Bolan sighed and left much of his snack untouched, went instead to the screened porch and smoked in a corner, arms folded across his chest, waiting.
The first crew wagon eased in, lights off, Sammy the yard boss walking alongside, yamming it up with the driver. The vehicle halted just outside the carport; doors opened, nine men unwound themselves from confinement and staggered around getting their legs under them.
Someone out there declared in a tired voice, “First of all, I got to take a piss.”
Someone else said, “It’s awful quiet around here. Thought you was havin’ a war.”
Sammy was telling them, “We got everything waiting for you right inside. Just go on in. Here, Tommy Dukes will show you the way. It’s downstairs, that’s where we’re getting it together. Hey … chow, some drinks maybe while we put it together, eh?”
Bolan was watching, searching faces as they moved into the light from the house.
He stiffened suddenly, his face going to stone, and he hung the tinted lenses across his face.
The guys were coming on in twos and threes, small-talking and adjusting to a straggly single file as they approached the door.
Sammy had stepped in ahead of them, was ushering them through with chummy remarks. Bolan moved up behind him and quietly commanded, “Cut one out for me, I’ll want some words. This guy just coming in—naw, make it the next one. He looks like a honcho or something.”
“He is,” Sammy agreed, and moved to intercept the guy.
Bolan retired to his corner, arms folded, smoking, watching.
Sammy the yard boss had Leo Turrin by the arm, telling him something and pulling him out of the procession.
A thumb jerked toward Bolan and Leo the Pussy tossed a curious glance that way.
Without changing position or expression, Bolan called over, “The library, Sammy.”
The yard boss gave directions; Leo was staring curiously at the tall figure in the corner as he moved into the hallways and disappeared.
Bolan watched the rest of the lambs through, then went to the library.
Leo was sitting on Angeletti’s desk, legs swinging, lips thoughtfully pursed.
Bolan strode on past him and to the bar, moved around behind it, opened two cokes.
Leo came up and stood there, gazing at him across the bar.
Bolan shoved a coke over and took off the glasses.
Turrin hissed, “Motherfucker!”
Bolan smiled and said, “Glad I was out there.”
Leo was beside himself. “God I thought—I looked, and I—I thought, aw, hell no, couldn’t be—you are the nerviest bastard I ever … the yard boss says you’re carrying an Ace of Spades!”
“That’s right,” Bolan replied, smiling faintly. “What are you doing here, Leo?”
“Ah, hell, I was ordered to fly down here as some sort of consultant to Angeletti. Just got in a little while ago, took a cab from the airport. These crews were waiting out there … I just rode in from the gate with them.”
Bolan repeated, “I’m glad I was out there.”
“Why, what’s the lie?”
“The lie,” Bolan explained, “is that those boys are going downstairs for a briefing. And there it is, they just got it.” A muffled commotion from below was rattling the floor at their feet.
Leo Turrin turned pale and said, “Choppers.”
“Right. And down they went, all in a row.”
Turrin grabbed the coke and belted about half of it. Then he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and muttered, “What a lousy way to make a living.”
“Yeah,” Bolan agreed. “But you’re not doing it for that. The world couldn’t pay enough for—”
“No way,” Turrin growled. “Okay. What’s going on? Is this another Palm Springs massacre you’re engineering here?”
Bolan said, “Something like that.” He went to the window, opened it, looked out.
Sammy the yard boss was trudging back across the lawn, headed for the gate and some fresh blood.
Bolan stepped back to the bar and told his buddy from Pittsfield, “I’ll have to watch them in. Can’t take a chance on another …” The eyes flashed at Turrin. “Wils Brown is supposed to be coming, also.”
“Who is Wils Brown?”
“Another guy who knows my face. Friend from back when, black guy. He was counting nickles and dimes for Arnie Farmer last time I—”
“Oh yeah, the NFL guy.”
“Not any more,” Bolan said. “Not since he threw a block into a Claymore mine … in ’Nam.”
“He’s NFL again,” Turrin advised Bolan. “Augie gave me a message for Angeletti. The football guy says go to hell. He left the mob right after that bust of yours in Europe. He’s scouting the colleges for the pro’s now.”
Bolan sighed. “Damn glad to hear that,” he muttered.
Another car was moving up the drive.
“Stay put right here,” he advised Leo, and went out for the next nose count.
The numbers, the new ones, were coming in now, fast and furious.
The Executioner meant to see that each of them was played to a cadence count.
It was war, he kept reminding himself … in the right here and now.
Chapter 20/ The Message
Regardless of the way the thing eventually worked out, Leo Turrin needed to be covered.
When the last group had been led to the slaughterhouse, Bolan took Sammy and Leo upstairs for a report to the man.
He was seated in a chair at the window, calmly puffing on a cigar.
It was Sammy who told the Capo, “It’s done, Don Stefano.”
“Good work, I’ll remember this,” Angeletti said lazily. “Give your boys some wine. No—give them whiskey but not too much. And tell them there’ll be an extra thousand on their books this month.”
The calm gaze swiveled slowly to dwell fully upon Leo Turrin. The eyes flared with a passing uneasiness as he asked, “Who is this?”
Bolan said, “We’re in luck, Steven. This is Leopold Turrin from our friends in Massachusetts. They’re neutrals. I think Leo should take the message back to New York.”
Angeletti proffered his hand. Leo kissed it. The old man became expansive then, smiling and waving the visitor to a chair.
Bolan remained standing. He flicked his eyes at the yard boss and Sammy went out.
The old man said, “I had other ideas for you, Leo, and I thank you for coming but … well … no need for that now. What message would you like to take to New York for me?”
Turrin looked at the floor.
He stretched his neck, patted his throat, popped his jaw, bugged his eyes, then patted his throat again.
The old man smiled. “Good, good,” he said warmly.
And that was all there was to it.
The Don turned his back on them and resumed his meditative smoking of the cigar.
As Bolan and Turrin returned to the library, Bolan grinned and told his friend, “You’re better at that than I am.”
“Hell, I was raised in it,” Leo said. “I’ve seen the old guys carry on conversations for hours like that. It’s a language all its own.”
Bolan knew it.
He also knew what Leo Turrin had told Don Stefano in that weird sign language of the Mafia. He would, he’d indicated, tell the men in New York that Stefano Angeletti was no old man to be dicking around with. He had killed amici, yes, but in self-defense and with honor, and he would handle further incursions into his sacred territory in the same manner, with all due respect to the brotherhood.
In the minutes that followed, though, Bolan gave a message of a somewhat different tune for Leo Turrin to carry to New York.
“The old man is addled, stumbling about in his second childhood. He hasn’t the faintest notion of what is going on around him, and Frank the Kid is already running things. The Kid has worked out a deal with Don Cafu of Sicily for unlimited support of trained soldiers. He’s planning on pulling out of the coalition and setting up a riv
al shop, and he’s gone plain power-crazy. If somebody doesn’t look out, Frank the Kid is going to have a standing army of mercenaries from Sicily, and he’s going to take over the whole outfit. Or at least, he’s going to try.”
That was the heart of it. As proof of that pudding, Leo would tell of the treacherous slaughter, by Frank’s boys, of the three New York crews who had been dispatched to the aid of Don Stefano. And for no other reason than that they had innocently blundered into Frank’s armed takeover of the Angeletti family.
A story such as that may be considered lacking in credibility by ordinary men, but Bolan knew that the New York coalition would buy it—quickly and anxiously. It was merely a repetition of an old, old story played many times upon the Mafia’s stages—and playing right now, in varying degrees, throughout the New York City area. The chief variation, in this case, was the use of foreign triggermen—and their presence in the country was already an established fact.
Bolan hoped that the reaction in New York would produce a two-fold result: one, to insure the utter destruction of the Angeletti Mafiosi and all their foreign outriders; secondly, to induce the old men in New York to take a new, hard look at this idea of importing foreign guns and at the power which the practice could place in the hands of upstarts like Frank the Kid.
But there was more to Bolan’s battle plan than mere hopes. Contributing factors in Philadelphia, reacting to Bolan’s manipulation of the natural environment there, would add the kicker to make the whole thing jell.
He provided Leo Turrin with an automobile, personally escorted him to the gate, and warmly shook hands with that soldier of the same side.
“Good luck,” he said in parting.
“Jesus Christ, keep it for yourself,” Turrin replied, and went off to open the second front of Bolan’s Philadelphia war.
Chapter 21/ Legs For the Kid
Frank the Kid was a soaken, sullen heap in the center of his floor, sending murderous glances at the house captain who was working him over with a soggy bath towel.
He wore a terrycloth robe, also soaked, and a steaming cup of coffee was balanced on his thigh.
Bolan told the captain, “Okay, guy, you’ve earned a rest. Get below, Sammy’s setting up drinks.”
The guy gave him a grateful and weary smile and got the hell out of there before Bolan could change his mind.
Bolan began rounding up clothing and throwing it at the guy on the floor. “Off your ass,” he growled. “We have work to do.”
Frank’s eyes had dropped to the floor the moment Bolan stepped into the room. Without looking up, he told him, “You’ve got a hell of a nerve.”
“You could use some,” Bolan told him. “Your old man facing the toughest night of his life and you dead drunk on your ass through most of it.”
Frank’s head snapped up and rolled with that verbal punch. The eyes flashed something from the depths which Bolan had never seen there before. He lurched to his feet and went into the bathroom, emerging a moment later with a dry towel. He dried himself and glared at Bolan throughout dressing. Then he told him, “I won’t have to put up with this kind of shit forever. Some day you’ll be kneeling and kissing my hand.”
Bolan said, “In a pig’s ass I will. Come on!”
The Kid reluctantly followed the big bastard from the room. As they headed down the hall, he asked, “Where we going?”
“We are going,” Bolan replied, “to put a different head on your shoulders.”
Frank muttered something beneath his breath and tagged along in silence.
Sammy the yard boss and the house captain were standing just inside the library door, drinks in their hands, talking in low tones.
Each of them started visibly and came to a stiffish attention but Bolan waved his hand at them and said, “Relax, you’ve earned it,” as he and the Kid swept on by.
They went through the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement. A bunch of boys in the ready room were passing a couple of bottles around and laughing it up. They also seemed a bit uncomfortable with the appearance of the bigshots, but one of the guys called out, “Hey, Mr. Cavaretta, have a drink with us.”
Bolan grabbed a bottle from an out-thrust hand and faked a belt from it, then passed it to Frank who stiffly handed it on without even a token show of conviviality.
Bolan growled, and pulled him on into the pistol range.
“What’re we doing in here?” Frank the Kid complained.
Bolan turned on the lights to the overpowering smell of spilt blood. Bodies were tumbled everywhere, piled grotesquely, strewn all along that range where earlier victims had been dragged to make room for fresh arrivals. Bolan had counted twenty-six men down those stairs; twenty-six stiffs all in a pile made a hell of an impressive sight.
He did not know what sort of reaction he had been expecting from Frank Angeletti, but he certainly was not expecting the one he got.
The Kid stepped delicately among the victims, carefully avoiding dirtying his shoes with their blood, but grinning and reaching out now and then to turn a face into view. Evidently he was looking for familiar faces and hugely enjoying each one he found.
He did not bother to even ask why until he’d picked his way through the entire batch. “What the hell happened here?” he asked, all smiles and good humor now.
Bolan was not entirely surprised, at that. Frank the Kid could be a dangerous son of a bitch if he ever got some legs under him.
And Bolan decided then and there that he could never allow that; his battle plan for the night would have to be revised accordingly.
One beat off the numbers.
He told the Kid, “There’s a war on. These boys came down from New York to take you over. We changed their minds.”
The damned guy was still grinning. He said, “Yeah, I’ve sort of been expecting something like that.”
Bolan gave him a close look, said, “Do tell,” and went the hell out of that slaughter pen.
The Judas goat was waiting for them at the door. He glanced at the Kid but directed his worry to the wild card. “What do we do with them guys, Mr. Cavaretta?” he asked.
Bolan replied, “What did Sammy say?”
“Sammy said leave ’em right there ’til you said different.”
“It still goes,” Bolan said, and went on up the stairs.
Frank had latched onto a bottle on the way out. Bolan had to hurry back and snatch him away from it. He hustled the guy up the stairs and told him, “Touch another bottle tonight and I’ll break your face. We have things to do and, dammit, I want you on your legs.”
Even that couldn’t spoil it for the guy. He chuckled and told Bolan, “Hey, I’m no souse. I just got a little carried away there this evening.”
Bolan took him outside and asked him, “Have you been in touch with your Sicily boys since that hit at the Emperor’s?”
“Sure. What d’you take me for? It’s the first thing I did.”
“What’s your present head count?”
“What? Oh. Why?”
“Don’t be cute, dammit. How many?”
“Well … I got twelve stashed in a rooming house over by Connie Mack Stadium. Another fifteen at this other joint. Then there’s … I got forty-two.”
“Out of how many to start with?” Bolan wanted to know.
“None of your damned business.”
“Go to hell!” Bolan snarled, turning angrily away. “I didn’t come down here to play—”
“Hey, hey!” the Kid yelled. “Okay. I started with seventy-five. So I got hurt, bad. You know what those malacarni are costing me? Listen, for every one that dies in my service, I have to send back ten grand over the original fee. You think I’m happy about that? For Christ’s sake, that hit out there today cost me three hundred gees.”
Bolan whistled. This kind of warfare, then, could hit them where it hurts. He commented to the Kid. “Hell, if I was your partner, maybe I’d have tied one on myself.”
The Kid thought that hilarious. He starte
d to laugh, then cut it off quickly and grabbed the back of his head. “Oh, oh,” he said. “Maybe you would but I wouldn’t if I had it to do over again. Hey, Johnny. We got off on a bad foot. Let’s be friends.”
Yeah. A damned dangerous son of a bitch.
Bolan gave him a surprised look and said, “Hell, I never said otherwise, did I?”
“I guess you didn’t at that. What’re we doing out here in the dark?”
Bolan said, “Talking. Private.” And rippling across every key in the repertoire, trying to find a chord for a son of a bitch. “Listen, Frank. You saw that mess in the basement. That’s just the beginning, not the end.”
“You’re on our side I guess, huh?”
Bolan shrugged. “Hell, I have to be neutral, you know that. But I was sent to advise your papa. That means I advise you, too. You know that. And I think it’s time you brought your Sicily boys out of hiding.”
Frank was frowning. “I brought ’em out once, and look what happened. The old man took advantage of me. He said the Emperor’s would be more defensible. And he wanted to test my boys. He set that up, I know he did. He laid a trail a mile wide from here to there.”
“That’s past history,” Bolan told him. “The thing is, what he loses, you lose. Right?”
“I guess that’s right.”
“He’s about to lose a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, dammit—”
“I get you. They picked a good time to lay down on us, didn’t they? With this Bolan laying all over us, too. Now that guy …”
There it was. He saw the look on the Kid’s face and told him, “Forget that guy.”
“You forget ’im. I saw the bastard and I’ll never forget him.”
Something turned him, moved him, compelled him, and Bolan voted to risk the exhibit once again. He said, “Come over here and see ’im again then.”
He was pulling the guy toward the Maserati.
“What? What are you—?”
“Just shut up and look.”
Bolan sprung the lid and opened his prize exhibit for its third premiere showing.
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