game, he was protecting me. It was a feeling I had known in the past and it scared me because it made
me think about Teddy.
“I‟ve been chasing Taglianis longer than anything else I‟ve done in my whole life,” I said. “Longer
than college, longer than law school, longer than the army. I know everything there is to know about
the fucking Taglianis.”
“That‟s why you‟re here enjoying the land of sunshine and little honeys,” Stick replied. “Think about
it—you could be back in Cincinnati. Now that‟s something to get the blues over.”
“1 hope you‟re not gonna be one of those jerks who always look on the bright side,” I said caustically.
In a crazy kind of way, I felt a strange sense of kinship with the Taglianis, as if I were the black sheep
of the family. My life had been linked to theirs for nearly six years. I knew more about the Tagliani
clan than I did about the Findleys or any of the hooligans. I knew what their wives and their
girlfriends were like, what they liked to eat, how they dressed, what they watched on television, where
they went on vacation, what they fought about, how often they made love. I even knew when their
children were born.
“You want to hear something really nuts?” I said. “I almost sent one of the Tagliani kids a birthday
card once.”
“I knew a detective in D.C., used to send flowers to the funeral when he wasted somebody. He always
signed the cards „From a friend.”
“That‟s sick,” I said.
“You know what we oughta do, buddy? When this fiasco is all over we ought to take a month‟s leave,
go down to the Keys. I got a couple of buddies live down there, sit around all day smoking dope and
eating shrimp. That‟s the fuckin‟ life. Or maybe get the hell out of the country, hit the islands Aruba,
one of those. Sit around soaking up rays, getting laid, forget all this shit.”
“Wouldn‟t that be nice?” I said.
“We‟ll do it,” he said, slapping the steering wheel with the palm of his hand, and then he said
suddenly, “Hey, you married?”
“No, are you?”
“Hell no. What woman in her right mind would spend more than a weekend at the Holiday Fuckin‟
Inn.”
“That‟s where you‟re staying, the Holiday Inn?”
“Yeah. It‟s kind of like home, y‟know. They‟re all exactly alike, no matter where you are, If you get
one of the inside rooms overlooking the pool, the view doesn‟t even change.”
“I had this little basement apartment when I was in Cincy,” I said. “I took it by the month because I
didn‟t think I‟d be there that long. There weren‟t even any pictures on the wall. Finally I went out and
bought some used books and a couple of cheap prints to try and doll the place up but it didn‟t work. It
always seemed like I was visiting somebody else when I came home.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It‟s been like that since Nam. We‟re disconnected.”
That was the perfect word for it. Disconnected. For years I had worked with other partners but always
at arm‟s length, like two people bumping each other in a crowd. I didn‟t know whether they were
married, divorced; whether they had kids or hobbies. All I knew was whether they were good or bad
cops and that we all suffered from the same anger, frustration, boredom, and loneliness.
“Don‟t you ever wonder why in hell you picked this lousy job?” I asked him.
“That‟s your trouble right there, lake, you think too much. You get in trouble when you think too
much.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Thinking can get you killed. You didn‟t make it through Nam thinking about it. Nob.ody
did. The thinkers are still over there, doing their thinking on Boot Hill.”
There was a lot of truth in what he said. I was thinking too much. There was this thing about Cisco
telling me to forget murder unless it was relevant. That bothered me. Hell, I was a cop and murder is
murder, and part of the job, like it or not, is to keep people alive, like them or not, and keeping them
alive meant finding the killer, no matter what Cisco said. It was all part of the territory. And there was
the lie about Teddy which I hadn‟t thought about for years, because I had stuffed it down deep, along
with the rest of my memories. I had walked away from the past, or thought I had. I had even stopped
dreaming, though dreams are an occupational hazard for anyone who has seen combat. Now the
dreams had started again. You can‟t escape dreams. They sneak up on you in the quiet of the night,
shadow and smoke, reminding you of what has been. You don‟t dream about the war, you dream
about things that are far worse. You dream about what might have been.
“Hell, it‟s very complicated, Stick,” I said finally. “I don‟t think I‟ve got it sorted out enough to talk
about. Sometimes I feel like I‟m juggling with more balls than I can handle.”
“Then throw a couple away.”
“I don‟t know which ones to throw.”
“That‟s what life‟s all about,” he said. “A process of elimination.‟
“I thought I had it all worked out before I got here,” I said. “It was very simple. Very uncomplicated,”
“That‟s the trap,” he replied. “Didn‟t Nam teach you anything, Jake? Life is full of incoming mail.
You get comfortable, you get dead.”
“That‟s what it‟s all about, Alfie?”
“Sure. It‟s also the answer to your question. We‟re cops because we have to keep ducking the
incoming. That‟s what keeps us alive.”
Finally I said, “Yeah, that‟s what we‟ll do, go down to the islands, lay out, and forget it all.”
“That‟s all that‟s bugging you, a little cabin fever then?”
“Right.”
He flashed that crazy smile again.
“1 don‟t believe that for a fuckin‟ minute,” he said as he cranked up the Black Maria.
23
HEY, MR. BAGMAN
Cowboy Lewis was waiting in the Warehouse when we got back. The big, rawboned man was sitting
at a desk, laboriously hunting and pecking out a report on a form supplied by the department. He
didn‟t worry about the little lines or how many there were. He typed over them, under them, through
them, and past them. Getting it down, that was his objective. There were a lot of words x‟d out and in
one or two places he had forgotten to hit the spacer, but I had to give him A for effort. At least he was
doing it. His face lit up like the aurora borealis when he saw me.
“Hey, I was writing you a memo,” he said, ripping it out of the Selectomatic in mid-word. “I‟ll just
tell you.”
I looked at the partially completed report and told him that would be just fine. The thought occurred to
me that I could sign it myself and send it to Cisco. That would probably end his bitching about my
reports, or lack thereof, forever.
“Salvatore says you‟re interested in that little weed, uh...” He paused, stymied temporarily because he
had forgotten the name.
“Cohen?” I helped.
“Yeah. Little four-eyed wimp, got his head on a swivel?” he said, twisting his head furiously back and
forth to illustrate what he meant.
“That‟s him,” I replied. “Unless times have changed, he‟s the bagman for the outfit.”
“Yeah,” he said, which was his way of agreeing. “Carries one of those old-timey doctor‟s bags, black.
Hangs on to that sucker like he‟s got the family jewels in there.
“That‟s about what it is,” said Stick, “the family jewels.”
“I shadowed him three days—Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, last week—and got him cold.” Lewis