He was wearing ragged leans, a faded and nicked denim battle jacket, no shirt under it, and a pair of
cowboy boots that must have set him back five hundred bucks. „The headband he wore had to be for
show—he didn?t have enough dishwater-blond hair left to bother with. He also had a gold tooth, right
in the front of his bridgework. I was to find out later that he was a former Golden Gloves
middleweight champion, a West Coast surfer, and, for ten years, a bounty hunter for a San Francisco
bail bondsman before he went legit and joined the police.
Salvatore appeared through the bright lights, nosing around.
“I thought you were gonna check out Stizano,” Dutch said. “What the hell are you doin? here?”
“A look-see, okay? Where?s Stizano gonna go anyway? He?s an old fart and it?s past ten o?clock.”
“You don?t think the whole bunch ain?t hangin? on by their back teeth at this point? Somebody just
wasted their king.”
“They?re on the phones,” Salvatore said confidently. “They?re jawin? back and forth, tryin? to figure
out what the hell to do next. What they ain?t gonna do at this point is bunch up. Jesus, will you look at
this!”
I was beginning to get a handle on Dutch?s hooligans, on the common strain that bonded them into a
unit. What they lacked in finesse, they made up for with what could mercifully be called individuality.
There?s an old theory that the cops closest to the money are the ones most likely to get bent. Dutch
went looking for mavericks, men too proud to sell out and too tough to scare off. Whatever their other
merits, they seemed to have one thing in common—they were honest because it probably didn?t occur
to them to be anything else.
“First Tagliani?s wife gets whacked,” Lange said. “And the old man?s grandson almost got it here.”
“This here don?t read like a Mafia hit t?me,” Salvatore said. “Killing family members ain?t their
style.”
“Maybe it was a mistake,” the Stick volunteered.
“Yeah,” Dutch said, “like Pearl Harbor.”
“More like a warning,” I said.
“Warning?” Lange and Dutch asked at the same time. A lot of eyebrows made question marks.
“Yeah,” I said, “a warning that he or she or it—whoever he, she, or it is—means to waste the whole
clan.”
“Tell me some more good news,” said Dutch.
“So why warn them?” Lange said.
“It?s the way it?s done,” said Salvatore. “All that Sicilian bullshit.”
“Now we got four stiffs, and we?re still as confused as we ever were,” Dutch said. “Hey, Doc, you got
