They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee (24 page)

Lippo looked at Zak, Johnny, and me. “Which one of youz girlfriend's got whacked?”

“Me,” I said, propping myself up.

“That shouldn't'a happened,” Lippo said. “That was sloppy like every other fuckin' thing around here.”

“Thanks for the sympathy.”

“Gino!” Lippo snapped his fingers and held out his hand. Gino placed a .38 police special in Lippo's hand. “Here!” Lippo held the gun out to me. “Go ahead, kill either one a those two pricks. And don't get no ideas. Gino boy'll cut you down before you fart the wrong way.”

Suddenly, my left shoulder didn't hurt so much. I took the gun and swung the tip of the barrel between George and Jerry. George looked particularly unhappy, but not especially frightened. Jerry, on the other hand, was a whisper away from begging. I picked Jerry. Dying at my hand would have no special significance to George.

“Okay,” Dallenbach threw his hands up, “I get the point. We shall endeavor to be more careful in the future. Now take that gun away from Klein and let's get on with this.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Lippo puzzled. “I ain't jokin'. Go ahead and kill the prick,” he urged me.

Dallenbach was sweating now.

“Don't!” MacClough shouted. “Don't do it, Klein. It'll stay with you forever.”

I pulled the hammer back on the .38.

“They're gonna kill us, Dylan. You're just makin' it easier for them to have it look like we all went down in a gun-fight between us and Dallenbach's boys.”

“Hey, shut the fuck up,” Lippo warned MacClough.

“Don't, Dylan!”

I began to nudge the trigger toward me. Bang! The shot went off and I went down, MacClough on top of me. The slug ricocheted off the concrete. Everyone hit the floor who wasn't there already. A light bulb exploded, its glass sprinkling down. The .38 was out of my hand. It was a long few seconds.

“Get up!” Lippo demanded.

We obliged. But when we got up, the .38 was in Jerry's shaking right hand. He pointed it at the spot where Lippo's vicuna coat fell away from his heart. Lippo ignored him, brushing the concrete dust off his lavish overcoat.

“Goddammit! I just had this thing cleaned.”

And as he finished his sentence, there was a sort of muffled spitting sound, a puff of smoke, and Jerry collapsed backwards. He lay all twisted like an ill-constructed jigsaw puzzle, a look of utter surprise on his dead face. Blood pooled where his right eye used to be.

“The other one, too,” Lippo said almost too nonchalantly.

George smiled, began laughing in an odd, strangled sort of way. He was not going to go quietly into that good night. He charged. He didn't get too far; three feet maybe. But because he had been a moving target, Gino hadn't managed to make clean work of it. The belly of George's skin-tight ski suit was a crimson mess. He writhed in pain on the floor, trying to hold his guts in place. Lippo calmly removed his coat, handing it to Gino, and grabbed the Glock out of Dallenbach's fear-frozen right hand. He placed his shoe on George's throat and pressed down hard enough to steady George's twisting.

“Here's dessert,” Lippo said, placing the gun barrel to George's heart. “Prick!”

As the shot went off a wave went through George's body. I almost expected the floor to shake. Dallenbach was white. I'm not sure whether it was fear or grieving or what.

“I really do get the lesson now,” he managed to say. “So, can we please get on with it?”

“I'm a cop,” MacClough said. “You wanna kill a cop?”

“Retired over ten years ago,” Dallenbach, feeling more his old self, retorted. “No one will send out the National Guard, if your body should turn up.”

“I don't like whackin' cops. My brother-in-law's on the job. But this ain't my headache. C'mon,” he said, waving the 9mm at us, “let's everybody go for a nice walk.”

“What about them?” Dallenbach wondered about the late George and Jerry.

“Them? Fuck them! We'll worry about them later.”

“Let's listen to the man,” I urged, getting to my feet. The pain in my left shoulder nearly knocking me back down. “The sooner they kill us, the sooner that disc gets to the cops.”

“Disc?” Lippo stopped dead in his tracks and stared coldly at the dean. “What disc?”

“You mean your partner didn't tell you about the disc that my nephew downloaded after he hacked his way into Dean Dallenbach's computer? Makes you wonder what else he didn't tell you about, doesn't it?”

“Shut up and get going,” Dallenbach slapped my wounded shoulder.

“No!” Lippo disagreed. “You,” he pointed to me, “talk.”

“Don't you know what all this is about? My nephew used to date that girl that's on trial for muling the Isotope. The details of how he hacked the system are irrelevant, but let's just say that there's a disc somewhere out there that details your distribution system and implicates your bosses. Now, my nephew's no idiot. He knew what his life would be worth if he took the disc directly to the cops, so he's been trying to barter it for the girl's freedom for months. That's all he wanted, the girl's freedom.”

“I never heard nothin' about no disc, Dallenbach.”

“That's because there is no disc,” he pleaded. “I didn't want to risk getting other people involved until I was sure it either did or didn't exist.”

“Other people are involved,
stroonze.
You think I'm here for the climate?”

“What bullshit story did he tell your boss to get you down here, anyways?” MacClough egged Lippo on.

“I don't know, but nobody mentioned no disc.”

“Did anybody mention the dead DEA agent?” MacClough wondered, innocent as a lamb.

“Fuck no!”

“Well, Dallenbach,” I prodded, “here's your chance. I understand the mob just loves being involved with the murder of federal agents.”

Working on the axiom that less is sometimes more, Dallenbach said nothing in his own defense. “Come on, Lippo, can we get this over with? We can deal with these peripheral issues later.”

“Sure, Dean, we can do that for you. Hey Gino, gimme back my coat.” Lippo took great care with his precious coat. “You know what happens sometimes when like McDonalds or somebody gives out a franchise to a guy who like cooks the books or don't follow company rules and shit like that?”

“I'm not sure I get your point, Lippo,” Dallenbach said impatiently.

“Humor me, okay? So do you know what happens or what?”

“I imagine,” Dallenbach answered, “that they reclaim their franchise.”

“Right! Exactly fuckin' right. They take back their franchise. And right now, that's what we're gonna do, Dallenbach. Take back our franchise, you total fuck-up.”

“I don't un—” Dallenbach began.

“You understand, asshole. You understand.”

We all stepped away from Dallenbach.

“Why don't I do all of them right here?” Gino spoke up for the first time. I liked it better when he didn't talk.

“Nah,” Lippo said, pointing at Dallenbach, “just him.”

“But what about the disc?” Dallenbach cried in desperation.

“What about it?” Lippo was cool. “If there really is no disc, then we got nothin' to worry about. If there is a disc, who gives a fuck? I betcha me and Gino's names ain't on it. Am I right or what, Gino?”

Gino laughed at that.

Dallenbach blurted out: “But Malzone and DiMinici, your bosses will go down.”

“Yeah, and so what? They ain't gonna blame me for it.

You was the one who never told them about it. And after tonight, there ain't gonna be anybody to say I knew about it. Besides, me and Gino are overdue for a promotion.” Lippo nodded to Gino.

Gino's hand came up holding an Uzi with a thick silencer extended from the barrel.

“But—” Dallenbach threw his hands up.

“Look at it this way,” Lippo consoled him, “we're doin' you a favor. If Malzone and DiMinici had ever found out about the disc, they wouldn't make this so quick and painless. This way you go out beggin' to live. With them, you'd go out beggin' to die. So cross yourself and shut your eyes.”

Dallenbach actually took his advice.

Before Gino could do Dallenbach his favor, MacClough went down in a heap. He was in terrible pain. He was doubled over on the floor, his left leg twitching. His bottom lip was bleeding from where he was biting through it. This wasn't a feint to buy time and Lippo knew it. I tried holding John, but the pain would not let me comfort him.

Gino and Lippo studied MacClough and searched each other's eyes.

“Okay,” Lippo said, “do ‘em all here. We'll play some games with the guns or we'll just throw a match on the pile. The cops in this town'll be sorting it out till next Halloween.”

MacClough winked at me. Gino had let him get too close. He kicked the gunman's legs out from under him and the back of Gino's head cracked hard on the concrete floor. I hit Lippo with a cross body block. My shoulder burned down through my toes, but, I thought, getting blood on Lippo's coat was almost worth it. It's funny what you think about. I stopped thinking about it when Lippo pounded the 9 mm butt into the square of my back. That wasn't a good sign. But suddenly, another body piled on. It was Zak. I couldn't see what was going on exactly, but I could feel Zak struggling with Lippo's gun hand. I wondered if MacClough and Dallenbach were sharing a cup of tea while we were scrumming about on the ground.

There was a shot. That got everyone's attention. I didn't figure it was John holding the gun. He was good, but his hands had been cuffed for quite some time and I doubted they had enough feeling left in them to handle a blind grab and behind-the-back shooting.

“Get away from him,” Dallenbach ordered.

Zak and I knew who he meant. We moved away. Lippo looked almost ridiculous seated there on his ass in his dirty coat. The fact that he was still holding the Glock made him seem a bit less silly. It was Mexican standoff time between Dallenbach and Lippo. Lippo didn't wait to discuss it and squeezed off a few shots. Dallenbach crumbled. The door flew open and an endless stream of state policemen flew in behind Detective Fazio. Lippo wasn't an eloquent speaker, but he could compute the odds. He immediately tossed the Glock at Dallenbach's body and started screaming something about self-defense. Gino moaned, opened his eyes, and went back to concussionville.

Fazio, his crooked nose shiny with sweat, just stood there shaking his head at us. He was out of breath and thought smoking a Kent was the best way to catch it. He looked at MacClough's cuffed hands and John caught his gaze.

“That one's got the key,” MacClough nodded at Dallenbach.

Fazio dutifully went about collecting the keys and undoing the cuffs. MacClough spent the next five minutes rubbing his wrists. Gloved hands were pushing and prodding my shoulder and the back of Zak's head. The general consensus was that we'd live.

“Did you get all that?” MacClough asked, pulling a small microphone off his inner thigh.

“Every word,” Fazio said. “Every fucking word.” He turned to me. “Sorry about the girl.”

I had nothing in me to say to him just then, but he smiled at what he must have seen in my eyes.

“What the fuck took you so long?” MacClough griped.

“These tunnels, I'm not an ant for chrissakes! I can get you from the IND to the BMT to the IRT, but anywheres north of Syracuse I'm no good underground.”

“How the—” I started the question.

“We'll talk about it some other time,” Fazio winked.

A vaguely military looking gentleman in aviator sunglasses, a blond brush cut, and cheek bones higher than K2 introduced himself to me as DEA Field Supervisor Robert Rees. I shook his hand.

“Good work,” he said. “Good work.”

Whatever that meant. Too many people on both sides of the issue had died to make something good of it. I asked him if I might be allowed to leave now. He muttered something about my shoulder and a hospital. I told him the hospital could wait. He told one of the state troopers to take me wherever I wanted to go. He shook my hand again. Maybe he was as much in shock as the rest of us.

I asked MacClough how he was feeling. He sort of laughed at me and said that he'd live. I guessed he would. Life is a hard thing to take away from some people.

Zak put his hand out for me to pull him up. I pulled him up. There were tears in his eyes and when he began to beg forgiveness, I said he had nothing to beg for. Forgiveness wasn't my province. He had to forgive himself. My anger had all vanished in a pool of other peoples' blood. I kissed him, told him I loved him, and ordered him to go visit his grandfather's grave.

“No one'll ever call me the family fuck-up again,” he vowed.

“Yeah, Zak, I know. And they don't play stickball in Milwaukee.”

It fit somehow.

When I was almost through the door, MacClough called out for me: “Where you goin'?”

“There's a man at the Old Watermill Inn who I need to talk to.” I didn't look back.

Poltergeists

Once again, the swimming pools and split ranches were rushing by beneath the belly of my plane.

Although it was only several weeks ago that I had flown home for my father's funeral, Hollywood felt like ancient history to me now. That's the trick of time, isn't it? It's not how much passes by, but how much happens as it passes.

As the flight attendant floated on by my row, I thought of Kira. She resembled her in only the most superficial ways—the almond eyes, the luminescent black hair. She smiled at me, checked the back of my seat to make certain of its upright position, and continued down the cabin. It was little moments like these that hurt the most, the unexpected flashes of her and the thoughts of what could have been. Sometimes it is a curse to have an active imagination.