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:
THREE DIE IN HOUSE ROBBERY
I read the story, which was vague, inaccurate, and short. The police weren‟t saying anything except
that they expected an arrest “shortly.”
“They‟re expecting an arrest, I see,” I commented.
“Keep reading,” Cisco said. “It gets worse.”
Tagliani was identified as Frank Turner, a Cincinnati businessman with interests in racehorses.
Stinetto—Nat Sherman in the story—was listed as “a business associate of Mr. Turner‟s.” Robbery
was the suspected motive. Not a mention of the Molotov cocktail the killer had dropped on his way
out. According to the story, the police believe that Turner and Sherman surprised the robbers and
were killed in so doing. There was a very fuzzy picture of Tagliani and his wife getting into a car,
obviously shot from somewhere in New Jersey and blown up until the grain was as big as the moon.
“Not a mention of Draganata.”
“That‟s on page eighteen,” Cisco said without looking up from his breakfast.
The Draganata story, identifying him as John Dempsey, a retired businessman, was even more
ludicrous. It was three paragraphs long and said he died in his swimming pool. „The police did not
suspect foul play.
“Well,” 1 said, “the police got the Draganata kill right. He certainly did die in his swimming pool.
“Point is, that‟s the kind of reporting you can expect here. Nobody‟s gonna dig for anything; they‟ll
print what they‟re told to print.”
“Dutch told me this would happen and I as much as laughed in his face.”
“Yeah, well, he‟s got the last laugh Just keep this in mind, pal, everybody supported the track. The
press supported it and the businessmen‟s association and the chamber of commerce and the local
politicians. Even the board of education endorsed it. Don‟t you get it? They don‟t want anything t
make their town look sour. So they‟ll play it down, make it look like exactly what they want it to look
like, and hope somebody will solve the case so they can cover it up. Let the killer cop a plea and keep
his mouth shut.”
“That‟s bullshit,” I said.
“It‟s the way the world turns,” he said. “That‟s why I don‟t want you spinning your wheels on the
homicide angle. Just find out how the Tagliani clan got their foot in the door and how far in it is now,
Okay? Forget local politics. Things here haven‟t changed in two hundred years, and a little massacre
isn‟t gonna make a bit of difference.”
“These islands have been raped,” I said bitterly.
“Maybe so,” he went on, “but look around you. These are the people who pull the strings in
Dunetown. When you talk about the rape of paradise, these are the people who are doing the raping.
They‟re the ones making the big bucks. Tagliani didn‟t ruin the place. He just got in on the kill.” Then