“That?s right,” Salvatore said. “Your old man swept floors in a Tijuana whorehouse.”
“You shoulda been brung up in a whorehouse,” Zapata shot back. “Maybe you wouldn?t wear an
earring, like a fuckin? fag.”
“Hey, you?re talking about my mother?s wedding ring!” roared Salvatore.
“All right, all right,” Charlie One E2,r said, holding up his hand.
“You keep outta this,” said Salvatore. „At least I got an ear to put it in; some dip didn?t eat it for
dinner”
I wondered why Dutch didn?t step in and stop things before they got out of hand. Then Zapata started
snickering and Salvatore broke out in a laugh and Charlie One Ear smiled, and I got a sudden sense of
what was happening. You see it in combat, this kind of barbed-wire humour. It?s a great equalizer. It
says: I trust you; we?re buddies; you can say anything about me you want; nobody else has the
privilege. It bonds that unspoken sense of love and trust among men under pressure, a macho
camaraderie in which the insult becomes the ultimate flattery.
I was beginning to understand what Dutch meant. This was a tight little society and they were letting
inc know it in their own way.
They all got into it except Pancho Callahan, who never cracked a smile. He stared at me over a
pyramid of fingers through cold gray eyes, the way you stare at a waiter in a restaurant when he
forgets your order. I got the message. “Screw the buddy-buddy humour, hotshot,” he was saying.
“Show us what you got.”
“You guys can rehearse your act later,” Dutch said, throwing a wet towel in the works. “If we listen,
maybe we can learn something. Did all of you forget that part of our deal was to keep organized crime
out of this town? Look what we ended up with.”
They all eyeballed me.
“Not him,” Dutch growled, “the pfutzluker Taglianis.”
Dutch never swore in English, only German. 1 doubt that any of his gang knew what the hell he meant
most of the time. Nobody ever asked, either.
“Go on,” he said to me. “Keep trying.”
“Look, this gang up here on the wall is no penny-ante outfit and they didn?t come here for the waters.
They came here to buy this town. I been after these bastards since the day I joined the Freeze.”
“So what d?you want outta all this?” Cowboy Lewis asked.
“I?ll tell you what I want,” I said. “The RICO anti-crime laws refer to any monies earned from illegal
sources as ICC,” I said, “which stands for ill-gotten gains.”
That drew a laugh from Charlie One Ear. “Ah,” he said, “the wonders of the government never
