by Max Lockhart
Cleary reached down and yanked Joe back on his feet. "You weren't being very smart last night, pissing off Mickey Gold like that."
He was wasting his breath, Cleary decided, because his comment had about as much effect as spitting in the ocean. Joe bounced the ball up and down in his hand, then suddenly threw it across the rooftops, watching it until it disappeared in the distance.
Cleary tried again. "I'm going to have my man, Johnny Betts, stick with you a couple of days." If the stupid bastard wouldn't protect himself, someone had to do it for him.
Joe picked up his shirt and wiped the sweat off his face. "You're not worried about last night are you? Come on, Jack. We've fought tougher guys than Mickey Gold and his stooges."
Cleary lit a cigarette. "War's over, Joe."
"To hell with the war. What are you doing, Jack? I never asked for your help."
"You never could." Cleary heard the echoes of gunfire, the harsh tonal sounds of the enemies' language inside his own head, and forced them back into his memory. "You're my friend. There's some responsibility here."
"Responsible Jack Cleary, making everybody's choices for them. Who the hell ever appointed you as my keeper?"
"Well, damn it, you're making a mistake. You made a mistake ever getting mixed up with Mickey Gold, and you're making a bigger one thinking you can thumb your nose at him and not get it knocked off."
"You think so?" Joe asked as he walked to the roof's edge and stared across the fifteen-foot chasm to the opposite building. He leaned over the ledge and looked out over the city, then down at the dizzying twelve-story drop to the pavement below.
He glanced back, and Cleary stiffened when he saw the wild look in Joe's eyes. "You know, I can still make it, Jack. Just like when we were kids. Do you remember when we were kids?"
Cleary wet his lips, and tried to sound calm. "Come on, Joe, of course I remember, but we're not kids anymore."
With a distant smile in his eyes, Joe started to back away.
"What's it going to prove, Joe...?" demanded Cleary, letting his voice trail off in midsentence, his features tightening as Joe started running toward the chasm.
"Joseph!"
Cleary grabbed for his friend and closed his hand around empty air as Joe took a half-dozen powerful strides and launched himself off the ledge. "Jesus Christ!" he screamed as he watched Joe, suspended in midair twelve stories above the ground, straining for all he was worth.
Cleary heard himself panting for breath as Joe barely made it. Grasping a hold on the opposite ledge, Joe lost his grip for an instant, then pulled himself up and straddled the ledge. "I told you I could still do it."
"What the hell does it prove, Quinlan?" Cleary yelled.
Joe faced Cleary over the man-made chasm. "It proves I'm still alive. That they haven't dragged me down yet, Jack." He tilted his head back, and a wild Tarzan yell echoed across the rooftops. "Not me. Not yet."
FIVE
Saturday Night
L.A. Thunderbolts vs. Silver City Indians
25k Winner-Take-All Extravaganza
Cleary glanced at the Olympic Auditorium scoreboard, then back at the lone skater whipping around and around the empty oval. Like the baseball game on the rooftop, like the leap across the chasm, skating against an invisible jam was another way Joe Quinlan competed against himself. What wars he fought, he fought alone. He would neither ask for help, nor accept it if it were offered. Which meant, thought Cleary, that any deal to get Joe off the hook would have to be made without his knowledge. And that left Jack Cleary with no options. He would meet with Frank Tucci because he had no other choice.
Reaching into his pocket, he removed a wire recording device and handed it to Johnny Betts. "Here, hold on to this wire for me. I better go clean to the first meet." He looked at his watch and stood up. "I better leave, I don't want to be late to my first appointment with crime's answer to Superman."
Johnny's brown eyes held a worried expression Cleary knew Betts would deny. "Watch yourself, huh. From what I hear, this Tucci is a for-real nut who gets his jollies rubbing people out. I can't go around breaking in new bosses every week. Takes too long to show you the ropes."
"I can take care of myself, Betts."
"Yeah? Well, I heard different. I heard you're always sticking your neck out, and someone's always got an axe waiting."
"I wear an iron collar, kid." He nodded his head toward the skater. "Just stay with him and make sure he doesn't get in the middle of this."
He turned to go when Johnny's voice stopped him. "I gotta ask what your angle is here, Cleary. What do you owe this guy?"
Cleary looked at him, then through him, to a time Johnny Betts was almost too young to remember. "It goes back a ways... to the war."
Johnny snapped his fingers. "Don't tell me: he took a bullet for you, saved your life. Now you're eternally grateful. Right?"
"Wrong." Cleary's lips were numb from the ice-cold tone of his own voice.
Cleary docked his Eldorado in front of Frank Tucci's futuristic, Lautner-designed house perched high above the city, just like an eagle's aerie, he thought as he slid out of the car. Except he didn't like comparing Tucci to something as noble as the eagle. He wondered if vultures built nests in high places. Because one thing was for sure. If Frank Tucci was in L.A., it wasn't for the scenery.
Ralphie Santangelo walked up and rested his hand on the Eldorado's hood. "You're on time."
"Time's money," said Cleary, checking out Ralphie's clothes to see what the well-dressed thug was wearing in the tag end of the 1950s. "Hands off the car, please. Fingerprints ruin the wax job."
Nico Cerro, an Old World button man, cold, efficient, and also well dressed, materialized at Ralphie's side. "Touchy, aren't you?" he asked, running his hand down the Eldorado's side.
Cleary suspected these two and he weren't going to be best friends. "Just particular about who touches the merchandise."
Nico didn't like that because his cold, dead-looking eyes turned a little colder and looked a little deader. "Come on. Mr. Tucci's waiting."
Cleary waved his hand. "Lead on, MacDuff."
Nico and Ralphie gave him a blank stare.
"Not students of the classics, I guess," said Cleary.
"Shut up, Cleary," said Ralphie, leading the way up to the floor-to-ceiling glass entrance.
"Nice house," observed Cleary.
With a jerk of his head, Nico motioned Cleary to follow. "Mr. Tucci's at the pool."
"Nice day for it," said Cleary, wondering how well Tucci could swim with a pair of handcuffs around his ankles, then remembering he didn't have any with him. He would have never lived to tell about it, anyway, he thought, as Ralphie and Cerro ushered him up a staircase, onto a covered sun porch, past an art deco-style outdoor bar, to a table occupied by the vulture himself.
Cleary decided he was maligning the name of vulture as he took stock of Frank Tucci in slacks and sport shirt sipping from a tall glass of ice water. Frank Tucci was a snake, a hooded cobra maybe, who ruled by stealth and fear, striking out with deadly fangs at the first sign of unexpected motion. Watchful, unblinking black eyes studied him until Cleary felt a stab of sympathy for a cobra's prey. The bastard's eyes were damn near hypnotic.
Tucci signaled toward a chair with a flick of his wrist. "You may sit."
Cleary shook his head. "I'll stand. I like to keep my options open." He also didn't like snakes and didn't want to sit close to one.
The wavering aquamarine reflection from the pool danced across Tucci's face, blurring his expression. "I did some checking on you. Silver Star. Decorated ex-cop who can't be bought. Word around town is Jack Cleary's a right guy."
Tucci spoke in a low, modulated tone, as if weighing every word, and with only a hint of a New York accent. Ice rattled in his glass like dry bones each time he drank. "Check him," he said to Nico, his serpent's eyes fixed on Cleary.
Cleary hardly heard the words before Nico struck, patting him down with impersonal efficiency, l
eaving a cold spot everywhere he touched. Cleary considered kicking him in the balls, but postponed it until a more auspicious time when he didn't risk getting his head blown off.
"He's clean," announced Nico in a flat voice and stepped back to stand watch like a minor serpent, not as deadly as Tucci, but no garter snake, either.
"I have to ask you something, Cleary. Why are you working for Mickey Gold and his matzo ball Mafia?" asked Tucci, his snake-cold eyes unblinking.
Cleary shrugged and straightened his jacket. "It's a quick couple of grand." He caught sight of the cold disbelief in Tucci's eyes. "Gold doesn't want another war on the Strip, and neither do I. Makes it difficult to have a quiet drink after work. The sound of guns and firebombs disturbs the peace and tranquility of my favorite bar."
Tucci smiled, a stretching of thin lips until his fangs showed. "War? I don't know what you're talking about. I'm opening a nightclub."
"Just like you opened nightclubs in Havana and Las Vegas? I heard there's more in the cornerstones than cement."
Tucci feigned surprise. Almost successfully. "Mickey's not worried about a little friendly competition, is he? Such lack of patriotism. This country was built on the free enterprise system."
"I don't think the Founding Fathers had using .38s and firebombs as business tools in mind."
Tucci took another drink to the accompaniment of the dry-bone rattle of ice cubes. "You exaggerate."
"Gold wants to know what you want."
Another thin-lipped smile. "What do I want?" Tucci asked, as if he couldn't believe Gold was so stupid as not to know. "I want what everyone wants. More. Tell Mickey Gold I want more. "
Johnny sat in the stands in Olympic Auditorium, watching Joe Quinlan work out on the oval by himself. Or maybe not by himself, thought Johnny. Quinlan, dressed in tattered old sweats and shorts Betts wouldn't use to wax his '49 Merc, and wearing a thick, clumsily taped knee brace, worked out against some ghost no one else could see. He sped around and around the oval, dipping low on the turns, using the full momentum of the banks to build speed, then hurdled himself against an invisible jam. The sound of Joe's skates, and his accompanying eerie war cry like a sad and angry Indian, echoed loudly in the huge empty hall, and gave Johnny the shakes. Joe Quinlan might be Cleary's friend, but he was weird, man.
Joe screeched to a sudden stop and tested his bad knee. Picking up a roll of tape, Joe began retaping it, soundless whistle pursing his lips.
"What happened to your knee?" Johnny asked.
Joe winced as he pulled the tape taut around the knee. "You name it, kid."
Johnny scratched his ear. Quinlan was as closemouthed as Cleary. "You and Cleary go back a ways, huh?"
Joe tore the tape off and adjusted the brace before looking up to study Johnny. Betts had the feeling Joe might just as quickly knock his ass off the bench as talk to him. He let out a breath as the older man decided which. "You were the kid out here last night with Jack Cleary."
Johnny couldn't decide if Quinlan was asking him or telling him. Either way, he might as well introduce himself. "I'm Johnny Betts. I'm supposed to hang around, sorta check out your back the next couple days."
"And if I tell you to take a hike?" asked Joe.
"Hey, man, I take my orders from Cleary. He tells me to lay off, I will. Otherwise, you got a new shadow."
Quinlan grinned. "Cleary was just about your age, maybe a little younger, when we first started knocking around together," said Joe, biting off the end of the tape, and tossing the roll back on the floor.
Johnny adjusted his collar until it stood up in back. High style. "Hard to imagine. He's kinda cast in stone, you know. Like he never was anything but right. What was he like then?"
Joe looked out over the empty auditorium. "Wild. Stubborn. Real independent." He turned and smiled at Johnny. "Kind of like you, kid." He straightened and skated lazily into the tunnel. "Think on that while I grab us a couple of cold ones."
Mickey Gold shifted uncomfortably on the metal folding chair. He scooted it further back into the shadows and looked with distaste on Joe Quinlan's makeshift living quarters. A cot, a broken mirror, an old locker with its door off substituting as a closet, and pictures of some woman on the wall. He compared it in his mind to his own immaculate home, and felt rage interfere with his indigestion. Joe Quinlan, living in a room a skid row bum wouldn't be caught drunk in, and he still had no respect for Mickey Gold. Impossible. Intolerable. That's what came of letting someone off the hook. If you lost control, you lost respect. Mickey Gold didn't like to lose either one.
He watched Joe skate inside and glide to the Coke machine. Joe lifted a tire iron off the top of the machine, inserted it in the dispenser, gave it a crank and, at the same time, smashed the machine with a bottle-rattling slap. A bottle magically dropped from the machine. Mickey Gold nodded with approval. He liked ingenuity. Besides, he never paid a machine himself. It was against human nature.
Mickey Gold tensed as Sidney Bloom materialized out of the shadows and Joe wheeled on him with the tire iron.
"You wanna piece of me? Here I am," said Joe, a wild look in his eye that Mickey didn't like.
"Take it easy, Quinlan. We're here to make life a lot easier for you. How'd you like to wipe the slate clean with us and put ten grand in your pocket on top of it?"
"What're ya talking about?" asked Joe, brandishing the tire iron.
Mickey relaxed. If Joe Quinlan asked questions, then he was halfway on the hook. "I understand you got a big money match tomorrow night." He saw something surface from deep in Quinlan's eyes, and promised himself an extra cherries jubilee as a celebration treat.
SIX
Cleary heard Johnny Betts before he topped the hill and saw him leaning against the fender of that eyesore Merc, killing time by polishing his side mirror and adjusting the aerial for better reception on his car radio. In Cleary's opinion, better reception didn't improve the rock and roll music endangering Bett's hearing and the neighborhood's peace. Jesus, how could he listen to that crap hour after hour without getting a headache?
Johnny looked up as Cleary's Eldorado glided to a stop. "Hey, man, everything's cool. Not a hood in sight."
Cleary looked at Eileen Quinlan's house for a moment, then back at Johnny. "Sidney Bloom could blast Joe, dig up the patio with a Jackhammer, bury him with a twenty-one-gun salute, and you wouldn't hear a damn thing over that radio."
"Me?" he asked, pointing to his chest with a thumb. "I got ears like a cat, man."
"Yeah, a deaf one. Go drape yourself around the doorknob."
"Maybe I ain't gonna win a good citizenship award, Cleary, but I'm no Peeping Tom."
Cleary pitched his cigarette into the street and took a deep breath. Sometimes Betts tried the patience of a saint, and Jack Cleary never claimed to be a saint. "I didn't tell you to look through the keyhole. I just want you to stick real close to Joe tonight: The second meet's set with Tucci. A couple of hours and this will all be over. I don't trust Mickey Gold to keep his word if Joe Quinlan's running around like a lamb ready for the slaughter."
Johnny rocked back on his heels and laughed. "Lamb! If that guy's a lamb, I'm Little Bo Peep."
"Betts!"
Johnny spread his hands, palm upward, in a gesture of innocence. "All right, all right. No sweat. I'll be on him like white on rice. Or wool on a lamb."
Cleary nodded and started his Caddy. "Just keep him under cover and quiet as you can."
Johnny wondered if they were talking about the same guy: Wild Man Quinlan, who thought a fistfight was a social engagement. "Hey, Cleary," Johnny said.
Cleary sighed and shifted into neutral. "Yeah, Betts?"
"Fontana backing your play?"
Cleary patted his jacket pocket. "I'm going to get everything on this wire. I don't want to take any chances of Tucci spotting one of Fontana's units."
Johnny put his hands on his hips. "That's just great, man. That's so damn stupid, I can't believe it. What if Tucci searches you? You think
he's not going to recognize a wire? Hell, he'll fill you so full of holes, we can strain tea through your hide."
Cleary impatiently tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "I'll leave you the detective agency, kid. At least, it'll be one way to make you get a haircut and wear something besides that leather jacket."
"Quit cracking jokes, Cleary!"
"Just relax, kid. I've been around the track a few times. I know what I'm doing."
Johnny nodded and fidgeted like the kid Cleary accused him of being. He opened his mouth several times, until Cleary wondered if he had suddenly lost his voice. "Look, Cleary, uh, about last night. I was way out of line." He fiddled with his aerial for a minute, then turned back, white lines of anger bracketing his mouth. "I've been backing your play since day one here, and I just thought you might want to cut me a slice and let me know what exactly is going on. I mean, you're sticking your neck out a mile. What the hell do you owe this guy?"
Cleary sat with eyes fixed on Johnny.
"Oh, shit, just forget it," said Johnny, turning back to his aerial. But not before Cleary saw the hurt expression in the younger man's eyes.
"Joe didn't save my life. I saved his."
Hearing a familiar chime, he looked up to see a Good Humor truck surrounded by excited children parked down the street. He remembered one hot, sticky night on some hellish Pacific island that was infested with bugs big enough to carry you off. The humidity was so high you could wring water out of the air, and the japs had the whole company penned down in the lousiest stretch of jungle on the whole island. He and Joe had spent the hours talking about the first thing they were going to do if they ever got home in one piece. Joe had wanted a cone from the Good Humor man.
Cleary switched off the Caddy's motor and got out. He pulled a coin out of his pocket and tossed it in the air. "Come on, kid. I'll buy you an ice cream."
Johnny trailed after him, silent for once, which was just as well, thought Cleary, paying for the cones and retracing his steps back down the bucolic street. He needed a few minutes to think just how to explain to a confused kid who'd never been to a war. He glanced around at the sprinklers lazily spraying the lush suburban lawns and thought how different it was on that island.
