Hooligans

CASABLANCA

I didn‟t talk a lot on the way to the place. I was thinking about the Kid‟s itching-foot story, which led

me to murder, which led me back to the Kid.

Maybe I was wrong about Nance. Maybe the killer was closer to home. Could it have been Salvatore?

or Charlie One Ear? Callahan?

Almost any one of the hooligans could have done the jobs, except Dutch, who was with me when

Draganata was slain, and Mufalatta and Zapata, who were at Uncle Jolly‟s when Stizano got his.

Of the group, Salvatore might have a reason, perhaps something related to his Mafioso father and

Philadelphia. I was thinking about the why, not the motive. The itching foot.

I let it pass. I didn‟t like the idea.

Casablanca was on the downtown waterfront, a scant fifteen minutes from the scene of the crime. I

parked on the promenade overlooking the river and we walked down a circular iron staircase to the

river level. The Stick and I were quite a pair, me in my narc Windbreaker and boots, Stick in a suit

that looked at least a decade old, a tie that defied time, and his felt hat balanced on the back of his

head.

The nightclub was perched on the edge of a pier. The windows had been taken out for the summer and

replaced by shutters, all of which were open. A rush of music and heat hit us as we entered

“Welcome to Mondo Bizarro,” said the Stick.

The place looked like it had been designed by an interior decorator on LSD.

None of the tables and chairs matched.

Gigantic stills from the Bogart film covered most of the walls. Towering up one was a gigantic blowup of Bogart, with cigarette and snarling lip, standing in front of Rick‟s nightclub in his white tux.

Nearby, Peter Lorre leered frog-eyed at a fezzed and arrogant Sydney Greenstreet, while on another

wall Claude Rains, dapper in his uniform and peaked cap, peered arrogantly at Conrad Veidt, who

looked like he had just swallowed same bad caviar.

And, of course, Bergman. The eternal virgin stared mystically from under the sweeping brim of her

hat on the wall opposite Bogie.

It wasn‟t the movie posters that gave the place its macabre charm, it was the animal heads, mounted

like hunters‟ trophies between the blowups; psychedelic papier-maché animal heads painted in

nightmare colours. There was an enormous purple elephant with pink polka dots and a giant red hippo

with mauve eyes. An orange snake speckled with blue dots curled around one of the posts that held up

the ceiling, and a lapis lazuli parrot swung idly on a brass ring under a ceiling fan.

The waitresses were poured into tan leather pants tucked into lizard-skin cowboy boots arid wore

matching leather halters, which just barely earned the name, and safari hats.

Mondo Bizarro was a conservative appraisal.

The crowd was as eclectic as the decor: tourists, college kids, pimps, gigolos, gays, straights, local

drugstore cowboys, and what looked like every woman in town, eligible or otherwise.

We took a table opposite the entrance and settled down to watch the Circus Maximus. I wondered if I

could even see DeeDee Lukatis in the mob, or whether I would recognize her if I did see her.

It didn‟t take five minutes for the action to start.

I felt the eyes staring at me first. It started at the nape of my neck and crept up around my ears. I let it

simmer for a while arid finally I had to grab a peek.

I saw her in quick takes, a tawny lioness, glimpsed between sweaty dancers weaving to a thunderous

beat that was decibels beyond human endurance, and through smoke thick enough to be cancerous.

Her sun-honeyed hair looked like it had been combed for hours by someone else‟s fingers; long hair,

tumbling haphazardly around sleek, broad shoulders. Her gauzy white cotton blouse was open to the

waist and held that way by that kind of dazzling superstructure that makes some women angry and

others dash for the cosmetic surgeon. There wasn‟t a bikini streak anywhere on her bronze skin, at

least anywhere that I could see. Her long thin fingers were stroking the rounded lines of the purple

elephant‟s trunk. Her other hand held a margarita in its palm, the stem of the glass tucked neatly

between her fingers.

I watched her glide through the frenetic dancers without touching a soul. Did she practice her moves

in front of a mirror, or did they come naturally? Not that it mattered.

Could this be DeeDee Lukatis? I wondered. The way things were going, my ego needed a boost.

It took her a long time to get to our table.

She slid into the chair opposite me and became part of it, stroking the stem of her margarita glass with

a forefinger as though she could feel every molecule of it.

“Hi,” I said, dragging out my smoothest line.

That‟s when I found out she wasn‟t interested in me.

She had eyes for the Stick, who was leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette

dangling from a lopsided smile.

“Well, what d‟ya know,” he said. „The place has a touch of class after all.”

Her voice, which started somewhere near her navel, was part velvet and part vodka. “Wow, it can

talk, too,” she purred.

Class dismissed. Suddenly I was an eavesdropper.

The Stick had an audacious approach.

“The joint‟s full of younger, better—looking, richer guys. Why me?” he asked, certainly one of the

great horse‟s mouth lines of all time.

Her smile never strayed.

“I love your tie,” she said. “I like old, rotten ties with the lining falling out. The suit, too. I didn‟t think

they made seersucker suits like that anymore.”

“They don‟t. It‟s older than the tie,” the Stick said.

“Are you going to be difficult?” she asked. “God, I love a challenge.”

I leaned over to the Stick and said, “This is some kind of routine, isn‟t it? I mean, you two have been

practicing, right?” My wounded ego was looking for an out.

“Never saw her before,” he mumbled, without taking his eyes off her. “Who are you?” he asked her.

“Lark,” she said.

“That your name or your attitude?”

That earned him a big laugh. Her gray-green eyes seemed to blink in slow motion. Her look would

have melted the icecap.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Let‟s go.”

Just like that. Disgusting.

He jabbed a thumb at me.

“He‟s got the car.”

She looked at me. Flap, flap with the slow-motion eyelids, then back at him.

“How about a cab?” she suggested.

“Do we call it or can we grab one outside?” he asked.

“No, I meant him with the cab.” And she pointed at me.

“Nifty,” I said. “Played like a champion.”

“1 knew you‟d understand,” she said, and slowly opened her hand toward me.

I dropped the car keys in her palm.

I glared at the Stick.

“Be in by one,” I said.

His smile got a little broader. “Nothing personal,” he said.

“Naw.”

“Next time I‟ll loan you the suit.”

She was on her feet already. The Stick followed. He walked to the door; she augured her way out.

I snagged one of the safari maidens and ordered a Bombay gin and soda with lime, no ice, and looked

for someone who might be DeeDee Lukatis. The place had grown more and more obscure. It wasn‟t

smoke, it was fog. A cold wind had sneaked across the marsh and invaded the warm river air. All of a

sudden Casablanca seemed wrapped in gauze.

I was beginning to think it was all a bad idea when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked

up at a very pretty young woman. She had a model‟s figure, tall and slender, topped by long, straight

ebony hair. Her angular features were as perfect as fine porcelain and required very little makeup.

Gray, faraway eyes.

“Hi, Jake,” she said. “Remember me? DeeDee Lukatis?”

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