Hooligans by William Diehl Page B

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
    pyramid of fingers through cold gray eyes, the way you stare at a waiter in a restaurant when he
    forgets your order. I got the message. “Screw the buddy-buddy humour, hotshot,” he was saying.
    “Show us what you got.”
    “You guys can rehearse your act later,” Dutch said, throwing a wet towel in the works. “If we listen,
    maybe we can learn something. Did all of you forget that part of our deal was to keep organized