Hooligans (42 page)

“Turk Nance.”

“You sure got a one-track mind,” he said, drifting off to talk to the Kid and Zapata. I checked the

time. It was half past twelve. I sought out Stick.

“How about a nightcap?” I suggested.

“Sure. Want to meet at the hotel?”

“Ever been to a place called Casablanca?” I asked.

His eyes widened. “I‟ve been to almost every place in town at least once,” he said. “Once was enough

for that place.”

“We‟ll take my car,” I said, ignoring his comment.

“Done,” he said with a shrug. As we headed for my rented Ford, Stick tossed his car keys to Zapata.

“Take my heap back to the Warehouse, will you, Chino?” he asked. “And keep it in second under

forty, otherwise it‟ll stall out on you” And then to me, “Let‟s go to the zoo.”

I was about to find out what he meant.

50

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?”

51

“I was about to abandon hope,” I said. She sat down. She was wearing a kind of bunched-up-looking

khaki jumpsuit with a lot of pockets and a First Cay patch on the shoulder. The full-length zipper was

pulled about halfway down to her waist, which for Casablanca was conservative.

“I hope you don‟t mind the little subterfuge with Lark,” she said.

“She‟s a friend of yours?”

“She works in the bank with me.”

“I‟m developing a healthy respect for Mr. Seaborn,” I said.

“Mr. Seaborn‟s all right. A little stuffy maybe.”

“There‟s nothing wrong with his taste.”

“Thank you. I told Lark I wanted to talk to you alone. She agreed to try and lure away anybody who

might be with you.”

“Try?”

She laughed. “Actually, she thought your friend was cute.”

“If that was an act, she ought to get out of the banking business.”

“She‟s a free spirit. Lark does whatever makes her feel good. I wish I could. I come here twice a

week. Lark says it‟s a good way to get rid of my inhibitions. This isn‟t even my outfit; I borrowed it

from her.”

“You have a problem with your inhibitions?”

She rolled her eyes. “You don‟t know what a trauma it was to write that note to you.”

“Well, I‟m glad you did.”

She had to lean closer to hear me The music seemed to be getting louder by the minute.

“I. I feel a little dishonest about this,” she said.

. .

“About what?”

“Asking you to meet me. Actually 1 want to ask a favor.”

“I didn‟t think you were going to propose.”

She laughed and began to relax.

“I‟ve thought about you often over the years,” she said. “I was so jealous of you and Doe and Teddy

Findley that summer. The three of you were so happy all the time; you just seemed to have

everything. I was fourteen; all I had was acne and a terrible crush on you.”

“On me!”

“Crazy isn‟t it?” she said, lowering her eyes. “I guess in a way I still do. You never quite get over the

early ones.”

I thought about that for a moment or two and shook my head.”No, I guess you don‟t,” I said. Then I

began to get that feeling on the back of my neck again, only this time it wasn‟t pleasant. I shifted

slightly in my chair and looked around the room, what I could see of it, but this time there was no

tawny lioness skulking through the dancers. I saw no faces I recognized.

I gave my attention back to DeeDee.

“So what‟s the favour?” I asked, to make it easier for her.

“I‟ve heard you‟re a detective now,” she said.

“Well, not exactly. I‟m a government investigator.”

“The FBI?” She sounded startled.

“No, why? The possibility seems to worry you.”

“I don‟t know.” She hesitated before she went on. “It‟s about my brother Tony. I‟m very worried

about him but I can‟t go to the police.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” she said, “he may be involved in something wrong.”

“You mean against the law, that kind of wrong?”

She nodded.

The din in Casablanca had become hazardous to the health. The music kept getting louder, the dancers

more frenetic, and the special effects more surreal. The lights went out, strobes reflected off smoke

and fog, lasers crackled from one side of the room to the other.

1 got that weird feeling in the back of my neck again. This time when 1 turned I thought I saw

someone, but it was a momentary flash through light spasms and haze.

DeeDee shrugged her shoulders as though a cold wind had blown by her.

“I‟m sorry,” she said. “I guess all the noise and----”

“Why don‟t we get out of here,” I suggested. “I‟ll call a cab. We can go someplace and talk over

coffee.”

“I have my car,” she said. “That was part of the deal. Lark would get your buddy and the car, I‟d get

you and keep mine.”

“Did you rehearse this act long?”

She laughed. The idea of leaving seemed to brighten her. I paid the bill and we elbowed through the

crowd and left.

The street was empty except for the eerie gas lamps flickering along the river‟s edge through the mist.

The hazy figure of a man stepped briefly through one of the halos, half a block away.

Barely audible over the din from Casablanca, a car door opened and closed.

We started toward the circular iron stairway that led up to the promenade. The street echoed with the

throbbing of the music. The damp fog settled over us. Our footsteps sounded like horse‟s hoofs on the

cobblestones.

I heard the car start. Then the stick dropped into place. It started to move, slowly at first.

No headlights.

Through the mist I could see the mouth of an alley thirty feet away.

I said to DeeDee, “Listen to me carefully. When we get to that alley, I‟m going to shove you in. Start

running. I‟ll be right behind you.”

“What—” she started, but the tires behind us bit into the cobblestone street and squealed to life.