Hooligans

PLAYING BY THE BOOK

The Palm Room of the Ponce Hotel was big, cheery room, as bright as a hothouse and decked out in

as many hanging plants, ferns, and potted flowers, it was decorated in soft hues of green, yellow, and

pink, with windows down one side that faced the hotel courtyard. Once, in summertimes past, the

cream of Dunetown society had sunned itself and gossiped around the pool. it had since been

converted into a giant fish pond spiked with lily pads, and while there were still a few old deck chairs

scattered about the area, the place had a forlorn, faded, unused look about it. The restaurant, however,

was breezy, cheerful, and buzzing with early morning conversation.

I showed up the next morning at a few minutes after eight with my head pounding and the taste of old

overshoes and amaretto in my mouth. I put on my sunglasses and groped my way through the

restaurant.

Francisco Mazzola, the peerless leader of the Freeze, was seated near a window overlooking the

courtyard. He had half a dozen vitamin pills of varying sizes and colors lined up in front of his plate

and was gulping them down with orange Juice. He pumped my hand, threw an arm around my back,

and slid the morning paper in front of me as 1 sat down.

“1 ordered your breakfast,” he said. “Fresh orange juice, a dozen dollar pancakes, one egg over easy,

no meat. Your system needs a break, I‟m sure. She‟s bringing your coffee now and I got some great

vitamins here for you.”

“If I eat all that, I‟ll die,” I said.

“Cot to keep up the old strength.”

“There are enough vitamins here for the whole room.”

He ignored the complaint. “Vitamins do great things for the brain,” he said.

Mazzola did vitamins like a speed freak does amphetamines. He was also fighting a losing battle with

his hair. He spent an hour every morning weaving what few strands were left over a pate as bald as a

kitchen table. To compensate he had grown a beard which made his dark Mediterranean looks and

intense brown eyes more intimidating than usual. He slid a handful of vitamins across the table to me.

“These are yours,” he said. “This stuff‟s from China. Incredible, has all kinds of—”

“Cisco, I‟m not into vitamins, okay? 1rn into coffee and a little booze, an occasional lay, rare steaks,

wine, mashed potatoes and gravy..

He looked like he was going to throw up.

“I‟m not into vitamins and weird herbs.”

“In two days you‟ll notice an improvement.”

“If I got a good night‟s sleep I‟d notice an improvement. I was tip half the night thanks to the sudden

departure of half the Tagliani clan.”

“We‟ll get to that,” he said, digging in to his breakfast, a plate of health food that looked like it had

been dredged from the bottom of a swamp.

“Besides,” I said, “I read where overdosing on vitamins makes your hair fall out.”

He looked up, aghast.

“Where did you read that?”

“In the paper. One of those health columns. Rots out the roots of the hair.”

I tried to keep the gag going but I started to laugh. He leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes.

“No more jokes about the hair, okay? Do 1 yoke about your knee?”

“It‟s my ankle.”

“See, you‟re touchy about that.”

“I‟m not touchy about it. I happen to have shifty ankles. Great wheels, shifty ankles; otherwise I

wouldn‟t be here, I‟d be a retired millionaire football player living in Tahiti. On the other hand, you

only have about four strands of hair left, although I‟ll say the beard helps.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “Fill me in.”

I gave him a fairly thorough walk-through of the events of Sunday night.

“You‟re the expert on the Triad—what the hell‟s going on here?” he asked.

“I‟ll tell you what I don‟t think‟s going on,” I said. “I don‟t think it‟s an outside mob and I don‟t think

it‟s an inside job.”

“That‟s interesting,” he said. “That just about rules out everybody. Who do you think did it, the tooth

fairy?”

“It‟s logical. The last thing the Triad wanted to do was create attention. They uprooted their families

and sneaked in here. If it had been a family feud, it makes more sense that it would have been done

before they left Cincinnati. Besides, this thing just doesn‟t read like a Mafia hit. Salvatore agrees with

me.”

“Salvatore‟s an expert, huh?” he said, looking over his breakfast plate and raising his eyebrows.

“He knows their style. Hell, he ought to, his father was an LCN cannon in south Philly.”

“I know that” He went back to his breakfast, waving a fork at my plate. “Talk and cat, it‟ll get cold.”

“The only exception to that is that maybe it could be Chevos and Nance.”

He looked up, surprised.

“1 didn‟t know they were here.”

“They‟re here somewhere.”

“Oh, you‟re guessing again.”

“It‟s logical.”

“You and your logic,” he said. “You can make any argument sound good. One minute you tell me you

don‟t think it‟s internal and the next you tell me it is.”

“Chevos and Nance are different.”

“That‟s „cause you want them to be,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “This is department business,

pal. I didn‟t bring you in here to carry out a personal vendetta.”

“I‟m just running the possibilities past you. Chevos is devious enough to try it and Nance is psychotic

enough to do the work. So, if the shot fits I let the rest of the sentence dangle.

“It‟s „If the shoe fits,” he said.

“Not in this case.”

“All right, tell me more.”

“We have reason to believe whoever‟s in on this did time in Nam.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Weapons, MO, style.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nance was in Nam, right in the thick of it.”

“Uh-huh. And so were you, Stick, and half of Dutch Morehead‟s bunch. Hell, even I was in Nam.

That doesn‟t make Nance an assassin. Some people might even consider him a hero.”

“The war‟s over,” I said.

“I think maybe you‟re shagging flies,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said with a shrug.

“Anything else?”

“Well, uh

He leaned over the table and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Before you go any further,” he said, “let

me remind you that

you‟re not here to solve homicides. Just between us, I don‟t care if Yankee Doodle Dandy‟s doing it,

unless it‟s relevant. I want the package on Tagliani.”

He didn‟t wait for me to say anything.

“This used to be a nice, quiet, historical tourist trap,” he said.

“It‟s turning into Rotten City, U.S.A. I want to know how deep Tagliani had his hooks in. What did he

own? Who did he buy? How did he pull it off? Hell, I don‟t have to give you the lecture, you know

what the Freeze is all about.”

“If you‟re interested in what I think,” I said, “I think the homicides have to be relevant.”

He pointed at me with his fork.

“Don‟t get lost on me, Jake. And don‟t lead Stick astray.”

“Lead Stick astray! You got to be joking. And what‟s all this shit about him not being jaded?”

“What do you think of him?” he asked with a smile.

“He‟s as off the wall as the rest of Dutch Morehead‟s hooligans,” I said.

“He‟s just like you were,” he said. “Eager, tough, a lone wolf. You two can help each other. Working

with Dutch and his boys‟ll give you both a sense of team play.”

“1 know all about team play, remember?”

“You been playing your own game for a while,” Cisco said. “Now you got plenty of help. I want to

nail the Cincinnati Triad. I think we got a giant washing machine here, Jake, and I want to see the

inside of it. I want to know how it works. That‟s what this trip is all about, okay?” He paused for a

moment and added, “And I‟d like to find out while a few of them are still breathing. Seen the morning

paper?”

Cisco could change the subject in midsentence. When he had said all he had to say on a subject, he

just dropped it and moved

He laid the paper beside my plate. It was turned to page 12, where the Tagliani killing was reported

quietly, under a one-column headline: