Hooligans Part 63

Dutch and I piled into the Kid's car and followed the ambulance to the hospital. It was like a front-line medcorps unit. Doctors, nurses, and attendants raced in and out of doors in bloodstained robes, while several of the wounded lay on stretchers in the hallway, waiting their turn in the emergency room.

"How bad is this one?" a hawk-faced nurse asked as they wheeled Graves in, a blood bottle stuck in his arm.

"Bullet in the chest and bleeding," the attendant said.

"Room three," she snapped officiously, and then to Graves, "Do you have hospitalization?"

Graves looked up at her and managed a smile.

"I'm on welfare, lady," he whispered. And they wheeled him away.

Kite Lange and Dutch filled us in on the particulars. Dutch had hardly finished his phone call to me when Nance and his sidekicks had whipped into the street. One car had gone in from Morgan Street, across the empty lot to the side door. Nance had driven straight to the front of the church, gunned down one of Graves' men, and thrown a stick of dynamite through the front door. Then all h.e.l.l exploded. Lange, coming in close behind, rammed Nance's car and ruined his own in the process. Nance had headed up the alley beside the drugstore, only to run into Stick coming toward him, slammed into reverse, and backed out. We knew the rest of the story.

"My car's a wreck," Lange moaned.

"Your car was already a wreck," said the Kid. "We'll go to the city dump tomorrow and get you another one."

Dutch was as busy as a centipede with athlete's foot, a.s.signing cops to the wounded and trying to get a final count on dead and injured. Miraculously, only one cop had been hurt in the melee. He had broken a toe jumping out of his burning patrol car. A quick count showed two of Graves' men dead, three shot or burned, and the boss himself fighting for his life. Five more had been arrested at the scene.

"We may be missing one or two more," volunteered the Kid. "I think there was thirteen of them, countin' Graves."

Nance had not fared well either. Three were dead, two more hanging on for dear life, two had minor wounds, and three were in custody.

"One of 'em looks like he got struck by lightning," Dutch said. "The whole top of his head's stove in."

"That was me," the Kid muttered.

"What'd you hit him with, a meat cleaver?" asked Dutch.

"Table leg."

"That's gonna look great on the report," Dutch said.

"Anybody see how many there were in the getaway car with Nance?"

"Three or four," said the Kid.

"Not bad," I said. "This may have been Waterloo for both gangs. They've got to be running out of hoodlums about now."

"Let's hope Stick nailed Nance and the rest of his bunch," Dutch said.

"If anybody can, he can," I said.

I was right-and wrong.

A few minutes later an ambulance wheeled into emergency, followed by the Stick. The ambulance held three more of Turk Nance's gunmen, one of whom had literally lost his head in the shooting.

"That was me, too," Mufalatta murmured again.

"You had some day," Lange said.

No Nance.

"They headed for the interstate bridge," Stick explained. "I radioed ahead, had the bridge sealed off. They tried to go cross-country and hit a delivery truck. Nance was AWOL. I don't know what the h.e.l.l happened to him, but I've put an all points out on him."

"We got the little s...o...b.. this time," Dutch said. "We can nail him with murder, arson, creating a public nuisance, discharging firearms in the street . . . "

"Yeah," I said, "all we got to do is find him."

"How about Nose?" the Kid asked. "What do we charge him with? He was just protecting his a.s.s."

"Concealed weapons?" Stick suggested.

"There wasn't anything concealed about them," Dutch said. "I don't know what we're gonna do about Nose. There's gotta be something we can stick him with."

"One thing for certain," Stick said, "it's sure as h.e.l.l gonna attract a lot of people."

It did. Within thirty minutes Chief Walters, t.i.tan, Donleavy, and several other dignitaries were in the emergency clinic, all asking questions. I had better things to do. I asked the Stick to run me back to the park to get my car and check on the progress of our black-water diver. As we started to leave, t.i.tan grabbed my arm.

"What the h.e.l.l happened over there?" he demanded.

"Ask Dutch," I said. "I'm busy."

"I'll bet my pension you shook up this ruckus," he said, his voice beginning to rise. He sounded like a dog whining.

"That's right. I attacked all twenty-five of them with my nail file," I said, and walked out.

A few doors down from emergency, a bronze casket was being loaded through the morgue entrance into a hea.r.s.e. Doe Raines was standing alone, watching the procedure. I walked down to her. She was wearing a severe black suit and a black hat and was carrying a black purse. As usual, she was dressed impeccably for the occasion.

"I'm sorry," I said. "If it's any consolation, I really think Harry was one of the few people in this town who weren't involved in the whole mess. His only sin was naivete."

She looked up at me. She was drifting aimlessly through a bad dream. Her makeup, heavier than usual, could not cover the grief lines around her eyes. Her voice, low and husky with sorrow, sounded like it was coming from someplace far, far away.

"It's been ghastly," she said in a tiny voice. "The newspapers in Atlanta and New York have been calling. TV stations. I don't know what to say."

"Let somebody else do the talking. Let Donleavy do it. Besides, when they get down here they're going to find a lot more to interest them than you."

"I've done a lot of thinking," she said. "Can we talk a little later on? I'll be at the funeral home until seven. Can we have a drink after that?"

"Sure."

"I'll be at the townhouse," she said. "It's on Palm right up the street from the hotel. The Breezes."

"I'll see you about seven thirty," I said.

"Yes, thank you," she murmured, s.h.i.+fting her attention back to the hea.r.s.e.

I watched her drive away, remembering what DeeDee had said about Doe being a princess and everything always working out well for her.

The Stick drove back to the park like a human being, apparently having had enough action to hold him for an hour or two. The fog had lifted and a warm drizzle had started. We found Baker empty-handed.

"I have just about cleared the shelf," he said. "But I been thinking, this killer might just have thrown the gun up under the pier. For one thing, it would not have made as loud a sound such as throwing it out in the river would have."

"What's under there?" I asked.

"One h.e.l.luva mess," Whippet said around his chewing tobacco.

"It's liken I told you, sir," Baker said. "Cables, old rope, s.h.i.+p propellers, just a lot of junk. The weapon could have slipped down amongst all that there, but it might be stuck close up to the surface of it also. I'll certainly give her a try."

"Thanks," I said.

I looked at my watch. It was barely one o'clock but it seemed like days since dawn. I sat down under a tree to think while the Stick went off for hot dogs and c.o.kes. Then I remembered the tape recorder. I took it out and rewound it. There was an hour's worth of tape, all of it full, none of it worth the bother. The Stick came back and we listened as we ate.

We could hear Raines' voice, muttering, sometimes yelling in agony. Once it sounded like he was giving football signals. Another time he said Doe's name very distinctly, but nothing before or after it. Nothing else was intelligible.

I looked at Seaborn's window several times, but if he was there, he wasn't showing himself. Someone had already placed a black wreath on the side door of Warehouse Three.

"What next?" the Stick asked.

"I'm going to sit here for a while while Baker plumbs the murky depths," I said.

"It's swarthy depths," said the Stick. "He's plumbing the swarthy depths."

"Right, swarthy," I said.

We watched Baker's air bubbles playing on the surface of the river while I mentally catalogued the events of the previous five days. Ideas were forming slowly. There's a thin line between what is logically true and what is fact, what can be proven and what can't. Most of my ideas were logically true. Proving them was going to be touchy. I decided to go for broke, throw the long bomb, and break up the ballgame. It was a risky plan but Stick loved it. I knew he would. It appealed to every perverse bone in his body.

Facing Nose Graves had been nervy. Now it was time to try something rash.

68.

MONEY TALK.

It was nearly five when I went to the bank. It was closed but I had been watching the place for two hours and I knew Seaborn was still there. Now I could see him, through the double gla.s.s doors, sitting back in his office behind that ma.s.sive desk, talking frantically into the phone.

I tapped on the front door. A bank guard, swaybacked by time, shuffled slowly up, tried to talk to me through the door, and gave up. I could have driven to Key West in the time it took him to open the door. He fiddled with his keys, took two or three stabs at the latch before he got the key in, and finally got the door open a sliver.

"We're closed," he said, in a patronizing voice that sounded like it was squeezed from a balloon. "Open at nine in the morning."

"I've got an appointment with Mr. Seaborn," I said. I was getting almost casual about lying.

He looked me up and down, sizing me up. "I'll check with the president," he said. "What was the name?"

"Kilmer. It still is."

"Huh?"

"Never mind," I said.

He closed and locked the door and shuffled across a wide, cold, marble lobby to the office in the back. I could see his stooped frame, silhouetted in Seabom's doorway. Finally he turned and slue-footed back to the door. He didn't have a fast bone in his body.

He opened it another sliver.

"The president says he's busy and-"

I had my wallet out and I flashed my buzzer as I shoved past the old gentleman. "The h.e.l.l with protocol," I said. "This is business."

Seaborn looked up wide-eyed when I entered the office. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it. He looked out the window, then back at me, his face doing every number in the book as he tried to change his expression from fear to anger.

"What do you mean by this?" he demanded. "This is the second time in two days you've intruded on me without-"

"I didn't intrude on you yesterday," I said, without waiting for him to finish. "I came to tell you your secretary had a death in the family."

"What are you doing here now?"

"I thought we could have a little talk, Mr. Seaborn, just you and me."

"About what?"

"About Franco Tagliani, who called himself Frank Turner. About Lou Cohen's banking habits. About Harry Raines, who got himself killed right over there." I nodded toward the window. He followed my gaze, but looked up instead of out, toward the top floor of Warehouse Three. Heavy storm clouds were brewing again and it was dark enough for lights but there weren't any. n.o.body was home. The boss was dead.

Seaborn's nervous fingers rippled up and down the desk as if it were a concert piano.

"I hardly knew Mr. Turner," he said. "And I don't know anything about poor Harry's death." He paused for a minute and then said, "Perhaps I should summon my lawyer."

"You could do that. Or you and I could have a private little chat. Just the two of us. That's if you want to cooperate. Otherwise, you don't have to call your lawyer, I'll leave. Somebody else will come back; that's when you'll need your lawyer. That's when they read you your rights and all that stuff you see in the movies."

He turned ash gray.

"What is it, then?" he said, in a faltering voice that was rapidly losing what little character it had. He looked back over at the warehouse.

"There's n.o.body over there," I said. "The place is closed. Another death in the family. So what's it going to be? Talk? Or lawyers?"

"Ahem. We can . . . certainly . . . start . . . uh . . . "

"Look here, Mr. Seaborn, there are some things I know, and some things I think I know, and some things I'm strictly guessing at. I think maybe you can eliminate some of my guesswork."

He didn't say anything. He sat there like a man with his head in the guillotine, waiting for the blade to drop.

"I repeat," Seaborn said, putting a little strength back in his voice. "I knew the man as Turner. He was just another businessman. We were actively soliciting new business and capital into the community, that's no secret. And he made us a very attractive offer."

"No strings attached, right?"