Part 10 (1/2)

He swerved into Highland Drive without even making a pa.s.s at the brakes and lit another cigarette at the same time. I started thinking about taking a cab when I saw half a dozen blue and whites blocking the street ahead, their red and blue lights flas.h.i.+ng. We pulled up behind one of them, leaving a mile or so of hot rubber in the process. Ground never felt better underfoot.

I could smell salt air when we got out of the car.

”Lock up,” the Stick said. ”Some f.u.c.khead stole my hat once.”

”So I heard,” I said as we headed toward the house, which sat a hundred yards or so back from the road against high dunes. An electric fence was the closest thing to a welcome mat.

I began to get the feeling that this whole bunch of hooligans, Stick included, were like Cowboy Lewis. They definitely believed the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. I also began to wonder where due process fit into all this, if it fit in at all.

We reached the fence, showed some bronze to the man on the gate, and started up the long drive on foot. Dutch was right behind us. I could see his enormous hulk silhouetted against the headlights of the patrol cars. The body lay, uncovered, at the pool's edge. A breeze blew in off the bay, rattling the sea oats along the dunes above.

The old man was unrecognizable. Whatever had blown up, had blown up right in his face. One of his arms had been blown off and either he had been knocked into the pool or was in it when the bomb went off. The water was the color of cherry soda.

There were blood and bits of flesh splattered on the wall of the brick house.

All the windows in the back were blown out.

A woman was hysterical somewhere inside.

”What kind of maniac we got here?” Dutch said, as quietly as I'd heard him say anything since I arrived in Dunetown.

”Right under my f.u.c.kin' nose,” Kite Lange said. And quite a nose it was. It looked like it had been reworked with a flat iron, and he talked through it like a man with a bad cold or a big c.o.ke habit. To make it worse, he was neither. His nose simply had been broken so many times that his mother probably cried every time she saw him. He had knuckles the size of Bermuda onions.

Ex-fighter, had to be.

He was wearing ragged jeans, a faded and nicked denim battle jacket, no s.h.i.+rt under it, and a pair of cowboy boots that must have set him back five hundred bucks. The headband he wore had to be for show-he didn't have enough dishwater-blond hair left to bother with. He also had a gold tooth, right in the front of his bridgework. I was to find out later that he was a former Golden Gloves middleweight champion, a West Coast surfer, and, for ten years, a bounty hunter for a San Francis...o...b..il bondsman before he went legit and joined the police.

Salvatore appeared through the bright lights, nosing around.

”I thought you were gonna check out Stizano,” Dutch said. ”What the h.e.l.l are you doin' here?”

”A look-see, okay? Where's Stizano gonna go anyway? He's an old fart and it's past ten o'clock.”

”You don't think the whole bunch ain't hangin' on by their back teeth at this point? Somebody just wasted their king.”

”They're on the phones,” Salvatore said confidently. ”They're jawin' back and forth, tryin' to figure out what the h.e.l.l to do next. What they ain't gonna do at this point is bunch up. Jesus, will you look at this!”

I was beginning to get a handle on Dutch's hooligans, on the common strain that bonded them into a unit. What they lacked in finesse, they made up for with what could mercifully be called individuality. There's an old theory that the cops closest to the money are the ones most likely to get bent. Dutch went looking for mavericks, men too proud to sell out and too tough to scare off. Whatever their other merits, they seemed to have one thing in common-they were honest because it probably didn't occur to them to be anything else.

”First Tagliani's wife gets whacked,” Lange said. ”And the old man's grandson almost got it here.”

”This here don't read like a Mafia hit t'me,” Salvatore said. ”Killing family members ain't their style.”

”Maybe it was a mistake,” the Stick volunteered.

”Yeah,” Dutch said, ”like Pearl Harbor.”

”More like a warning,” I said.

”Warning?” Lange and Dutch asked at the same time. A lot of eyebrows made question marks.

”Yeah,” I said, ”a warning that he or she or it-whoever he, she, or it is-means to waste the whole clan.”

”Tell me some more good news,” said Dutch.

”So why warn them?” Lange said.

”It's the way it's done,” said Salvatore. ”All that Sicilian bulls.h.i.+t.”

”Now we got four stiffs, and we're still as confused as we ever were,” Dutch said. ”Hey, Doc, you got any idea what caused this?”

The ME, who was as thin as a phalanx and looked two hundred years old, was leaning over what was left of the old man. His sleeves were rolled up and he wore rubber gloves stained red with blood. He shook his head.

”Not yet. A hand grenade, maybe.”

”Hand grenade?” the Stick said.

”Yeah,” the ME said. ”From up there. He was blown down here from the terrace. See the bloodstains?”

”There were two,” Lange said.

”Two what?” the ME asked.

”Explosions. I was sittin' right down there. The first one was a little m.u.f.fled, like maybe the thing went off underwater. The second one sounded like Hiros.h.i.+ma.”

”Woke ya up, huh,” Dutch said.

The ME still would not agree. He shook his head. ”Let's wait until I get up there and take a look. The pattern of stains on the wall there and the condition of the body indicate a single explosion.”

”I heard two bangs,” Lange insisted.

”How far apart?” I asked.

”h.e.l.l, not much. It was like . . . bang, bang! Like that.”

I had a terrifying thought but I decided to keep it to myself for the moment. The whole scene was terrifying enough.

The woman screaming uncontrollably inside the house didn't help.

”Homicide'll clean this up,” Dutch said. ”I'm just interested in the autopsy. Maybe there's something with the weapons'll give us a lead.”

The homicide man was a beefy lieutenant in his early forties dressed in tan slacks, a tattersall vest, a dark brown jacket, and an atrocious flowered tie. His name was Lundy. He came over shaking his head.

”Hey, Dutch, what d'ya think? We got a f.u.c.kin' mess on our hands here, wouldn't ya say?”

”Forget that Lindbergh s.h.i.+t, Lundy. This isn't a 'we,' it's a 'you.' Homicide ain't my business.”

Lundy said with a scowl, ”I need all the help I can get.”

Dutch smiled vaguely and nodded. ”I would say that, Lundy.”