Part 7 (2/2)

”How come?” asked Zapata.

”Because he's the most likely one of the bunch to take over as capo di tutti capi now that Franco's bought the farm. That's unless there's something we don't know,” I added.

”Such as?” asked Dutch.

”Such as somebody else in the family pus.h.i.+ng the old man across and taking over.”

”Oh,” said Dutch, ”that such as.”

I went on, running down the list of felons who were now in residence in Doomstown: Johnny Draganata, the tough, no-quarter Mustache Pete from the old school, and professor and priest to all the Tagliani soldiers, the final authority on tradition and protocol; Rico Stizano, also known as the Barber, because that's what he had once been in Chicago, until he married Tagliani's sister. Now his speciality was gambling. A big family man. They all were.

Tony Logeto, Tagliani's son-in-law, was a cannon and a muscle man, married to Tagliani's oldest daughter, Sheila, and a specialist in loan sharking, extortion, and anything that required more muscle than brains. Logeto saw himself as a big ladies' man. A lot of ladies apparently did too.

”Anthony Bronicata is another old-timer,” I told them. ”He's a onetime soldato with a lot of notches on his gun. In dope circles he's known as the Peg, short for Il Peggiore, which means the Worst, and that-in the trade-means don't mess with him. He's king pusher, pipeline to the street, and we've never been able to put a finger on him for anything-possession, conspiracy, distribution, nothing. Bronicata's front is always a restaurant. The only good thing I can say about him is he makes pretty fair fettuccine. You want him? If we can nail his a.s.s, he's yours.”

I had very little recollection of O'Brian. In my mind I remembered him as a short little Irishman with a bl.u.s.tery red face and bad teeth. Dutch's photo showed that he had a pug nose and a go-to-h.e.l.l smile, and his picture was the only pleasant one in the bunch, but I didn't let that fool me for a minute. As the newest member of the clan, he still had to prove himself, and that made him more unpredictable than any of the rest.

Dutch observed, ”All these guns around, and it didn't help Tagliani for a minute.”

”Never does if they want you bad enough,” I said.

I pulled two new photographs out of my briefcase and held them up.

”These two look familiar to anybody?” I asked.

There were no takers.

I held up the clearer of the two photos, that of a round-faced man in his sixties with a pleasant smile, his snake eyes hidden behind sungla.s.ses.

”This is Tuna Chevos,” I said. ”We'll turn him up.”

”How would you know that?” Charlie One Ear asked.

My stomach started to churn just thinking about Chevos and Nance, his personal a.s.sa.s.sin.

”I have this little buzzer inside me goes off whenever I'm within fifty miles of the son of a b.i.t.c.h.”

”Something personal?” Charlie One Ear asked, raising his eyebrows.

I stared at him dead-eyed for a full minute before he looked away. Then I held up the other picture, a somewhat fuzzy photograph of a lean, hard, ferret-faced man in his midthirties, his eyes also obscured by sungla.s.ses.

”You see Chevos, this one is close behind. He's the Greek's numero uno, your friendly little neighborhood a.s.sa.s.sin. His name is Turk Nance and he's the deadliest one of the lot, a psychopath with a temper as thin as a shadow. They're both cobras. Chevos married into the family but they're outsiders. They play by their own rules.”

”Maybe they did the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d in,” Zapata suggested.

”Maybe, but I don't think so.”

”Why not?” Dutch asked.

”I don't say I'm ruling them out,” I replied. ”I said I don't think they did it. It's still family. Salvatore, you know what I mean?”

”He's right,” Salvatore said. ”I mean, what you say, this Chevos was the old man's brother-in-law. Unless there was real bad blood . . . ” He let the sentence dangle.

”So where do these two bombos fit in?” Cowboy Lewis asked.

”Chevos brings the stuff in, Bronicata gets it to the wholesalers,” I said. ”Nance is Chevos' personal soldato. If Chevos says go flush your head in the toilet, Nance's head is as good as in the bowl. There's one other thing-don't let Chevos fool you because he's got Nance for backup. The story goes that Chevos killed his own brother to make his bones for Skeet. I don't know if his brother needed killing, but if he was in the same league as Chevos, it was no big loss.

”Nance started in the streets, got a postgrad course in Vietnam, probably killed at least half of the Bannion gang himself. He favors a nine-millimeter Luger with a twelve-inch barrel and hollow points soaked in a.r.s.enic. A real sweetheart. He's also a muscle freak. Sooner or later, when he can plant Chevos someplace safe for an hour or two, he'll show up at the best fitness center in town. Everybody in the family is scared s.h.i.+tless of both of them.

”Turk Nance. Remember that name. If you have trouble with him, shoot first.”

”You keep tellin' us what you don't want,” Callahan said in a dead monotone. ”What the h.e.l.l do you want?”

I thought about that, about why I was here and what had happened to Dunetown and was going to happen to it. I thought about a lot of things in the next few seconds.

”I want the whole d.a.m.n bunch off the street. I don't care if you do it or I do it or we do it together. They're the c.o.c.kroaches of our society.”

I looked at Charlie One Ear. ”You ask me is it personal? I got five years invested in this bunch. In the whole rat pack only Costello and Cohen are clean. The rest of them have rap sheets that'll stretch from here to Malibu and back.”

I started pacing. I had lost my temper for a moment, not because of Charlie One Ear or because Dutch Morehead's hooligans didn't trust me. I was used to that. It was because of Cincinnati. I stopped and looked at each of them in turn.

”Yeah, f.u.c.kin'-A it's personal,” I said. ”One of my partners on the Tagliani job was Harry Nome, Wholesome Harry we called him. Best inside man I ever met. He was undercover in Chevos' dope operation. Nance tumbled him. They took him for a ride and Nance stuck his gun up Harry's nose, ripped it off with the gunsight-I mean he ripped it off. Then he tossed Harry out of a car doing about fifty. Harry came out of it a paraplegic.

”We had another man, on loan from the Drug Enforcement Agency. He tried to burrow into the operation at the New Orleans end. We never saw him or heard from him again. Nothing. He just disappeared. That's been three years now.

”I had an informant, a hooker named Tammi. She was eighteen years old, recruited by Stizano, who hooked her on horse when she was fifteen. They had her working interstate and she wanted out, so she agreed to talk to the attorney general about how hookers are moved around on the national circuit, who runs it, that sort of thing. Very strong stuff. Nance got her away from us. He cut off her nose and both ears, stuffed them down her throat, and strangled her with them. Costello-Mr. Clean? He was Nance's mouthpiece. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d wasn't even indicted.”

I paused for a minute, letting it all sink in.

”Naw,” I said, ”it isn't personal. It's never personal, right? I mean, why should I be p.i.s.sed? I was lucky. When they took a shot at me, the bullet went in my side, here, just below the ribs, popped out my back, and went on its merry way. The bullet hurt, but not like the a.r.s.enic it was soaked in.”

I sat down.

Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. Save up the rough stuff until the end.

n.o.body said anything else for a minute or two.

I didn't know it at the time, but there was another name I should have added to the list that night: Longnose Graves.

I would get to know him well in the next few days. I would get to know a lot of people well in the next few days, very d.a.m.n few of them for long.

9.

s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g UP ROYALLY.

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