“Shit!” the Stick said. “Now what?”
“The Coast Guard got the name of the ship off some of the wreckage. It sailed out of Maracaibo nine
days ago with a crew of four. Maracaibo is right around the corner from Colombia, and Colombia
spells cocaine to me. The Department of Natural Resource boys have been picking up bits and pieces
of it since Monday morning. Then this morning another stiff floated up.
This new one is a black guy. Both of them are full of bullets, Jake. Twenty-twos.”
“What?s that got to do with—”
“I?m not finished yet,” he said. “lie labels in this black dude?s shirt and pants say he?s from
Doomstown. Designer jeans, a two-hundred-dollar shirt, five-hundred-dollar boots. And one other
thing—he has a shiv mark, from here to here.” He drew a line with a thumb from ear to mouth.
“I?ll be damned,” Stick said. “Stitch Harper?”
“Fits him like homemade pyjamas. He also had an empty holster on his belt,” said the Dutchman. „So
what sailor do you know dresses like that and packs heat?”
“Who?s Stitch Harper?” I asked.
“One of Longnose Graves? top honchos.”
“If it?s Stitch Harper,” Dutch said, “we just might have us a whole new scenario working. And I?ll
know in an hour or so. I got photos of both victims comin? in on the telex.”
“Okay, let?s hear the theory,” I said.
The way Dutch had it figured, Longnose Graves was bringing several kilos of coke by boat from
Colombia to Doomstown. Graves bragged the information to Della Norman and she bragged it to her
new boyfriend, Tony Logeto, who, in turn, passed it on to the rest of the Taglianis. Somewhere east of
Jacksonville Beach, someone from the Tagliani clan hijacked the shipment, killed the crew, and
burned the boat. If that?s the way it happened, it was a clever scheme. It did Graves out of several
million dollars? worth of snow and at the same time made him a loser to his people.
“I think,” Dutch concluded, “that Craves is on the warpath. Add to all this his old lady gettin? snuffed
in bed with Logeto, you got to have one angry mobster on your hands.”
The idea had a lot of merit and I told him so. If Dutch?s theory was true, the most likely person to
have pulled off the hijacking was Turk Nance, which could account for Nance?s whereabouts for the
past few days.
“The way I see it,” Dutch said, “it?s either Costello or Craves who?s behind all the killing. And right
now Graves is the only one with a motive.”
“We don?t have anything to move on,” Stick said.
It was true—it was all ifs and maybes. I decided to play devil?s advocate.
