The brass buttons were in a semicircle about fifty yards in diameter around the front of the theatre.
Nobody got inside the circle, including them. Several men from homicide were stretching a yellow
crime scene banner around the perimeter of the movie house and car.
Nick Salvatore, smoking a cherry cigar, was sitting on the fender of his car, looking as sad as a basset
hound. Dutch was sitting sideways on the front seat of his car, his legs stretched out into the street.
“It?s funny,” he said, to nobody at all. Then he looked around and said, “Is this whole thing getting
funny to anybody else or is it just me?”
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“Somebody tried to top the Saint Valentine?s Day Massacre,” Dutch said.
“Right in front of my fuckin? eyes,” Salvatore said, shaking his head.
Dutch was shaking his head too. “The last four days, that?s a year?s work for the geniuses in
homicide. If we?re real lucky, they might turn up a clue by the next census,”
“Who is it this time?” I asked.
“The family man,” said Dutch. “That?s what I remember you saying about him. A big family man.”
“Stizano?”
“And a rather large party of friends. Salvatore saw it go down. He?s an eyeball witness, can you
believe that? Doesn?t anybody see the humour in all this?”
Salvatore ignored Dutch. He was anxious to tell his story again.
“You won?t believe this,” he said, speaking very slowly and deliberately, as though he were being
recorded, and pointing out little scenes of interest as he described the massacre. “Stizano, when he
comes outta the show, I?m maybe a hundred yards from him, all of sudden it?s like.. . like somebody
started shaking the ground. They fuckin? keeled over. Now here?s where it really gets weird, man. I
don?t hear nothin?, I don?t see nothin?. The loudest noise was the slugs, thumpin? into them. Then the
glass started going, the box office, marquee. Sweet Jesus, it got fuckin? surreal.”
There were five bodies lying helter-skelter in front of the theatre. Glass and debris everywhere.
Several slugs had whacked the car.
“Looks like a bomb went off in front of the place,” I said.
“It was fuckin? surreal, is what is it was,” Salvatore intoned.
“Who?re the rest of these people?” I asked, pointing at the massacre.
“Coupla shooters, the driver, and another guy I?ve seen with Stizano more often than not,” Salvatore
said.
“Pasty-faced little runt, looks like he died of malnutrition?” I asked.
“That?s the one.”
