Free Hooligans by William Diehl Page B

up something. The
    rest of you, back out on the range; see if we can stop this daisy chain before it goes any further. If you
    run across the Mufalatta kid, Kite Lange, or the Stick, tell them to get in touch. Any questions?”
    There weren‟t any.
    As the gang started to disperse, Cowboy Lewis got up and walked straight toward me. He moved two
    desks out of his way to get to me.
    “It‟s Jake, right?” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    He stuck out his hand.
    “My name‟s Chester Lewis. They call me Cowboy.”
    “Right.”
    “You want this asshole Nance, right?”
    “Yeah, I want him, Cowboy.”
    “Then he‟s yours.”
    “Thanks,” I said, pumping his hand.
    “You got a right,” he said, whirled n his heel, and headed straight out the door. As he left, a new face
    appeared in the doorway.
    I knew who it was without asking.

    10

STICK
    The new guy was ignored by the rest of the bunch, who were too busy talking about the tapes to
    notice him He came straight toward me.
    He was what some women would call a primal beauty. Indian features, high cheekbones, long, narrow
    face, hard jaw, brown eyes, thick, shining black hair that turned over his forehead and ears. Six feet
    tall and lean, he was my height and ten pounds trimmer. His seersucker suit looked like he balled it up
    and put it under his pillow at night; his tie had a permanent knot in it and was hanging two inches
    below an open collar. The points of his shirt collar curled up toward the ceiling, and I doubt that his
    loafers had ever seen a shoeshine rag. Obviously, dressing wasn‟t a real big thing with him.
    He looked bagged out, and not just from a bad night. The circles under his eyes were permanent and
    his dimples were turning into crevices. He had the deep, growling voice that comes from too many
    drinks or too many cigarettes or too many late nights or all three. He was wearing a battered old
    brown felt hat, and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.
    Twenty-nine going on forty. One look, you knew he drove the women crazy.
    Not jaded yet?
    “I‟m Parver,” he said. “Everybody calls me Stick.”
    We moved away from the rest of the bunch, back toward the coffeepot.
    “You a pool shooter?” I asked, to get the conversation off the ground.
    “Not really, why?”
    “The moniker.”
    “It‟s short for Redstick. Everybody thinks I look like a damn Indian,” he said with disgust. “Truth is,
    I‟m Jewish and I‟m from Boston.”
    “I‟m Jake Kilmer,” I said. “That‟s all I ever was.”
    We shook hands.
    “This about the Tagliani chill?” he asked. He said it casually, as though murder in Dunetown were as
    common as sand fleas on the beach.
    I nodded.
    “It looks like two gunners,” I said. “They killed a couple of guard dogs, got by a couple of armed
    guards, and killed all three of them.”
    “Three?” Stick said. “When Cowboy raised me, he said Tagliani and Stinetto got it.”
    “After wasting Tagliani and Stinetto, they dropped off a bomb to finish the job. Tagliani‟s wife
    walked in. She died in the hospita1.”
    “Too bad,” he said. “Though I can‟t say as I‟m too upset over the two goons.” So much for sympathy.
    “How do you figure there were two shooters?”
    “The house was wired. Dutch has the whole scene on tape, what there was of it. It was all over in
    about thirty seconds.”
    “Not so great for you. In town for an hour and your mark gets snuffed out from under you.”
    “That‟s the breaks.”
    “Guns and bombs,” he mused. “Sounds like the Lincoln County war.”
    I said I hoped not.
    “The boys giving you a hard time?” he asked.
    “How‟d you guess it?”
    “I got some jazz when I first came on. Kind of like an initiation. But they think Dutch hired me, so
    they weren‟t as suspicious as they will be toward you. You‟re a Fed, man. That makes you a badass.
    Don‟t let it get you down; they‟ll come around.”
    “So as far as they‟re concerned, you‟re just another one of