Hooligans Part 38

"You'll learn to love me," I said, and begged off dinner with some vague excuse. I had to meet Harry Nesbitt at Uncle Jolly's and this time I decided to keep the meeting to myself.

I headed back to the hotel to take a quick shower.

There were four phone messages in my box. Three of them were from Doe Findley. The fourth was from DeeDee Lukatis.

44.

UNCLE JOLLY'S.

I put on my oldest jeans, a faded cotton s.h.i.+rt, clodhopper boots, a nasty old Windbreaker from my narc days, put my .357 under my arm, and slipped a bob-nosed .22 into my boot. It was about eight o'clock when I headed out Highway 35 south.

I was thinking about Doe, and I was also thinking about DeeDee Lukatis. She had obviously left the message at the desk. It was handwritten.

Dear Jake: You probably don't remember me. The last time I saw you I was barely 15. I need to talk to you about a matter of some urgency. My phone number is below. If we miss each other I'll be at Casablanca after ten tonight.

An old friend,

DEEDEE LUKATIS.

It was followed by a P.S. with her phone number. I had tried it but there was no answer. I might have ignored the message except for two things. DeeDee Lukatis was Tony Lukatis' sister, and Tony Lukatis had once been Doe's lover. That would have been enough to warrant a phone call. But Babs Thomas had also told me that DeeDee Lukatis was the personal secretary of my favorite Dunetown banker, Charles Seaborn. That made it very important. She might know a lot about Lou Cohen's relations.h.i.+p with Seaborn.

Then I started thinking about Doe. Her first two phone messages had been simple and to the point: "Please call Mrs. Raines about the stud fee." Nice and subtle. The last message informed me that she was out for the evening but I could call her after ten in the morning. That was to let me know Harry was back in town. I felt a sudden urgency to see her, knowing I couldn't, and I felt some sense of guilt at not calling her earlier in the day.

Uncle Jolly's Fillup ended that reverie. The place wasn't hard to find. It would have been harder not to find.

It looked like a Friday night football game. A country cop was directing traffic, most of which was going down the same dirt road I went down. I followed the crowd about two miles through pine trees and palmetto bushes to the parking lot. Through the cracks and peeling paint I could just make out the sign: PARK HERE FOR UNCLE JOLLY'S FILLUP.

A hundred cars in the s.p.a.ce, at least.

I parked among dusty Chevys and Dodges, Pontiacs with high-lift rear ends, and pickup trucks with shotguns in the rear window gunracks, and drifted with the crowd. As I pa.s.sed one of those big-wheel pickups, the kind with wheels about six feet high, the door opened and the Mufalatta Kid stuck his caramel-colored face out.

"You take a wrong turn someplace?" he asked.

"What're you doing here?" I asked.

"Just checkin' out the territory."

"Me too."

"Glide easy, babes. Strangers make these people real nervous."

"What's this all about, anyway?" I asked him.

"You mean you don't know why you came all the way out here?" he said incredulously. "s.h.i.+t, man, I guess you are psychic. This is the dog fights, babes."

It jolted me.

Dog fighting was the last thing I expected. Bare-knuckle boxing, a p.o.r.no show, a carnival, a lot of things had occurred to me when I saw the traffic jam, but dog fighting was the farthest thing from my mind.

"Dog fighting," he repeated. "Not your thing, huh?"

"Jesus, dog fighting. I didn't know they still did that kind of thing. "

"Well, you do now, man, 'cause that's what it's all about."

"You going to bust this little picnic?"

"Me? All by myself? s.h.i.+t. If I was that f.u.c.ked up I wouldn't have any life line. These people take their sports real serious. You wanna die in a backwoods swamp in south f.u.c.kin' Georgia? If I was you, what I would do is, I would hightail my a.s.s back up the road and be glad you're gone."

"I don't want to start a thing," I said lamely.

"So how the f.u.c.k did you wind up here?"

"I was invited," I said.

"You are a piece of work, all right. Stick was tellin' me about you. 'He's a real piece of work,' he said. He left off that you're nuts."

"Well, that's what happens when you're in a strange town," I said. "You'll do anything for a laugh."

We watched a lot of coming and going, a lot of lean men in felt hats, overalls, and galluses, a lot of weary women in Salvation Army duds dragging four- and five-year olds with them, a few friendly arguments over the merits of the dogs, two freckle-bellied high school kids wandering off into the brush to settle a dispute over a cheerleader who looked thirteen years old except for a bosom you could set Thanksgiving dinner on, a woman nursing a child old enough to tackle a two-dollar steak, and a few blacks, all of whom were men and all face-creased, gaunt-looking, and smiling.

As it started getting dark, the visiting team rolled up, a group of edgy, sharp-faced badgers in polyester knits. Mug-book faces. Twenty in all and traveling in a herd. The Romans had arrived; time for the festivities to begin.

"Track dudes," Mufalatta said. "Always a bunch don't get enough action at the races. Look at those threads, man. Now there's a f.u.c.kin' crime."

Next the emperor arrived-in a silver and gray stretch Lincoln limo big enough to throw a Christmas party in. The chariot stopped for a chat with the guard at the road.

"That's Elroy Luther Graves in that car there," the Mufalatta Kid said. Now I knew what the Kid was doing there.

"Elroy Luther?"

"That's his name, babes, Elroy Luther Graves," he said.

"Nice to know," I said, and decided to get a peek at the man everybody seemed to have a healthy respect for. As I started toward the limo, I ran into the back of Mufalatta's hand. He never looked at you when he spoke; he was always staring off somewhere at nothing in particular.

"Uh-uh," he said.

"Uh-uh?" I said.

"Uh-uh. Not that way."

"f.u.c.k him," I growled.

Mufalatta moved his hand. "Okay," he said, "but you're on his turf, man. No place to start trouble."

I thought about that for a minute. What Mufalatta was telling me was that it wasn't just Graves' turf, it was the Kid's too.

"I didn't know you had something going," I said. "Sorry."

"Don't be. It's the way things happen. You'll get the hang of it. "

"Okay," I said, "so we do it your way."

"That's cool," he said. "For now, the Kid's way is to hang loose, don't splash the water, don't wave your face around a lot, lay back, see what comes along."

"Is there gonna be trouble here?"

"Anyplace Elroy Luther is, there could be trouble. It comes to him like flies to a two-holer."

"Well, are you expecting trouble?"

"I just answered that," the Kid said, and shut up.

"I'm going to mosey around," I said.

I followed the silver chariot a hundred yards down the road until it ended at an old frame roadhouse, a big place with a cone-shaped roof, boarded-up windows, and a lot of noise inside.

And there were the dogs. Mean dogs. Not yipping dogs. These were angry, snarling, growling, scarred, teeth-snapping, gum-showing, s...o...b..ring dogs, biting at their cages with yellow teeth. I could feel the gooseflesh on my arms rising like biscuits in a stove.

In all, I estimated three hundred fifty to four hundred people were packed inside, all of whom had paid ten dollars a head, man, woman, and child, to the giant at the door. He was bald and black-bearded, wore overalls and no s.h.i.+rt, had arms like a truck tire and curly hair on his shoulders. For those who were not impressed by his size, there was a .38 police special hanging haphazardly from his rear pocket.

When the crowd outside the arena had thinned to half a dozen, a tall, pole-thin black man got out of the front seat of the Lincoln. The rear window glided silently down and he reached in and drew out a wad of bills big enough to strangle Dumbo. I got a quick look at a handsome black face at the window. I had imagined Nose Graves to be ugly. If that was Nose Graves, and I was fairly sure it was, he was the lady-killer type. Older than I'd thought, probably forty-five or so, give or take a couple of years either way. His bushy hair was graying at the temples and he had a deep scar almost the width of one eyebrow, another over his ear that carried a gray streak with it. His nose was straight and no larger than mine. He was wearing gold-rimmed sungla.s.ses. My guess was, Nose Graves probably wore those gla.s.ses to bed.

The window went back up without a sound and the skinny man headed for the rear door of Uncle Jolly's. So that was the pitch, then. Longnose Graves was the banker. It was his house.

I sauntered up to the gate. My sawbuck vanished into the keeper's fist. He cut me about six ways with his black eyes before jerking his head for me to go in.

Noise, heat, odor, hit me like a bucket of hot water. Tiers had been built up and away from a pit in the middle of the room. Fruit jars of moons.h.i.+ne were being pa.s.sed back and forth. Some of the families had brought picnics and were wolfing down dinner, waiting for the tournament to start. Smoke swirled around half a dozen green-shaded two-hundred-watt bulbs that hung from the ceiling over the plywood rink.

Most of the crowd could have been dirt farmers living on food stamps-until the betting started. That's when the U.S. Grants and Ben Franklins appeared.

The place suddenly sounded like a tobacco auction. Graves' man stood in the ring and handled it with the bored finesse of a maitre d'. A wizened, mean-looking little creep, with a flimsy white beard, whom I took to be Uncle Jolly, stood behind him with a large roll of movie tickets over one wrist, handing out chits as the bets were made, after scribbling what I a.s.sumed to be the size of the bet and the number of the dog on the back.

A lot of money was going down, big money. And this was only the first fight. Clyde Barrow could have knocked over this soiree and retired.

45.

DOUBLE FEATURE.

It had seen better days, the South Longbeach Cinema, a movie palace once long ago, when Garbo and Taylor were the stars and glamour and double features eased the pain of the Depression. Its flamingo-painted walls were chipped and faded now, and the art deco curves around its marquee were terminally spattered by pigeons and sea birds.

It stood alone, consuming, with its adjacent parking lot, an entire block, facing a small park. Behind it, looming up like some extinct prehistoric creature, was the tattered skeleton of a roller coaster, stirring bleak memories of a time when the world was a little more innocent and South Longbeach was the playground of the city's middle cla.s.s.

Now the theater was an ethnic showplace, specializing in foreign flms shown in their original language. It attracted enough trade to stay open, but not enough to be cared for properly. The park across the street was rundown too. Its nests of palm trees dry and dusty, the small lake polluted, most of its lights broken or burned out. At night n.o.body went near the place but drunks, hoboes, and predators.

The ocean was hidden from the area by an abutment, the foot of one of the many towering dunes from which the city had taken its name. The road that wound around it to the beach was pockmarked by weather and strewn with broken bottles and beer cans.

A long black limousine was parked in the "no stand' zone in front of the theater. The double feature was Roma and La Strada. Stizano and his bunch had come only for the last feature, La Strada. Stizano, an inveterate movie buff, had dropped his wife off, and come back to the movies with his number one b.u.t.ton and two other gunsels. It was his way of relaxing.

They were still dressed in black. First came the shooters, both of whom looked like beach b.u.ms in mourning, their necks bulging over tight collars. They studied the street, then one of them stepped back and opened the theater doors and the number one b.u.t.ton exited, a thin, sickly-looking man, the color of wet cement. He shrugged and summoned his boss.

Stizano was portly, with white hair that flowed down over his ears, and looked more like the town poet than a mobster. He walked with an ebony cane, his fingers glittering with rings.

The chauffeur walked around the back of the car to open the door.

Suddenly they were marionettes, dancing to the tune of a silent drummer. Tufts flew from their clothes; popcorn boxes were tossed in the air.

The only sound was the thunk of bullets tearing into the five of them, then the shattering of gla.s.s as bullets ripped into the show windows of the theater and an explosion of shards as the box office was obliterated, then the popping of the bulbs in the marquee.

Poppoppoppop . . . poppoppoppop . . .

Poppoppoppoppoppop . . .

Broken bulbs showered down on the street.

Five people lay in the outer lobby, on the sidewalk, in the gutter.

It had happened so fast there were no screams.

Nor the sound of gunfire.

Nor the flash from a weapon.

Nothing.

Nothing but five puppets dancing on the string of death.

Then, just like that, it was all over. Silence descended over the park.