“Somebody just blew up Johnny Draganata in the family swimming pool while Lange was sittin‟
shiva half a block from his house,” the Dutchman bellowed.
The war room sounded suddenly like a hen house.
“Now listen t‟me,” Dutch boomed. “I want Tagliani‟s bunch covered like a strawberry sundae, and
now. I‟m goin‟ up to Draganata‟s. Chino, you come with me. The rest of you know your marks. Let‟s
roll before the whole town gets snuffed.”
He rushed back to us.
“You two wanna join us?”
“We wouldn‟t miss it for the world,” I said.
“Let‟s roll,” the Dutchman roared, and moved faster than any big man I ever saw.
11
DEATH HOUSE ON FLORAL STREET
It was like Saturday afternoon at the county fair and the Stick was Joey Chitwood. He slapped the
blue light on the top of his black Firebird and took off, driving with one hand while he lit cigarettes,
tuned the police radio, and hit the siren with the other, cigarette bobbing in the corner of his mouth as
he talked. Pedestrians and traffic ran for cover before the screaming Pontiac. I hunkered down in my
seat and stiff-armed the console.
“You nervous?” he asked.
“Not a bit,” I lied.
He hit Azalea Boulevard sideways and straightened out doing seventy. I could feel the seat moving
out from under me.
I liked the Stick‟s cavalier attitude, but his driving was downright hazardous. I knew he had to be a
good cop or he wouldn‟t be in the Freeze. The Federal Racket Squad, which everybody called the
Freeze, was three years old, understaffed, underpublicized, underlobbied, and under the gun. The FBI
wanted to make it part of their dodge, but so far we had maintained our integrity because our job was
mainly gathering information, not strict law enforcement. At least, that‟s what it was supposed to be.
Sometimes it didn‟t work out just that way. Cisco Mazzola, who had formed the outfit, was an exstreet cop and he hired only street cops. As far as I could tell, the Stick fit in perfectly.
He seemed to know the town. His course took us down a few alleys and past an impressive row of old
homes, restored to Revolutionary grandeur, their lights blurring into a single streak as we vaulted
down the street.
“How long you been here?”
“Coupla months,” he said around the cigarette dangling from his lips.
“So you were here for the Graves-McGee showdown?”
“Just after it happened.”
“I knew a Philly shooter who operated out of Pittsburgh named McGee,” I said, still making small talk
“But he called himself Ipswich.”
“I wouldn‟t know about that,” Stick said. “Actually, it was all over when I got here. All I know is
what I heard on the gas pipe.”
More turns. More screaming tires. More fleeing pedestrians.
“What‟s this Graves like?” I asked.
“Like Dutch said, for years he had the town sewed up. I get the idea the local law left him alone as
long as he didn‟t get too far out of line,”
“Wasting McGee wasn‟t getting out of line?” I asked.
“Y‟know, I don‟t think anybody blamed him for the McGee thing. In fact, I get the feeling the locals
were glad he did McGee
in.
“Could he be behind this Tagliani chill?”
“I suppose he could. Mufalatta‟s keeping an eye on him. If anybody will know, the Kid will.”
We drove away from the downtown section and across the bridge to Skidaway Island, which lay
between the city and the beach. The rain had stopped and the moon seemed to be racing in and out of
the clouds. As we crossed the bridge, the old-town charm of Dunetown vanished, swallowed up by
redwood apartment complexes and condos that looked like gray boxes in the fleeting moonlight.
There was something sterile and antiseptic about Skidaway. Twenty years ago it was a wild,
undeveloped island, a refuge for wildlife and birds. Now it appeared almost overpopulated.
Stick took Ocean Boulevard like it was Indianapolis. The souped-up engine growled angrily beneath
us and the needle of the speedometer inched past one-twenty. The landscape became a blur. Five
minutes of that and he downshifted and swerved off the four-lane and headed off through a
subdivision, its houses set back from the road behind carefully planted trees and shrubs. In the dark it
could have been any planned community.
“Cisco says you lived here once,” Stick said past the cigarette clenched between his teeth.
“I just spent a summer here,” I answered, trying to adjust my eyes to the fleeing landscape.
“When was that?”
“I hate to tell you. Kennedy was still the President.”
“That long ago, huh?” he said, somewhat surprised.
“I was still a college boy in those days,” I said. I was beginning to feel like an antique.
He made a hairpin turn with one hand.
“Surprised you, huh, how much it changed?”
I laughed, only it didn‟t come out like a laugh; it sounded like I was gagging.
“Oh, yeah, you could say that. You could say I was surprised, and I haven‟t even seen the place in the
daylight.”
“I couldn‟t tell you about all that. No frame of reference, y‟know.”
“This used to be a wildlife refuge,” I said. “That give you an idea?”
He flipped the cigarette out the window and whistled through his teeth.
“I doubt if you‟ll see a sparrow out here now. Rents are too high.”
He swerved into Highland Drive without even making a pass at the brakes and lit another cigarette at
the same time. I started thinking about taking a cab when I saw half a dozen blue and whites blocking
the street ahead, their red and blue lights flashing. We pulled up behind one of them, leaving a mile or
so of hot rubber in the process. Ground never felt better underfoot.
I could smell salt air when we got out of the car.
“Lock up,” the Stick said. “Some fuckhead stole my hat once.”
“So I heard,” I said as we headed toward the house, which sat a hundred yards or so back from the
road against high dunes. An electric fence was the closest thing to a welcome mat.
I began to get the feeling that this whole bunch of hooligans, Stick included, were like Cowboy
Lewis. They definitely believed the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. I also
began to wonder where due process fit into all this, if it fit in at all.
We reached the fence, showed some bronze to the man on the gate, and started up the long drive on
foot. Dutch was right behind us. I could see his enormous hulk silhouetted against the headlights of
the patrol cars. The body lay, uncovered, at the pool‟s edge. A breeze blew in off the bay, rattling the
sea oats along the dunes above.
The old man was unrecognizable. Whatever had blown up, had blown up right in his face. One of his
arms had been blown off and either be had been knocked into the pool or was in it when the bomb
went off, The water was the colour of cherry soda.
There were blood and bits of flesh splattered on the wall of the brick house.
All the windows in the back were blown out.
A woman was hysterical somewhere inside.
“What kind of maniac we got here?” Dutch said, as quietly as I‟d heard him say anything since I
arrived in Dunetown.
“Right under my fuckin‟ nose,” Kite Lange said. And quite a nose it was. It looked like it had been
reworked with a flat iron, and he talked through it like a man with a bad cold or a big coke habit. To
make it worse, he was neither. His nose simply had been broken so many times that his mother
probably cried every time she saw him. He had knuckles the size of Bermuda onions.