Hooligans Page 9

  And I just sit there listening because, what are you to say, right? Besides, my insides are really beginning to churn and I'm wondering when I'm going up. And then he says, "What's it like back in the world? Do they really spit on soldiers?" And I says I never saw anybody spit on a soldier, although once I did see a demonstration and I was in uniform and a bunch of them, y'know, they shot me a bird like it's my fault I got to go to Vietnam.

  Finally I navigate the kid from Wisconsin back to his quarters and he's really soused and the last thing he says to me is, "I'm afraid to go home, scared shitless here and scared shitless to go home, shit, they're gonna hate me because of Bobby."

  I never saw him again but I know what he means now, about them hating him because of what happened to his brother. You get so paranoid after awhile. After awhile you get so you think everybody back in the world blames you for the whole thing.

  Like this Jesus freak from Mississippi I meet at the Red Cross. He's even worse. He kind of babbles, you know, runs things together, like he can't get it off his chest quick enough, keeps talking about the kids, about killing kids. "Kids?" I says to him. "Listen," he says and he's whispering, "don't ever shoot a water buffalo, hear? You can kill women and children but you kill a water buffalo, man, they'll bury you under the brig." Then he starts laughing. Laughing. Then he says, "Nothin' over here makes any sense. Sometimes I wonder, hey, we the good guys or not? But you ask an officer that, he'll send you up to the psycho ward. I don't pray anymore. I'm too embarrassed to talk to God. I got too much to tell him." He goes on like that for maybe an hour, shaking his head the whole time. Always whispering.

  By the time I get my walking papers I'm almost glad to be going into it. This place is nuts. It all seems to come to a head here at Cam Ranh because you get them comin' and goin'. Everybody's a little crazy. There's a lot of questions you want to ask but after awhile you figure out nobody has any answers, anyhow, why bother.

  So anyway, here I am in this creepy little town near the river, if you can even call it a town, I'm not here five minutes, the lieutenant, who looks about sixteen, red hair and freckles, his name is Carmody, sits down and pops two beers, and he says, "Now listen good to me. I been out here, it's going on eight months. I got my own way of doing things after all that time, so you do what I say, don't even argue, don't tell me you didn't learn it that way back in the world, you just do it and I'll get you home alive. You don't, I give you two weeks, you'll be dead or missing something you don't want to lose."

  I don't say anything, I just listen. I try not to shake but I am real nervous.

  "I got a few rules," he says. "In the beginning, no matter what happens, follow me. If Charlie starts busting caps, you just follow me. Don't talk, don't start yelling at anybody else. If I go down, you go down. Find a pebble or a mound of dirt or a paddy and get below it. Get under his horizon. If you get hit, don't say anything and don't move. You do, and you're dead. just lay there, somebody'll get you. That's my last rule—we don't leave anybody behind. Dead or alive, everybody goes out together."

  I was so scared my stomach hurt.

  "These VC are good, goddamn good," he says. "Don't let anybody tell you different because that's bullshit. All that shit they gave you back in Al, forget it. They got tunnels out there, they go on for miles. They got whole operating rooms under the ground, not just some little pooch hole you throw a grenade in and forget it, they pop up fifty feet away and your ass is in a bucket. These fuckers can run into a village and vanish. We don't get heroic, okay, we call in some air, let the Black Ponies burn it out. We move on. That's our mission, search and destroy. What it is not is search and be destroyed."

  I remember thinking, this is for real. Jesus, in five minutes we could be doing it for real.

  "Any questions?" he says.

  I shake my head no.

  "Welcome to the war," he says.

  13

  STONEWALL TITAN

  We drove across town to a bluff overlooking the Dunetown River. The rain had stopped and the river steamed in the warm southern wind that had brought it. Ancient brick buildings, shrouded in fog and dating back to God knows when, lined the bluff, like sentinels guarding the waterfront from Front Street and the Strip, and history swirled around us in the fog as we edged down a narrow cobblestone alley from Bay Street to the river's edge.

  I felt the cold breath of ghosts on my neck. Unseen signs, hidden in the mist, creaked before the wind. The dim shape of a freighter drifted eerily down the river, not twenty yards from us, its foghorn bleating a path to the sea.

  This was the Dunetown I remembered.

  Doomstown seemed a Saturn ride away.

  The Feed Mill was a long, narrow place on River Street facing the waterfront. The menu was written out on a green chalkboard at one end and between it and the front door there were maybe twenty tables and booths. We sat near the front. Dutch squinted through his glasses at the bill of fare.

  "The chicken fried steak is great; so's the mulligan stew. All the vegetables are good," he said as he studied the menu.

  He ordered the steak, three vegetables, a side dish of mashed potatoes and gravy, another side of stew, and two orders of tapioca pudding. I got heartburn listening to him.

  The Stick and I ordered a normal meal and coffee.

  "I think I'm ruling out Nose," Dutch said, diving into his banquet.

  "How's that?" I asked.

  "It's just not his style. When Nose came out of Little Q after doing that stretch, he went straight after Cherry McGee, blew him away in broad daylight as McGee was comin' out of a bank on Bay Street. People were all over the place but he didn't take out anybody but McGee and one of his strongarms. We got a woman kayoed here."

  "Could have been a mistake," the Stick argued.

  "Why's Graves still on the street?" I asked.

  "No proof. I had twenty people who were standin' right there when it went down, couldn't identify him in the stand-up."

  "Twenty-two," the Stick corrected.

  "He was wearing a stocking cap, and the car he did the trick from was boosted from a downtown parkin' lot half an hour earlier. We couldn't prove doodly-shit. He walked. And he was laughing as he went out the door."

  "Nevertheless, I kind of like Nose," the Stick said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because he's not afraid of anybody. One spook against the lot."

  "I give him credit for still being alive," Dutch said between mouthfuls.

  "So where does that leave us?" I said.

  "No-fuckin'-where," said Stick.

  "Tell you the truth," Dutch added, "I think about it, we got about a hundred good suspects we could hassle on this score so far. "

  "I thought homicide was out of your league," I said.

  "Wel-l-l, you can't stop a man from thinking. Besides, we'll be in wheelchairs before Lundy and his bunch come up with anything. He needs a road map to find his ass when it itches."

  "I got explicit orders," I said. "Cisco says he'll hang me higher than the Washington Monument if I stick my nose in a homicide investigation."

  "Well, nobody can stop us from thinking."

  "You can blow a circuit trying to separate all the suspects," I said. "You've got the whole Tagliani outfit, what's left of them. Stizano, Logeto, Bronicata, Chevos—"

  "If he's here," Dutch interrupted.

  "Yeah, if he's here. Then there's Leo Costello. He's not only Tagliani's son-in-law, he's consigliere for the whole outfit."

  "You may as well throw in Cohen," Stick said.

  "He's afraid of his own shadow," I said, and then after thinking it over, I tossed in: "On the other hand, if he burned the books, they'd all end up doing the clock. They've all got a motive. That's assuming it's in the family."

  "Even if it isn't, there's got to be lots of nervous Taglianis out there tonight."

  "With Tagliani, Stinetto, and Draganata out of the way, that just about takes out all the old line. Except for the Barber," I said.

  "They
gotta figure it's Nose," said the Stick. "Some hothead Tagliani torpedo will take a pop at one of Graves' boys and we'll have a three-way war on our hands."

  "That's if they don't start shootin' each other," said Dutch.

  "Hell," the Stick said. "It's probably a coupla Philly shooters on their way home already."

  "Or a coupla China soldiers with nothing to do right now," Dutch said.

  "Shit, it could be anybody," the Stick sighed.

  "Which is why I'm finishing my meal and going home," I said. "We can sit here all night speculating on who shot who. Let's hit it fresh in the morning."

  We paid the check; the Stick said good night and left. Dutch and I drove the ten minutes back to the hotel in silence.

  The black limo was still parked under the marquee of the Ponce when we got back. As I got out of the car I noticed the tag: ST-l. I told Dutch I would check my messages and meet him in the bar for a nightcap.

  There was a phone call from Cisco and a hotel envelope, sealed, with my name printed meticulously across the front.

  I called Cisco, gave him the latest body count, and told him I'd give him the details over breakfast.

  As I started toward the bar I finally saw him, the first of several specters from the past. I was tired and getting irritable and I wasn't ready to face up yet, but there he was in his three-piece dark blue suit and a gray homburg, leaning on a gold-handled ebony cane, his snowy hair clipped neatly above the ears, his sapphire eyes twinkling fiercely under thick white brows.

  Stonewall Titan, sheriff and kingmaker of Oglethorpe County, Mr. Stoney to everything that walked on two feet in the town, was standing under the marquee wiggling a short, thick finger under the nose of a tall and uncomfortable-looking guy in a tweed jacket and gray flannels. Titan had made or destroyed more than one political dream with a wave of that finger. The man in tweeds went back into the bar.

  Finished, Titan turned and, leaning on the cane, limped toward his car, where a tall and ugly bird in a tan and black county policeman's uniform held the door for him. As he was about to enter the car, he saw me and hesitated for an instant. His bright blue eyes glittered in brief recognition, then his hard jaw tightened and he climbed into the limousine and was gone.

  Then I saw her.

  I moved behind a fern, watching her through its slender leaves, like a high school swain eyeing his first crush. I don't know what made me think I could have avoided seeing her. It had to happen sooner or later. Later would have been better.

  Doe Findley still looked eighteen, still had the long blond silky hair, the caramel tan, eyes as gray as ever. A flash of memories tumbled through my mind: Doe on water skis, her silken hair twisting in the wind; roaring across the beach in a dune buggy; playfully wrestling on the boat dock with Teddy and pushing him into the bay in his best sports coat and pants, then chasing me across the wide lawn down to the edge of the bay.

  Doe watching the sun set off the point at Windsong, an image as soft and fragile as a Degas painting.

  Time had erased a lot of images from my mind, but those were as clear as a painting on the wall, even after twenty years.

  It came and went quickly.

  She was talking to a chic blond woman; then she laughed and turned and joined a tall guy in Ultrasuede who was holding open the door of a dark blue Mercedes sedan.

  So that was Harry Raines. My dislike for him was intense and immediate, a feeling I didn't like but could not control. I looked for flaws, blemishes on the face of this golden boy who had it all. His blond hair was thinning out the way a surfer's hair thins out, and he had traded his tan for an office pallor, but he was a handsome man nonetheless, with the bearing and presence that most powerful men exude. Harry Raines wore success the way a beautiful woman wears diamonds. If he had flaws, they were not apparent. I watched as he helped her into the car, trying to ignore the feelings that hit me in waves, like the aftershock of an earthquake. A handsome, good-looking pair. I tried to shove my feelings down in the dark places where they had hidden for all those years but it didn't work. As the Mercedes drove off into the dark I was aware that my hand was shaking.

  Easy, Kilmer, I told myself; that was then, this is now. The lady probably doesn't even remember your name. I tried shrugging it off and joined Dutch.

  Some things never change. The Ponce Bar was one of them. It was a dark, oaken room with a brick floor, a zinc-topped bar, and Tiffany lamps over the stalls and tables. The mirror behind the bar itself ran half the length of the room and was etched glass. They had built the hotel around it, rather than change a brick of the place. Politicians had been made and trashed in this room, business deals closed with a handshake, schemes planned and hatched. It was the heartland of the makers and breakers of Dunetown. For two hundred years the room had crackled with the electricity generated by the power brokers, arm-wrestling for position.

  Only Findley and Titan seemed immune to the games. Together they called the business and political shots of the entire county, unchallenged by the other robber barons of Dunetown. It was in this room that Chief had given Teddy and me one of our first lessons in business.

  "Right over in that corner," he had told us, "that's where Vic Larkin and I locked horns for the last time. We owned half the beach property on Oceanby together; our fathers had been partners. But we never got along. Larkin wanted to develop the beach front, turn it into a damn tinhorn tourist trap. He just didn't have any class. I favored leaving it alone.

  "One night it came to a head. We had one helluvan argument sitting right over there. 'Damn it, Victor,' I says to him, 'we're never gonna get along and you know it. I'll cut you high card. Winner buys the loser out for a dollar.'

  "Vic turned pale but he had guts, I'll give him that. I told the bartender to bring us a deck of cards and we cut. He pulled a six, I pulled a nine. That nine bought me a million dollars' worth of real estate for one buck."

  "You call that good business?" Teddy had asked.

  "I call it gambling," Chief had said. "And that's what business is all about, boys. It's a gambler's game."

  From the look of the crowd, there weren't too many gamblers left among the Dunetown elite. What was missing was the electricity. There was no longer a hum in the air, just a lot of chatter.

  The blond woman who had been outside with Doe had returned to the room and was talking to a small group of people. She was wearing a wraparound mauve silk dress and an off-yellow wide-brimmed hat and her eyes moved around the room as she spoke, taking in everything.

  "The blonde you're eyeballin' is Babs Thomas," Dutch said. "Don't say hello unless you want everybody in town to know it five minutes later."

  "Local gossip?" I asked.

  "You could call her that. She does a snitch column in the Ledger called 'Whispers.' Very apropos. You wanna know the inside on Doomstown's aristocracy, ask her. She knows what bed every pair of shoes in town is under."

  I jotted that down in my memory for future reference and then said, "I just saw Stonewall Titan out front."

  "Yeah?" Dutch said.

  "I figured Titan was probably dead by now," I said.

  "Mr. Stoney will tell God when he's ready to go, and offhand I'd say God's gonna have to wait awhile. How well do you know him?"

  "Too long ago to matter," I said, which was far from the truth. I don't think Dutch believed it either, although he was kind enough to let it pass.

  "I saw him, too, coming out of the bar," said Dutch. "We had words. He gave me some sheiss."

  "What does Titan expect you to do?" I asked.

  "End it."

  "Just like that?"

  "Yeah, just like that. 'Get it done before Harry gets wind of it,'" he says.

  "Gets wind of it!" I replied. "How the hell does he hope to keep Raines in the dark? And why?"

  "He's hoping we'll nail this thing down fast so the Committee can shove it under the carpet."

  "What Committee?" I asked.

  Dutch hesitated, staring into his drink. He rattled ic
e in his glass for a few moments, then shrugged. "Local power structure," he said, brushing it off.

  "You just took a left turn," I said.

  "Y'see, Raines doesn't think beyond the racetrack," Dutch said, still ignoring my question. "The paper and the TV stations tend to play down any violence that happens. Now we got Mafia here, it could be Raines' worst nightmare come true. I could get my walking papers over this."

  "So you said."

  The waitress brought our drinks. I decided not to press him on who or what the Committee was for the moment.

  "Fill me in on Titan," I said.

  He jiggled the ice in his highball.

  "Only trouble with Stoney Titan, he's been sheriff for too damn long. Forty years plus; that's one hell of a long time."

  "You think he's on the take?"

  "Not the way you mean," Dutch said. "Nothin' goes down in this town he don't know about. Not a card game, not a floating crap game, not numbers. Not a horse parlor. He knows every hooker by her first and last name, every bootlegger, dope runner, car booster. A man can't be around that long, know that much, he isn't bent just a little, know what I mean? On the other hand, he's a tough little bantam, not a man to take sides against."

  I remembered Titan differently. I remembered him on soft summer afternoons with his coat across his knees, drinking bourbon with Chief and talking on the porch at Windsong. I remembered he always put his gun in the trunk before coming up to the house and took off his coat because he wore his badge pinned on the inside pocket and I guess that was his way of saying it was a friendly call. And I remembered him as thinner and not as gray, a wiry little man with a fast step and twinkling eyes. Hell, I thought, he's pushing hard on eighty. Funny how people never age in your memory.

  "I wonder if he was on Tagliani's payroll," I thought aloud.

  "He isn't bent in that direction. No way," Dutch said. "Stoney doesn't need money or power. And he's too old to get sucked into that kind of game. Titan coulda been a state senator, probably governor. God knows he's got the power. But he's like a man who can't swim—he never goes in over his head."