Hooligans Part 11

"No, I felt like s.h.i.+t if you want to know the truth," I admitted to him. "Three years in law school and I end up driving a blue and white."

The Stick listened to the music for several seconds and finally flicked the switch off. I looked above us, up to the top of the dunes.

"Up there," I said.

We huffed and puffed through the sand to the top of the sharp embankment and found ourselves staring at the ocean far below. It twinkled in the moonlight.

"What're we looking for?" the Stick asked.

"You were in the army," I said. "What makes a discharge when it's fired and another one when it hits?"

"Mortar?"

"Too close."

He snapped his fingers. "Grenade launcher."

"It fits," I said.

We checked the trajectory from the hill to the pool. The terrace could be seen only from the very edge of the dune. It didn't take us long to find a scorched place in the gra.s.s on the back of the dune with a smear of gun grease behind it.

"Right here," I said. "Whoever killed the old man lobbed his shot from here, right onto the terrace. He couldn't even see him; he lined up his shot with some point on the pool and it blew up right in the old man's lap."

I flashed the light around the dune, looking for footprints.

"There," the Stick said, pointing to several depressions in the side of the dune leading toward the ocean.

We looked closer.

"Looks like Bigfoot," the Stick said. The depressions were fairly shallow and about the size of a small watermelon. There was no definition to them.

I pointed the light to the hard sand at the bottom of the dune. The tide was almost full. Ridges of foam lay near the foot of the dune.

"Great," I said. "The tide's in. There goes any tracks on the beach."

"Knew what he was doin'," the Stick said. "A blind shot like that and the timing was perfect."

"This took a little planning. He had to know the setup. He knew when high tide was. And with those two goons down there, he only had one shot. Confident son of a b.i.t.c.h. We better not make too many tracks; forensics may turn something up."

"One Ear," the Stick said.

"Right. Let's get him over here."

We went back down and told Lundy what we had found and he sent two men and a photographer up the hill.

"Those two gorillas up there may need some medical a.s.sistance, too," the Stick said. "They give you any s.h.i.+t, book 'em for a.s.saulting an officer."

Lundy's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Yeah, thanks," he said with a touch of awe.

"I'm goin' inside," said the Stick. "See if I can raise Charlie One Ear."

I joined Dutch, who was leaning on the corner of the house gnawing on a toothpick. He was obviously impressed.

"You guys weren't gone long to be so busy," he said with a grin.

I looked at my watch. It was past ten and my stomach was telling me it hadn't been fed since noon.

"I've gotta fill Mazzola in and get something to eat," I said. "Then I'm calling it a night."

"I could use some food too," the Stick said, rejoining us. "Charlie's on his way and not too happy about it. I told Lundy to keep people off the hill."

The Stick produced a small tan calling card.

"You ever need me," he said, handing me a card, "my home number's on the back. There's a machine on it. If it rings four times before it answers, I'm there, just takin' a s.h.i.+t or a shower or something. Leave a number, I'll usually get back to you in a coupla minutes. If it answers after one ring, I'm out."

"Meet us at the Feed Mill," Dutch said to Stick. "Jake can drive down with me."

I was grateful for that.

As we walked back to the cars I said, "We can throw in with you on this. I think we can a.s.sume the weapon was a grenade launcher and that's an illegal weapon and that makes it federal."

"Gee whiz," Dutch growled. "Ain't due process grand."

12.

FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, ARRIVAL.

The first ten days: First off, I was a replacement. I sat around the Cam Ranh Bay repo-depot for about ten days before they sent me down to Third Corps HQ and from there over to Phouc Binh which is where I pick up my squad. I'm only five weeks out of Advanced Infantry school, I don't know s.h.i.+t and I am plenty scared.

I can tell you this, flying in to Cam Ranh I look down and it's really gorgeous, I mean this is some beautiful place except you have all this beautiful green jungle and then you have mortar holes everywhere. It was like, you know, paradise going to h.e.l.l and gone.

Anyway, while I'm in Cam Ranh waiting to get a squad, I hang out with this potato farmer from Nebraska they call Spud, because of the potatoes and all. He doesn't like it much but he doesn't complain either. That wasn't too bad because we were both, you know, newcomers, so mostly we talked about what it's like back in the world-the States. Except this Spud, he was really scared. His hands shook and everything. Then he gets s.h.i.+pped into Indian country, and after that I meet up with this kid from Wisconsin-a short termer with only two months left to go who is off the line a couple days to come see his brother who got wounded and is in the hospital. We hook up in this sorry a.s.s lean-to they call a bar. First off I tried striking up some talk with a sergeant but he just looks at me with these dead eyes, I mean eyes like hunks of coal, no feeling, no nothin'. He was scarey. I says "hi" and he looks at me and gets up and leaves, and that's when this kid from Wisconsin, who is sitting down the way from me, pipes up and says, "He's a CRIP, they don't socialize much." And I says, "What's a CRIP?" And he says, "Jeeze, how long you been over here?" And I says, "Less than a week," and he says, "s.h.i.+t, you got it all ahead of you," and just shakes his head but he doesn't say anymore about CRIP; I learned about that later.

Anyway he got off the line to see his brother, only it turns out he's been there three days and hasn't been to the hospital yet and when I ask him why he says, "No guts." Finally after a couple of beers I walk him down to the hospital and I wait outside in the hall and there's some guy screaming the whole time I'm waiting. It gives me the crawlers. I wanted to just up and leave but that wasn't right so I sat there and after awhile I put my hands over my ears so I couldn't hear it anymore. Then the kid from Wisconsin comes out and he's crying and he's like, you know, hysterical or something, and we get outside and sit down near the hospital and this kid, he's really torn up. But I don't ask him anything, I just wait, because already I'm learning about not asking questions.

About five minutes after we sit down for a smoke this Huey comes over and settles down almost on the ground and they dump out half a dozen body bags, just like that, plop on the ground and whip off again. I never saw anybody dead before. I started getting sick and the kid from Wisconsin is sitting there staring at the bags and finally I says, "Let's get out of here," and we go down to this other hooch and have a couple more beers.

The kid gets pretty drunk and finally he starts talkin'. Real fast, it just comes bustin' out. He says, "Bobby says to me, 'Christ, how am I gonna tell Arlene, [that's his girlfriend, Arlene,] how'm I gonna tell her I ain't got any b.a.l.l.s left,' and I'm sittin' there thinking, Jeeze Bobby, you don't have any f.u.c.kin' legs left!' Ah, s.h.i.+t, it don't make no never mind anyways. Arlene married some a.s.shole from over at the paper mill at Christmas and she never even wrote him or anything. You think I'm gonna tell him that? There's a lot of Arlenes in the world but Bobby, he only has two legs and two b.a.l.l.s. Now he ain't got neither."

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 s.h.i.+tless here and scared s.h.i.+tless to go home, s.h.i.+t, 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 embarra.s.sed to talk to G.o.d. 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 n.o.body 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, G.o.dd.a.m.n good," he says. "Don't let anybody tell you different because that's bulls.h.i.+t. All that s.h.i.+t 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 a.s.s is in a bucket. These f.u.c.kers 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 t.i.tAN.

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 G.o.d 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 gla.s.ses 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-s.h.i.+t. 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-f.u.c.kin'-where," said Stick.

"Tell you the truth," Dutch added, "I think about it, we got about a hundred good suspects we could ha.s.sle 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 a.s.s when it itches."

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

"Well, n.o.body 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 a.s.suming it's in the family."

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