Hooligans Part 62

"They need a fall guy for the whole enchilada."

"Who needs?"

"Maybe Chevos. Maybe Costello. Maybe even Bronicata, although I doubt it. Whoever knocked over twelve Taglianis so far this week. Somebody had to go down for it and they're setting you up to be the guy."

He leaned back in his chair, made a church steeple of his fingertips, and stared up at the dark ceiling. There was a lot to sort through, most of it guesswork on my part, and very little of it, if any, could be substantiated.

Without looking down, Graves whispered: "Also I didn't kill McGee. Man, I was gonna whack that little c.o.c.ksucker off but somebody else did the job for me."

That one caught me by surprise, although I did my best not to show it.

"I've had my people killed in this thing," he said. "Hard to forget. "

"So why get more killed? It'll just get harder to forget. I understand people went down on both sides."

Pause.

"That's true," he agreed. Then, still looking at the ceiling, "I take the fifth on that cocaine s.h.i.+t. That's federal. Put that motherf.u.c.ker back in the file."

"You're clean on that one too," I said. "If somebody else lifted the load, you're not guilty of violating anything. Whoever stole and brought it in, that's the guilty party."

He looked down at me and smiled. "You could be in the wrong game, dog lover," he said. "You oughta be a fixer."

"I used to be," I said.

"Well, s.h.i.+t, how about that."

"Can we talk about Leadbetter?" I asked. I wanted to know about the dead police chief. That was another coincidence I didn't believe in. Mufalatta was staring at me, open-mouthed, as I pushed it as far as it would go.

"What about him?"

"Was he giving you any trouble?"

Graves shook his head very slowly. "Him and Mr. Stoney," he said, entwining two fingers, "like that."

"Do you know why he was killed?"

"I heard it was an accident," he said.

"There's one other thing," I said. "Did Tony Lukatis ever do a job for you?"

"s.h.i.+t, don't be a jivea.s.s. I hardly knew the little motherf.u.c.ker."

"You didn't like him, then?"

"I didn't think about him one way or the other."

"So he wasn't working for you on the Colombia run?"

"If there was a Colombia run, he wouldn't have been workin' for me, nohow. Okay?"

"Okay."

"So what the h.e.l.l's the plan, baby? Do we wait for you to tell us the truce is on or what?"

"I need a couple of hours," I said.

"To do what?"

"Cool the situation down. Just stay low, that's all you got to do. "

He stroked his jaw with a large, rawboned hand that sparkled with a diamond ring as big as the house I was born in. He started to chuckle in that whispery, gravel voice of his.

"I don't believe this, y'know. I mean, me trustin' a f.u.c.kin' honky Fed. What's your name, man?"

"Kilmer. Jake Kilmer."

"Like the poet?"

"You read poetry?" I said.

"Why not," he said. "I got cla.s.s."

66.

SHOOTOUT IN BACK O'TOWN.

"Okay, you got a deal," Graves said, offering me his hand. "We'll stay cool until you get Nance and the rest of them off the street. But they come lookin' for trouble, Kilmer, forget it. I ain't standing still for any motherf.u.c.ker."

A phone rang somewhere in the darkness of the Church. It kept ringing persistently until it was finally answered. A voice in the darkness said, "It's for somebody named Kilmer. Is that either one of you?"

I stood up, followed by Graves' hard glance.

"I hope this ain't some kind of stand-up, 'cause if it is, man, you go down first."

"Probably my broker," I said, and followed a vague form back to the cash register. The phone was on the wall, an old-fas.h.i.+oned black coin-eater.

"Kilmer," I said.

It was Dutch. "Get your a.s.s outta there now," he told me.

"We're doing fine here," I said.

"Kite Lange just called central from his car. He's following Nance and two carloads of Tagliani gunsels, and they're headed your way."

"Call in some blue and whites."

"I've done that but you got maybe a minute to get out of there before shooting's likely to start."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it," I said, "Nose has agreed to a cease-fire!"

"Then you better get your a.s.s out here and tell that to your buddy Nance, 'cause he's about to come around the corner."

I slammed down the phone and stumbled through the darkness back to Graves' table.

"We got a problem," I said as calmly as I could. "Nance is on his way with two cars."

An S&W .38 appeared in Graves' fist. There was a lot of movement around us. The gun was a beauty, a Model 19 with a four-inch barrel, Pachmar grip, the c.o.c.king spur shaved off. Not fancy, all pro.

"What the f.u.c.k's goin' down here?" he hissed.

"That was our partner. One of our people spotted Nance and his bunch heading this way. Police cars are coming. Just stay inside, keep your heads down. Let us handle it."

"You ain't goin' nowhere till this gets unwound, dog lover."

An explosion ended the conversation. The front door erupted and yellow flames lashed up the stairwell, followed by bits and pieces of wood and gla.s.s that seemed to float lazily in the updraft.

The place shook like an earthquake had hit us.

The Kid dove sideways, out of Graves' line of fire, and pulled me with him. Graves couldn't have cared less about us, though. He dashed toward the door.

Handguns started popping down on the street. Then a shotgun bellowed and somebody screamed.

The Kid turned a service table on its side, smacked a leg off with his elbow, grabbed it like a club, and motioned me to follow him to a side door.

Another explosion. I looked back and saw a gaping hole in the side of the room. Light slashed through smoke and fire, showing me several men with guns, heading toward the front stairs, fire be d.a.m.ned. More gunfire. Another scream. Handguns were popping off all over the place. I could hear several sirens shrieking out on the street.

Heavy artillery boomed behind the door just as we got to it. The Kid kicked it open and came face to face with one of Turk Nance's goons. His Remington twelve-gauge had just blown a hole through one of Graves' men, who was tumbling down the stairs behind him. The Kid jumped back inside as the hoodlum swung the shotgun up. Mufalatta pulled the door shut, and dragged me to my knees beside him as the riot gun blew a six-inch plug out of the center of the door. The Kid counted to three and then slammed the door open again, right into the gunman's face. The shotgun barrel slid through the hole it had just made in the door. The Kid grabbed the barrel with one hand, pulled the door shut again, and wrenched the weapon from the gunman's hands. He reached through the hole, grabbed a handful of the hoodlum's s.h.i.+rt, pulled him against the shattered door, and slammed the b.u.t.t end of the table leg into his chest. The gangster fell away from the front door, gagging, and the Kid charged out, swinging the table leg like Lou Gehrig, and almost took off the goon's head. The gunman hit the stairs halfway down, bounced once, and piled up in the doorway.

We followed him down the stairs. The shotgun was an 870P police riot gun loaded with pellets, an awesome weapon. At the foot of the stairs we peered cautiously around the corner of the door. One of Nance's cars was parked twenty feet away. They saw the Kid's black face and every gun in the car opened up.

We jumped back as the doorjamb was blown to pieces.

"There's one of 'em outside the car on the other side," the Kid said. "I'm gonna squirrel the son of a b.i.t.c.h and get us a little breathin' room."

Squirreling is a useful trick. Fire a shotgun or any projectile weapon at less than a forty-five-degree angle into anything solid, and the bullet or pellets will ricochet exactly eight inches off that surface and stay at that height. That's just low enough to go under a car. The Kid got the shotgun ready, leaned around the corner, and cut loose twice.

Kow-boom! Kow-boom!

Forty-eight pellets sang off the sidewalk and showered under the car, tearing through the ankle and s.h.i.+n of the man on the other side. He went down screaming. The Kid took advantage of the hiatus to put another blast through the rear window. The car took off, with the wounded thug hanging on to the front door.

Outside, all h.e.l.l had broken loose.

At least two of Nance's shooters and one of Graves' men were down in the street.

Pedestrians were cowering behind parked cars and in alleyways.

The Church was in the middle of a block with Gordon Street in front of it and Marsh Street behind. Empty lots on both sides. It was under siege. The front of the place was aflame, as was a police car sitting sideways in the middle of Gordon Street on blown-out tires.

Both ends of the street were clogged with blue and whites.

The mob car slammed on its brakes as it neared Gordon, and the human cargo hanging on to the door was vaulted end over end into the street. He lay there clutching his ankles until a volley of gunfire from the Church stilled him. The Nance car spun around and started back our way. As it did, Dutch Morehead pulled his Olds out of Marsh Street, into the lot, jumped out, and dashed for cover. The Kid shot off a rear tire and most of the rim as the sedan roared past. The Nance car lost control, tried to swerve out of the path of the Olds, slammed into the front end of the Dutchman's car, vaulted over it, and slid to a grinding halt on its side.

Nance's men started crawling out of doors and windows. Cops swarmed up from Marsh Street and were all over them.

The other car was nowhere to be seen. Then it suddenly burst backward out of an alley beside the drugstore and into Gordon Street, spun around on screaming brakes, and careened into the lot as the Stick's black Pontiac roared out of the alley in pursuit. Longnose Graves dashed from the door of the Church and emptied his pistol into the fleeing car.

As Nance's car pa.s.sed our doorway, showering dirt and debris toward us, the Mufalatta Kid sent one burst into its rear window. He could handle a shotgun, all right, but it didn't slow down the escaping car. It cut left into Marsh, glanced off a police car, sideswiped a brick wall, and was gone, with Stick growling off after it.

Fire trucks and ambulances arrived. More confusion.

The Church was burning out of control. Graves' people tumbled out into the street, coughing and rubbing their eyes. A fast body count showed three of Nance's men dead to two of Graves' gunmen.

Graves was not in the roundup.

Dutch said, "He must've slipped us in the confusion."

I didn't believe that. I went back to the side door and ran upstairs. Smoke swirled through the Church. Flames were snapping at the far end of the room.

Graves was sitting on his wooden throne, tie askew, suit and face smoke-smeared, a bullet hole high in his left chest, his .38 aimed at the floor. He looked up with surprise as I stumbled through the smoke to the booth.

He raised the pistol and pointed it at my head. His rasping voice said, "s.h.i.+t, dog lover, you don't know when you're well off."

"Why don't you get out of here while you can," I said.

"I ought to kill you on general principles," he said.

"What's stopping you?"

His finger squeezed and an electric shock sizzled through me. The hammer clicked harmlessly.

"Out of bullets, poet," he said, laughed, and threw the gun at my feet.

67.

BODY COUNT.