Hooligans Part 73

"Stick!" I yelled.

He turned and crouched in a single move; then his shoulders drew up suddenly, his knees buckled, and he fell over onto the deck.

I jumped aboard the sailboat and ran back toward the stern, where he was lying. I was ten feet from him when he raised up and lifted the 180. For a second I thought he was going to shoot me. I just froze there. He swung it up, to my left, and squeezed off two or three bursts. The bullets chewed a ragged line up the mast. Bits and pieces of wood flew out of it, followed by streams of white crystals. They poured out of the bullet holes in the shattered mast, sparkling like snowflakes, were caught in the wind and whisked away, out over the bay and into the darkness. Stick sighed and his head fell back on the deck.

I leaned over him. His eyes were turning gray.

He flashed that crazy smile.

"Wasn't it . . . one h.e.l.luva . . . blast," he said, in a funny, tired, faraway voice, "while it lasted? Huh, Jake?"

"It was one h.e.l.luva blast."

His lips moved but he didn't say anything.

"You did it all, didn't you? Took on the whole Tagliani clan?" I said.

He didn't answer. All he said was "Burn . . . boat, 'kay?"

The Stick winked, then sighed, and it was all over.

Up near Chevos' compound, I could hear sirens and see red and blue reflections through the trees. People shouting. Doors slamming.

I turned Nance over. Half a dozen slugs had removed most of his chest. He wouldn't be soaking any more slugs in a.r.s.enic. The look frozen on his face was pure terror, the mask of a man who had died in fear. That's one I owed that I'd never repay.

I checked over the mast. It was on hinges, the kind that can be lowered for repairs and going under low bridges. I examined it closely, then picked up the machine pistol and raked the mast with gunfire. I started at the base and let the . 22-caliber slugs tear it to pieces. As the slugs ripped up the birch pole, the s.h.i.+ning white crystals sifted out, sparkling as the wind caught them and tossed them, twinkling, out over the water. I kept shooting until the gun was empty. The powder poured out. I sat down next to Stick and watched twenty-four million dollars' worth of cocaine dance on the wind and dissolve in the sea. It took a while.

I rolled Nance's body off the deck and watched it splash into the bay. Then I carried Stick ash.o.r.e and fired a grenade into the engine of his sailboat. The back end of the sleek craft exploded, then burst into flames. I threw the M-16 and the 180 as far out into the bay as I could fling them and headed back up the hill to see what was happening.

76.

VOTE OF CONFIDENCE.

I labored back up the hill toward the big cottage, lit now by the roving searchlights of a chopper that hovered a few feet above the roof. There were a lot of red and blue lights flas.h.i.+ng, by now standard procedure every time the SOB's showed up anyplace.

A small fire was burning in one of the rooms and I could hear the throaty blast from a fire extinguisher. There was a lot of smoke and broken gla.s.s around the place. As I pa.s.sed the kitchen window I got a brief look at the inside of the house. I could see down the length of the five-room cottage. I didn't stop to count bodies, I knew the score already.

The chopper swung away from the house and dropped down into a corner of the parking lot, throwing shards of gla.s.s and dirt in little waves below it. Cowboy Lewis jumped out and dashed from under the whirring blades.

I found Doe in the back, standing with Dutch. Her eyes were as round as quarters and she was trembling. I'm sure she was as confused as she was stunned by the sudden explosion of activity and by the destruction. I walked straight over to her and an instant later she was huddled against me, burrowing into my chest with her nose, like a puppy.

"What in h.e.l.l happened?" Dutch asked as the rest of the group began to gather around us. He sounded like he was in shock. I realized it was the first time I had seen all of the hooligans together at one time. All but one.

"Nance lifted Mrs. Raines and me off the street in front of her townhouse," I answered. "Stick hit the place and got us out. Just that simple."

I looked back down the hill.

"We need to get somebody down there," I said. You could hardly hear my voice. "Stick's lying at the bottom of the hill."

"Is he dead?" Salvatore asked.

"Yeah." I nodded.

"Aw, s.h.i.+t," Cowboy Lewis said. "Aw, s.h.i.+t!"

He started down the hill and Dutch tried to stop him. "We got an ambulance on the way, Cowboy," he said gently.

"I'm gonna get him. f.u.c.k the ambulance."

"I'll go along," Charlie One Ear said, and followed him through the smoke.

Callahan strolled out of the wreckage looking startled, with Kite Lange behind him carrying the extinguisher. "All dead in there," he said incredulously. "Every last one of 'em. I count ten. Biggest total yet."

"Why in h.e.l.l would they kidnap you?" Salvatore said.

"Costello wanted to make a deal. He was willing to turn up Nance and Chevos and dump Sarn Donleavy and Charles Seaborn if I'd get him off the hook."

"Otherwise?"

"He was going to kill us."

Dutch squinted his eyes and looked down his nose at me.

"How's that again?"

I had started another lie. I was getting pretty good at it by now.

"Let me give you the scenario, okay? Nance and Chevos were going to throw in with Bronicata and Cohen, get rid of the rest of the family, and take over the town. Nance was the official shooter. I don't know the reasons-what difference does it make anyhow? There's none of them left to disagree. Any problems with that?"

Dutch humphed and shuffled his feet around a bit.

"How about Nance?" Mufalatta asked.

"He's floating around in the bay," I said. "Stick's last official act."

"We got the weapons? Any of that?" Dutch asked.

"They fell in the bay," I said.

They all looked at each other, then back at Dutch, and then at me.

"How about the toot?" Zapata asked.

"In the mast of the sailboat that's burning down there," I said. "By now it's either in the bay or turned to charcoal."

I looked at each of the hooligans in turn, waiting for comments. Only Dutch spoke up.

"It ain't gonna work," he said. "There's holes in it."

"f.u.c.k the holes," Salvatore said.

"It'll work," I said.

"How about t.i.tan? Chief?"

"I'll take care of that."

"It's some story," Dutch said, shaking his head.

"You got a better one?" I asked.

Cowboy came back up the hill with Stick over his shoulder. He laid him on the gra.s.s away from the building and started to take off his Windbreaker.

"Don't do that," I said. "Don't cover him up."

He hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Whatever you say," he replied.

"Anybody else got any problems with the story?" I asked.

"What story?" Cowboy asked. "I missed it."

I repeated it for Cowboy and Charlie One Ear. Charlie One Ear raised his eyebrows and greeted the outcome with a wry smile. But his answer was instantaneous.

"I don't see a problem," he said. One by one they all chimed in. No problem, they agreed.

"I've got to get the lady home," I said. "Anybody got a car I can use?"

Half a dozen sets of car keys were offered. I took Dutch Morehead's sedan. It was the only one I was sure was clean.

As we were walking away, the Mufalatta Kid said, "Hey, Kilmer?"

I turned around. "Yeah?"

"We're gonna need to replace Stick. You ought to think about that. "

"Thanks. I'll do that," I said. And smiled for the first time in several hours.

77.

RETURN TO WINDSONG.

When we got to the end of the lane leading to Windsong, Stonewall t.i.tan's black limousine was parked in the drive. Luke Burger, the sheriff's man, was leaning against the hood of the car. He didn't take his eyes off me from the moment I stepped out of the car I had borrowed from Dutch.

I started toward the house and he said, "Just a minute there. Gonna have to pat you down."

"Don't even think about it," I said, without looking at him or slowing down. I'd had enough of hard talk and tough people for one night. I put an arm around Doe, led her across the long green lawn to the house, around the porch, and up the front steps to the door. Warren, the family retainer, opened it before I got a hand on the doork.n.o.b, as if a psychic doorbell had rung inside his head. He was older and grayer and arthritis had slowed him down, but he was as starched and precise as ever.

"Good evening, sir," he said with a smile, as if it were twenty years ago and I was dropping by for dinner. Then he looked closer at both of us and added, "Gracious, are you all right?"

"We're okay," I said as we went into the broad entrance hall. I had feared coming back to this house with its ghosts, long gone. But now I had too many other things on my mind, and so there was only curiosity. I figured the years would have distorted my memory of the place, but there were few surprises. I doubt that a single picture, vase, or stick of furniture had been moved in two decades. It was like a museum, preserving the past for future generations of Findleys, generations that would no longer carry the name, which had died with Teddy. Warren led us through the sprawling entrance hall with its twin curved staircase at the far end, and into a sitting room large enough to accommodate a Legionnaires' convention.

Chief and t.i.tan were waiting there. It was a room cloyed by nostalgia, all wicker and antiques, its tabletops choked with framed pictures of every size and shape-laughing pictures of Doe and Teddy as children, teenagers, college kids, and finally adults, if in fact they had ever grown up.

The old man looked up from his wheelchair with almost o.r.g.a.s.mic relief when Doe came into the room. He held out his arms and she rushed into them, as if she had just returned from a long trip. t.i.tan stood in front of the dormant fireplace, smoking a short, stubby cigar which he held between two fingers like a cigarette. You could almost feel the relief in the room, like a warm breeze seeping through the shuttered windows.

Chief was the first to speak. He looked at me over Doe's shoulder.

"Thank you," he whispered. "You're a brave man."

"Not really," I said. "It was my stupidity that got us into trouble in the first place."

Doe said, "We're back, Daddy. That's all that matters."

"We'll make it up to you, son," Chief said, hanging on to her as if he were afraid the tide was going to rush in and carry her away.

"You don't owe me anything," I said. "It was Stick who bailed us out."

"Stick?" Chief said.

Both he and t.i.tan tried to cover their surprise, but they were not very good actors.

"A cop. You probably know him better as Mickey Parver," I said, when it had sunk in.

"What happened out there, doughboy?" t.i.tan asked. "There hasn't been much in the way of radio communication for the last two hours."

"We were too busy to bother," I said curtly.

I gave them a sketchy report on what had happened from the time we left the Breezes until the shooting was over.

"Costello, Bronicata, Chevos, and Turk Nance are all dead, along with nine of their gunslingers," I said.

"My G.o.d," Chief whispered, clutching Doe even tighter.

"The four of them were behind the Tagliani killings," I went on. "My guess is that Nance did most of the work, although we'll never know for sure."

t.i.tan looked up as if a bee had stung him, then said, "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned."