Blood & Tacos #1 (2 page)

Paul "Laugher" Graziano, sometimes called the Laughing Man by friends and enemies, wore slacks and slippers, an athletic undershirt underneath the silk robe he'd tied around his trim waist. He was pushing sixty but maintained a regime of racquetball, swimming, and athletic sex with young women his daughter's age. His nickname was derived from a childhood incident when he was eleven.

He and a friend were running from a copper after robbing a blind newshawker at his sidewalk stand. They ran into the street and Graziano was struck by a street car, causing nerve damage in his face. He was caught and sent to reform school. The other kid, Benny "Bean Pole" Mathers, got away. Thereafter the left side of Graziano's face drooped, and he learned to talk out of the other side of his mouth. His melancholy appearance earned him his opposite sobriquet.

He prided himself that he pretty much weighed the same as he did when he played basketball at Theodore Roosevelt High. They were the Rough Riders. That is before he was kicked out of school for taking bets on the games. The same school some years later that Booker Essex, Marcia Mathers and her now deceased brother Robert had attended as well. Less than a year after they graduated, Essex was drafted and Bobby Mathers volunteered for Vietnam.

Laugher Graziano puffed on his thin cigar, looking out the window from the study to his backyard and the pool he better cover soon. A few ducks swam about in the water, quacking happily. What did it mean to be happy, he pondered as he turned back to Loomis Kassel, his Bill Blass-dressing, Yale-educated, half-German, half-Italian consigliore.

The time was just past dawn and both men were aware of what had gone down at the Fuzzy Feather a few hours before. Indeed Kassel had already dispatched a crew to clean up the mess. Due to having a homicide cop named Bert Chastain on the pad, he'd gotten a call from the detective and with his help, was keeping a lid on the matter — for the moment.

"I know," Graziano began unprompted. "I should have listened to you and not given in to my weakness. But who the fuck checks on the background of these broads? They all use a made up name strippin' and hookin' on the side." He shook his head. "Who could figure that chick would be undercover snatch?" He laughed sourly at his joke.

"We not only need to deal with her, but this colored gentleman."

"I need to color him red "

Kassel adjusted his Yves St. Laurent-designed frames. "I have a solution, only it's going to cost."

The Laughing Man spread his arms wide. "Doesn't it always, Loomis? Doesn't it always?"

Ever since physically recovering from the fire resulting from the bomb, the Silencer had gone underground. With Chastain, Graziano's gang, and the self-styled revolutionary Rahim Katanga and his bunch all crowding him about making deadly inventions for them, he had little choice. But before it all changed, he and Bobby Mathers had managed to make it back to the world from ‘Nam and opened their auto garage. It didn't hurt that both men had earned a few medals and were welcomed back as hometown heroes.

At their Danang Drag Motor Specialists shop, they repaired everyday cars and customized those who could afford something special. Life was good then.

He looked toward the sound of water coming from what had been the boss' office and the private bathroom and shower within.

In there Marcia Mathers was finishing up and turned off the hot and cold faucets. Leave it to Booker, she noted appreciatively, to be able to bootleg electricity and running water into a place that went belly up months ago.

She pushed the pebbled glass door open and stepped out of the shower, taking off the rack one of the large towels Essex had provided. Drying off next to the portable heater, she stood in the compact office area he'd converted to a kind of bedroom with a cot, lamp sans shade and numerous technical books on a makeshift shelf. There was a photo taped to the wall of Essex and her brother as soldiers in a jungle clearing in Vietnam. Both had vacant smiles on their faces — the smiles of men who had seen and done too much over there.

There were no pictures of Charlotte Sumlin about. There was though a charred piece of what had been the hand painted sign over their garage. The fragment leaned atop some of the books and Mathers picked it up, looking at it wistfully. She vividly remembered that terrible day. She'd just gotten off the phone with her brother and it would turn out to be the last time she'd speak to him.

Mathers learned later that afternoon about how a bomb had gone off in the garage. Her brother, the police surmised, must have been talking to Charlotte Sumlin who'd stopped by to see Essex. Essex had been away to pick up a part and was just driving up when the blast went off. From his eye witness report, Sumlin had been in the open bay of the garage, waving at Essex. Bobby Mathers was behind her, wiping his hands on a shop towel. Then there was the orange-red flare that filled his vision and the boom of the exploding sticks of dynamite. His windshield shattered into his face from the concussive force.

She put the fragment down and taking the towel from around her and unwrapping the other one from her wet hair, she got dressed. Marcia Mathers came into the kitchen area – mostly a jury-rigged stove that had been thrown out and a coffee maker — where he was preparing breakfast for both of them. Her hair was wet from her recent shower and she smoked an unfiltered Marlboro. She wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a sweater top.

"Hash and eggs," she said, chuckling. "Some things don't change."

"I've added paprika," he said, turning off the fire as he stirred the concoction in a skillet.

There were two plates on the one small table and she picked them up so he could spoon out food onto them. There was toast and fresh coffee, too. Essex had turned this corner of the once-thriving refrigerant coil factory into living quarters and more. There was a work bench nearby with parts and tools strewn on it, a blueprint tacked to the wall above it as well. Also hanging on the wall were three different shoulder holster rigs with specialized silent handguns in each.

Sitting and eating, Essex said, "I got a wig for you and some padding to make you look less, you know."

"What?"

"Voluptuous," he got out. "Recognizable I mean."

"No, I meant what the heck are you talking about?"

"So I can get you out of town," he said.

"I'm not leaving."

"But Graziano's on to you, Marsh."

"He's on to you, too."

"I'm prepared."

"Then prepare me. We both loved him, Book. I want to get his killers, too."

He was going to argue but could see she was in no mood for the hassle. He allowed too that a smart sexy woman who on her own did a gutsy thing like infiltrate the strip club, knowing it was owned by the Laughing Man, then making sure to insinuate herself to him to learn a few of his secrets, well that was certainly not someone you sent packing given the firefight was about to light shit up.

"So what's out next move, sarge?" she said, chewing on the hash and eggs.

"You know that waiting ain't my bag, but they'll make a move. Soon. That smart boy of Graziano's, Kassel, he's like those West Point greenhorn lieutenants we had to suffer in ‘Nam. He's read up on his Alexander the Great and von Clausewitz. He's going to bring in the heavy hitter and draw us out to trap us."

She regarded him. "Always thinking and always prepared."

"Let's hope so," he said dourly. "But in any battle, there's always the unexpected factor, that turn of bad luck or roll of capricious fate you didn't account for."

"Seems we're both pessimists." She got up from her seat and picked up her plate and his even though neither had finished breakfast. She put them on the stove as there was no sink.

She turned back to him and her intent was clear in her eyes as she took off her shoes using her feet.

"Look, maybe this isn't such a good idea," he hedged. Because of vocal cord damage from the fire, his voice was coarse and whispery. And at the moment, he was so caught up in conflicting emotions, he could barely talk at all.

"Maybe," she said, unzipping her jeans and stepping out of them. "Most times you've thought of me as a sister. And me, you're my other brother. We've known each other since junior high, Book. The two white trash kids, miserable thief for a father, and that goofy black kid who always had his nose, appropriately, in a book. We've known too that we've gone back and forth in our feelings for each other." She paused, a solemn look settling on her face, then added.

"Charlotte isn't coming back. But don't misunderstand, I'm not pretending I'm her. I'm not trying to take her place."

"I know."

She was close on him now and he leaned forward and gently kissed her mound encased in her lacy black panties. She caressed the top of his head. He looked up at her, his hands on her thighs.

"This might be our one and only time. We might not come out of this whole or alive," she said, her voice as hoarse as his. She touched a tear at the corner of his eye, the scars from the fire on his face. She undid his zipper and straddled him. They made love as the Laughing Man and Kassel planned their executions.

"How is it you call yourself a cop, Chastain?" former petty street thug Ronnie Brownlee, who now went by Rahim Katanga, growled. As leader of the Ministers of Praxis, names were everything.

The beefy cop spread his arms wide. "Hey, I'm doing my job here, Ronnie boy."

There was bristling from the other members of the Ministers of Praxis, MPs for short. The two uniformed officers with Chastain, one black the other white, reacted too. Their hands went toward the hilts of their tethered nightsticks.

The plainclothesman continued. "It's a known fact your little troop here has had run-ins with them Reds," he gestured with his hand as if conjuring up the name. "The Luxumberg League," he finally said, snapping his fingers. "Them."

"They wouldn't kidnap our youth, Chastain," a woman with a bubble afro said.

Chastain gave her an up-and-down, like sizing up a double cheeseburger slathered with bacon and onions. "Y'all say four kids went missing after they attended your propaganda class."

"After school program, policeman," a tall MP emphasized. "We help them with their math and reading skills."

Chastain pursed his lips, biting back a sarcastic comment. "So anyway, these four don't make it home afterward." He consulted his notepad. "But these are teenagers, between 13 and 16 you said." He looked up, a sincere expression on his face. "They could be off smoking reefer or grabbed a car to go joy-riding, doing who knows what they get into at that age."

"Jesus," the woman exploded. "We're calling your boss, Chastain."

He laughed hollowly. "You call on us oinkers only when this kind of shit allegedly happens and you expect the department to be at your beck and call. But any other time you're spitting on us and cursing us out."

"How about you just do your job, man?" Katanga said.

"We're on this," the black officer answered.

Chastain shot him a withering look. "This matter will be dutifully investigated. Starting with me grilling their parents, a couple of whom, single mothers and all, have records." He and Katanga glared at one another then Chastain exited the storefront office. He was followed by the two uniforms who looked embarrassed.

"I'm calling Councilman Ricks," the woman with the large afro said, stalking toward a dial phone.

Katanga had a different idea.