Hooligans

The night calm was shattered by the explosion, by a crescendo of broken glass, by the screams.

8

THE CINCNNA11 TRIAD

Morehead had pinned seven photographs on a corkboard in the front of the big room, each one

identified with a felt-tip pen. Since we had already made Tagliani and Frank Turner as one and the

same, ditto Stinetto and Nat Sherman, Dutch crossed them out.

Until a couple of hours ago Tagliani had been capo di tutti capi, “boss of all bosses” of the Cincinnati

„Tagliani family, known as the Cincinnati Triad.

For fifty years the Taglianis had ruled the mob world in southwest Ohio, operating out of Cincinnati.

The founder of the clan, Giani, its first capo di tutti capi, died when he was eighty-three and never

saw the inside of a courtroom, much less did time for his crimes. The empire was passed to his son,

Joe “Skeet” Tagliani. While the old man had a certain Old World charm, Skeet Tagliani was nothing

less than a butcher. Under his regime the Taglianis had formed an alliance with two other gang

leaders. One was Tuna Chevos, who married Skeet Tagliani?s sister and was also one of the

Midwest?s most powerful dope czars. Across the Ohio River, in Covington, an old-time Mafioso

named Johnny Draganata controlled things. When a black Irish hood named Bannion tried to take

over, Skeet threw in with Draganata. The war lasted less than three months. It was a bloodbath and to

my knowledge there isn?t a Bannion hoodlum left to talk about it.

Thus the Cincinnati Triad was formed: Skeet Tagliani, Tuna Chevos, and Johnny Draganata.

I had put Skeet away for a ten spot, but it had taken three years of my life to do it and I had spent the

better part of the next two trying to prove that his brother, Franco, had taken over as capo in Skeet?s

place. It was a nasty job and costly. Several of our agents and witnesses had died trying to gather

evidence against the Taglianis.

Then Franco had vanished, poof, just like that, no trace— and another year had gone down the drain

while I chased every hokum lead, every sour tip, up and down every dead-end alley in the country.

The Cincinnati Triad had simply disappeared.

A clever move, Tagliani selling out and hauling stakes like that. Clever and frustrating. Now, almost a

year later, he had turned up iii Dunetown—stretched out in the morgue with a name tag on his toe that

said he was Frank Turner. The name change was easy to understand.

What he was doing on ice was not.

The other five faces in Dutch?s photos were familiar although their names, too, were new. „[hey were

the princes of Tagliani?s hoodlum empire, the capi who helped rule the kingdom: Rico Stizano, who