All the Fine Tombstones
by Gary Clifton
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 1
Cellular hell came calling at just past five a.m. “Kratzert, thatchoo?”
I’d partied with a couple of dancers and the barmaid from Starbust Topless until three a.m. and some clown is calling to play “twenty questions” a couple hours later. Shoulda just let the damned thing ring, I guess, but sometimes early morning calls translated to “Dialing for Dollars” to me.
“Who’s calling?”
“Gotta know if this is Dave Kratzert, usta be a Houston Homicide cop. Thatchoo?” he repeated.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s me. Now your turn.”
“It’s me, Dave, Benny Wormsley. Ya ’member?”
I remembered all right. Benedict Wormsley had been a harness bull, me as his sergeant in the Central Patrol District out by the Turning Basin. Worms had gotten jammed up when a citizen photographed him making it with Horseface Sally, a hooker, behind a dumpster in broad daylight in the back seat of a marked patrol car. Horseface Sally had a face like an infected toe. Naturally, cop-speak got around that Worms was pumping the babe for info, but that didn’t keep the brass from kicking his ass out the door.
“Worms, whatcha doin’ up so early. You in jail?”
While he was still on the job, Worms had gotten a couple of rips for dragging the sack as the cop lexicon goes: free lunches and booze at several bars, a free one from a streetwalker. He’d gotten his snoot in the bottle, then drifted to sucking happy dust up his nose, and he finally developed a hundred a day habit for poison he shot in his arm.
That neighborhood was home to hardworking dock workers and hardworking whores, thugs, and grifters in about equal numbers. Worms was never very discreet about who he took a chance with.
After he got canned, he’d worked up a pretty good sheet: shoplifting, bad checks, and finally felony assault when he pistol-whipped a citizen he was trying to rob. He would have murdered the guy except he was too jacked up to load his gun. The case got him five years to do inside. He paroled out in two or so, and last I’d heard, he was running with a sorry crowd of nickel and dime thugs out in the Channelview district. Worms had gone over the hill without reaching the top.
“Dave, heard you took one in the thigh and the HPD put you out on a half-pay disability.”
“Yup, Worms, now what the hell you want this time of day?” I figured he was gonna try to work me for a few bucks, but ol’ Worms was way beyond a simple panhandler. “You in jail, dude?”
“Naw, hell no, Dave. Mr. Cohen wants to talk to you.”
“Cohen? Cohen who?”
“Hugo Fat.”
“Hugo Cohen? Worms, I bet he does. You workin’ for that tub of guts?”
“Yeah, Dave, they... he’s treated me okay.”
The switch from “they” to “he” was some sort of Freudian slip. “They” was the old Italian mafia. Hugo Cohen, called Hugo Fat in street speak was the local half-assed equivalent of Brando’s Godfather caper except he chewed fat-heavy death burgers instead of rocks to talk with his mouth full. Worms was definitely not qualified for the Hugo Cohen Mafia varsity. He must have embellished his tepid cop career enough to convince Hugo he had enough sense to walk and talk at the same time, had an in with the cops, and was mean as hell. All a product of Worms’ imagination.
“Worms, Hugo swore he’d have my head in a two-gallon bucket after the deal with Carmine. Some sucker put a .30-30 slug in my hip, making me a civilian. You gotta know the mope was never caught. That you let the hammer down?”
“Dave, if Mr. Cohen — or me, for that matter — hadda took a shot at you, we wouldn’t be talkin’ right now.”
That bit of wiseass was a dig too far. I rolled upright on the side of the bed. “Worms if you called up to tempt me to find you and kick some serious ass, just keep runnin’ your pie hole.”
“Dave, even I ain’t slipped far enough to take a shot at you. Just makin’ a point. Besides, Fat Hugo’s wife was Carmine’s woman before he went to the joint. Hugo ain’t bustin’ his ass to spring the punk.”
“Hugo still live out in River Oaks, Worms?”
“Yeah, Dave, and he needs to see you right away.”
“Needs, Worms? You want me to waltz out there and get a ball-peen hammer shampoo. That about it?”
“Dammit, Kratzert, he’ll have my ass if you tell him I snitched, but the wife I just spoke of has been kidnapped. He wants to hire you.”
“Worms, Hugo’s wife died right after Carmine’s trial. And he needs the real police, not me.”
“Aw, hell, Dave, he married some topless dancer babe last year. Add-on knockers and a real looker. Maybe twenty at the most. Dave, the old man is frantic. He’ll pony up whatever it takes, and he’ll nut me if you don’t help him. I promised him I could get you. And you gotta know he ain’t about to call no cops in.”
The Carmine deal was a result of Hugo Fat’s worthless son beating his neighbor to death with a ball-peen hammer over a barking dog. I’d worked up the case. Hugo had been plenty pissed when his only son was sentenced to life without parole two years earlier. Worm’s chatter sounded like he’d dampened his anger when he took up with Carmine’s squeeze. Add-on boobs can have that effect.
I could smell payday. “Worms, here’s the deal. I pull up to Hugo’s front gate. He comes out and cuts up the deal in the truck with me. Any crap and I let the air outta his fat ass. Comprende?”
“Yeah, I think he’s ramped up enough to do that. How soon can you get out here?”
“Half hour. Write it down Worms: inside my GMC and no crap.”
“He’s bound to have a guy or two standing around, Dave, but I think he’ll go for the inside your truck deal. Thirty minutes; okay, buddy?”
I wasn’t his buddy, but trying to talk to Worms was a study in wasted energy. “I’m on the way, Worms. Hey, dude, you sober now?”
“Why you ask?”
“Cuz, Worms, you try to get over on me on some toked-up scam, it ain’t gonna work out so well for you.”
“Yeah, chill, Dave, clean over a year.”
I broke the connection. Chances that Worms had kicked the habit of sucking his paycheck up his nose were limited to zero because the scale won’t go lower. A quick pass with the toothbrush, a stop on the corner for a cup of 7-11’s finest caffeinated, and I headed west, wondering what kind of suicidal dickweed in all of Hell’s half-acre would have the stones to kidnap Hugo Cohen’s wife.
* * *
As I whizzed out I-10, that thought grew larger. Would real thugs actually cross Hugo Fat Cohen? Could ol’ Hugo Fat be trying to line me up for some sort of frame... or to take another shot to finish what the first one had not?
I’d by God go headfirst. If Hugo and friends had a trainwreck planned for me, it wasn’t my nature to get off at the last station.
The morning wet heat was an overnight holdover of yesterday. My head was screeching at 10,000 decibels. My old man had been right when he said, “A man who don’t drink whiskey will never know how long the next day could be.”
Hugo, a native of Kansas City, Missouri was a hybrid Mafioso: Jewish father and a mob-connected Italian mother. Hugo and his original wife had drifted down to Houston twenty years or so back. With support from the New Orleans mob, he’d prospered via loan sharking and busting fingers. Among other ventures, he now owned three car dealerships and a half-dozen apartment complexes around the greater Houston area, living proof of the advantages of a prudent thug saving his allowance. And Hugo Fat would still take on a contract murder when the money or circumstances were right.
Me taking on a case from a hook like this would be an extreme case of threading a very small needle. I concluded that a little knee and knuckle ass-kick action spread fairly around the gaggle of worthless mopes who followed Hugo like suckling dogs might eventually be necessary. But first, take a look at the circumstances.
Worms and a couple other bust-ass punks were standing outside the massive gate like vultures on a power line. In the dim light, one was nobody I knew. The other was Hugo Fat’s main man, a nasty psychopath named Salvatore Spumanti, called on the street “Sally Dead.”
When Hugo needed fingers busted or an iron pipe hammered up some mark’s ass, Sally Dead was his honey-do. I’d spent enough time looking for murderers in the organized crime files to know that Sally Dead, also a native of Kansas City, had been Hugo Fat’s dog robber before they ever departed K.C. for the swelter, humidity, gridlocked traffic and crime rate of Houston. He’d been a prime suspect in a half-dozen murders I’d eventually had to dump into the cold files for want of evidence. As opposed to his walrus boss, Sally Dead was tall, skinny, and sufficiently morose to play Dracula in the Mafia Easter Parade.
The half ton of steel swung open enough to allow Hugo to slither through and waddle over to my GMC. He struggled up on the seat. Body odor and fat-ass thug filled the cab. Sally Dead had followed, ostensibly to help the fat man into my pickup.
I leaned across. “Sal, drag your ass away from the truck. You might get carbon monoxide poisoning by standing too close.”
“Kratzert?” he hissed between crooked teeth. I guess Hugo hadn’t told him I was coming.
I was ready to step out and settle any territorial issues when Hugo intervened. “Step back, Sal.”
“Mother of God, Kratzert, you gotta help me,” Hugo whined in his fat man’s wheeze. Oncoming dawn had ginned up enough light to see he was in tears.
It was early August and, in Houston, that meant breathing water vapor that contained brief pockets of oxygen. I left the engine running with the air wide open, hoping Hugo didn’t expire in the front seat of my pickup. That happened and I’d be obliged to get out and off three guard-dog dirtbags who were probably way overdue for their last ride to be in a hearse anyway.
“So, what gives, Hugo?”
“Dammit, Kratzert, my wife... my sweet baby. Bastards got her. Paid the ransom, traipsed all over hell following their directions, and I still ain’t got her back.” He lost it in sobs. Feeling sympathy took some major play acting for a guy who’d ordered hits on a couple dozen souls. If I was walking into a set-up, Hugo was one hell of an actor.
“And you’re not calling the cops... the FBI, because they told you not to?”
“Bastards said they’d send her back in pieces.” He lost it again.
“When did she go missing?”
“Around six yesterday evening. She manages a club I own up in the Heights, the Casa Loma. Two dudes in a van grabbed her on the parking lot and split. Called me about eight. Demanded a million and they’d call back with instructions on how to deliver. Sent me to three different places to meet some punk who didn’t show and then to a dumpster way the hell out in Pasadena. Nothin’ Kratzert, nothin’. Ya gotta help me. I’ll pay whatever you ask.”
“Descriptions... race, sex, color of van, anything?”
“Both white guys, dressed in matching blue coveralls, white van, one guy hadda black beard.”
“Sign on the van?”
“Electrical somethin’ or other. Kratzert, they said they’d call again.” I felt my hand instinctively going for the little .38 in my back waist as he dug out a cell phone.
“How’d you learn about the van and all?”
“Customer leaving the club. Saw the deal and run back in all full of vinegar.”
I didn’t ask how they knew his cell number or how he came up with a million in cash after any sort of banking hours. That little hiccup would require some serious thought, but not just yet. I studied the distraught old man. I’d handled kidnappings when I was a real cop. Chances are the girl was already dead when the toads made the first call. I didn’t let myself ponder their fate if Hugo got his hands on them.
“Your wife, Hugo. What’s her name and where is she from?” I wondered if the abduction was connected someway to a past boyfriend or pimp. Topless dancers and personal problems involving no good punks germinated into screwed up situations with amazing regularity.
“Her name is Traci, last name McCartney before she married me. Come from a family up in north Harris County. I got her mom’s number.” He clicked his cell and I copied the number into my own cell. “Terri’s the sweetest thing you’d ever meet. Dunno her mom and them. Christ, Kratzert, you gotta help me.”
Then his cell squawked. “It’s them.”
“Lemme answer it, Hugo.” I snatched it out of his hand.
“Hello,” I said brilliantly.
“Who the hell is this? Put Hugo on the line.”
“Mr. Cohen is still out following your instructions. Y’all are gonna have to talk to me. My name’s Dave, a family friend.”
“Tell that mope the bag only had half a mil. We get the rest, or we send this chick back in pieces.”
I looked over at Hugo. That he’d shorted the kidnappers would have made little difference. The comment made me more certain the girl was already dead.
“Before we talk money, dude, we gotta have proof of life. Put Traci on the line.”
“Can’t dipstick, I’m on a pay phone.” Another functional pay phone? This guy must own the company. He also didn’t talk like the run of the mill mopes who’d attempt to cross Hugo Fat. He sounded like he might have learned to read and write.
“No proof of life, no cash.”
“We already got half a mill, dumbass. It’s gonna take another half to buy back this big-titted little honey. We havin’ plenty of fun with her in the meantime.” He hung up.
Hugo blurted, “Dammit, Kratzert, you just killed her!”
“I don’t think so,” I lied. “Hugo, I need a list of all employees at the club she managed.”
“Ain’t got that info here. I can have the manager send me the stuff you need.”
He’d said two minutes earlier that Traci was the manager. “Just tell him or her to get the info together. I need to talk to those people.”
“What kinda money ya need, Kratzert?”
Since he’d asked, I upped the figure a bit and gave myself a nice pay raise. “Two thousand a day, a thousand up front.”
This time I didn’t flinch when he came out of his pocket with a roll of hundred-dollar bills that had to weigh two pounds. In street speak, hundred-dollar bills were called “Ben Franklins” for the photo of Benjamin Franklin on the bill. He thrust out a fistful of green. Sobbing, he pled, “God, help us find her, Kratzert. You’re my only chance.”
Hugo Fat, the mankiller was just a distraught old man in the midst of taking an ass-kicking as helplessly as the men he’d murdered. If his comment meant he was calling on God for help, he needed to ask someone closer to home, because I was certain the man upstairs had no more use for this corpulent dirtbag than a lot of other folks.
“I’ll do my damnedest, Hugo.” He struggled out of the truck. I started toward downtown along with a quarter of a million other damned fools intent on conquering the gathering morning traffic.
* * *
I stopped on I-10 at Little Eddies Diner and loaded up on grease, eggs, and cholesterol while I waited for Rose, my old group clerk at Homicide. At seven, I walked back out to the GMC and called her.
“Whadda ya’ want, now, Kratzert? Gonna try and use me, lay me, then disappear again? Listen, mister: Captain Jackass in there suspects I gave you that info on the Wilson murder. He says one more screw-up and I’m as gone as you.”
“Wow, good morning to you too, Rosie.” The retort seemed to me strong evidence the good captain was making a move on Rose. If the little weasel ever stumbled across home plate, she’d bust his mainspring in fifteen minutes.
“Rose, I bet you can tell me without touching the computer how many female victim abductions you’ve had in say the last two, three months.”
“Yes, David, in the last two months, Houston PD has had two, both found butchered in local cemeteries. If you’d read the papers you woulda known, dummy. Baby, that’s all you’re gonna get until you drop by my place for a beer.”
I guess I had heard something about the two abductions but didn’t feel the need for discussion with Rose. “Call ya soon, kid.” I hung up, confident that HPD was about to be called out on a third body. I did occasionally read or watch the news but, in view of the slaughterhouse Houston could be, a simple violent, atrocious murder might be trapped at the bottom of page three of the garden section.
Copyright © 2025 by Gary Clifton
