Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

Her eyeballs shifted to the bar. “Those two guys at the bar.”

He started to twist in his seat to look at the bar, when her hand reached out and grabbed his wrist and she whispered, “Don’t look.”

His eyebrows rose in a question mark.

She whispered, “That’s Pat and Mike. They work for Rudy.”

Then, despite her protest, he twisted around to get a good look at the two rough-looking customers sitting on barstools, sipping beer. They gave the former soldier a clear fuck-you look.

He turned back around and disconnected another slice of pizza, as she told him, “At some point they’re going to come over here and chase you away.”

He raised his eyes from the pizza slice in his hand to the pale-skinned bottle blonde across the table. “Oh, they are, are they?”

Abigail made a guilty face and apologized. “I’m sorry, Cliff, I didn’t think Rudy would react this way. I mean, it’s not like I’m his fuckin’ wife or he doesn’t have eight other girlfriends.”

“Yeah,” Cliff said, “but you’re probably his favorite. I can see that.”

That made Abby blush.

Then he told her to excuse herself and go to the little girls’ room. She started to protest, and he repeated his order to her: “Excuse yourself and go to the little girls’ room. Lock the door and don’t open it till I tell you it’s okay.”

She didn’t understand.

“Do it,” he commanded.

She followed orders, standing up, excusing herself, going into the ladies’ room, and locking the door.

Once Miss Pendergast had exited the dining room, the two Italian hoodlums made their way over to Cliff’s table.

Mike Zitto sat in Abigail’s vacant chair, and Pat Cardella took a chair from an unoccupied table and slid it over.

Cliff looked away from Charlie Chaplin on the wall and up at the two linebacker-like fellows joining him at his table, as he took another bite of his pizza.

Pat placed his glass of beer on the table and said to Cliff, “Okay, fruitcake, here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna get up from the table, you’re gonna take your ass out that door”—jerking his thumb behind him, pointing at the door—“and if either me or him”—moving his thumb between Mike and himself—“sees you hangin’ ’round Miss Abigail again, you’re gonna visit the hospital for a long time.”

Cliff continued chewing his slice of pizza.

“You understand, pizza-face?” Mike asked.

Cliff swallowed his food and took the pizza in his hand and placed it back on his plate. He grabbed a napkin, and as he wiped the grease from his fingers, he asked the two fellows, “You two gentlemen wouldn’t by chance be of Italian descent , would you?”

The two dark-haired men instinctively gave each other a look, then looked back to the blond guy. “Yeah,” Pat said.

Cliff pointed his outstretched finger back and forth between them. “Both of you?”

Mike puffed up his chest and said, “Yeah, we’re both Italian, what of it?”

A grin spread across Cliff’s face as he leaned forward and said, “Do you know how many Italians I’ve killed?”

Pat leaned forward and asked in a whisper, “Excuse me?”

Cliff said, “Oh, you didn’t hear me? Let me repeat it.” Then he asked for a second time, “ Do you have any idea how many Italians I’ve killed? ”

Cliff reached into his front jacket pocket as he said, “Let me give you an idea.”

Pat and Mike watched him pull the Medal of Valor out of his pocket and drop it on the table between them. It landed hard on the wooden table, with a loud bang.

“For the day I got that”—pointing at the Medal of Valor—“I killed at least seven. Maybe as many as nine. But at least seven.” Cliff continued, “And that was just one fuckin’ day. When I was in Sicily, I killed Italians every day.”

Sitting back in his chair, he said, “And I was in Sicily a long, long time.”

The two Italian gangsters’ faces turned red.

“In fact,” Cliff continued, “I killed so many Italians, they made me a war hero. Consequently, because I’m a war hero, I got a license to carry this.”

Cliff removed a snub-nose .38 from his other jacket pocket and placed it, loud, on the table next to the Medal of Valor. Pat and Mike jumped in their seats when they saw him take out the pistol and lay it on the table.

Cliff leaned forward and whispered across the table to the two torpedoes, “You know what? I betcha I could take that pistol there and shoot both of you dead—right now—in this shitty little pizza parlor. Right in front of the owner, the waiters, the customers, and Charlie Chaplin. And you know what?

“I betcha, I just betcha, I’d get away with it. Because I’m a war hero. And you two are just degenerate guinea garbage.”

Mike Zitto had had enough, and now it was time for him to do the talking. He pointed an angry finger at the blond smart aleck. “You listen to me, you Army faggot—”

Cliff interrupted him by snatching his snub-nose .38 off the table and firing one bullet each into the skulls of Pat and Mike. Red blood shot out of the holes he’d just made in their craniums, spraying across the tabletop, across the front of Cliff’s shirt and face, and practically across the room.

The female customers screamed as the male customers hit the ground. Both gangsters tipped over out of their chairs, collapsing on the sawdust-covered floor. Once they were on the ground, Cliff shot them twice more for good measure.

Later, when the Cleveland Police Department questioned Cliff about the incident, he told them, “Well, they tried to kidnap myself and Miss Pendergast. The fatter one said he intended to shoot me and throw acid in Miss Pendergast’s face to teach her a lesson.” Adding, “I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared.”

Cliff’s theory proved to be right. The Cleveland cops knew exactly who Pat Cardella and Mike Zitto were. And if a World War Two hero wanted to shoot ’em dead in a pizza parlor, the police would pay for the pizza. Cliff’s story didn’t even need to be convincing. It just needed to be plausible.

And that was how Cliff Booth got away with murder … the first time.

Chapter Eighteen

The Name Ain’t Jughead

Caleb DeCoteau.

When Murdock Lancer mentioned that the name of the ringleader of the land pirates who’d been stealing his cattle was Caleb DeCoteau, it took all of Johnny’s poker-playing skills not to show a reaction on his face. This proud, bitter old bastard Murdock Lancer, his father, was desperate. And it was Caleb DeCoteau who was the cause of his desperation. When Johnny and his half brother, Scott, traveled from different locations to their former childhood home, it was to receive the thousand dollars their father offered them if they would listen to a proposal. Neither of the men figured they’d be interested in anything the father they hadn’t seen since they were children had to propose.

Both men were wrong.

For about two hundred miles, their father, Murdock Lancer, was the wealthiest man on the American side of the California-Mexico border. He had the biggest ranch, he owned the biggest home, and he had more cattle than any other man in the Monterey Valley. But now this rich, proud man was desperate, and desperation was not an emotion he was accustomed to. It didn’t make him look weak. Murdock Lancer had the strength, the dignity, and the face of a stagecoach relay horse. But it did make him look worried. Things were definitely bad, but the worry he wore on his face was the acknowledgment that they could get far worse.

Ever since Caleb DeCoteau and his gang of rascals had moved into the area of Royo del Oro, they’d zeroed in on Murdock’s cows to such a degree it would appear Caleb had a personal vendetta against the man for some past transgression. But, actually, nothing could be further from the truth. It was simply that, in a field of poppies, Murdock Lancer was the tall poppy, and it’s the tall poppy that gets cut down to size.