Hooligans

Was that it? Was it all part of the Findley test? Were Doe and Teddy part of that three-year probation

during which they sized me up and checked me out for longevity_ consistency, durability, loyalty, all

the important things? Perhaps I had never passed the test at all. Perhaps they had seen in me some fatal

flaw that I myself did not perceive, something more ominous than bad ankles, something that did not

prevent Teddy from accepting me as his best friend, but precluded my becoming one of the Findley

inheritors. Perhaps my blood had never been blue enough.

Wake up, Kilmer.

Lying there, I began to feel like a piece of flux caught between two magnets. One drew me toward

Doe and Chief and the sweet life that might still be there. The other, toward the Taglianis of the

world, which was, ironically, a much safer place to be. In a funny way, I trusted the Taglianis

precisely because I knew I couldn?t trust them and there was safety in that knowledge.

A lot of raw ends were showing. It scared me. It clouded my judgment. Dunetown was dangerous for

me. It was opening me up. My Achilles? heel was showing.

The magnets were drawing me out of my safe places.

I lay there, immobilized, staring at the lazy ceiling fan until the room was totally dark. At five after

nine the phone rang. It rang for a long time. At twenty after, it rang again. I didn?t move. I lay there

like a statue. I couldn?t talk to her, not right then. At nine thirty it rang twelve times; I counted them.

After that, every five minutes. At five of ten I heard a scratching at the door. It sounded like a

cockroach crawling across a kitchen cabinet. I raised upon one elbow and looked over. There was a

slip of paper under the door.

I picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes before I turned on the light, it was a

phone message from Dutch Morehead.

Tony Logeto had made the list.

28

THE SINGING ROPE

It didn?t take me five minutes to get dressed. As I hurried through the lobby toward the garage, the

Black Maria roared into the motor lobby and screeched to a stop. The front door swung open and I

crawled in. Stick dropped it into first arid left an inch of rubber in the drive.

“I hope to hell the place isn?t far,” I moaned.

“Ten minutes,” he said, pulling the red light on the top of the car and flicking on the siren. it was the

longest ten minutes of my life. We boomed south along the river, where late-returning shrimp boats

were reduced to streaks of light.