The figure on the dune fitted what looked like a pineapple onto the end of the weapon and adjusted a
knob on the rear of the barrel. There was the faint sound of metal clinking against metal.
The old man looked around, not sure where the sound had come from.
One of the men in the gazebo stood up, stepped out onto the terrace, and looked up.
“Something?” the other one said.
The first one shrugged and walked back into the gazebo.
There was a muffled explosion—
Pumf!
A sigh in the night air over their heads.
Then the terraced backyard of the house was suddenly bathed in a sickening orange-red glow.
The two men in the gazebo were blown to the ground. The grandfather arced like a diver doing a back
flip as he was blown off the terrace. He landed in the pool. The merry horses were blown to bits.
The night calm was shattered by the explosion, by a crescendo of broken glass, by the screams.
8
THE CINCNNA11 TRIAD
Morehead had pinned seven photographs on a corkboard in the front of the big room, each one
identified with a felt-tip pen. Since we had already made Tagliani and Frank Turner as one and the
same, ditto Stinetto and Nat Sherman, Dutch crossed them out.
Until a couple of hours ago Tagliani had been capo di tutti capi, “boss of all bosses” of the Cincinnati
„Tagliani family, known as the Cincinnati Triad.
For fifty years the Taglianis had ruled the mob world in southwest Ohio, operating out of Cincinnati.
The founder of the clan, Giani, its first capo di tutti capi, died when he was eighty-three and never
saw the inside of a courtroom, much less did time for his crimes. The empire was passed to his son,
Joe “Skeet” Tagliani. While the old man had a certain Old World charm, Skeet Tagliani was nothing
less than a butcher. Under his regime the Taglianis had formed an alliance with two other gang
leaders. One was Tuna Chevos, who married Skeet Tagliani‟s sister and was also one of the
Midwest‟s most powerful dope czars. Across the Ohio River, in Covington, an old-time Mafioso
named Johnny Draganata controlled things. When a black Irish hood named Bannion tried to take
over, Skeet threw in with Draganata. The war lasted less than three months. It was a bloodbath and to
my knowledge there isn‟t a Bannion hoodlum left to talk about it.
Thus the Cincinnati Triad was formed: Skeet Tagliani, Tuna Chevos, and Johnny Draganata.
I had put Skeet away for a ten spot, but it had taken three years of my life to do it and I had spent the
better part of the next two trying to prove that his brother, Franco, had taken over as capo in Skeet‟s
place. It was a nasty job and costly. Several of our agents and witnesses had died trying to gather
evidence against the Taglianis.
Then Franco had vanished, poof, just like that, no trace— and another year had gone down the drain
while I chased every hokum lead, every sour tip, up and down every dead-end alley in the country.
The Cincinnati Triad had simply disappeared.
A clever move, Tagliani selling out and hauling stakes like that. Clever and frustrating. Now, almost a
year later, he had turned up iii Dunetown—stretched out in the morgue with a name tag on his toe that
said he was Frank Turner. The name change was easy to understand.
What he was doing on ice was not.
The other five faces in Dutch‟s photos were familiar although their names, too, were new. „[hey were
the princes of Tagliani‟s hoodlum empire, the capi who helped rule the kingdom: Rico Stizano, who
was now calling himself Robert Simons; Tony Logeto, who had become Thomas Lanier; Anthony
Bronicata, now known as Alfred Burns; and Johnny Draganata, the old fox, whose nom de plume was
James Dempsey. The subject in the last picture was less familiar to me, although I knew who he was:
Johnny “Jigs” O‟Brian, a nickel-dime hoodlum who had been doing odd jobs for the mob in Phoenix
until he married Tagliani‟s youngest daughter, Dana. At the time the Triad had done its disappearing
act, O‟Brian was doing on—the—job training running prostitution.
Cute, hut not a11 that original. „The new names helped explain initials on suitcases, gold cuff links,
silk shirts, sterling silverware, that kind of thing. The Tagliani bunch was big on monograms.
[hen there were the two missing faces, „Tuna Chevos and his chief executioner and sycophant, Turk
Nance. In the whole mob, Chevos and his henchman, Nance, were the most deadly. The setup here
seemed too perfect for them to be very far away. Besides, Chevos was a dope runner and the coastline
of Georgia from South Carolina to Florida was the Marseilles of America. Dope flowed through there
as easily as ice water flowed through Chevos‟ veins.
“Recognize these people?” Dutch asked, pointing to the rogues‟ gallery.
I nodded. “All of „em. Cutthroats to the man.”
“Okay,” he said, let‟s get on with it”
I decided to play it humble and sat down on the corner of the desk.
“1 don‟t want to sound like I know it all,” I said, “but I‟ve been hound-dogging these bastards for
years. I know a lot about this mob because I‟ve been trying to break up their party ever since I got out
of short pants.”
Not a grin. A tough audience. Salvatore was cleaning his fingernails with a knife that made a machete
look like a safety pin. Charlie One Ear was doing a crossword puzzle.
“Just what is the Freeze?” Charlie One Ear asked without looking up from his puzzle.
They were going to make it tough.
“Well, I‟ll tell you what it‟s not. It‟s not the Feebies or the Leper Colony,” I said. “We have two jobs.
We work with locals on anything where there‟s a hint of an interstate violation. And we go after the
LCN. We‟re not in a league with the Leper Colony. We don‟t kiss ass in Washington by victimizing
some little taxpayer who can‟t protect himself, and we don‟t hold press conferences every five
minutes like the Feebies.”
“What‟s the LCN?” Zapata asked.
“La Cosa Nostra, you fuckin‟ moron,‟ Salvatore taunted.
Zapata looked back over his shoulder t Salvatore. “Big deal. So I never heard it called LCN before.
My old man didn‟t suck ass for some broken-down old Mafioso.”
“That‟s right,” Salvatore said. “Your old man swept floors in a Tijuana whorehouse.”
“You shoulda been brung up in a whorehouse,” Zapata shot back. “Maybe you wouldn‟t wear an
earring, like a fuckin‟ fag.”
“Hey, you‟re talking about my mother‟s wedding ring!” roared Salvatore.
“All right, all right,” Charlie One E2,r said, holding up his hand.
“You keep outta this,” said Salvatore. „At least I got an ear to put it in; some dip didn‟t eat it for
dinner”
I wondered why Dutch didn‟t step in and stop things before they got out of hand. Then Zapata started
snickering and Salvatore broke out in a laugh and Charlie One Ear smiled, and I got a sudden sense of
what was happening. You see it in combat, this kind of barbed-wire humour. It‟s a great equalizer. It
says: I trust you; we‟re buddies; you can say anything about me you want; nobody else has the
privilege. It bonds that unspoken sense of love and trust among men under pressure, a macho
camaraderie in which the insult becomes the ultimate flattery.
I was beginning to understand what Dutch meant. This was a tight little society and they were letting
inc know it in their own way.
They all got into it except Pancho Callahan, who never cracked a smile. He stared at me over a