comes back, somebody lifted the hat. Don?t ask me why anybody would want the hat, but there you
are. About a week later Stick is cruising up Bay Street one afternoon and there this guy is, strolling up
the boulevard wearing his hat.
“Stick pulls up, starts following the guy on foot. The guy goes into a record store. At that point Stick
remembers he left his piece in his glove compartment. So what does he do? He hops in a hardware
store, buys a number five Stillson wrench, and when the little putz comes out of the record store, Stick
falls in behind him, shoves him in the first alley they come to, and whaps the bejesus out of the guy.
The guy never saw him and never knew what hit him, but he sure knew Stick got his hat back.”
He paused for another moment and then added: “Resourceful, that?s what Stick is, resourceful.”
I filed that information away, then said to Dutch, “Look, I don?t want to seem pushy this early in the
game, but I know this Tagliani mob. There?s something I?d like to run by your people. Maybe it?ll
help a little.”
He gave the request a second?s worth of thought and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But let me ease you
into the picture first.”
“Anything you say.”
I went over and grabbed a desk near the side of the room.
Dutch, as rumpled as an unmade bed, stood in front of the room.
“All right, listen up,” he told his gashouse gang. “You all know by now what happened tonight. We
lost the ace in the deck and we had a man sitting two hundred yards away.”
He did an eyeball roll call and then bellowed loud enough to wake the dead in Milwaukee:
“Sheiss, we?re missin? half the squad here. Didn?t they hear this is a command performance?”
“They?re still out on the range,” a „voice mumbled from the back of the room.
“Hmmm,” Dutch muttered. “Okay, you all know about Tagliani and Stinetto getting chilled. Those
are the two we knew as Turner and Sherman. Well, first, I got a little good news, if you want to call it
that. Then we?ll talk about who was where and how we screwed up tonight. Anyway, he had the
house bugged and as happens, one of the rooms on the wire was the den, which is where the hit was
made. So I?ve got the whole thing on tape, thanks to Lange, who did his telephone repairman act.”
Dutch punched a button on a small cassette player and a moment later the room?s hollow tone hissed
through the speaker.
For maybe two minutes that?s all there was, room tone.
Then a doorbell, far off, in another part of the house.
Seconds later someone entered the room.
Sounds of someone sitting down, a paper rustling, a lighter being struck, more paper noises. Then a
