Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

Temple was desperately seeking that ogre who was the key to it all. “Don’t tell me there were no suspects.”

“Dozens back in that day,” Aldo said. He adjusted his shirt cuffs. “One of the most colorful was capo of the Italian mob, naturally. Crude but effective. The cops called him ‘Jack the Hammer’.”

“That sounds like some shyster TV-ad lawyer’s nickname,” Temple objected. “That’s not even an Italian name.”

“Aldo was sparing the ladies’ sensibilities,” Ernesto said. “The mob boss was noted for taking guys out into the dessert and using a jackhammer to encourage them to talk, or keep quiet forever. Name of Giaccomo Petrocelli. Giaccomo. Italian for ‘James’, but in English it shortens to just plain ‘Jack’. Giacc the Hammer.”

Matt, beside her, shifted on his chair and coughed, as repelled as she by brutal mob execution styles.

Temple shuddered in the benign sunlight. “Not so plain,” she told Ernesto. “An ogre like Giacco Petrocelli would be capable of hanging a man by his own Zoot suit chain. What happened to him?”

Aldo shrugged. “Somebody offed him after the millennium. Most of his power was gone. He never adapted.”

More than fifty years ago a macabre message had been sent in a building a couple blocks from where she laid her head every night, Temple realized.

How on earth had Electra’s ineffective, ordinary-Joe ex-spouse’s body become the vehicle of another, undecoded message today? And who had sent messages by murder then and now? Obviously, two different killers. So who wanted to echo Vegas’s Bad Old Days of Italian, Irish and Jewish mob control and violence, and maybe even the ethnic unrest? And why?

36

In the Ranks of Death

“This is my last quest, as you call it, of this trip, Kathleen, and it’s sorry I am to drag you along, but I can’t cut you loose until I leave Ireland in case you might kill me or in case someone else might want to kill you.”

“Oh, cut the music-hall Irish palaver, Max Kinsella. It’s tired I am of your endless do-goodin’ and breast-beatin’. I might rather be killed. So what am I expected to suffer through now?”

“I confess it’s all too easy to walk the walk and talk the talk in Ireland. I need to find the remains of Gandolph the Great, or be sure he was given a proper burial or cremation. I was forced to abandon his body in the car.”

“Is it a church burial in Belfast you’re after?”

“No. He wasn’t Catholic, just a damn good man. I promise my intentions are purely secular, Kathleen.”

“Despite the grandiose performing name, he sounds a right old fellow,” she admitted, “and a far more decent father figure than I had.” She shook her head and the glory of her flagrant thick hair the nuns had cropped. “Maybe you’ll less regret following the black velvet band if we find him.”

That “we” was revolutionary, so he didn’t mention it.

The car’s GPS guided Max over the curving hills to the M1 and a straight shot into Belfast in less than an hour. As Max and Garry had found on the previous visit, Americans were startled by how short distances and very little time could cross borders in the British Isles and Europe.

Belfast’s population was almost 700,000. As they drove into the city, its views were dominated by Belfast Castle high on a hill and other large and stately red brick and white marble ministerial buildings dating back to earlier centuries, but also new, striking simple and clean modern office complexes.

The “Peace walls” meandered like scars through city, bunkerlike dividers between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods painted with colorful urban graffiti six feet up, then bare concrete expanses topped by high-wire fences.

“Where are we to sleep tonight?” Kathleen asked, her eyes fixed on the passing buildings and cars.

Hours of their mutual wariness gave her tone the same weariness he felt.

“We’ll not be doing much of that, I’m thinking, with various factions sure to have an eye on me or you.”

“You want them to find us.”

“How else will I discover what happened to Garry’s body?” Max had Googled a hotel on the fringe of the city center. “We can rest at a decent hotel, have a leisurely dinner, and then go walking.”

“The perfect Max Kinsella night out. Feed the prey, then it’s on foot, looking for trouble to find you. You sure know how to wine and dine a woman.”

“I’m not going to get caught in another car chase.”

Max pulled the Honda into an interior parking garage. They left their luggage inside, with Kathleen pulling out a loose-knit dark sweater and Max a light black leather jacket for the evening chill.

“This is a cheap American chain hotel,” Kathleen said, sounding surprised and a bit indignant.

“We’re not newlyweds, Kathleen. It’s a solid, unassuming three-star hotel that’s been redone inside and will keep us invisible and off the street until dusk, when we go hunting.”

“Or being hunted.”

“What’s the matter? Home ground not a big enough advantage for you?” Max asked. “I’m the one who’s the target.”

In the dim parking garage, her posture and expression shifted. Max couldn’t quite read how. Perhaps she’d arranged earlier to hand him over to the Real IRA. Their reserved double/double bedroom with en suite would be a prison cell for them until a late dinner would have a walk through Belfast for a chaser.

Dinner had been decent—salmon filet for her and for him the interesting Irish-prepared barbecued ribs, corn on the cob, cole slaw, and chips. Kathleen mocked his all-American menu choice.

Max didn’t want to waste his time reading a long wine list, or drink much of it. He ordered a Bailey’s Irish coffee with whiskey, his favorite after-dinner drink with Garry Randolph.

Kathleen ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream, marshmallows and a shot of sweet syrup. He mocked her all-American soda fountain dessert.

Then they got up, hooked their outer clothes off the chair backs and went into the cool, dark streets.

Max took Kathleen’s sweater-clad arm. He didn’t want her either ahead or behind him. He veered for the narrower and darker streets, for the oldest cobblestoned ways, graffiti-lined walls of abandoned public housing buildings into trash-occupied alleys, where the smell of urine ebbed and flowed like rank incense.

Lounging knit-capped gangsta youths on corners straightened at the sight of Kathleen, but Max pushed her between him and the wall side and gave them a long wolfish lowered-head glare.

He knew where he wanted to go, but not if he was exactly in the right place. This time, he wasn’t still limping from his broken legs. He was more formidable, although he and Gandolph had fought their way out of the place he was hoping to find last time. The last time for Gandolph, by so few minutes.

A single man from behind took Kathleen’s arm on the wall side into his custody. Max didn’t turn to react, but spun to put his back the wall to confront the man coming toward them.

The men, wearing black knit caps pulled down to their eyebrows, were twenty to thirty years older than he, like Garry, but toughened by years of passionate, merciless urban warfare.

The advancing man spoke in a voice as soft and smooth and soothing as the best Irish whiskey.

“D’ye have such an ache to commit suicide, Michael Kinsella? Is that what brings you back to the Auld Sod again in so little time after suffering such a heavy loss your last time back?”