Hooligans

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

Dutch Morehead had a hunch.

When we arrived at the Warehouse, he was sitting with his feet on the desk under the two holes he

had put in the ceiling the night before.

“Did y‟see this?” he asked, tossing us the morning paper.

The article was on page 7, circled with a ballpoint pen:

MAN BELIEVED VICTIM OF SHIPWRECK

The story, datelined Jacksonville, went on to say that an unidentified white male had washed ashore

twenty miles north of the resort town the night before. Local police speculated that he was aboard a

trawler believed to have burned at sea three days earlier. Charred wreckage of the boat had been

floating up along the coast for two days. An autopsy was planned and there were no other details. The

item was about three inches long.

“Don‟t we have enough trouble?” the Stick said.

“1 already talked to the boys down there” was Dutch‟s answer.

“1 guess we don‟t,” the Stick replied.

“I got this hunch,” the Dutchman said. It was obvious he was feeling proud of himself.

“Shit!” the Stick said. “Now what?”

“The Coast Guard got the name of the ship off some of the wreckage. It sailed out of Maracaibo nine

days ago with a crew of four. Maracaibo is right around the corner from Colombia, and Colombia

spells cocaine to me. The Department of Natural Resource boys have been picking up bits and pieces

of it since Monday morning. Then this morning another stiff floated up.

This new one is a black guy. Both of them are full of bullets, Jake. Twenty-twos.”

“What‟s that got to do with—”

“I‟m not finished yet,” he said. “lie labels in this black dude‟s shirt and pants say he‟s from

Doomstown. Designer jeans, a two-hundred-dollar shirt, five-hundred-dollar boots. And one other

thing—he has a shiv mark, from here to here.” He drew a line with a thumb from ear to mouth.

“I‟ll be damned,” Stick said. “Stitch Harper?”

“Fits him like homemade pyjamas. He also had an empty holster on his belt,” said the Dutchman. „So

what sailor do you know dresses like that and packs heat?”

“Who‟s Stitch Harper?” I asked.

“One of Longnose Graves‟ top honchos.”

“If it‟s Stitch Harper,” Dutch said, “we just might have us a whole new scenario working. And I‟ll

know in an hour or so. I got photos of both victims comin‟ in on the telex.”

“Okay, let‟s hear the theory,” I said.

The way Dutch had it figured, Longnose Graves was bringing several kilos of coke by boat from

Colombia to Doomstown. Graves bragged the information to Della Norman and she bragged it to her

new boyfriend, Tony Logeto, who, in turn, passed it on to the rest of the Taglianis. Somewhere east of

Jacksonville Beach, someone from the Tagliani clan hijacked the shipment, killed the crew, and

burned the boat. If that‟s the way it happened, it was a clever scheme. It did Graves out of several

million dollars‟ worth of snow and at the same time made him a loser to his people.

“I think,” Dutch concluded, “that Craves is on the warpath. Add to all this his old lady gettin‟ snuffed

in bed with Logeto, you got to have one angry mobster on your hands.”

The idea had a lot of merit and I told him so. If Dutch‟s theory was true, the most likely person to

have pulled off the hijacking was Turk Nance, which could account for Nance‟s whereabouts for the

past few days.

“The way I see it,” Dutch said, “it‟s either Costello or Craves who‟s behind all the killing. And right

now Graves is the only one with a motive.”

“We don‟t have anything to move on,” Stick said.

It was true—it was all ifs and maybes. I decided to play devil‟s advocate.

“Supposing that Costello is real greedy,” I said. “Maybe he decided to scratch out everybody except

the ones he needed, which would be Tuna Chevos, who controls the waterways, Lou Cohen, his

financial wizard, and Bronicata, who‟s the narcotics pipeline to the street. Maybe they got together,

made a front-end deal to waste all the rest of the family, ruin Graves‟ credibility, and split the town up

three ways.”

“It‟s not as strong as the case against Graves,” Dutch said. “He‟s fighting for his life and he‟s got a

revenge motive to hoot.”

“Either way, we need that dope,” the Stick said, “Without the coke, all we got is speculation.”

One thing we all agreed on: If the dead black man wasn‟t Stitch Harper, or somebody from Graves‟

gang, Dutch‟s hunch would be colder than an Alaskan picnic. We decided to table all further

discussion until the pictures arrived.

While we were waiting, I went looking for Charlie One Ear. He was sitting in his cubicle, dressed in

his best with a cigarette bobbing at the end of a fancy holder, touch-typing a report at about a hundred

and twenty words a minute.

“You do that like you know what you‟re doing,” I said.

“My mother believed in the broadest kind of education,” he said.

“Do me a favour, will you?” I asked. “I‟m trying to get a line on a Tony Lukatis, thirty years old,

dark...”

“I know Lukatis,” he said. “Did time in Little Q. Pot smuggling.”

“That‟s him.”

“Is he in trouble again?” Charlie One Ear asked.

“His sister‟s a friend of mine,” I said. “She thinks he may be involved in another—”

I stopped in midsentence. My stomach was doing slow rolls.

“My God,” I said, and ran back to the telex room with Charlie a few steps behind me. Dutch was

sitting beside the machine, leafing through some reports.

“These things are embarrassing,” he said as we entered the room. “If anybody else read them, they‟d

swear Salvatore and Zapata were illiterate.” Then he looked up at me and said, “What‟s wrong with

you?”

I handed him the Polaroid of Tony Lukatis.

“Know him?” I asked.

He took a look. “Sure, that‟s Tony Lukatis. He did a deuce for smuggling grass. Titan nailed him.”

“Titan? I got the impression he more or less tolerated pot.”

“Smoking, not smuggling,” Charlie One Ear said. “What‟s this all about?”

“The white guy that floated up with Stitch Harper, it could be Lukatis,” I said.

“Why?” asked Dutch.

“Hunch,” I said. “He‟s been missing since Sunday. His sister thinks he may have been involved in

smuggling.”

The first photo rolled off the tube twenty minutes later.

“Stitch,” Dutch said, “or what‟s left of him.”

Crabs or sharks or both had done a lot of damage to the black man‟s face but there was enough left to

tell who he was. The white man was not as lucky. He was missing a foot, his face was nibbled to bits,

and he was badly bloated. I hoped the dead man would be someone else, anybody else. I remembered

DeeDee‟s picture of Tony, pleasant, dark, good—looking kid. And I was thinking about DeeDee, to

whom life so far had been one bottom deal after another. First her father, now the brother she adored,

warts and all. I didn‟t hope for long.

“It‟s Lukatis,” Dutch said.

“You‟re sure?” I asked.

He nodded. “There isn‟t much, but there‟s enough.”

I turned away from the photo. I knew I would be the one to tell DeeDee. And now something new „as

gnawing at me.

Who had „Tony Lukatis been working for? Longnose Graves or the hijackers?

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