was under siege. The front of the place was aflame, as was a police car sitting sideways in the middle of Gordon Street on blown-out tires.
Both ends of the street were clogged with blue and whites.
The mob car slammed on its brakes as it neared Gordon, and the human cargo hanging on to the door was vaulted end over end into the street. He lay there clutching his ankles until a volley of gunfire from the Church stilled him. The Nance car spun around and started back our way. As it did, Dutch Morehead pulled his Olds out of Marsh Street, into the lot, jumped out, and dashed for cover. The Kid shot off a rear tire and most of the rim as the sedan roared past. The Nance car lost control, tried to swerve out of the path of the Olds, slammed into the front end of the Dutchman's car, vaulted over it, and slid to a grinding halt on its side.
Nance's men started crawling out of doors and windows. Cops swarmed up from Marsh Street and were all over them.
The other car was nowhere to be seen. Then it suddenly burst backward out of an alley beside the drugstore and into Gordon Street, spun around on screaming brakes, and careened into the lot as the Stick's black Pontiac roared out of the alley in pursuit. Longnose Graves dashed from the door of the Church and emptied his pistol into the fleeing car.
As Nance's car passed our doorway, showering dirt and debris toward us, the Mufalatta Kid sent one burst into its rear window. He could handle a shotgun, all right, but it didn't slow down the escaping car. It cut left into Marsh, glanced off a police car, sideswiped a brick wall, and was gone, with Stick growling off after it.
Fire trucks and ambulances arrived. More confusion.
The Church was burning out of control. Graves' people tumbled out into the street, coughing and rubbing their eyes. A fast body count showed three of Nance's men dead to two of Graves' gunmen.
Graves was not in the roundup.
Dutch said, "He must've slipped us in the confusion."
I didn't believe that. I went back to the side door and ran upstairs. Smoke swirled through the Church. Flames were snapping at the far end of the room.
Graves was sitting on his wooden throne, tie askew, suit and face smoke-smeared, a bullet hole high in his left chest, his .38 aimed at the floor. He looked up with surprise as I stumbled through the smoke to the booth.
He raised the pistol and pointed it at my head. His rasping voice said, "Shit, dog lover, you don't know when you're well off."
"Why don't you get out of here while you can," I said.
"I ought to kill you on general principles," he said.
"What's stopping you?"
His finger squeezed and an electric shock sizzled through me. The hammer clicked harmlessly.
"Out of bullets, poet," he said, laughed, and threw the gun at my feet.
67
BODY COUNT
Dutch and I piled into the Kid's car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. It was like a front-line medcorps unit. Doctors, nurses, and attendants raced in and out of doors in bloodstained robes, while several of the wounded lay on stretchers in the hallway, waiting their turn in the emergency room.
"How bad is this one?" a hawk-faced nurse asked as they wheeled Graves in, a blood bottle stuck in his arm.
"Bullet in the chest and bleeding," the attendant said.
"Room three," she snapped officiously, and then to Graves, "Do you have hospitalization?"
Graves looked up at her and managed a smile.
"I'm on welfare, lady," he whispered. And they wheeled him away.
Kite Lange and Dutch filled us in on the particulars. Dutch had hardly finished his phone call to me when Nance and his sidekicks had whipped into the street. One car had gone in from Morgan Street, across the empty lot to the side door. Nance had driven straight to the front of the church, gunned down one of Graves' men, and thrown a stick of dynamite through the front door. Then all hell exploded. Lange, coming in close behind, rammed Nance's car and ruined his own in the process. Nance had headed up the alley beside the drugstore, only to run into Stick coming toward him, slammed into reverse, and backed out. We knew the rest of the story.
"My car's a wreck," Lange moaned.
"Your car was already a wreck," said the Kid. "We'll go to the city dump tomorrow and get you another one."
Dutch was as busy as a centipede with athlete's foot, assigning cops to the wounded and trying to get a final count on dead and injured. Miraculously, only one cop had been hurt in the melee. He had broken a toe jumping out of his burning patrol car. A quick count showed two of Graves' men dead, three shot or burned, and the boss himself fighting for his life. Five more had been arrested at the scene.
"We may be missing one or two more," volunteered the Kid. "I think there was thirteen of them, countin' Graves."
Nance had not fared well either. Three were dead, two more hanging on for dear life, two had minor wounds, and three were in custody.
"One of 'em looks like he got struck by lightning," Dutch said. "The whole top of his head's stove in."
"That was me," the Kid muttered.
"What'd you hit him with, a meat cleaver?" asked Dutch.
"Table leg."
"That's gonna look great on the report," Dutch said.
"Anybody see how many there were in the getaway car with Nance?"
"Three or four," said the Kid.
"Not bad," I said. "This may have been Waterloo for both gangs. They've got to be running out of hoodlums about now."
"Let's hope Stick nailed Nance and the rest of his bunch," Dutch said.
"If anybody can, he can," I said.
I was right—and wrong.
A few minutes later an ambulance wheeled into emergency, followed by the Stick. The ambulance held three more of Turk Nance's gunmen, one of whom had literally lost his head in the shooting.
"That was me, too," Mufalatta murmured again.
"You had some day," Lange said.
No Nance.
"They headed for the interstate bridge," Stick explained. "I radioed ahead, had the bridge sealed off. They tried to go cross-country and hit a delivery truck. Nance was AWOL. I don't know what the hell happened to him, but I'v
e put an all points out on him."
"We got the little s.o.b. this time," Dutch said. "We can nail him with murder, arson, creating a public nuisance, discharging firearms in the street . . . "
"Yeah," I said, "all we got to do is find him."
"How about Nose?" the Kid asked. "What do we charge him with? He was just protecting his ass."
"Concealed weapons?" Stick suggested.
"There wasn't anything concealed about them," Dutch said. "I don't know what we're gonna do about Nose. There's gotta be something we can stick him with."
"One thing for certain," Stick said, "it's sure as hell gonna attract a lot of people."
It did. Within thirty minutes Chief Walters, Titan, Donleavy, and several other dignitaries were in the emergency clinic, all asking questions. I had better things to do. I asked the Stick to run me back to the park to get my car and check on the progress of our black-water diver. As we started to leave, Titan grabbed my arm.
"What the hell happened over there?" he demanded.
"Ask Dutch," I said. "I'm busy."
"I'll bet my pension you shook up this ruckus," he said, his voice beginning to rise. He sounded like a dog whining.
"That's right. I attacked all twenty-five of them with my nail file," I said, and walked out.
A few doors down from emergency, a bronze casket was being loaded through the morgue entrance into a hearse. Doe Raines was standing alone, watching the procedure. I walked down to her. She was wearing a severe black suit and a black hat and was carrying a black purse. As usual, she was dressed impeccably for the occasion.
"I'm sorry," I said. "If it's any consolation, I really think Harry was one of the few people in this town who weren't involved in the whole mess. His only sin was naiveté."
She looked up at me. She was drifting aimlessly through a bad dream. Her makeup, heavier than usual, could not cover the grief lines around her eyes. Her voice, low and husky with sorrow, sounded like it was coming from someplace far, far away.
"It's been ghastly," she said in a tiny voice. "The newspapers in Atlanta and New York have been calling. TV stations. I don't know what to say."
"Let somebody else do the talking. Let Donleavy do it. Besides, when they get down here they're going to find a lot more to interest them than you."
Hooligans Page 42
