trimmer, and wore a black patch over his left eye. He was dressed in white jeans and a tan
Windbreaker zipped halfway down, had very little hair on his chest. A black baseball cap with a gold
dolphin on the crown covered a tangled mop of dishwater-blond hair. There wasn?t a spare ounce of
fat on the guy.
“Pound for pound, the hardest man in the bunch. He doesn?t have much to say, but when he does, it?s
worth listening to,” Dutch said. “He thinks in a very logical way. A to b to c to d, like that. If there?s a
bust on the make, Lewis is the man you want in front. He?s kind of like our fullback, y „know. You
say to Cowboy, we need to lose that door, Cowboy, and the door?s gone, just like that, no questions
asked. I suppose if I told him to lose an elephant, he?d waste the elephant. He?s not afraid of anything
that I can think of.”
“Are any of them?” I asked.
Dutch chuckled. “Not really,” he said. “Lewis is kind of.
He paused a moment, looking for the proper words, and then said, “He?s just very single-minded.
Actually, he started out to be a hockey player but he never made the big time. His fuse was too short,
even for hockey. Y?see, if Cowboy was going for a goal, and the cage was way down at the other end
of the rink, he?d go straight for it. Anybody got in his way, he?d just flatten them.”
“Doesn?t sound like the perfect team man,” I said.
“Nobody?s perfect,” said Dutch.
The last man in the room was also lean and hard-eyed, in his mid-to late thirties, and over six feet tall
. He looked like he had little time for nonsense or small talk.
“The tall guy in the three-piece suit and the flower in his lapel, that?s Pancho Callahan,” Dutch
contini.ied. “He?s a former veterinarian, graduated from UCLA, and can tell you more about horse
racing than the staff of Calumet Farms. He spends most of his time at the track. He doesn?t say too
much unless you get him on horses; then he?ll talk your ear off.” Callahan seemed restless.
It was obvious he would rather have been elsewhere, which was probably true of all of them.
Altogether, about as strange a bunch of lawmen as I?ve ever seen gathered in one room. And there
were a few more to go: the Mufalatta Kid and Kite Lange, more of whom later, and, of course, Stick,
who was still an enigma to me. Eight in all, nine if you counted Dutch.
“Tell me a little about the Stick,” I said. “What kind of guy is he?”
Dutch stared off at a corner of the room for a moment, tugging at his moustache.
“Very likable,” he said finally. “You could call him amiable. Bizarre sense of humour. But not to be
messed with. I?ll tell you a little story about Stick. He has this old felt hat, I mean this hat looks like
an ape?s been playing with it. One day he leaves the hat in the car while he goes to get a haircut. He
