than brains. Logeto saw himself as big ladies‟ man. A lot of ladies apparently did too.
“Anthony Bronicata is another old-timer,” I told them. “He‟s a onetime soldato with a lot of notches
gun his gun. In dope circles he‟s known as the Peg, short for I1 Pegiore, which means the Worst, and
that—in the trade—means don‟t mess with him. He‟s king pusher, pipeline to the street, and we‟ve
never been able to put a finger on him for anything—possession, conspiracy, distribution, nothing.
Bronicata‟s front is always a restaurant. The only good thing I can say about him is he mikes pretty
fair fettuccine. You want him? If we can nail his ass, Lie‟s yours.”
I had very little recollection of O‟Brian. In my mind I remembered him as a short little Irishman with
a blustery red face and had teeth. Dutch‟s photo showed that lie had a pug nose and a go-to-hell smile,
and his picture was the only pleasant one in the hunch, but I didn‟t let that fool me for a minute. As
the newest member of the clan, he still had to prove himself, and that made him more unpredictable
than any of the rest.
Dutch observed, “All these guns around, and it didn‟t help Tagliani for a minute.”
“Never does if they want you bad enough,” I said.
I pulled two new photographs out of my briefcase and held them up.
“These two look familiar to anybody?” I asked.
There were no takers.
I held up the clearer of the two photos, that of a round-faced man in his sixties with a pleasant smile,
his snake eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
“This is Tuna Chevos,” I said. “We‟ll turn him up.”
“How would you know that?” Charlie One Ear asked.
My stomach started to churn just thinking about Chevos and Nance, his personal assassin.
“I have this little buzzer inside me goes off whenever I‟m within fifty miles of the son of a bitch.”
“Something personal?” Charlie One Ear asked, raising his eyebrows.
I stared at him dead-eyed for a full minute before he looked away. Then I held up the other picture, a
somewhat fuzzy photograph of a lean, hard, ferret-faced man in his mid-thirties, his eyes also
obscured by sunglasses.
“You see Chevos, this one is close behind. He‟s the Greek‟s numero uno, your friendly little
neighbourhood assassin. His name is Turk Nance and he‟s the deadliest one of the lot, a psychopath
with a temper as thin as a shadow. They‟re both cobras. Chevos married into the family but they‟re
outsiders. They play by their own rules.”
“Maybe they did the old bastard in,” Zapata suggested.
“Maybe, but I don‟t think so.”
“Why not?” Dutch asked.
“I don‟t say I‟m ruling them out,” I replied. “I said I don‟t think they did it. It‟s still family. Salvatore,
you know what I mean?”
“He‟s right,” Salvatore said. “I mean, what you say, this Chevos was the old man‟s brother-in-law.
Unless there was real bad blood He let the sentence dangle.
“So where do these two bombos fit in?” Cowboy Lewis asked.
“Chevos brings the stuff in, Bronicata gets it to the wholesalers,” I said, “Nance is Chevos‟ personal
soldato If Chevos says go flush your head in the toilet, Nance‟s head is as good as in the bowl.
There‟s one other thing—don‟t let Chevos fool you because he‟s got Nance for backup. The story
goes that Chevos killed his own brother to make his bones for Skeet. I don‟t know if his brother
needed killing, hut if he was in the same league as Chevos, it was no big loss.
“Nance started in the streets, got a postgrad course in Vietnam, probably killed at least half of the
Bannion gang himself. He favours a nine-millimetre Luger with a twelve-inch barrel and hollow
points soaked in arsenic. A real sweetheart. He‟s also a muscle freak. Sooner or later, when he can
plant Chevos someplace safe for an hour or two, he‟ll show up at the best fitness centre in town.
Everybody in the family is scared shitless of both of them.
“Turk Nance. Remember that name. If you have trouble with him, shoot first.”
“You keep tellin‟ us what you don‟t want,” Callahan said in a dead monotone. “What the hell do you
want?”
I thought about that, about why I was here and what had happened to Dunetown and was going to
happen to it. I thought about a lot of things in the next few seconds.
“1 want the whole damn bunch off the street. I don‟t care if you do it or I do it or we do it together.
They‟re the cockroaches of our society.”
1 looked at Charlie One Ear. “You ask me is it personal? I got five years invested in this bunch. In the
whole rat pack only Costello and Cohen are clean. The rest of them have rap sheets that‟ll stretch
from here to Malibu and back.”
I started pacing. I had lost my temper for a moment, not because of Charlie One Ear or because Dutch
Morehead‟s hooligans didn‟t trust me. I was used to that:. It was because of Cincinnati. I stopped and
looked at each of them in turn.
“Yeah, fuckin‟-A it‟s personal,” I said. “One of my partners on the Tagliani job was Harry Nome,
Wholesome Harry we called him. Best inside man I ever met. He was undercover in Chevos‟ dope
operation. Nance tumbled him. They took him for a ride and Nance stuck his gun up Harry‟s nose,
ripped it off with the gunsight-.--I mean he ripped it off. Then he tossed Harry out of a car doing
about fifty. Harry came out of it a paraplegic.
“We had another man, on loan from the Drug Enforcement Agency. He tried to burrow into the
operation at the New Orleans end. We never saw him or heard from him again. Nothing. He just
disappeared. That‟s been three years now.
“1 had an informant, a hooker named Tammi. She was eighteen years old, recruited by Stizano, who
hooked her on horse when she was fifteen. They had her working interstate and she wanted out, so she
agreed to talk to the attorney general about how hookers are moved around on the national circuit,
who runs it, that sort of thing. Very strong stuff. Nance got her away from us. He cut off her nose and
both ears, stuffed them down her throat, and strangled her with them. Costello—Mr. Clean? He was
Nance‟s mouthpiece. The bastard wasn‟t even indicted.”
I paused for a minute, letting it all sink in.
“Naw,” I said, “it isn‟t personal. It‟s never personal, right? I mean, why should I be pissed? I was
lucky. When they took a shot at me, the bullet went in my side, here, just below the ribs, popped out
my back, and went on its merry way. The bullet hurt, but not like the arsenic it was soaked in.”
I sat down.
Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. Save up the rough stuff until the end.
Nobody said anything else for a minute or two.
I didn‟t know it at the time, but there was another name I should have added to the list that night:
Longnose Graves.
I would get to know him well in the next few days. I would get to know a lot of people well in the
next few days, very damn few of them for long.
9
SCREWING UP ROYALLY
Dutch stood in front of the room, a Teutonic frown etched into his heavy features.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Any time.”
“I don‟t want to upset anybody,” he said, turning to his troops, “but these.., ash lochers have been
under our surveillance two weeks. A whole family of them, and we didn‟t even know it!”
The group looked stricken, none more than Charlie One Ear.
“I can‟t believe it,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Not so much as a hint from any of my