"Quiet as ever, since you left. Uh. Sarge. There's another guy in Texas you should know about."
"Quaso?"
"Okay, so you know already. He's out of the same mould as Lileo. And the old men love him He'll be working hard to preserve that love."
Bolan said, "Yeah. Go to work, Leo."
He hung up, signalled the operator and settled the overtime charges, then direct-dialled a number in Dallas. Barring any unforeseen problems, Jack Grimaldi should have had time to make it back to the Dallas base.
And it was time to sweep.
Right down Beloved Joe Quaso's throat!
8: NOT FOR LUNCH
The room was darkened. The only light was coming from the bed-mounted projector, a beam which splashed out in full colour onto the smooth surface of the opposite wall upon which the two-dimensional likenesses of a man and a woman, both nude, moaned and gasped with the attentions each was receiving from the other.
A small, skinny man sat slumped in a chair near the circular bed, gazing with rapt interest at the activities unfolding upon the wall screen. Now and then he would snicker and shift restlessly in the chair.
A door opened and another man entered the room. He called, "Hey, Boots. Larry Awful wants you."
"Wait a minute," was the lazy response. "C'mere and watch this. This is terrible. I don't believe it."
The newcomer closed the door and spun a chair into position beside the other one. "Which one is this?" he grunted as he dropped into the chair.
"It's about this guy that comes home for lunch. He's hungry, see. But his old lady has got different ideas. She's hungry too, see, but not for lunch. She starts working him over right there in the kitchen. First thing you know she's pouring food all over him and licking it off, all kinds of food, see—even minestrone soup. Hey, lookit that! Ain't that terrible?
"All these guys in these movies are fags, Boots. Hell, he ain't getting a damned thing out of that."
"George, all you gotta do, just lay there. And enjoy it. Whattaya mean, queer? I'd do it."
"You'd let them take pictures of you doing it?" "With a babe like that? You kidding? Just show me the place, man."
George scooted to the edge of his chair and said, "Come on. Larry wants you."
"It's just about another minute. Hey, he assigned me to the damn flick room, didn't he? Wait just a minute. It's the punch line you gotta see. See, this guy has been turned every way but loose by this broad, see. God, he's even turning green in the gills, I guess, and maybe he's going to throw up or something any minute. Finally he shoves her away and comes up on his elbow, see. And he says, 'Look, honey, I married you for better or for worse. But . .
"She says, 'Yeah, okay, but what?'
"And he says—get this, this is the punch—he says, 'But not for lunch.' Ain't that rich?"
George rose half out of his chair then quickly dropped back.
He growled something in a half-strangled voice and a leg shot up as though responding to a knee- hammer reflex then returned to the floor with a thump. There were energetic hand movements, also, as though he was pounding the arms of the chair at a convulsive fit of hilarity.
Boots was cackling over the ribald humour and being fed further by the supposed appreciation of his partner. He leaned across the darkness to share the moment eye to eye—then froze, an explosive cackle wrenching off at about chest level.
George's eyes were bugging almost out of his head and his tongue was hanging out, the body beginning to sag.
And then Boots saw the clenched fists poised above that lolling head, sensed the dark presence standing there behind that chair, knew that silent judgment had found him in a darkened bedroom in Texas.
He croaked, "Holy!" and tried to get some feet beneath him, to thaw frozen limbs, to send survival commands through numbed nerve paths.
But there was not that much time left in the universe for Boots Faringhetti.
Those clenched fists moved swiftly in a circular pattern above his own head, something soft as nylon and strong as steel became imbedded in the soft flesh of his throat, and the final sight on earth recorded by those bulging eyes was a male figure upon a darkened bedroom wall delivering the favoured punch line: "But not for lunch."
The light on the wall flickered, the images vanished. The movie projector whirred into automatic rewind. A black shadow moved across the room, as silent as a sigh.
A door opened, bringing in a shaft of daylight and the head and shoulders of a youngish man in shirtsleeves and side leather. He called into the darkness, "Will you guys for Christ's sake get it off! Boss'll be here any minute. Put that stuff away and don't leave no mess!"
The impressively long barrel of a pistol with an ominous bulb at its muzzle end moved away from the wall and grafted itself to the man's forehead.
A quiet, no-nonsense voice warned, "Don't breathe. Step inside. Shut the door."
Yes. judgment had come to Texas.
But not for lunch.
9: THE AWFUL TRUTH
Quaso stepped from the elevator and into the foyer of the penthouse, his two tag men close on his heels. The front men of the palace guard scrambled to their feet, one of them reaching hastily to squelch the Nashville sound blaring from the transistor radio.
The Chief Enforcer growled, "What's with you boys? Don't you know there's a war on? Damn it, you keep alert!"
"Yessir. We were alert. We just—"
"Shut up! Keep alert!"
"Yessir."
Quaso swept on inside and immediately yelled, "Larry! Get in here!"
The tag men exchanged nervous glances and drifted toward the kitchen.
A lanky middle-aged man with a hawkish face slouched into the room, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from stained lips. "Yeah, boss," he said casually. "How'd the meeting go?"
Quaso yelled, "Larry, goddamn it, you look awful! You clean yourself up!"
It was a customary greeting. The rangy hard man just grinned and replied, "Sure, boss. I got an appointment for a manicure, first thing next week."
Quaso laughed, then sobered abruptly and told his crew boss: "The awful thing, Larry, is those two boys out front. They're on their ass out there. They're going to be on their knees if I ever catch them like that again. You get out there and straighten them out."
There was a "thing" between these two men, a closeness which was masked by the startling contrast of appearances as well as the gruff—sometimes yelling—character of their personal exchanges.
Quaso was gruff with everyone. It was his nature and—with regard to his own boys—his right. But the open insults to Larry Stigni were above and beyond anything suffered by others in the Quaso cadre. And yet there was genuine affection there, on both sides. Stigni—dubbed "Larry Awful" as a result of the abuse—took the whole thing with good nature. But he could say things to Jaunty Joe Quaso that no others in the group dared say.
Rumour had it that Stigni was a blood relative. People in the mob love to gossip, however, especially about one another, and of course there were many other explanations whispered around concerning the "thing" between Quaso and his crew boss—most of it highly implausible, with no basis whatever.
Stigni himself was tough as nails, as cold a killer as had ever come along the Mafia trails. As for Quaso —sure, he was tough too. But he did have this problem with women. Sometimes he beat hell out of his women and kicked them out in the middle of the night. Beautiful women, the cream of the Texas prairies with whom most of the boys would gladly share a cordial bed for an entire night.
Nobody was actually saying that Jaunty Joe had a homosexual thing going with Larry Awful. But the gossipy possibility had served as a subject for quiet jokes—especially because of the physical appearance of Stigni. A better nickname for him would have been "Buzzard"—and it is surprising that no one had ever hung it on him. Mob people are big on descriptive nicknames, particularly the behind-the-back variety.
But the hard men generally liked Stigni. He took up for them, acted as
a buffer for Quaso's harshness, saw to their general needs and comforts.
And he did so in this instance. "I told the boys to don't look like they're standing at attention out there," he explained to the Chief. "Don't worry, they've got eyes and ears open. These are good boys you've got here, Joe."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Quaso admitted, dismissing the entire incident in a characteristically sudden reversal of mood.
Larry Awful moved to the bar and mixed a drink for the boss. Quaso went to a small desk near the windows, produced a small notebook from his breast pocket, and opened it to the entries of the day. "We've got trouble, big trouble," he told his head man.
Stigni brought the drink, commented, "We've had it before, right?"—and craned his head for a look outside. Although the penthouse capped a twenty-story building, the highest structure in the area, the crew boss closed the drapes that were immediately behind Quaso and mildly scolded him, "Stay away from open windows, boss."
Jaunty Joe glanced toward the draped window and chuckled. "This guy is no superman, Larry," he replied. "Anyway, we think he's out snooping around the prairies."
"You never know," Stigni muttered, unconvinced of either statement. "How'd the meeting go?"
"We're screwing it down. Everyone is cooperating. Our man in Austin is beating the drums for a mobilization of all the reserve cops. There'll be a badge behind every rock in the state before nightfall."
Larry Awful made an uncomfortable face and lit a fresh cigarette to cover the emotion. Such things had never been done in the "old mob." You could juice a cop, sure, that was part of the game. But you never hid behind one. You couldn't really trust them that much.
Quaso was saying, "And we're trying to backtrack the smart ass. I finally got the story out of Woofer and a pretty fair description of the plane he used. Our guy at the airport is trying to run it down. Checking all the flight plans and air traffic control razzmatazz. Meanwhile we want to stay plenty hard right here. Our smartass might get some big ideas and decide to storm the citadel. The general feeling is that he won't. We think he's just feinting, shadowboxing, trying to provoke a response that will give us away. We're not playing that game, I mean the Texas Plan isn't. I sent the alert to St. Loo. Lileo's bunch will be swarming all over, might be here already."
"That's what bothers me," Stigni quietly commented.
"Huh?"
"Well if we have a cop behind every rock and Lileo swarming, that sounds like plenty of trouble right there. Besides, I don't trust Lileo."
Quaso laughed and took a stiff pull at his drink. "You're right, he's a smartass, himself. As for the cops, that's Lileo's problem. Let him worry about it, eh?"
"We're not going after. Bolan ourselves? He hit our territory, boss."
"Our job is to stay hard and run the shop. That's our job, Larry. That's your job. Let the battlefield specialists handle the open warfare."
Larry Awful was not liking that decision, not even a little bit, but only his face was revealing the secret. Quaso caught the look, though, and jeered at it. "Hey, you want to be a big hero, Larry? You want to take a whack at big bad Bolan's head? Christ, he could smell you a hundred yards away. You haven't taken a goddamn bath since—"
That particular insult was aborted by a muffled explosion that vibrated the desk and sent Quaso's drink sloshing against the sides of the glass. Several paintings on the far wall tumbled to the floor and a chandelier started swaying.
Quaso's eyes popped wide as his head jerked toward the sound. He yelled, "What the hell?"
"Your cunt castle!" Stigni yelped, and took off running toward the master bedroom.
The lanky crew boss was halfway across the room and calling for reinforcements before the stunned Quaso could get his legs under him. Stigni hit the bedroom door at full gallop and bounced off.
The two tag men had come running in from the kitchen.
By the time Quaso was up and moving, the other three were assaulting the door in a concerted attack.
It gave way just as Quaso reached the scene, Stigni and the tag men lunging through the opening and brandishing hardware.
From that moment on, it seemed to Quaso as though he were watching a slow-motion scene on television, although actually the entire stunning thing spanned no more than a few seconds.
In the foreground were his three boys—wheeling in half-frozen movements (it seemed )—off balance, half falling—trying to get set to handle that sense-boggling scene opening to them.
In the near background were the three housemen, two of them sprawled in chairs, eyes bugging in death, garrotted—the third lying face down in a pool of fast-spilt blood.
Worst of all was back there at the windows, the big guy in the black combat rig, a big ugly silencer- tipped pistol at full extension and chugging death straight at Jaunty Joe Quaso.
The frames of action seemed frozen in that immovable moment.
Larry Awful, spinning on around in a continuation of the same motion that had catapulted him into that room and which was now sling-shotting him hack outside—a terrible, bubbling hole flinging blood I from the base of his buzzard nose—and Larry had never looked so awful.
The other two boys—going down in a tumble together, dying together as they had lived together, in lockstep, their weapons firing in a frantic but useless final discharge into the floor.
And then the moment moved on. The door swung back to close with a gentle click.
Quaso had not even gone for his gun.
He did so now, flinging himself to the floor and rolling out of that death alignment as slugs began punching through the closed door and sizzling the air above his head. He grabbed Stigni's foot and dragged him clear, also.
One of the boys from the foyer ran in, bug-eyed and yelling, "Boss! Boss!"
Quaso screamed, "Hit the alarm! Bolan's in there! Seal it off, close this goddamn building up tight!"
The front man did a fast pivot and raced back out.
Quaso steadied his revolver on the arm of an overturned chair and aligned the sights with the bedroom door.
He muttered to his dear, dead friend, his punching bag since childhood, "Don't know how the smartass got in there, Larry. But he's sure as hell not walking out."
And then Quaso remembered the explosion. The safe! The bastard had blown his safe!
Oh, Christ!
Now, for damned sure, Quaso could not allow the smartass to leave that room alive.
"Alert!" he screamed to the deserted penthouse. "Full alert! Everybody!"
For the first time in his life, Joe Quaso was totally alone. And it was awful.
10: DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
Bolan had dispatched the third houseman during that early, "silent phase" inside the enemy head shed. He had locked the door and opened the drapes at the wraparound windows to let some light into the problem, then began his search for hot intelligence— along the way spreading acid upon tape recordings, film cartridges, anything and everything that would offer no direct assistance to his Texas hit. He would have preferred to torch the joint, but a fire was utterly out of the question.
Perhaps as many as a hundred families lived in the building; he could not gamble that the flames would not race out of control and punish the innocent along with the guilty.
As things turned out, it was a short search. The wall safe had been concealed with very little imagination. It was set into a panel in the walk-in closet, behind an array of hand-tailored suits.
It was during moments like this that Bolan remembered and thanked his deceased fellow deathsquadroneer, Boom-Boom Hoffower. The munitions expert had shown the Executioner some interesting tricks with simple explosives, including the technique for opening things such as locked safes without destroying the contents in the process.
Bolan carefully worked in a thin strip of plastics, frilly feeding the goop with fingertips into critical cracks and grooves. Then he set the detonator, stepped out and shut the closet door and stood clear.
There would be one he
ll of a hue and cry in response to that blast. The numbers would be very close. Too close, really, but he had not felt that he had a choice in the matter. All the numbers were going to be falling close during this campaign.
It was a good blow, not too much and not too little, with the right pressure in the proper places. The safe held ten packets of $100-bills—a tidy sum, probably clout money—also a stack of small notebooks and a four-by-six leather-bound ledger. The money itself was nothing but cream to the job—which was intelligence, not robbery. He scooped the entire contents into his chest pouch, wasting no time on inspection and evaluation of the yield.
Bolan was crossing to the windows when the reaction came—the assault upon the bedroom door. The closure jamb splintered, the door shuddered inward.
Pendleton, Don - Executioner 018 - Texas Storm. Page 6