“When one commences on a career in organized crime, one’s highest aspiration is to become a made man,” Moffitt said, mockingly. “A made man, so to speak, is one who is accepted, one who enjoys all the rights and privileges of acknowledged master craftsmanship in his chosen trade. Analogous, one might say, to the designation of an individual as a doctor of medicine.”
“You’re saying that he’s in the Mafia?”
“The ‘family,’ we call it,” Moffitt said.
“What did he do to become ‘made’?”
“About six weeks ago, Vito Poltaro, sometimes known—from his initials, you see—as ‘the vice president,’ was found in the trunk of his car in a parking garage downtown, behind the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. Poor Vito had two .22 holes in the back of his head. Five-dollar bills were found in his mouth, his ears, his nostrils, and other body orifices. This signifies greed. I think that Angelo did it. A week after Organized Crime found Vito, they heard that Angelo had been to New York and had come back a made man.”
There was no question in Louise’s mind that what he was telling her was true.
“What about Organized Crime finding the body?” she asked. “I didn’t understand that.”
“There’s a unit, called Organized Crime, because what it does is try to keep tabs on people like Angelo,” he said.
They were looking into each other’s eyes again. Louise averted hers.
“You don’t really want to talk about the mob, do you?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“Then what shall we talk about?”
“What about your wife?” Louise blurted.
He lowered his head, and shrugged and then looked at her.
And then he said, “Oh, shit!”
He was, she saw, looking over her shoulder.
She started to turn around.
“Don’t turn around!” he said, quietly but very firmly.
He slipped off the banquette and started toward the door, moving on the balls of his feet, like a cat.
She wanted desperately to look, and started to turn, and then couldn’t, because he had said not to. And then she could see him, faintly, in the mirrored side surface of a service table. She saw him brush the flap of his blazer aside with his hand, and then she saw that he had a gun.
Then she turned, chilled.
He was holding the gun with the muzzle pointed down, beside his leg. And he was walking to the cash register.
There was a young man at the cash register, skinny, with long blond hair. He was wearing a zipper jacket, and he had a brown paper bag in his hand, extended toward the cashier as if he was handing it to her.
And then Dutch Moffitt was five feet away from him, and the pistol came up.
She could hear him, even over the sounds of the Waikiki Diner.
“Lay the gun on the counter, son,” Dutch said. “I’m a police officer. I don’t want to have to kill you.”
The kid looked at him, his face turned even more pale. He licked his lips, and he seemed to be lowering the paper bag.
And then there were pops, one after the other, five or six of them, sounding like Chinese firecrackers.
“Oh, shit!” Dutch Moffitt said, more sadly than angrily.
The glass front of the cashier’s stand slid with a crash to the floor, and there was an eruption of liquid and falling glass in the rows of liquor bottles in the service bar.