toward town in the rain, feeling beach-tired but recharged.
I thought about that place a lot in the days that followed, but I never went back. I didn‟t have to.
Driving back to Dunetown, I realized I had left the safe places behind forever.
42
FIGHT NIGHT AT THE WAREHOUSE
I drove back to the Warehouse, and into bedlam.
A dozen men, including a couple of brass buttons, were jammed in the doorway. There was a lot of
shoving, pushing, cursing, threatening. The Stick was standing outside, back from the crowd,
watching the melee with a smile.
“Be goddamned,” he said as I rolled up. “Dutch‟s put the arm on Costello and all his merry men!”
I jumped out of the car and we ran into the building.
A lot of racket from the back.
A cop stopped the Stick long enough to tell him they had Costello; his number one bodyguard and
shooter, Drack Moreno, who looked and talked like a moron but had a genius IQ; two of his top
button men, Silo Murphy, a.k.a. the Weasel, because he looked like one, and Arthur Pravano, whose
moniker was Sweetheart, for reasons I‟ll never understand; and two other musclemen. In addition,
they also had Chevos and Bronicata on tap with their various gunsels. Nance was missing, as was
Stizano.
A small army of twelve, all of them but Costello raising almighty hell.
We headed for the war room, which is exactly what it had turned into from the sound of things.
The hooligans were well represented: Pancho Callahan, Salvatore, Chino Zapata, Charlie One Ear,
Cowboy Lewis, and Dutch Morehead. Everyone but Kite and Mufalatta, who seemed to have
vanished from the earth. With the Stick and me, it kind of rounded the teams off at eight to eight.
The yelling, cursing, and threats had continued down through the Warehouse and into the war room,
which was as chaotic as the floor of the stock exchange at the closing bell.
Dutch had separated the big shots and shoved them into one of the cubicles. The gunsels were all in
the war room. Dutch was standing in front of the room bellowing like a wounded whale.
“Everybody ease off, y‟hear me, or some heads are gonna get loosened!” he roared.
The room settled down to a low rumble.
With Costello‟s bunch and the hooligans, the room was full of the meanest-looking gang of cutthroats
I‟ve ever seen gathered in one place.
I was standing in the doorway, eyeballing Costello and Chevos. In all the years I had been bonded to
this gang, I had never seen either of them closer than fleetingly and from across the street or through
binoculars. Now they were both fifteen feet away. I made no attempt to conceal my contempt for
them.
Costello alone seemed calm. He was a tall man and better looking than I would have liked, his sharp
features and hard-set jaw deeply tanned, his longish black hair bronzed by a lot of sun, his lean body
decked out in a blue blazer, a pale blue shirt open at the collar, white slacks, and white loafers. He
was one of those people whose age is superfluous. There were a lot of reasons to dislike him. Only his
brown eyes were a clue to his anger. They glittered with suppressed rage. My rage was open, my
hatred obvious, but I kept my mouth shut for the time being.
Chevos stood stoically in a corner of the cubicle, alone, staring at the wall, and Bronicata was
jabbering like a monkey in heat.
The rest of the Tagliani mob was dressed casually for the beach, looking like graduates of a Sing Sing
cellblock disguised as the Harvard crew team.
The hooligans rounded out the scene. A novice would have had one hell of a time separating the good
guys from the bad.
“Kick that door shut there, Pancho,” Dutch said, and Callahan closed the door.
Everybody chose up sides and lined up against opposite walls of the room, hooligans near the door,
Costello‟s gunsels against the far wall.
Cowboy Lewis, wearing aged jeans, a faded Levi‟s jacket, a Derringer-type cowboy hat, and a
brilliant red sunburn, was carrying a large grocery sack.
“We dumped „em comin‟ offa Costello‟s rowboat,” Cowboy said, in a voice that sounded like he
swabbed his throat with number four sandpaper. I was to learn that Costello‟s “rowboat,” as Lewis
had genteelly put it, was a sixty—foot yacht that slept ten.
Cowboy carried the brown paper bag to the front of the room and dumped its contents on Dutch‟s
desk
Eight pistols of every kind and calibre, slip knives, brass knucks, two rolls of quarters, and other
assorted tools of the trade. “The heavyweights were all light,” he said.
Dutch‟s eyebrows rose with the corners of his lips.
“Neat. Did you all hear the Russians re in Charleston or some such?” he asked nobody in particular.
Nobody answered, but there was a lot of grumbling and grousing.
“Definitely concealed weapons,” said Lewis, who was nursing a split lip.
“Where‟d ya get the fat lip?” Dutch asked.
“The little asshole with the mouse clipped me when I wasn‟t looking,” he said, jerking a thumb
toward one of the goons, who was wearing a black eye the size of a pancake. “1 had to use reasonable
force to subdue him.”
The little asshole with the mouse got very tense.
“Okay, let‟s start makin‟ a list‟r two here,” said Dutch. “First off, we got concealed weapons—”
“They‟s all registered,” said one of Costello‟s rat pack, cutting Dutch off.
“Shut up,” Sweetheart Pravano said quietly. “L.C. says we don‟t say nuthin‟ to these monkeys,
period.”
Salvatore‟s eyes narrowed to slits and his fists balled and un-balled. Cowboy Lewis stared at a spot in
the corner of the ceiling and looked bored. Callahan just chuckled, and Chino Zapata took the gold
tooth out of the front of his bridgework, put it in the change pocket of his jeans, and shook out his
hands. Charlie One Ear mumbled something that could have been “shithouse mouse,” although I‟m
not sure.
The Stick and I ambled into a neutral corner on the opposite side of the room from Dutch and laid
back, waiting for something to happen.
Callahan started it.
“Tag these and put „em away,” Dutch told him. The dapper cop found paper and pencil and went up to
the desk to complete his chore. He picked up a palm-sized .25 with a pearl handle, a cute little
weapon, accurate for maybe three feet if the wind isn‟t blowing.
“Which one of you girls belongs to this?” Callahan said with a snicker, holding it between thumb and
forefinger, like a dead fish.
Sweetheart Pravano, well over six feet tall and built like a Russian weightlifter, stepped up and
slapped the carnation out of Callahan‟s lapel.
„Whyn‟t ya eat that daisy, ya fuckin‟ fag,” he said.
His comment was greeted with a right hook that hurt my jaw and sent Sweetheart soaring across the
room, head over heels over a table.
All hell broke loose.
Dutch was so appalled, he just watched it, open-mouthed.
Cowboy swept the artillery back into the paper bag and threw it in a desk drawer.
I held my corner of the room.
The Stick waded right in.
Makeshift weapons appeared from under jackets, armpits, pants legs.
Salvatore drew his sawed-off pool cue from his shoulder holster and whapped Weasel Murphy across
the back of the head as if he were swinging at a fastball. A tuft of Murphy‟s hair lifted straight up and
Murphy slid across a table, sweeping file folders, baskets, and other stenographic paraphernalia before
him to the floor.
Callahan took the meanest-looking of Costello‟s mutts, squared off in a fighting stance, and as the