“And that’s what I am? A freelancer?”
“You know what I mean. People at the Bureau don’t know you exist, Mack.”
“Just what is it they’re investigating?” Bolan asked. “You said the record was Nuncio has been clean for years.”
“But not forever, and before you started this crusade there were others who were suspicious of Ivory Wave. Nuncio and Dominic Chiarello left a lot of bodies in their wake as they were coming up. They finally busted Dominic on racketeering charges and sent him away, but the Bureau would still like to pin some murders on both brothers.”
“And there’s no statute of limitations on those,” Bolan said.
“Speaking of murder, there’s another thing,” she added. “There have been a lot of hitters going into Cleveland over the past twenty-four hours. Guys from Chicago, New York, Miami, Vegas and so on. It’s like somebody’s throwing a killers convention.”
“Or like somebody who’s been out of the game for a while is expecting a war.”
“You could see it that way.”
Bolan saw it exactly that way. “So I’m just supposed to let this Ivory Wave thing go, because the FBI is worried a ‘freelancer’ might get in the way of an investigation of somebody who is, according to all appearances, not doing anything illegal.”
“That’s the word I’ve been asked to pass along. I’m passing it.”
“Okay,” Bolan said. “You told me.”
“Should I even ask what you’re going to do?” Price asked.
“Do you really need to?”
She laughed, but seemed to quickly remember that she shouldn’t. “Mack...”
“Will it help if I just don’t tell you what I’m doing?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
“Well, if you don’t ask, I won’t say.”
“Deal,” she said. “Be safe, Mack.”
“Always.” He ended the call and snatched up his zippered ordnance bag. He winced. Maybe not always totally safe, he thought—the night’s activities had taken a toll on him. A person didn’t drive a truck through a building without suffering some aches and pains down the line.
He was fresh out of trucks. But he was already in Cleveland, home of NDC Consolidated Industries. No way he was leaving without paying a visit.
Still, walking into a war was usually not a good idea. Not that he hadn’t done it before, but he liked to know what he was getting into when he did.
He thought for a moment, then dialed another phone number.
Bolan had carried out his own one-man war against the Mafia, and he had made a lot of enemies in the organized crime community. Few accomplishments in life made him more proud.
But his immersion in that world had taught him a lesson that shouldn’t have been surprising, on the face of it, but was just the same. As in every other community of human beings, not everyone was as bad as its worst members.
As an example, there was Sheldon Wylie.
Sheldon Wylie was no more Sicilian than Bolan himself. He had entered that world as a boy, not through an accident of birth but of death—that of his parents, in a house fire that he alone survived. With no living grandparents or other family to take him in, he had gone to an orphanage, then entered the foster-care system. After a couple of wretched experiences, he had been taken in by his next-door neighbor, Rosa D’Errico, the near-saintly wife of a thug and murderer named Betto D’Errico.
Wylie had been adopted by the D’Erricos and raised as one of their own, along with their other three sons. All the boys had gone on to become powerful figures in the organized crime community, including Sheldon Wylie. But Wylie’s heart had never been in it. He had felt he’d had no choice. His adoptive parents hadn’t offered to pay for college, and by the time he reached adulthood, he had no other role models to help him find another path.
When Bolan went up against Vinny D’Errico, the most bloodthirsty of the brothers, he’d found himself outnumbered, outgunned and in trouble. He had encountered Sheldon Wylie, had seen something decent in the man, and Wylie had, for his part, found something about Bolan that he trusted. More than that, he’d found an example. He helped Bolan, Bolan helped him, and together they defeated Vinny D’Errico and dismantled his operation.
Since then, Wylie had kept a hand in the Family business, but only in a very limited fashion. And he had contacted Bolan from time to time, telling him about particularly heinous crimes he’d heard about. Bolan had acted on his intel and always found him trustworthy.
So it was Sheldon Wylie’s number he called from his motel room in Cleveland.
The man answered with a hesitant “Hello?”
“Wylie,” Bolan said. “It’s me.”
“It’s...oh. Hi. What’s up?”
“I need something.”
“I figured you did. You don’t normally call me. But considering the number of times I’ve called you, well...just name it.”
“I need an introduction.”
“Who to?”
“Anybody in Cleveland, pretty much.”
“In Cleveland, in the Family business?”
“Right.”
“I know a couple of people,” Wylie said.
“Ever heard of Nuncio Chiarello?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“How about Dominic Chiarello?”
“Yes. I don’t know him. But I know people who know people who do.”
“Can you make some calls? Without putting yourself in harm’s way?” Bolan asked.
“Of course.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Bolan said. “Here’s the name I’ll be using....”
18
Once the arrangements had been made, Bolan drove to the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. He parked in short-term parking, left the ticket in the SUV and hiked through the lines of cars to the nearby Holiday Inn Express. He checked in under a false identity that wasn’t the Tom Kenner name he had asked that Wylie use or the Matt Cooper alias he had used in Makin. In the privacy of his room he went online and learned the location of the NDC Consolidated Industries building in downtown Cleveland. He retrieved the vehicle from the lot, drove into the city, parked a few blocks away, then walked over, making a circuit of the entire block. It was an area in transition, industrial turning slowly into business, or the other way around. The building hadn’t been there long, Bolan guessed, and he suspected Nuncio had done some serious remodeling, as well.
There was a restaurant on the next block, a diner that served sandwiches and burgers, with windows facing toward the corner. Bolan went in and ordered a meal. He sat at a window table and watched the NDC building for most of an hour.
There wasn’t much to see. The structure was gray stone and anonymous, except for a name plaque by the front door that identified the building’s occupant. It was six stories tall, with a few windows, mostly on the side that faced toward the lake, though if there were lake views, it was only from the upper floor. There was an underground parking garage. Only one car went in while Bolan watched, a black Lincoln. When the steel gate slid back to admit it, Bolan caught a glimpse of a couple of guys in dark clothes on the inside, checking the car’s occupants as it entered.
The building’s front entrance was on Rockwell Avenue. The door was clad in brass, and Bolan figured that was probably steel under that. A couple of people came and went, including a guy who parked right in front, then fetched a stack of about a dozen pizzas from the back of his truck. Every time the door opened, Bolan saw more guys on the inside. No one ever opened the door alone.
What he saw looked like a building under siege, or getting ready for one. What he didn’t see was an easy way inside.
That didn’t bother him too much. He wasn’t used to taking the easy way.
Having seen what he c
ould, he returned to the hotel, parking this time in the long-term lot. He wasn’t expected until morning, so he returned to the hotel. He watched a movie, which was a rare luxury, worked out in the gym, enjoyed a leisurely dinner, then went to sleep early and got in a good nine hours. In the morning he had breakfast, then walked over to the airport.
A few minutes after the first flight arrived from Las Vegas, he went outside and caught a cab. He gave the driver the address he had been given. The cab driver stopped in front of a coffee shop on a business block not too far from downtown.
“Here you go,” the man said. Bolan paid him, giving a tip that was neither stingy nor generous, and got out of the car.
A Closed sign hung in the coffee shop’s door, and the interior lights were off. Bolan stood in front of the place for a few moments, uncertain of his next step. But then he saw movement inside the darkened shop, and the door opened. A huge man filled the doorway, and he caught Bolan’s eye. “Kenner?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Massimo Chiarello. Come on inside.”
Bolan gave Massimo the same once-over the other man gave him. The guy was huge, taller than Bolan, and with sixty or seventy pounds on him. He wore a gold tracksuit and plenty of gold jewelry: chains around his neck, a wristwatch on one arm and a bracelet on the other, rings. His knuckles were recently skinned and there was scar tissue around his eyes and nose. He put out his hand and Bolan shook it, both men squeezing tighter than was necessary but quitting before it got obnoxious.
Inside the coffee shop, another man sat at a table in the back, watching the doorway. An H&K submachine gun sat on the table in front of him. “Massimo’s gonna pat you down,” the other man said.
“Sure.” Bolan had expected as much. He was wearing a dark blue ribbed T-shirt, jeans and a navy blue blazer that hid his shoulder holster. The Beretta 93-R was tucked under his arm, and he’d known coming in that he would have to give it up. He also knew that when he did, he would be unarmed, in the middle of a den of vipers. There was no way around it, though. He opened the blazer, revealing the piece. Massimo lifted it out with two fingers, put it on a nearby table and continued the search.
“No problem getting that here on the plane?” Massimo asked.
“Not if you know the right people.”
“Tell me who they are, so maybe I won’t lose my fucking luggage so often,” Massimo said with a grin.
Massimo gave him a thorough frisking. Bolan had been right not to try to sneak in another gun or even a knife. When they were done, Massimo gave the Beretta to the guy sitting down and nodded toward a doorway at the back of the shop. “Back here.”
Bolan followed him through the doorway, which took them into a narrow hall that led past a small kitchen. Through a second door, they entered a large room with a few tables and a couple dozen chairs. There was a big urn-style coffeemaker on one table, and the room smelled like old coffee and cigarette smoke. More bruisers sat around one of the tables, and an older guy, gray haired but hard-looking, sat by himself. He rose when Bolan came in.
“Artie, this is Kenner,” Massimo stated.
“Thanks for coming,” Artie said.
“Heard you could use some guys,” Bolan said. He assumed the man was Artie D’Amato, but knew better than to ask.
Artie indicated one of the chairs at his table. “Sit.”
Bolan sat.
“You come well recommended,” Artie said. “How come I never heard of you?”
“Because I’m good at what I do,” Bolan told him. “Means I don’t make a lot of noise. I get in, get the job done and get gone.”
“That’s a good quality.”
“I think so.”
He felt Artie’s gaze, appraising him. “He carrying?” he asked Massimo.
“He had a Beretta.”
“Good Italian piece. But you’re not Italian,” Artie said. “Or Sicilian.”
“I didn’t realize there was a national origin qualification.”
“There’s not. It’s just easier sometimes.”
Bolan started to get out of the chair. “If you don’t want me—”
Artie waved him back down. “No, sit, sit. Nobody’s saying that.”
“Okay, then.”
“How do we know you’re as good as you say?” Artie asked.
Bolan looked around the room. Six men in all, every one of them looking dangerous. “Any of them you can do without?”
“That’s it?” Artie asked. “You’d just kill one of these guys on my say-so?”
“That’s what the job is, right?”
Artie chuckled. “That’s part of it. Here’s what’s going on. There’s kind of a conflict brewing, between my man Dominic and his brother. Family history can be tough, right?”
“My parents died when I was a kid,” Bolan said. “So I don’t know.”
“Take my word for it. Anyway, there’s already been some trouble, and we think there’ll be more. Dom has been away for a long time, and I was more or less associated with Nuncio until he came back. But now that he’s back, things have taken a turn for the worse. We’re hiring some guys to help out while we build Dom’s organization back up. Looks like Nuncio might try to interfere. Your job would be to protect Dom and his interests, and to take the fight straight to Nuncio if need be. You okay with that?”
“I can do without the details,” Bolan said. “Point me in the right direction and turn me loose.”
“There could be a lot of waiting around before there’s any action.”
“But you pay either way, right?” Bolan asked.
“We pay either way.” Artie named a number.
“Okay, then.”
“You’re in?”
“Isn’t that what okay means? I’ve never spent time in Cleveland, but I thought you spoke English here.”
Artie laughed again. “Give him his piece back,” he said. “I think Kenner is gonna work out just fine.”
* * *
ARTIE D’AMATO HAD been correct about one thing: there was a lot of waiting around. Bolan didn’t ask a lot of questions or volunteer much, but he listened and watched. He learned that Dominic Chiarello had brought in eleven men, including him, from out of town, to add to the fourteen that Dominic and Artie had between them. And he learned that, although Massimo was Nuncio’s son, he had sided with Dominic. Nobody knew if Nuncio had discovered that yet, but it was expected that when he did, the waiting would end and the war would be on.
When it did come, Bolan hoped the men around him would be ready. They were all hard cases. A couple were ex-military—Bolan recognized it in their posture, the easy way they carried themselves, comfortable in their own skins. One looked like a JSOC veteran, and he had a tattoo that Bolan had seen on some Navy SEALs. He and Bolan didn’t have to speak to share a mutual respect based on the understanding that both were battle-tested warriors. But sitting around drinking coffee and eating pastries wasn’t preparing them for combat. Artie provided everybody with H&K MP5s and boxes of 9 mm Parabellum rounds. Most guys had 32-round magazines, but a handful got 100-round drum magazines. They weren’t allowed to fire them in the space behind the coffee shop, though, and except for a few guys who went out to Dominic’s house, that’s where they stayed. There were other rooms back there, some stocked with mattresses, and there was a bathroom with a shower stall. Bolan thought about the nice hotel room he was paying for, by the airport.
But staying there wouldn’t put him close to Nuncio, and the more he heard, the more he understood that it was Nuncio, not Dominic, who was behind the Ivory Wave epidemic.
So he waited, along with the rest.
19
“Sitting around here is driving me fuckin’ nuts,” Massimo said. “I’ve gotta get some air. You want to come?”
Nic
o shook his head. “I’ll stay put,” he said. “You go if you want. I’ll cover for you.”
“Thanks,” Massimo said. He had wanted Nico to come along. Since he had finished off Dario, he hadn’t had a chance to be alone with Nico anyplace that it was safe to kill the guy.
Nico was loyal to Dominic, but loyalty went only so far. Anybody could be bought for the right price, and Massimo didn’t know what Nico’s price would be. He didn’t want to find out by learning that Nico had told Nuncio that it had been Massimo who had shot up his poker game. Things would come to a head between his father and his uncle soon enough, and then it would all be out in the open.
Until then, he didn’t want to burn any bridges. He needed his options left open, just in case.
Still, he had to do something to burn off nervous energy. Not just anything—he knew what he wanted to do. The only thing he had thought about for more than fifteen seconds at a time these past several days.
He had to kill.
The power he felt when someone’s life passed from them, at his hands, was intoxicating. Addicting. He couldn’t get enough.
He took a walk around the neighborhood. The daylight was fading fast; lights were already on around the block, and a couple of stars had just appeared in the sky. He walked faster, out of the immediate neighborhood and into streets where he wouldn’t be recognized.
The blocks shifted from mostly businesses to largely residential. There were a couple of shops with apartments upstairs over them, and then the shops were gone and the homes separated by patches of grass, driveways and garages. Massimo kept walking, his fists stuffed into his pockets. Finally he saw a young couple pull their Toyota into a driveway ahead of him. Both were white, maybe early thirties, fit and healthy-looking. They got cloth bags containing groceries from the back of the car and carried them into the house. Massimo looked quickly up and down the block, didn’t see anybody watching. He followed the couple inside, through the door they had closed but not locked.
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