was there, which certainly wasn?t to weep over my lost youth. A man named Franco Tagliani was the
reason I was there, a mobster who headed an outfit called the Cincinnati Triad. For five years I had
dogged Tagliani; for five years I had listened to his voice on wiretaps, watched him through
binoculars, snapped pictures of him through a telephoto lens. For five years I had tried to bring
Tagliani and his bunch down. I had tried everything due process would allow.
Zip.
In those five years I never got close enough to him to tip my hat good morning. It was embarrassing,
five years and nothing to show for it but a goose egg.
„Then he had disappeared. And with him, his whole bunch. Poof, just like that. „The magic trick of the
year. And now, nine months later, he had popped back up. And in Dunetown, the last place on earth I
cared to be. Thanks a bunch, Franco.
This time we were going to play hard cheese. This time the score was going to be a little different.
I finessed the hotel and drove straight to the city hospital. The lieutenant was waiting at the entrance,
an enormous man who towered over me.
“I?m Morehead,” he said as my hand disappeared into his. “Call me Dutch.”
“Jake Kilmer,” I said.
Five minutes later I came face-to-face with Franco Tagliani for the first time. He was in a drawer in
the basement freezer with a hole in his back, a nick in the shoulder, one more in his forehead, and an
insurance shot in the right eye.
The tag on his toe said his name was Frank Turner but I knew better.
In the drawer beside him and lust as dead was his number one boy, Nicky Stinetto. He had been shot
three times, two of them good-bye hits. His tag said he was Nat Sherman, another lie.
Both bodies were badly burned, both had multiple body hits. Two different guns. You don?t need to
be a coroner to tell the difference between the hole a .22 makes, and one made by a .357.
“Couple of pros?” I suggested.
“That or Wyatt Earp,” Morehead said. He went on, sounding like an official police report. “The
homicides occurred at approximately seven fifteen p.m. at the residence of the deceased, Turner. . . or
Tagliani, whichever way you want it. The shooting was followed by an explosion. We?re working on
the bomb angle now. Tagliani?s old lady got caught in the blowup. She?s up in ICU, hangin? on by her
pinky.”
I looked at my watch. It was a little after nine.
“You?ve put together a pretty good sheet on this thing, considering it happened less than two hours
ago,” I said.
