Menaced Assassin

by Joe Gores

  Within a week he had gone through them all except Mae, who never let him get that close to her because he gave her what she called “the willies.” Even so, he soon became as much of a fixture around the establishment as Mose or Dietrich, the massive and savage Rottweiler who guarded Mae’s Place after hours.

  Until the P.W. arrived, nobody was able to touch Dietrich, and only Mose even dared get near enough to throw raw meat in his direction once a day. He was a huge, silent, morose, and savage attack waiting to happen, let out to roam only at night after all the clients had departed, otherwise kept locked away in a cage under the cellar steps to which he was lured each morning by a slab of bloody beafsteak left in his food dish courtesy of Mose.

  The P.W. had laid out his sleeping bag that first night after Dietrich had been released to roam. When the huge dog returned to the basement, it immediately rushed him, roaring and snapping, sharp fangs gleaming. The P.W. dropped to one knee as Dietrich sailed at him, somehow swayed aside, getting a gloved hand behind Dietrich’s passing cocked front leg, and using the dog’s own momentum, smashed his 180-pound body nose-first into the concrete-block basement wall.

  After this happened three more times, Dietrich stood panting in the middle of the floor, nose bleeding and a little spraddle-legged, staring at the P.W. with puzzled eyes…

  Then he whined. The stub of what would have been his tail if they had left him one started, very slowly, very tentatively, as if he had used it no more than the P.W. had used his vocal cords, to wiggle back and forth. Had it been whole, it would have been wagging.

  The P.W. finished laying out his sleeping bag and got into it, totally ignoring the dog. After a long time, Dietrich shuffled over and lay down beside him with a huge sigh of what sounded almost like relief. Sometime through the night, in his sleep, the P.W. draped one arm over the dog’s massive body.

  After that, the P.W. always fed Dietrich, and together they patrolled the building and the grounds after hours, two silent primordial ghosts drifting in tandem through the icy darkness of the New Jersey night.

  During the month before the P.W. arrived in Jersey, in San Francisco Dante’s bone-deep rage and resolution at the almost scornful blowing away of Gideon Abramson in Death Valley had made him fess up to Tim about the Raptor phone calls. To do it, he took Tim out to dinner at the Salonika on Polk near Green.

  Since the film festival, Dante had been accompanying Rosa to festivals sponsored by various Greek Orthodox churches around the Bay Area. He’d gotten to like the food, and knew it would appeal to Tim’s gargantuan tastes. So he ordered a tray of mezethes — literally “starters”-to begin the meal. Sure enough, Tim was first enchanted with the dolmathakia, stuffed vine leaves, usually grape, and ate the whole plate of them himself.

  “Delicious! What’s in ’em?”

  “Long-grain rice, pine nuts, onions, dill, mint, parsley, lemon, pepper… Rosie makes them, but she adds ground lamb, too. Hers are better.”

  So it went through the melitzanosalata — eggplant and feta cheese and a lot of herbs-the soutzoukakia of lamb and beef sausage served with pita bread, and a dynamite tzatziki of cucumber and yogurt that Dante fought him for.

  “I know all this ain’t out of the goodness of your heart, chief,” said Tim, waving a greasy-fingered hand, “since we been eating forty-five minutes and haven’t gotten to our dinners yet. So c’mon-talk to Daddy.”

  Talk Dante did, over kefthes, fried meatballs that released tantalizing aromas from the kitchen as they were cooked, and the horiatiki salates of tomatoes and cucumbers and black olives and onions and feta cheese topped with dried oregano, known to most people just as “Greek salads.”

  “So this guy has called five times-”

  “I think it was him after Moll Dalton,” said Dante, forking flaky-crusted spanakopita — spinach pie-into his mouth and talking around it, “but I didn’t save the tape. By Hymie’s voiceprints, all the others are different people. Raptor used Gideon Abramson’s own voice as his message. Telling a Jewish joke.”

  “Recorded him off the phone, I bet,” mused Tim.

  Main courses were kotopoulu fournou for Tim, roast chicken with potatoes, and baked lamb with pasta, giouvetsi, for Dante. Over impossibly sweet baklava served with thimble-size cups of thick Greek coffee, Dante told about the note pinned to his shirt while he slept in the Death Valley dunes. Tim started to guffaw.

  “That’s one I would have liked to see, chief,” he chortled. “It’s only because of that note that I’m buyin’ into the calls. Otherwise I’d be laughin’ in your face while I’m readin’ these.” He was shuffling through the transcripts of the calls like a hand of cards. “None of them really say, bang, bang, I did it, do they? Uh-uh. But that note pinned to your shirt…”

  “And doing Abramson from four hundred yards out.”

  “Whadda they got on the slugs?”

  “Not much so far. The ones they could find are badly distorted. Since the killing occurred in a national monument, the FBI’s involved, and you know their Forensics Ballistics lab takes its own sweet time to analyze and report.”

  “Four football fields away, so we know high-velocity, scoped…” Tim shook his head. “Near a fifth of a mile? That’s shooting, it tells us stuff about him.”

  “Like what?” Dante had ideas of his own, but he liked to watch the big homicide cop’s mind work.

  “Probably a good ol’ southern boy from Arkansas, Tennessee, like that. Maybe sniper-trained, maybe by the Marines in ’Nam.”

  “Lots of Marines in ’Nam weren’t from the South.”

  Tim leaned back with a luxurious sigh, his belly out over his belt. “More than you’d think. And southern boys make about the best killers there are-of animals or men. Take one of ’em who really likes killing…”

  “Yeah,” said Dante, “with maybe some seasoning as a CIA spook or mere or somebody before going to work for the mob.”

  “I buy it-he’s too methodical for a guy just poppin’ caps ’cause he’s got a hard-on against somebody.”

  “Somebody who knows Popgun Ucelli’s M.O. and has Raptor use it on the close-in hits.”

  “All of a sudden you don’t think Popgun did any of ’em?”

  “Not if we have one man here-and I think we do, because of the Raptor messages and note. Popgun wouldn’t be bright enough for the gas line trick, and from his federal rap sheet he sure as hell couldn’t make any four-hundred-yard rifle shots.”

  “Unless this Raptor shit is just a smoke screen,” mused Tim. “Multiple hitters…” He shook his head. “That doesn’t make much sense, does it? Single perp.”

  Dante paid their bill with a 20 percent tip. They kept at it on their way down Polk Street toward the Hall where Tim had to pick up his own car.

  “What can we maybe figure about who hired him?”

  “Mob,” said Dante instantly. “Prince… or old Garofano.”

  “Old, all right-old as water. Why’d he want to knock off a bunch of his compeers? He can’t have too many years left.”

  “Maybe that’s why.”

  “Go out with a bang? Maybe. How about your boyfriend?”

  “Gounaris? I can see him hiring Raptor for the others, but Abramson was his mentor, his buffer with the big boys. If he screwed up and let Moll Dalton get too close to him, he’d need all the buffers he could get.”

  “But what if he’s been skimming or something? If she nosed it out, that’s why she’d have to go. Then Lenington dug it out… Spic Madrid… right up to Abramson and St. John. I read him as a guy’d hit just about anybody who threatened him.”

  “What about the calls? The note?” They were stopped for the light at Market. “If it’s Gounaris, there’s nothing I can do to confirm it; I’m gonna focus on Raptor. He’s made himself my business.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Kosta thought long and hard about going to Uncle Gid’s funeral. Myra would expect him to be there, she and Gid had been regular visitors aboard Kosta’s yacht in the Go
unaris Shipping years. The visits had ended when Uncle Gid had started grooming him as a front man for the Cosa Nostra. But still, Myra…

  Now Gid and St. John both were gone, who could he talk to about Myra? He finally made a call to a safe number in L.A.; Prince called him back from Vegas on the scrambler phone.

  “We all commiserate with you on your loss, Kosta,” came Mr. Prince’s heavy baritone, “but the funeral is out of the question. Too public. The value of Atlas Entertainment would be markedly reduced should our involvement be proven.” His voice dropped several degrees in temperature. “What was that policeman, Stagnaro, doing in Death Valley? What does he know?”

  “Stagnaro was in Death Valley?” Kosta’s surprise was real.

  Prince must have realized it. He merely said, “Stagnaro could get to be a problem for us. He gets around.”

  “Do you want me to-”

  “No, I will initiate action if it seems indicated.”

  Kosta hung up uneasily, drove back to his apartment playing the conversation over in his mind. The way Prince had offered no comment on the man who had hit Uncle Gid suggested he had ordered the hit himself. Who would be next? Kosta?

  Or was there an independent operating here, for his own obscure ends? As Kosta had been operating for his? He wasn’t going to let Myra down in her hour of need. She was respected in the Family, might be useful to him in turn. He would go down to Palm Springs for the private service where they would sing kaddish for Uncle Gid. That would be for family only, not Family, so Mr. Prince wouldn’t find out.

  Martin Prince sat at his desk, frowning. Myra had been a good and faithful Organization wife, she would understand that Gounaris couldn’t attend the funeral, and Gounaris would know that. Gounaris could have some agenda of his own, could have had Gideon hit, perhaps by some contract hitter imported from Greece.

  There’s been too much killing recently, and Gounaris was vital to Atlas Entertainment at present. But eventually…

  And then there was Stagnaro. Just a little mosca buzzing around right now, but he kept turning up. When Moll Dalton had been hit. And Spic. Even St. John. And there he was on the scene in Death Valley. What did this guy know? Who did he report to? Was his superior reachable? Or maybe a break-in at his office, to see what he had in the way of hard evidence.

  Maybe better, for the moment, just leave him alone.

  Basta. He used the scrambler phone again to call Enzo Garofano back in Jersey.

  “What is going on out there, Marcantonio?” came Garofano’s ancient but strong voice. “Why are all these people dying? Do we have problems in the Organization? And why is this Stagnaro turning up all over? Do you think he is working with Rudy Mattaliano here in Manhattan? That could be dangerous.”

  “I’m looking into all of those things, Don Enzo,” said Prince soothingly. He thought for a moment. “But just in case, it might be wise to make sure Ucelli is uncommitted so he can act for us on short notice if we need him.”

  “It is what he lives for,” said Enzo.

  Fuckin’ life was good, thought Eddie Ucelli, sucking the flattened knuckles of his right hand. The punk on the next stool had called Eddie an old man when Eddie had told the bartender to switch off some TV shit called Beavis and Butthead. Eddie, a roll of nickels in his hand, had coldcocked him instantly, no warning, no preliminary discussion, just knocked him on his ass.

  Eddie chuckled to himself. Peeler Paradiso-so called because he liked to hang somebody up on a meat hook and then use a knife on him-had always said, “Don’t lead with your right, stronzo ” But he had, smearing the guy’s nose all over his face.

  He jabbed a finger at the big-shouldered fannullone — literally, big do-nothing-who was just scrambling to his feet. Eddie’s right cross had sent both him and his barstool flying.

  “G’wan, getta fuck outta here, I look at your face I’m drinkin’, makes me wanna puke.”

  The punk was holding a hand over his flattened nose.

  “Lissen, you sucker punched me. How about I-”

  “How about I kick you in the nuts so hard they end up in your cheeks, make you look like a squirrel?” Eddie was in great good humor. He licked his stinging knuckles, repeated, “Like a fuckin’ squirrel,” then added, “But I ain’t gonna do that. I’m a gentleman. Harry-a round for the house, here.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Ucelli.”

  Both Harry and he knew Eddie wouldn’t pay for it anyway. But the blood that wasn’t on the fannullone’s nose left his face.

  “Uc… Ucelli?”

  “That’s me, kid. They call me Popgun ’cause I’m a pistol.”

  He laughed heartily at his joke. The men waiting for their free drinks laughed loudly with him. Through the front win dow of the bar with the backward red neon sign COORS LIGHT on it, snow could be seen swirling down from the gray December afternoon sky. Big soft flakes that would stick.

  “Geez, Mr. Ucelli, I din’t know…”

  “’Sokay, fannullone ” He turned to Harry. “Set him up a beer. He’s a okay kid. He takes a good punch.”

  He liked being known and feared in this neighborhood bar. He liked the sting of his knuckles from belting the fannullone. He liked still being able to knock a big kid like that down with one punch, even if it was, like the kid had said, a sucker punch.

  He especially liked the phone call to Ucelli Meats from Mae’s Place that had made it such a good day.

  “Tell Eddie that we need some extra pork sausage out here for the holidays,” the message had read.

  They’d delivered some extra links to Mae’s Place with the next delivery, just in case the fuckin’ feds were listening in and decided to check the order. But he knew what pork Mae meant. The pork in his pants. Delivered to her place.

  Which meant she had a phone message to relay to him.

  Yeah, December 2nd, a Friday. An all-around good fuckin’ day. And a good day for fuckin’.

  That Friday in December was eight weeks since Raptor had assassinated Gideon Abramson in Death Valley, six weeks since Dante and Tim had worked out a tentative profile of the killer, two weeks after the FBI’s forensics report on the slugs found at the scene of Abramson’s death had been completed. But Dante hadn’t seen it because he didn’t get along with Jack N. Theobaux, the local SAC-nobody did. The Special Agent in Charge was a self-righteous prick even his own men called Jack-in-the-Box.

  Dante had a good working relationship, however, with Special Agent Geoff Hoskins, a very tall, very lanky man with sorrel hair in a bristly brush cut, a delicate bony face with piercing blue eyes, long-fingered hands like someone in an El Greco painting.

  Dante bought him a late dinner at the old Golden Spike on Columbus Ave, where his dad had said you used to be able to get all the spaghetti you could eat and dago red you could drink for two bucks fifty. No more.

  They sat in the back booth with the ancient deer head on the wall, ate pasta, drank wine. Geoff told him about the report.

  “We’re taking this a little more seriously than we did before,” he said, slurping minestrone. “The guy was a shooter. He was using a scope, ten-power or better, and target-quality ammo, not something you’d buy off a gun shop shelf.”

  “By target-quality I take it you also mean sniper quality?”

  “Yeah. Lake City Match M852s, in. 270 caliber. Forensics Ballistics says fired from a Winchester Model 70, the old bolt-action center-fire jobbies that long-range shooters seem to prefer. Plus that particular gun has another great advantage.”

  “What’s that?” asked Dante.

  “They were manufactured in the tens of thousands. They’re a very common hunting rifle that would excite nobody’s notice during hunting season. October is hunting season.”

  “It sure was for him,” said Dante.

  They checked the dessert menu, both ordered cappuccino and biscotti. Dante was about to ask the FBI for a favor, always a touchy, usually a demeaning, proposition.

  “Tim Flanagan and I worked out a sort of profile of wha
t sort of guy he might be. I’d like to run it by you…”

  “You got no standing in this case, Dante, nor does your pal Flanagan, even if he is Homicide. It’s federal, you know.”

  Even with Geoff, a certain ration of shit. “Sure, Geoff, I know that. But you can’t blame me for being involved. I was right there when Abramson got it. I think it ties in with a homicide that is Tim’s baby, a woman named-”

  “Margaret Dalton-I did my homework. So go ahead.”

  Dante ran it down-probably a southerner, probably Vietnam vet, probably a sniper for some special unit, Marine or Army or CIA, probably would have been a mercenary after ’Nam, probably would have drifted into heavy lifting for the mob…

  “Were you in Vietnam?” asked Hoskins. He would have been in his teens when that particular brushfire war had ended.

  “I was just a kid,” said Dante. “Just a grunt. Shoot and get shot at. But it took me a year or two to get back to normal after they shipped me home. If I could see your computer files on ex-Vietnam, ex-mercs who have kept up their skills-”

  Geoff was truly shocked. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “Just guys fit the profile who have records that might suggest they had gotten involved with organized crime…”

  “Jesus Christ, you don’t want much for a plate of spaghetti.” Then he chuckled. “But what the hell?”

  A few days later, Dante got his printout. A month after that, fifty-seven names had become three, and on this Friday, the second of December, between the work the city of San Francisco was actually paying him to do, Dante eliminated the last of those. And decided he just wasn’t going to get at Raptor that way.

  There was still the enormously complicated world of gun nuts and hand-loaders and shooting enthusiasts, but it was a million-to-one against turning him up there. Tim had been right-it was an appalling task. Raptor had not struck again, and nothing he had done so far was going to expose him. What Dante needed was little dancing men to spell out answers for him like in one of those Sherlock Holmes mysteries on the A amp;E channel.