Hooligans Part 48

"If it's at all risky . . . " I said, but her stare killed the sentence while it was still in my mouth.

"Isn't giving out that information a felony?" she asked.

"Only if you're caught."

"Seems to me somebody said that to Tony once."

I was prepared to take whatever abuse she might throw my way. It was a rotten thing to ask, a rotten position to put her in. Had it not been for her concern over Tony and my promise to try and help, I could never have broached the subject. I'm sure all of that was racing through her mind.

"Look," I said, "if you don't trust me, forget it. I'm still going to get a line on Tony for you, if it's possible."

"Thanks for telling me that, anyway," she said. She stared at the floor some more. I decided to push it.

"There are laws that make it possible to put people away," I said, "people who deserve to be put away, if we can prove their money is earned illegally. I believe Cohen is a money man for the Mafia. That's who tried to kill us last night."

She looked up sharply, her concern tempered by curiosity.

"It isn't the first time they've tried to put me away," I said. "I have a bullet hole in my side as a memento from their last try:"

She kept staring without comment, making me work for it.

"Would you like to hear how they make their money? Or what they do to people who get in their way?"

"I got a hint of that last night," she said, getting up and taking the tray back to the kitchen. When she returned, she said, "Come on, I'll take you to the hotel."

She didn't say anything else. She got her things together and checked the door to make sure it was locked when we left. Just a couple of normal folks heading off for the daily grind. In the daylight her street was like a picture from an eighteenth-century history book. I almost expected to see Ben Franklin strolling by with a kite or Thomas Paine ranting on the street corner. It didn't seem possible that Front Street was only a few blocks away.

DeeDee didn't say a word on the way to the Ponce. When we got there she turned to me, her face tortured with anguish and anxiety.

"I know how to reach you," I said. "I'll call, even if I don't hear anything definite." I started to leave the car.

"Jake?"

"Yeah?"

She sat for a minute longer, then shook her head. "I can't do it," she said. "I owe a lot to Charles Seaborn, and somehow what you're asking seems like an affront to him. When Tony got in all that trouble, some of the directors at the bank wanted Mr. Seaborn to fire me. They felt it gave the bank a bad image. He stuck by me through it all, never said a word or asked anything more of me than I usually gave. I didn't even know about it for months. Lark found out and told me. I'm sorry, but what you're asking . . . I'd feel as if I'd done something to him personally."

"My mistake," I said. "I never should have asked."

"I'm glad you did," she said. "I'm glad you felt comfortable enough to ask me. I'm just sorry I feel this way."

"Loyalty's a rare commodity, don't apologize for it," I said. "I'll be talking to you."

"Thanks again," she mumbled as I got out of the car. I watched her drive away and went into the hotel. The Stick was sitting in the lobby reading the morning paper.

"This is a terrible hour to be getting in," he said drolly. "What'll the neighbors think?"

"You know what you can do with the neighbors," I snapped.

"Uh-oh. Get out on the wrong side of the bed?"

"I never got into bed."

"Ah, that's the problem."

I glared at him and suggested breakfast in the room to save time. "I need a shower," I growled.

We went to the room and I ordered food. I needed more than the toast and coffee DeeDee had provided. Then I got Dutch on the phone and gave him a quick report on the night's activities, not wanting him to hear it from anybody else. In the excitement at the movie theater I had forgotten to tell him about my meeting with Harry Nesbitt. I started off with that, finis.h.i.+ng with the shootout at Casablanca.

The latter got him fuming.

"I'll have Kite pick up that son of a b.i.t.c.h Nance now," he growled.

"Won't do any good. He's probably got a dozen people who'll swear he was six other places at the time."

"So what do we do, ignore it?"

"For the time being," I said. "When we get him, I want to get him good-and I want it to stick."

"What do you want to do about Nesbitt?" Dutch asked. "It doesn't sound like his info on Nance was too swift."

"Maybe Nance went around the bend," I said. "I can't imagine Costello or Chevos pulling a stunt that stupid the way things are."

"Why not?" the Stick cut in. "If he'd nailed you, they could've written you off as another victim."

"I made a promise to Nesbitt and I'd like to keep it," I told Dutch. "Can we find a couple of honest cops who'll smuggle him down to Jax and stick with him until his plane leaves?"

"I'll take care of it," Dutch said. "Let me know when you hear from him."

"Thanks. Stick and I are working on some other things. I'll catch up with you later."

He rang off and I gave Stick the license number of the black Pontiac. He called the DMV while I showered and shaved.

The license plates were hot, stolen a few hours before Nance and company came calling on me.

"s.h.i.+t," I growled, "the way this day is starting maybe I ought to go back to bed and start over."

A bellhop who didn't look a day over fifteen showed up with breakfast. The phone rang and I answered it, trying to eat, talk, and put fresh clothes on at the same time.

"Good morning, darling." Doe's voice was as soft as lambskin and husky with sleep. "Sleep late?"

I looked over at Stick, who was back into his newspaper, then turned my back to him and dropped my voice an octave.

"Yeah. A late night. A lot happened."

"I thought about you all day and all night."

"Me too," I mumbled.

"It was torturous being with Harry after the other night."

I made a dive for the safe spots, but stopped before I got there. I thought, Why does it scare me when it's what I want to hear?

"That's understandable," I answered.

"Are you under the covers? I can hardly hear you."

"My partner just stopped by for breakfast," I half whispered.

"Ah, so that's it," she purred. "Well, I'll let you go. I just wanted to hear your lovely voice before I got up. I want to lie here and think about you. Please make it happen again soon. G.o.d, how I miss you."

"Well, that's good," I said awkwardly.

She laughed. "What a silly thing to say," she replied. "I'll be staying at Windsong for a week or so, alone. Harry's staying at the townhouse. I'm coming out here after the party tonight."

"Party?"

"Babs' c.o.c.ktail party, you goose. If you miss it, she'll kill you-that's if I don't do it first. See you at six. Thank you for coming back, Jake. I love you, my sweet."

"Uh, yeah, me too."

She hung up.

I cradled the phone and turned around to finish dressing. A minute crept by before Stick said, without looking up from his paper, "You really got it bad. You can hardly talk to the woman." Before I could protest, he held his hand up and closed his eyes. "Please, don't insult me by telling me that was your insurance man."

"That's right, it was my insurance man," I said with mock irritation.

"She wants to crawl all over your bones, right? It's always like that the morning after."

"How come you reduce everything to a cliche? Maybe this is different. "

"It's different, all right. I'll give you that in spades, friend. It is unique. Her old man owns the town, her husband runs the town, you'd like to put him in jail, at least for murder if nothing better pops up, and you tell me it's different! That's the understatement of the year."

"It's only a problem if I make it a problem."

"You've already made it a problem, putz! What in the f.u.c.k do you call a problem if this isn't one?"

"Dunetown. There's a problem."

I finished dressing and ate another piece of soggy toast.

"Okay," I blurted, "it's a problem. She's rooted too deep, man. I haven't been able to get her out of my mind for twenty years. I keep thinking it was the best shot I ever had. I want another crack at it. I'm stuck on what could have been instead of what is."

"Aren't we all," Stick said, with surprising bitterness. There was another pause before he added, "I think I missed something. The part about the price you have to pay. Or did you leave that out?"

"I don't know the price. That's the big question."

"I don't know what could have been," Stick said. "Want to run that by me?"

Now there was a rueful occupation-thinking about what could have been. But if I couldn't trust Stick, who the h.e.l.l could I trust? Suddenly I heard myself laying it all out for him, starting from the day Teddy and I became football roommates at Georgia and ending on the day I got the kiss-off from Chief. I didn't leave out anything; I threw it all in-heart, soul, anger, hurt, all the feelings that my returning to Dunetown had dredged up from the past.

"Jesus, man, these people really f.u.c.ked you over!" was his response.

"I've never quite admitted that to myself," I said. "I look at Raines, I think, that could have been me. I look at Donleavy, I think, if Teddy were still alive, that could be me. Every time I turn around the past kicks me in the a.s.s."

"You're one of the ones that can't stay disconnected," he said seriously. "It's not your nature. But you've been at it so long you can't break training, you're afraid to take a chance. Like in Nam, when you're afraid to get too close to the guy next to you because you know he may not be around an hour later. It's an easy way to avoid the guilt that comes later, being disconnected is."

"Is that all it is, Stick? Guilt?"

"Like I told you the other day, it's guilt that gets you in the end. s.h.i.+t, you're overloading your circuits with it. You got guilt over the girl, you got guilt because you want to pin something on her husband, guilt because you're losing your sense of objectivity, guilt because of her brother. What is it about Teddy? You keep circling that issue. You talk about him all the time, but you never pin it down."

I finally told him the story. It was easy to talk to him; he'd been there, he knew about the madness, he understood the way of things.

There were days when time dulled the sharp image of that night, but they were rare. A lot of images were still with me, but that one was the most vivid of all. It was a three-dimensional nightmare, as persistent as my memories of Doe had been. The truth of it was that Teddy Findley didn't die in combat or anywhere near it. He might have. There you have it again, what might have been. Teddy and I didn't have a very rough time in Nam until a few weeks before we were scheduled to come back to the World. Until Tet, when the whole country blew up under us. Hundreds of guerrilla raids at once. Pure madness. They pulled us out into Indian country and for the next six weeks we found out what Nam was all about. We got out of it as whole as you can get out of it and finally got back to Saigon. Teddy was a little screwy. He scored a couple of dozen Thai sticks and stayed stoned for days on end. He started talking about the black hats and the white hats.

"I got this war all figured out, Junior," he said one night. "What it is, see, we've always been the white hats before. We're supposed to be the good guys. But over here, n.o.body's figured out what we are yet. Are we the white hats or the black hats?" He said it the way the good witch in The Wizard of Oz said, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?"

There was this compound in Saigon run by the military. They called it Dodge City because the man in charge was a major named Dillon. It looked like Dodge City, a h.e.l.l-raisers' paradise, a place to blow off steam; a couple of blocks of wh.o.r.ehouses and bars controlled by the military for our protection. But the MP's couldn't be everywhere. Sometimes things went a little sour. One night we smoked enough dope to get paralyzed and we headed down to Dodge and we ended up in a wh.o.r.ehouse. It was nothing but a hooch divided up by screens. You could hear GI's humping all over the place.

"Let's get about five or six of 'em," Teddy said. "Have a little gang bang." It wasn't for me. I wasn't that stoned and I still had a little Catholic left in me. So he went behind one screen and went into the next stall. He started kidding me; it was like being in the same room.

"How's the foreplay going, Junior?"

"Will you shut up!"

"Having a problem?"

"Yeah, you!"

He started to laugh and then the laugh turned into a scream and the scream turned into a m.u.f.fled cry that sounded as though he were underwater. I jumped up and smashed through the screen.

The girl was gone already. It was a fairly common trick. She had a single-edge razor blade held between her teeth when she kissed him, cut off his tongue with the razor and, while he was gagging in his own blood, slit his throat for closers. He died in my arms before I could even yell for help. I don't remember what the girl looked like; all I remember is that it could have just as easily been me instead of Teddy.

"I knew what it would do to Doe and Chief Findley, finding out he died like that," I told Stick, finis.h.i.+ng the story. "I forged a set of records saying he was killed in action and I forged a recommendation for a Silver Star and the Purple Heart for him. The captain didn't give a s.h.i.+t. He acted like he didn't even notice it.

"Then I wrote the letter telling them how Teddy had died in action, that it was quick, no pain. I don't know which is worse anymore, Teddy's death or the lie. Reducing it all down to a f.u.c.king piece of paper like that."

Stick sat there for a long time after I finished, smoking and staring at his feet. It was not a shocker; that kind of thing was common. Just another day in paradise.

Finally he started shaking his head. "Man, you have really done a number on yourself, haven't you? What's the big issue here? You told a lie and made your best friend a hero. Big f.u.c.kin' deal."

"It's what it represents. Somehow Nam should be more important than that."

"Nam was a f.u.c.k-up. It's like a scar on your belly. You cover it up and forget it; you don't paint it red, white, and blue. You're one of those steel-covered marshmallows, Kilmer old buddy. You're a sitting duck for the vultures. You know what I say? Forget the lie part. Stick to the story; n.o.body wants to hear the truth anyway. s.h.i.+t, pal, I say f.u.c.k the obstacles, go for it. Could be your last chance."

He lit a cigarette and went back to his newspaper, and then threw in, "Just put her old man in the joint, that'll solve all your problems. "

"That's a s.h.i.+t thing to say."