Hooligans

FIGHT NIGHT AT THE WAREHOUSE

I drove back to the Warehouse, and into bedlam.

A dozen men, including a couple of brass buttons, were jammed in the doorway. There was a lot of

shoving, pushing, cursing, threatening. The Stick was standing outside, back from the crowd,

watching the melee with a smile.

“Be goddamned,” he said as I rolled up. “Dutch‟s put the arm on Costello and all his merry men!”

I jumped out of the car and we ran into the building.

A lot of racket from the back.

A cop stopped the Stick long enough to tell him they had Costello; his number one bodyguard and

shooter, Drack Moreno, who looked and talked like a moron but had a genius IQ; two of his top

button men, Silo Murphy, a.k.a. the Weasel, because he looked like one, and Arthur Pravano, whose

moniker was Sweetheart, for reasons I‟ll never understand; and two other musclemen. In addition,

they also had Chevos and Bronicata on tap with their various gunsels. Nance was missing, as was

Stizano.

A small army of twelve, all of them but Costello raising almighty hell.

We headed for the war room, which is exactly what it had turned into from the sound of things.

The hooligans were well represented: Pancho Callahan, Salvatore, Chino Zapata, Charlie One Ear,

Cowboy Lewis, and Dutch Morehead. Everyone but Kite and Mufalatta, who seemed to have

vanished from the earth. With the Stick and me, it kind of rounded the teams off at eight to eight.

The yelling, cursing, and threats had continued down through the Warehouse and into the war room,

which was as chaotic as the floor of the stock exchange at the closing bell.

Dutch had separated the big shots and shoved them into one of the cubicles. The gunsels were all in

the war room. Dutch was standing in front of the room bellowing like a wounded whale.

“Everybody ease off, y‟hear me, or some heads are gonna get loosened!” he roared.

The room settled down to a low rumble.

With Costello‟s bunch and the hooligans, the room was full of the meanest-looking gang of cutthroats

I‟ve ever seen gathered in one place.

I was standing in the doorway, eyeballing Costello and Chevos. In all the years I had been bonded to

this gang, I had never seen either of them closer than fleetingly and from across the street or through

binoculars. Now they were both fifteen feet away. I made no attempt to conceal my contempt for

them.

Costello alone seemed calm. He was a tall man and better looking than I would have liked, his sharp

features and hard-set jaw deeply tanned, his longish black hair bronzed by a lot of sun, his lean body

decked out in a blue blazer, a pale blue shirt open at the collar, white slacks, and white loafers. He

was one of those people whose age is superfluous. There were a lot of reasons to dislike him. Only his

brown eyes were a clue to his anger. They glittered with suppressed rage. My rage was open, my

hatred obvious, but I kept my mouth shut for the time being.

Chevos stood stoically in a corner of the cubicle, alone, staring at the wall, and Bronicata was

jabbering like a monkey in heat.

The rest of the Tagliani mob was dressed casually for the beach, looking like graduates of a Sing Sing

cellblock disguised as the Harvard crew team.

The hooligans rounded out the scene. A novice would have had one hell of a time separating the good

guys from the bad.

“Kick that door shut there, Pancho,” Dutch said, and Callahan closed the door.

Everybody chose up sides and lined up against opposite walls of the room, hooligans near the door,

Costello‟s gunsels against the far wall.

Cowboy Lewis, wearing aged jeans, a faded Levi‟s jacket, a Derringer-type cowboy hat, and a

brilliant red sunburn, was carrying a large grocery sack.

“We dumped „em comin‟ offa Costello‟s rowboat,” Cowboy said, in a voice that sounded like he

swabbed his throat with number four sandpaper. I was to learn that Costello‟s “rowboat,” as Lewis

had genteelly put it, was a sixty—foot yacht that slept ten.

Cowboy carried the brown paper bag to the front of the room and dumped its contents on Dutch‟s

desk

Eight pistols of every kind and calibre, slip knives, brass knucks, two rolls of quarters, and other

assorted tools of the trade. “The heavyweights were all light,” he said.

Dutch‟s eyebrows rose with the corners of his lips.

“Neat. Did you all hear the Russians re in Charleston or some such?” he asked nobody in particular.

Nobody answered, but there was a lot of grumbling and grousing.

“Definitely concealed weapons,” said Lewis, who was nursing a split lip.

“Where‟d ya get the fat lip?” Dutch asked.

“The little asshole with the mouse clipped me when I wasn‟t looking,” he said, jerking a thumb

toward one of the goons, who was wearing a black eye the size of a pancake. “1 had to use reasonable

force to subdue him.”

The little asshole with the mouse got very tense.

“Okay, let‟s start makin‟ a list‟r two here,” said Dutch. “First off, we got concealed weapons—”

“They‟s all registered,” said one of Costello‟s rat pack, cutting Dutch off.

“Shut up,” Sweetheart Pravano said quietly. “L.C. says we don‟t say nuthin‟ to these monkeys,

period.”

Salvatore‟s eyes narrowed to slits and his fists balled and un-balled. Cowboy Lewis stared at a spot in

the corner of the ceiling and looked bored. Callahan just chuckled, and Chino Zapata took the gold

tooth out of the front of his bridgework, put it in the change pocket of his jeans, and shook out his

hands. Charlie One Ear mumbled something that could have been “shithouse mouse,” although I‟m

not sure.

The Stick and I ambled into a neutral corner on the opposite side of the room from Dutch and laid

back, waiting for something to happen.

Callahan started it.

“Tag these and put „em away,” Dutch told him. The dapper cop found paper and pencil and went up to

the desk to complete his chore. He picked up a palm-sized .25 with a pearl handle, a cute little

weapon, accurate for maybe three feet if the wind isn‟t blowing.

“Which one of you girls belongs to this?” Callahan said with a snicker, holding it between thumb and

forefinger, like a dead fish.

Sweetheart Pravano, well over six feet tall and built like a Russian weightlifter, stepped up and

slapped the carnation out of Callahan‟s lapel.

„Whyn‟t ya eat that daisy, ya fuckin‟ fag,” he said.

His comment was greeted with a right hook that hurt my jaw and sent Sweetheart soaring across the

room, head over heels over a table.

All hell broke loose.

Dutch was so appalled, he just watched it, open-mouthed.

Cowboy swept the artillery back into the paper bag and threw it in a desk drawer.

I held my corner of the room.

The Stick waded right in.

Makeshift weapons appeared from under jackets, armpits, pants legs.

Salvatore drew his sawed-off pool cue from his shoulder holster and whapped Weasel Murphy across

the back of the head as if he were swinging at a fastball. A tuft of Murphy‟s hair lifted straight up and

Murphy slid across a table, sweeping file folders, baskets, and other stenographic paraphernalia before

him to the floor.

Callahan took the meanest-looking of Costello‟s mutts, squared off in a fighting stance, and as the

goon closed in on him, kicked him in the jaw. The toe of his sneaker was loaded with ball bearings, It

burst open like a squashed grapefruit, and steel marbles rattled all over the floor. Callahan‟s target

destroyed a typing stand and landed in a corner, spitting out his front teeth.

The floor was covered with ball bearings. It looked like amateur night at the roller derby, everybody

dilly-dancing on the things like three-year-olds at ballet school.

Charlie One Ear, who had seemed a little overweight to me and far too elegant to mix it up with this

bunch, slid out of his tweed jacket, spun around on the ball of one foot, kicked a goon in the

diaphragm with a perfectly aimed toe-shot, slashed him across the temple with the flat of his hand,

and was hack on both feet before the goon hit the floor. A lovely little pas seul.

Zapata relied on nothing more than his fists, waltzing across the ball-bearinged floor and hitting any

and all targets of opportunity.

The Stick picked Drack Moreno and they went at it, Moreno outweighing him by twenty pounds and

outreaching him by three inches, a condition Stick quickly remedied by first kicking Moreno in the

kneecap, then pulling a handkerchief loaded with silver dollars from his pocket and swinging it

around and around like a bob. It caught Moreno more than once. Moreno‟s face bunched up in pain.

„The Stick hit him in the throat. Moreno‟s tongue almost hit the far wall. His eyes crossed. He gasped

for air. Zapata stepped in and flattened Moreno with a lovely one-two, a short jab to the face, followed

by a gorgeous right uppercut to the jaw.

The Stick‟s silver dollars and Salvatore‟s pool cue finished off Weasel Murphy, who made the

mistake of trying to get up off the floor.

Charlie One Ear gave another of his brief karate demonstrations and put another one away.

Salvatore held the last of Costello‟s strongarms by the collar of his shirt at arm‟s length and was

socking him, almost casually, in the face, over and over again, with his pool cue.

Dutch ended the melee with two shots into the ceiling.

All motion was suspended.

“Verdammt, Salvatore, drop that guy!” he boomed.

Salvatore opened his hand and let him go, the tough dropping face first into a typewriter that lay on

the floor.

Weasel Murphy groaned and slid down the wall.

The asshole with the mouse now had a pair of mice and no front teeth.

Drack Moreno‟s face looked like Omaha Beach on June seventh.

To my knowledge, not one of the hooligans had suffered so much as a bruise, except for Cowboy

Lewis‟ fat lip.

The entire gala had lasted maybe a full minute, no more.

Dutch stood in front of the room, gun in hand, dust drizzling down on his shoulders from two holes in

the ceiling.

“What‟s the matter with everybody? You all comin‟ unwired? Book these punks here for resisting

arrest.”

The door opened cautiously and three uniformed cops peered in nervously before entering the room.

There were a lot of clinking handcuffs and groans as they cleared out the Tagliani goons.

Lewis and the others helped Callahan clean up his ball bearings.

“Brand-new sneakers,” he complained, surveying the split toe of his Nikes.

All clubs and other weapons had magically vanished back to their nesting places.

The Stick returned to my solitary corner. He was smiling. “I feel much better,” he said.

“I thought maybe one of them stole your hat,” I said.

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