Hooligans (45 page)

“Aren‟t we all,” Stick said, with surprising bitterness. There was another pause before he added, “I

think I missed something. The part about the price you have to pay. Or did you leave that out?”

“I don‟t know the price. That‟s the big question.”

“I don‟t know what could have been,” Stick said. “Want to run that by me?”

Now there was a rueful occupation—thinking about what could have been. But if I couldn‟t trust

Stick, who the hell could I trust? Suddenly I heard myself laying it all out for him, starting from the

day Teddy and I became football roommates at Georgia and ending on the day I got the kiss-off from

Chief. I didn‟t leave out anything I threw it all in—heart, soul, anger, hurt, all the feelings that my

returning to Dunetown had dredged up from the past.

“Jesus, man, these people really fucked you over!” was his response.

“I‟ve never quite admitted that to myself,” I said. “I look at Raines, I think, that could have been me. I

look at Donleavy, I think, if Teddy were still alive, that could be me. Every time I turn around the past

kicks me in the ass.”

“You‟re one of the ones that can‟t stay disconnected,” he said seriously. “It‟s not your nature. But

you‟ve been at it so long you can‟t break training, you‟re afraid to take a chance. Like in Nam, when

you‟re afraid to get too close to the guy next to you because you know he may not be around an hour

later. It‟s an easy way to avoid the guilt that comes later, being disconnected is.”

“Is that all it is, Stick? Guilt?”

“Like I told you the other day, it‟s guilt that gets you in the end. Shit, you‟re overloading your circuits

with it. You got guilt over the girl, you got guilt because you want to pin something on her husband,

guilt because you‟re losing your sense of objectivity, guilt because of her brother. What is it about

Teddy? You keep circling that issue. You talk about him all the time, but you never pin it down.”

I finally told him the story. It was easy to talk to him; he‟d been there, he knew about the madness, he

understood the way of things.

There were days when time dulled the sharp image of that night, but they were rare. A lot of images

were still with me, but that one was the most vivid of all. It was a three-dimensional nightmare, as

persistent as my memories of Doe had been. The truth of it was that Teddy Findley didn‟t die in

combat or anywhere near it. He might have. There you have it again, what might have been. Teddy

and I didn‟t have a very rough time in Nam until a few weeks before we were scheduled to come back

to the World. Until „Tet, when the whole country blew up under us. Hundreds of guerrilla raids at

once. Pure madness They pulled us out into Indian country and for the next six weeks we found out

what Nam was all about, We got out of it as whole as you can get out of it and finally got back to

Saigon. Teddy was a little screwy. He scored a couple of dozen Thai sticks and stayed stoned for days

on end. He started talking about the black hats and the white hats.

“I got this war all figured out, Junior,” he said one night. “What it is, see, we‟ve always been the

white hats before. We‟re supposed to be the good guys. But over here, nobody‟s figured out what we

are yet. Are we the white hats or the black hats?” He said it the way the good witch in The Wizard of

Oz said, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”

There was this compound in Saigon run by the military. They called it Dodge City because the man in

charge was a major named Dillon. It looked like Dodge City, a hell-raisers‟ paradise, a place to blow

off steam; a couple of blocks of whorehouses and bars controlled by the military for our protection.

But the MP‟s couldn‟t be everywhere. Sometimes things went a little sour. One night we smoked

enough dope to get paralysed and we headed down to Dodge and we ended up in a whorehouse. It

was nothing but a hooch divided up by screens. You could hear GI‟s humping all over the place.

“Let‟s get about five or six of „em,” Teddy said. “Have a little gang bang.” It wasn‟t for me. I wasn‟t

that stoned and I still had a little Catholic left in me. So he went behind one screen and went into the

next stall. He started kidding me; it was like being in the same room.

“How‟s the foreplay going, Junior?”

“Will you shut up!”

“Having a problem?”

“Yeah, you!”

He started to laugh and then the laugh turned into a scream and the scream turned into a muffled cry

that sounded as though he were underwater. I jumped up and smashed through the screen.

The girl was gone already. It was a fairly common trick. She had a single-edge razor blade held

between her teeth when she kissed him, cut off his tongue with the razor and, while he was gagging in

his own blood, slit his throat for closers. He died in my arms before I could even yell for help. I don‟t

remember what the girl looked like; all I remember is that it could have just as easily been me instead

of Teddy.

“I knew what it would do to Doe and Chief Findley, finding out he died like that,” I told Stick,

finishing the story. “I forged a set of records saying he was killed in action and I forged a

recommendation for a Silver Star and the Purple Heart for him. The captain didn‟t give a shit. He

acted like he didn‟t even notice

it.

“Then I wrote the letter telling them how Teddy had died in action, that it was quick, no pain. I don‟t

know which is worse anymore, Teddy‟s death or the lie. Reducing it all down to a fucking piece of

paper like that.”

Stick sat there for a long time after I finished, smoking and staring at his feet. It was not a shocker;

that kind of thing was common. Just another day in paradise.

Finally he started shaking his head. “Man, you have really done a number on yourself, haven‟t you?

What‟s the big issue here? You told a lie and made your best friend a hero. Big fuckin‟ deal.”

“It‟s what it represents. Somehow Nam should be more important than that.”

“Nam was a fuck-up. It‟s like a scar on your belly. You cover it up and forget it; you don‟t paint it

red, white, and blue. You‟re one of those steel-covered marshmallows, Kilmer old buddy. You‟re a

sitting duck for the vultures. You know what I say? Forget the lie part. Stick to the story; nobody

wants to bear the truth anyway. Shit, pal, I say fuck the obstacles, go for it. Could be your last

chance.”

He lit a cigarette and went back to his newspaper, and then threw in, “Just put her old man in the joint,

that‟ll solve all your problems.”

“That‟s a shit thing to say.”

He dropped the paper on the floor and looked up at me. I‟m just being honest. The perfect solution for

you is to have Raines turn out to be the brains behind the killing and Nance the actual shooter. That

way you nail „em both in one whack. You get even and you get the girl. It‟s the perfect ending.”

“Incredible,” I said. “Those are great opinions.”

“You just figured out the price,” he told me.

“Yeah, business as usual,” I said, and there was a lot of acid in my tone.

“If it‟s business like last night,” Stick said. “Count me in every time.” It was obvious that he had said

all he had to say about my personal problems.

“Thanks for sparing me your tales of conquest,” I said.

“Speaking of business, I got a little for you. Let‟s get to the number one problem, okay? 1 don‟t like

to brag, anyway. I was up and at the Warehouse by eight. We got good news, we got bad news, and

we got some in-between news.”

“Gimme the good news first,” I said.

“The good news is that Kite‟s finally got Nance in view. The bad news is that he didn‟t make contact

until about three a.m. Otherwise he might have been a witness to your little party over there on the

waterfront.”

“It‟d be nice to know what he‟s been doing for the past two days,” I said.

“Kite‟s working on it. Also Charlie One Ear has some information on who owns what in town and

Cowboy Lewis is hot on Cohen‟s trail this morning. So what got your day off to such a lousy start,

besides the fact that your head‟s not screwed on right?”

“First of all, I hurt a very nice lady,” I said.

“What‟d you do, turn her down?”

“Worse, I asked her to break the law.”

“Oh, is that all? Murder, bank robbery, what?”

“The bank‟s computer code and Cohen‟s bank account numbers,” I said.

He didn‟t bat an eye. I might have said I asked her to get me a glass of water, for all he seemed to

care.

“Did she do it?”

I shook my head. “The lady has more integrity than I have,” I said.

“Well, Lark hasn‟t got any such notions,” Stick said, with that strange smile of his. “Here‟s the rest of

the good news.” He reached into his shirt pocket, took out a slip of paper, and handed it to me. There

were two numbers written on it. Lark had drawn a smiling face behind the second one.

“Are these the bank‟s computer access numbers?” I asked excitedly.

“And the numbers for the Tagliani account.”

“This is incredible! Are you sure they‟re correct?”

“I trust the lady all the way.”

“The lady‟s got one hell of a memory,” I said.

“There‟s a little more to it than that. Guess who the computer operator at the bank is.”

“You‟re kidding!”

“She has a master‟s degree in mathematics and computer technology from Emory University. I may

be in love. A dame looks like that with all those smarts, shit, I might even think about early

retirement.”

I was impressed with the information, but even more impressed that he had asked for it.

“How the hell did you know I was after these numbers?” I asked him.

“Lark told me you went to Casablanca to meet DeeDee, so I figured you must be after something,” he

said. “It wasn‟t hard to figure out what it was. Hell, I can put one and one together and get two almost

every time.”

“Now that I‟ve got them, I‟m not sure what to do with them,” I said.

“Have you forgotten I spent six months slaving over a computer when I joined the Freeze? I know

what to do with them.”

“Can you access the code and get into the bank‟s main terminal?”

“I can hack into anything,” he said with a grin. “I‟m the magic man, remember?”

My palms got sweaty thinking about what we could come up with. For the first time since arriving in

Dunetown, I felt we were getting close to something important. The information wouldn‟t stand up in

court, but it could lead us straight to the bad seeds.

“You want to tell me what you want, specifically?”

“I‟m not sure. But I am sure Cohen‟s the bagman and he deals only with Seaborn at the bank. DeeDee

did tell me that. They‟re using the bank for a washing machine, I know it. That bank account should

tell us something.”

“I agree with you about Cohen. Lark says he usually makes cash deposits once a day. Big ones.”

“Does she know how much?”

“No, but she checked the daily deposit tape once out of curiosity and it was in six figures.”

“What! Jesus, Stick, we‟re on to something. Just maybe we can get them this time.”

I whistled through my teeth and we laughed and slapped each other on the back and acted like a

couple of high school kids. If Lark was right, Cohen could be moving as much as halfa million dollars

a week or more through the Tagliani accounts.

“It had to be shielded in some way,” Stick said. “That kind of money activity attracts the Lepers like a

petunia attracts a hummingbird.”

I said, “It also means Seaborn has to be involved.”

“So you want to go fishing?”

“Yeah. What I‟m really looking for is a Hollywood box, some kind of payoff account.”

“That the tax boys won‟t tumble on to?” the Stick said.

“Right.”

“That‟s been tried before by experts.”

“Well,” I said, “there‟s always somebody who thinks he has a better mousetrap.”

284

54

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