Coalface Willy parked on a side street. He tried to relax. He’d left himself a short walk to the strip club to feel the sun on his shoulders. At noon, two of his clan had been gunned down. He remained dazed by that. Less by the calamity than by the surprise, the possible repercussions. He was anxious to get a sense of how the news was reverberating through the community. Lately, Mafia henchmen were leaping into their graves. None volunteered. A virtual epidemic of bad guys snapped up by the fates.
He was supposed to be one of them.
Nothing to say he wouldn’t be next.
Inside the club he took a seat at the bar and waited. Surprised to be left alone, he tried to maintain a calm demeanor. His underarms began to sweat. Then Slew came out of the men’s room, drying his hands on his shirt, so that part made sense.
‘Willy boy,’ the manager greeted him.
‘Slewfoot,’ Willy said. He didn’t know why he chose to state the man’s full nickname. It popped out. Legend told a story that Slew fought a cop in a street brawl as a young man and brought him down with a deft trip. He had the policeman on his back and at his mercy where he could easily kill him. He had the opportunity, the weaponry, the motivation, the mindset and the rage to do it, yet restrained himself. Later the cop nicknamed him Slewfoot, to commemorate his tricky footwork in pinning him to the ground, and to honor the man who spared his life. They became something that approximated pals. Willy had not witnessed the fight but spoke the nickname in full, to remind them of old times, perhaps, and by extension to commemorate their long collaboration.
The old guy seemed to take it that way. He cocked an eyebrow and smiled. ‘Beer?’
‘Ex. Thanks,’ Willy said.
Slew went behind the bar and uncapped a Molson Export. He poured tap water for himself, with ice.
Must be on the wagon, Willy noted, and said, ‘Interesting times.’
‘What do you know about it?’
‘Any names released? Pasquale, my guess, and Le Gris.’
‘Their mugs were on TV. Why do they have to use mugshots? Le Gris looked unconscious. Fucking Pasquale looked stuffed. Like a moose head on a wall.’
They clinked water glass to beer bottle and drank. A genial toast to the dead.
‘What’s your take?’ Slew wanted to know.
Willy preferred to ask questions, yet it made sense to do the talking. He was connected to the source on high, whereas Slew worked the ground. At least, that’s how he billed himself.
‘Battle’s on,’ Willy declared.
‘Who and who?’ Slew asked.
They were talking on opposite sides of the bar. That created a considerable gap and Willy signaled the aging manager to lean in. No one else was around. No dancer on stage. Not a single patron seated. One guy still mopped the previous night’s scuzz off the floor with a lassitude fitting the task. He was out of earshot. Still, beyond a need for confidentiality, Willy desired a heightened level of intimacy to connect them.
Slew, leaning forward, plucked a toothpick from a container and stuck it in his mouth to chew on.
‘Battle’s on,’ Willy repeated. ‘I’m here on a mission. We don’t want a tip-off contact. Everything is dangerous as we speak. Follow me so far?’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Your job: take the message, one on one, where you live. The Hells need to know this.’
‘Pick up the phone.’
‘We’ll meet. I don’t mean me and you. The Hells and Ciampini. But we don’t want the other side to see it coming.’
‘What other side?’
‘You told me. Didn’t you? Sure you did. Where do you get your girls from now?’
‘You’re at war with The Rabbit?’
‘Who do you think did Pasquale and The Gray?’
‘Ciampini himself, my thought. Or something personal?’
‘Add on Nic Jobin and The Dime. That’s personal? The two guys in the countryside you told me about, personal? One screwed up whack-job to take so much so personal.’
Slew concurred that the death toll was adding up to something more than coincidence. He’d come to that conclusion long ago, even before Willy walked in the door.
‘Why tell me? Like I said. Pick up the phone.’
‘Ciampini’s not confiding directly, OK? I can give you my honest opinion. I can be wrong.’
‘Listening.’
‘We don’t know where the Hells are at. We need somebody to explain the opportunity under their heels. No more is it a secret they got their own ambitions.’ Slew looked as though he wanted to raise an objection to the charge, that he took it as a charge, but Willy quickly mollified his concerns. ‘We’ll work with that. We get it. By “we”, I mean Ciampini, of course. I’m the messenger. My idea, you’re the trusted one, Slew, the messenger inside the Hells. You’re long in the game, even if you’re on the sidelines now, no offence.’
‘Old age comes to us all, Willy-boy. More sooner than you think.’
‘My point, Slew. You’re neutral. No involvement. Long in the game. You have influence. I know you give directions. Like me, you’re the perfect emissary.’
‘Emissary, huh?’
‘Go-between.’
‘I know what the word means.’
‘Then all right. This is what I want you to get across. The Rabbit does not act alone. He’s not stupid. He’s thrown in with new arrivals. Mostly Russians and Ukes. East Germans, too, so I hear. Not to be taken lightly. This is why we want you. Who can say this better than you? The Rabbit wants the sex trade. The Hells want the sex trade. Trust me, that’s not the big secret you think it is. You and me, we know the Hells are looking at the drug action, too, asking why they’re only down on the street. Why aren’t they raking in the big dough on high? Slew, there’s room for collaboration here. I’m saying that. You need to convince them. Ciampini is still the man with the contacts, in politics, with the police, with the internationals. What flows in, flows through Ciampini. He needs help, that’s true. He’s willing to face that fact. A collaboration can walk down the road. If you ask me, it’s inevitable. Right now, it’s the women. That’s an action the Hells can take for themselves. The strip clubs, the hookers and primrose pimps, the Hells can take it on. But only if we kick The Rabbit’s butt ass. Otherwise, Ciampini might go down but what rises up in his place won’t be the Hells like they think, it’ll be the East Europeans. Trust me, the Hells don’t want to mess with those KGB mind-fucks.’
A helluva speech, with implications, ramifications – words that were part of Slew’s vocabulary. He worked his toothpick around in his mouth, contemplating it all, naturally wary.
‘You want me to say all that to the Hells?’ Slew said.
‘It’s not a pick-up-the-phone type thing, is it? It’s a discussion. More than that, a persuasion. It has to come from a wise voice. Not from an outsider. I know that you are more than who you say you are, more than what you show.’ Willy raised a hand to prohibit any objection, although none seemed forthcoming. ‘The Irish didn’t give the Hells a leg up, without they didn’t keep a piece. The Hells are French. The Irish and the French get along. Always have. It’s history. The French don’t like Italians being head of the pack on their turf. Not when they want the turf. Not saying this is the whole shebang. But it’s a bigger jump than they can do otherwise, and it keeps out a bigger threat than old, dying-out Italians. We need the Hells to join the battle now against The Rabbit and who he’s bringing in. Make this a war. Any war, there’s spoils on the ground to pick up. Count on that. But any war is also survival. Your people need to understand that.’
‘My people.’
‘The Hells.’
Clearly, Slew was not going to concede an inch.
‘Slew, I can say this to you because I know you understand,’ Willy said. He took a long slug of his beer, partly to quench his thirst after so much talking, partly for dramatic effect.
Slew fell for it. ‘Say what?’ he asked, curious.
‘Do all this – go to war even – it’s got to be behind the sign.’
A winning argument. The phrase was an old one, unused in decades, but Slew was an older man who appreciated older times. The phrase referred to cartoons of cops in their patrol cars concealed behind billboards. They’d be up to mischief, drinking the moonshine they’d confiscated, munching donuts, undressing a damsel they arrested. Unsuspecting speeders were barreling down the highway, involved in follies of their own, similar to the policemen’s. The phrase ‘behind the sign’ meant that you could mess around all you wanted, like the cop, except be ready to pounce from behind the sign, shock the guilty culprit on the highway when that made sense. Didn’t matter that you were no better than him.
Afterward, return to the usual mischief behind the sign.
Slew made no commitment. He did not say no, either.