“What?d you expect, a twenty-one-gun salute?”
“Four stiffs in less than three hours,” Dutch mused again. “This keeps up, I?ll be out of work before
morning.”
“Yeah, and I?ll have a nervous breakdown,” Lundy said.
1 looked over the entire scene. The pool was directly adjacent to the rear of the house; then there was
a terrace with a carousel, a miniature railroad, a gazebo, and three picnic tables. Beyond that, the land
rose sharply to the dunes above, maybe a hundred yards behind and above the house.
“I?m gonna take the Stick and have a look-see up on the terrace,” I told Dutch. To the Stick I said,
“Get a light.”
A young patrolman came down the bill and said, “There?s a couple of Draganata?s goons up there,
acting like they own the place.”
“We?ll talk to them,” the Stick said. “Let me bum your torch a minute.”
“Three gets you five they ain?t sayin? a word about what happened. It?s that damn wop salad code of
theirs,” Dutch growled. Lundy went back to the scene.
“Want to come along?” I asked Dutch.
He looked up the bill and laughed.
“In a pig?s ass. Call collect when you get there.”
The Stick and I went up to the terrace and looked around. One of Draganata?s bodyguards approached
me. He was no more than six four or five and didn?t weigh a pound over two hundred and fifty, with a
face that would scare the picture of Dorian Gray.
A finger the size of a telephone pole tried to punch a hole in my chest.
“Private property,” he said.
I stared him as straight in the eye as I could, considering the eye was four inches above me.
“You jab me once more with that finger, I?ll break it off and make you eat it,” I said in my tough-guy
voice.
The goon looked at me and smiled.
“Sure thing.”
“I?m a federal officer and you?re obstructing the scene of a crime. That?s a misdemeanour. You jab
me again, asshole, that?s assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. Can you stand still for a felony
toss, sonny?”
He shuffled from one foot to the other for a moment or two, trying to work that out in whatever he
used for a brain. While he was sorting through my threat, the other gorilla came over.
“Don?t take no shit, Larry,” he said. He was just as big and just as ugly.
