Sure, lucky punch, everyone said so, crumbum from Hicksville. But, god, what a whanging right hand. Eddie felt sore and as though he breathed glass for three weeks afterwards.
The second Main he went against some long-limbed spade with a fancy monicker like Johno Bantuli, some such shit, a cause type. Eddie fancied him around a half-dozen rounds, flicking left, rocking the spade's head doubling, sometimes tripling combinations, so far ahead on points the judges got restless, yawning. Christ, Eddie The Champ thought, where's it been all my life, this kind of easy dough? Main event. He snapped three fast lefts into the spade's blunt nose, crossed with a right, dropped his shoulder and shoveled two fast left hooks, just a fraction low, into the black hide. Then Johno came up with that dynamite right cross and he went blind.
One punch.
Eddie The Champ almost died right in the ring. His jaw was broken in five places and unhinged below his left ear. He had a severe concussion where the back of his head smashed into the canvas. He lay in hospital nine weeks, soup through a glass straw, then finely strained baby food. He had a lot of time to think. The main thing he thought was fuck fighting. He wanted no more dumbutt hicks from Omaha, or funny-named blacks from Kenya. He wanted good, uncomplicated, steady work requiring no great physical effort and a good payday, preferably tax free.
In those days just after the Korean War, the early to late fifties, all fighting on the East Coast was totally "mobbed up." Sometimes a guy won, other times he took a fall, and occasionally the bout was completely square. So long as the bout went at least five rounds, so the TV guys got in all their commercials and ad-agency people kept happy, what the hell?
Okay, sure, they sent the mob guy to the joint, finally. He rigged too many fights, kept the ad-agency boys too happy.
Eddie The Champ could care less. He was out of it then, back home upriver, taking on a little weight, moving from a natural welter to light-heavy, then heavy. He could put a hell of a shot behind 200 pounds holding a short length of lead pipe convincing some factory dumbutt the vigorish had to be paid, never mind the principal.
Eddie never remembered quite how or why.
He got a little too eager, had a trifle more enthusiasm than necessary, or had perhaps just gamed too much weight. He leaned into the muscle too hard, and "the arm" as the Mafia was called in his part of New York State, was out one customer and had a killer on its hands.
The commission met. Eddie expected death, unless the contingency plan he worked out did work out. And then he found himself alive, forgiven, pockets stuffed full of cash, passport, documentation, and a singular assignment.
Go "home."
Recruit an army.
Train them. Make soldiers of them.
Then turn them over to Don Cafu. He knows the rest.
And one hell of a job it was, too! Beautiful. He had guys beating down his door to join up. He had booze, babes, a bunk five feet wide, and never enjoyed any of them! He found himself not only recruiter, screening officer, training officer, and troop commander, but Don Cafu's house captain. Only by luck did he escape the yardboss job. Fortunately, Don Cafu had a long-time totally trusted retainer who watched the estate grounds, with a crew of locals and several studs who'd finally lost the last-ditch battle with the U. S. Immigration Service and gotten shipped "home."
During his easy life in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, Eddie The Champ had lost forty-three pounds. None of his expensive New York tailoring fit. He felt strong as a bull and horny as a billygoat. When he got time to lie awake and think about women, it lasted perhaps three minutes after he awoke at dawn, until Don Cafu pressed the buzzer that rasped like an angry wasp in Eddie The Champ Campanaro's ear.
Eddie bounded from his old-fashioned bed with the five-foot-high hand-carved headboard and mashed the button on the intercom, this particular dawn in late spring. "Yeah, Chief, I'm awake."
"Get down here, now!"
"Okay, Chief, soon as I finish washing my face, and I gotta shave."
The old man spoke English quite well. He was another of the deportees, years past; but when anger and passion overtook him, he fell back into his mother tongue, and Campanaro could hardly follow the cursing, shouting, absolute commands, so much slang, some of it omerta stuff, the forbidden language. Except to those inside.
Campanaro got off the bed and lit a cigarette, coughed, poured a huge handpainted crockery basin full of tepid water, dropped a thin washcloth into the water, then hooked an equally fancy large jar from under his bed.
A ton of money the old bastard must have, Campanaro thought, a ton— weigh it! Renting soldiers out to Frankie Angeletti for a thousand clams a day! Got to be big stakes to afford that kind of overhead.
Sicily. Home. Rich. Respected. Feared. And you want to take a leak, what do you do? Pull a jar out from under the goddam bed. Or walk a hundred yards out back. Christ. Like friggin' Korea!
Campanaro did his business, then turned to the basin beside the large pitcher and washed quickly, smeared his face with soap and ran his double-edged razor over his light beard. Swarthy or not, he was lucky in that respect. He had no blue jaw with grainy stickers sprouting an hour after shaving.
He dressed hurriedly in native clothing, all he had that now fit him. He tied his trousers up with a thin cord, slipped his feet into rope-soled sandals and headed for the door as the intercom rasped again, like an angry wasp.
8
Agrigento anguish
Don Cafu stopped pacing and stared at Eddie The Champ. "Well, well, you got nothing to say? You gonna stare till the words drop off the paper?"
Eddie shrugged, flapping the long eight-page radiogram. The whole thing was in an open code of which Eddie understood perhaps a tenth. Christ, it was like Navajo, for which there was no alphabet, no written language. That's why the Marines used Navajos for radio telephone operators during the Pacific war and in Korea. Even when the gooks intercepted a transmission, loud and clear, five by five, they got nothing but gibberish. How can you write down something that don't exist on paper, but is only noise?
The old greaseballs had the same kind of thing, but they had over the years worked out a phonetic phraseology, which they kept to themselves. In all the world, Eddie figured, maybe fifty guys knew enough of the "language" to read the radiogram.
"Hah! Some goddam house captain I got!" Don Cafu snarled. "What if I'm not here when this came in, hah? What about that?"
"Chief, I can't help not knowing," Eddie said. "You old guys — "
"Now you calling me a greaseball, hah? My own house capo? You go ahead, tough guy. Try it. Then you be a grease spot! I throw gasoline on you, a match, phoof! And like you never existed. Gone, a puff of stinking smoke."
"Okay, Chief, okay. That still don't tell me anything except what we already know. I don't dig." Eddie waved the radiogram. "You want me to know, you got to tell me. It's not doing any good yelling at me because I don't read your secret codes."
Don Cafu whirled on Eddie, hooded brown, reptilian eyes flashing with anger, and then he stopped, sighed, let his shoulders sag. He shuffled across the tiled floor and patted Eddie on the arm. "You're right, Eddie. You're a good boy and you're right. My anger I'm taking out on you. Here, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and maybe some brandy. There's a chill in the air this morning."
Eddie felt no chill. He felt sweat under his chin and along his flanks. He sat down at the round old-fashioned hand-carved table, facing the don. He spread the radiogram on the white cloth. Don Cafu poured coffee for them both, slurped noisily, opened a bottle of grappa, refilled the cup and stirred with his finger. Eddie thought, the table manners of these old greaseballs would gag a buzzard.
Don Cafu slurped again, put his cup down and jerked his chin at the radiogram. "What it says is no more seventy-five thousand bucks a day rental for our soldiers, Eddie."
"What! Some son of a bitch's crossing us! That goddam Frankie!"
The don quieted Eddie with a gesture. "Don't curse the dead. It's bad luck."
>
"Dead? Wha — "
Don Cafu gestured again, and Eddie fell silent. "You know of this Mack Bolan, this Executioner he calls himself?"
"You ain't telling me one guy took out seventy-five of our best, Chief." Eddie shook his head. "Excuse me, boss, with all respect, but that's bullshit. No way! I personally trained those guys. Physical conditioning, weapons, stealth, fire and maneuver." Eddie flicked the radiogram, shaking his head. "If that's what this says, somebody's putting a shuck on you, Chief, trying to cross you, work our soldiers without paying."
"You a good boy, Eddie. I like you. But you got a mouth on you gonna get you killed one day, you don't learn." Don Cafu smiled; he looked like a death mask. "This came from The Man. You understand me, Eddie, capo di tutti capi?"
"Boss of bosses."
"That's right, Eddie. So no more about a shuck, hah? No more about stealing our soldiers or bullshit, hah?"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry. So what happened, and please, Chief, don't tell me this Bolan cat wiped out seventy-five of our best."
"Kill them all? No. I think he killed only about thirty, personally, you understand? But how you like that, hah? One man, thirty deads! The rest, they kill each other or now in jail."
"And Frankie, our payday?"
"This you listen close, Eddie. The commission sent a wild card hit-man to Philly, an expert, the best. And you know what happens? I tell you, listen close. This bastard Bolan takes the hit man — " Don Cafu snapped his fingers like a gunshot " — and sells him to Frankie as himself. You understand?"
"Jesus Christ in all His truth!"
"Hah? That's right. You know what else he does, Eddie. He collects the bounty on himself, this bastard Bolan. One hundred and ten of the Large. That was our money, Eddie."
"You mean for the soldiers we sent, all the expense we had training them, getting them smuggled in ... we get nothing?"
"You a smart boy, Eddie. You catch on fast."
"That stupid Frankie, I — "
"No, not the dead, don't curse the dead boy, bad luck."
"Bolan got him, too."
"No, the commission took care of Frankie."
"What! Goddam, Chief, you got me going in circles."
"A good lesson you should learn. Don't panic! That's what happened in Philly, and the commissione, too, I'm sorry to say. Frankie took the head in to collect the bounty. The commission thought he was trying to pull a fast one, rolling out the hit-man's head, claiming it was Bolan. So no more Frankie Angeletti, no more Don Stefano Angeletti, no more Outfit in Philly, because they panicked."
"And Bolan? Just walked out?" Eddie buried his face in his hands, anguish like physical pain as he closed his eyes and thought of all the months of grinding hard work he'd put into training his soldiers, the arrangements, expenses, and now all gone, a fart in a whirlwind. Key-rist!
Eddie became aware of Don Cafu's voice. He raised his face and looked at the old man. The don poured again. "Here, more coffee, and now, hah? You want a slug of brandy?"
"Hell, yes!"
"Okay, help yourself," and Eddie did as the don spoke. "No, Bolan did not just walk out. Number one, he was shot to pieces, Naturally, we hoped he'd die. But one of our amicu di l'amici, you know, friend of friends, a transit cop, he spotted the hit-man's Maserati coming into The City. He made a call. The New York people knew Bolan had a doctor he sometimes used and they got to the doctor before Bolan did, made him an offer he couldn't refuse, hah?" Don Cafu grinned like a shark. He slurped more brandied coffee, then banged down his cup in anger. "But the bastard got away, even after the doc gave him a hit that should have knocked nine mules flat."
Don Cafu raised a hand and pointed at Eddie The Champ. "You understand this, hah? This is a tough bastard we're dealing with. Not movie tough, not some old gangster picture, Edward G. Robinson or Cagney growling from the side of his mouth, hah? Tough, this guy. Tough, Eddie, you hear."
"Yeah, okay, I hear, Chief," Eddie said, puzzled. "So he's a real badass. What does it mean to us?"
"It means, you dumb shit, I've been telling you all this for a reason! You think I talk for my health, hah? For exercise? He's coming here. Now you understand, hah? Clear now? You got it? You goddam dumbhead!" In fury, the old don slammed his fist down on the table so hard the cup jumped from its saucer, fell sideways, rolled off and shattered on the tile floor. "here!"
"Shit, he ain't got a chance," Eddie said. And to his astonishment, Don Cafu began laughing. But it was a bitter, anguished, coarsely grinding laugh, totally devoid of humor.
"Eddie, you a good boy. I like, I always liked you. But you keep thinking like that, and I don't like you no more so much, hah? No use liking a dead man."
Stupefied, Eddie The Champ stared at his don.
Don Cafu rose to his feet and lumbered heavily on arthritic feet to a vast sideboard, found a glass, blew dust from it, returned to his chair and poured a generous slug of grappa. He took a swallow, sighed and licked his lips.
"Yeah, Eddie, keep thinking this Bolan bastard ain't got a chance coming here!" The don slammed his fist down again. "And I need a new house captain."
Eddie raised his hands, "But, Christ, boss. How? I mean, this guy's wanted everywhere. How the hell's he going to cross the goddam ocean, get through immigration and customs?"
"Goddam, you Eddie," the don raged, "get it through your head. This guy's got balls like a water buffalo, and he's smart. What you think, hah? He walks into La Guardia wearing a ton of heat and tries to catch TWA to Rome?"
The don's voice suddenly quieted, became lethal in its toneless flat hissing. "This guy you say ain't got a chance has already blown up more than a thousand soldiers. He went through Boston like a tank over a baby carriage, exposed a guy it took twelve years to plant in society and top-echelon government. He took over the Angeletti house in Philly. He slept there. After he escaped from the doctor, he destroyed two more soldiers who had the car staked out, then he dropped off the face of the earth for nine days, vanished. Then turns up at Teterboro Airport and charters a private jet. Another of our friends gets word to us, but not in time, hah? So we can send guns after him, just one of our girls planted at the airport, a hustler but also a spotter for unguarded freight. She's at the bottom of the goddam ocean, sharkbait. The jet lands at the Azores, gets a plate riveted over the open window, refuels, and for all I know the son of a bitch is circling overhead this minute ready to make a napalm run on my house!"
Don Cafu smashed his fist down on the table. "You still think so, hah? He ain't got a chance, this Bolan bastard? Answer me, you idiot!"
"Okay, boss, okay," Eddie The Champ said, bottom falling from his guts.
"Okay, okay, what, hah?" The don grabbed his glass and drained the last big gulp of grappa. "Get your dumb ass outside and get to work!"
9
Neapolitan nightmare
Mack Bolan knew that Mafia, both the word and the original organization bearing the name, originated in Sicily. The so-called Castellammarese War ripped open the Italian underworld in the early 1930s, littering the streets of various cities in the U.S. with more than sixty deads, and an unknown number of others simply vanished.
The outcome of this mutually destructive warfare resulted in settling once and for all the question of Sicilian versus mainland Italian — particularly Neapolitan — dominance of the Italian-American underworld.
The emergence of two men as Number One and Number Two, Charley Lucky Luciano, a Sicilian, and Vito Genovese from Naples, allied and working together and ruling with steel-fisted discipline, ordered the traditional factions to stop feuding and fighting for dominance, and all come together into "this thing of ours": the Cosa Nostra.
For Mack Bolan, as for most people not members of a Family, the terms were, and are, interchangeable. Mafia ... Cosa Nostra.
And The Executioner did not deal in semantics, in vague shadings of word definitions. He had set out on another mission against the Mafia, this time to turn the Mafia's soldier training school into
hell ground, and he was well on his way.
After Bolan shot the window out and the girl went, Captain Teaf shoved the nose down and put the chartered jet on the deck, calling a mayday. He wanted to turn back, but Bolan/Borzi refused.
"Christ, man," Teaf shouted, "we won't have ten minutes reserve fuel over the Azores. We miss one approach or have to hold, and we ditch, right into the drink!"
"Then you'd better not foul things up, huh? What do you think the bonus was for? You've got the uniform and the shoulder boards and big gold-plated wings, so let's see if you're a pilot!"
Teaf remembered that TWA had not thought so, and had dismissed him before his probationary period ended; that's how he ended up scrambling for nickles and dimes around dead-end country airports, until he'd smuggled in some "items" and got a good payday which allowed him to finance himself and get his airline transport rating. Armed with the Big Ticket, he found better jobs easier to get, and now he held the best he'd ever have. If he lived.
Like most executive and airline pilots, Teaf privately admitted he was overpaid, most of the time. But things had a way of catching up, so about twice a year on the average a professional pilot found himself in a position where he would have been willing to trade places with almost any other man in the world. Even a convict serving tune could reasonably look forward to eventual freedom, and life.
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