“You keep saying that!”
“He will.”
A suave man of about forty appeared through the doorway. “They told me I’d find you out here,” he said jovially.
Pat disliked the man instantly. He despised that soft pink pampered look some of these guys had. “You found us,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Just, uh, wanted to make sure you’re comfortable and all.”
“And all what?”
The guy’s face fell. He said, “It’s part of the VIP package, Mr. Talifero. I always look in on honored guests.”
“All right, you looked. Thanks. Goodbye.”
“I, uh.…” The man took a step toward the doorway, then turned back and blurted, “Do you know the new casino boss?”
“What new casino boss?”
“Well … I was wondering … he’s setting up the house.”
“He who?”
“I believe the name is Vinton, a Mr. Vinton. It’s the talk of the Strip, I wondered if you’d heard. He actually closed the casino.”
“Closed it?”
“Yes, until midnight. They’re starting the new books at midnight. Until then, the drinks are on the house. And continuous entertainment. I just wondered if you knew.”
“Stop wondering, Mr. Crosser,” Mike said. “Goodnight, Mr. Crosser.”
The guy murmured, “Goodnight,” and took his leave.
The brothers stared at each other for a moment, then Mike said, “Well, that was pretty quick. I passed the word east just a few hours ago.”
“They can move fast when they want to,” Pat replied, shrugging. “You remember when Bugsy got his.”
“Sure, but that was set up,” Mike said. “They had time to run someone in beforehand. But this time.…”
“Maybe we should go talk to this new blood,” Pat said. “He should check with us before he goes boarding up the place.”
“Why? That’s not our action.”
“At a time like this, everything is our action.”
“May as well get a free drink anyway, eh?” the bodyguard said.
Mike frowned at that and declared, “Hell, I don’t want our boys sopping that stuff up.” He stood up, stretched, and rubbed his belly. “I never heard of this Vinton. Did you?”
“Not by that name, no. Let’s go talk to him.”
“Okay. But you’ll find he’s just another green felt jerk.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Pat said. He flipped his cigar over the railing, showed his brother a smile, and said, “Let’s go see.”
15: ALL BETS IN
Bolan told the controller, “Don’t give me that noise! You pull it outta the goddam vault and you count it!”
“Mr. Vinton,” the flustered man protested, “we have certified—”
“You shove your certifieds up your own ass, not mine!” Bolan roared. “A new deal gets a new deck, don’t it?”
“The house stakes, sir, are—”
Bolan grabbed the guy by the throat and shook him until his eyes were rolling. Then he threw him back against the wall. “You’re making me wonder, controller,” he said, in a voice quivering with pretended rage. “Just what th’ hell’re you trying to cover up?”
“We’ll count it, sir,” the terrified man agreed.
“I wanta see it with my own eyes, all 375-thou’ of it. I wanta see it sitting there on the counting tables, and it better be there in ten minutes when I get down there! You hear me?”
The guy heard him.
Bolan growled, “Now get outta here!”
The mob controller threw a last desperate look at the sleeping figure of Joe Stanno and hurried out. Bolan followed him to the door and called, “Max!”
The tagman jerked around with a grin. “Yes boss?”
“What time you got?”
“Uh … eight thirty, boss.”
“Right. At eight forty you remind me what time it is.”
“Sure boss.”
“I’m waking the sleeping beauty up now. You see he gets down the stairs okay.”
The smile broadened. “Sure boss.”
Bolan closed the door, went over to the mirror and checked his appearance, put the hat on and rolled the brim down—then he went to the couch, grabbed one of Joe Stanno’s big feet and he dragged the monster man onto the floor.
The FBI district chief leaned into the car and told Brognola, “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where’ve you been?”
“Prospecting,” the Justice official replied tiredly. “Get in, Bill.”
“No, I’m taking a force to the Gold Duster. Something funny is going on down there.”
“All over this town,” Brognola said, sighing, “something funny is going on.”
“Check up,” Miller said, grinning. “The night is young. I thought you might want to check out the Duster with us.”
“What is it?”
“Well, you’ve heard the talk, it’s all over the Strip.”
“Apostinni? Sure, I’ve heard. So what’s new in funnyland?”
“One of my insiders at the Duster reports that the new boss has hit the scene. He’s closed the casino until midnight and he’s setting up drinks all around.”
“That is funny,” Brognola commented.
“The funniest part is yet to be told. The guy’s name is supposed to be Vinton. None of the mob watchers in these parts ever heard of the guy. My man says he looks more like an eastern torpedo than a syndicate jerk—you know, the silk suit cadre.”
Brognola nodded. “The town’s full of them.”
“Well.…”
“It fits,” Brognola said, sighing. “The hit on Vito was obviously a thing of the moment. So the brothers have obligingly put in a substitute until the next jerk shows up.”
“Well, there’s one more thing,” Miller said. “I know it sounds pretty far out but … well, my man says.…”
“Yeah?”
“Hal, you’re the Bolan expert. Would the guy try a stunt like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like masquerading as a guy called Vinton.”
Brognola stared silently at the other man for a long moment, then he replied, “He sure would.”
“To what possible damned end?”
Brognola shrugged. “Let’s go ask him.”
“I mean, closing the joint and setting up drinks half the night … that sounds pretty flamboyant, even for Bolan.”
“He’s a shrewd warrior,” Brognola said. “Everything he does is to the numbers. How much of a force are you taking?”
“I’ve gathered up ten men.”
“You’d better gather up a lot more. What were you going to tell me? Something about your man at the Duster.”
“He says it’s hard to get a good look at the guy. Vinton. He keeps moving, waves his arms around a lot, always seems to find a shadow for his face. Wearing lenses and bandages also. But he’s the right size, the right build, and roughly the right age.”
“Uh, I’ll get right down there,” Brognola said. “You find my sidekick and tell him to get those marshals down there, all of them, and tell them to warm up their sharpshooter fingers. Get the locals to put a cordon around the place, very quietly, I mean like two men per square foot. Set up roadblocks. Send those horseback volunteers down there, too, semi-circle them on the desert side.”
“It’s going to make us look awful damn silly if—”
“Don’t worry about that, we’d look even sillier with Bolan treating the town right beneath our noses. Anyway, my hackles are rising and I believe they’re getting the Bolan scent.”
“The guy has pulled these wild stunts before, hasn’t he?”
“You bet your badge he has. Remind me to tell you about Palm Springs some day.”
“Be careful, Hal.”
“Yeah.” Brognola threw the car into gear and screeched out of the parking lot with rubber burning.
Yeah. What a pity. What a hell of a rotten waste of a truly superior human being. Be car
eful. Those were not the right words, were they. Hell no. Be hard. Be hard, Hal, do your duty, and go gun down a very superior human being.
He would, of course. Because he had to. He and Bolan were two of a kind.
They simply did what they had to do.
Joseph Earl Stanno had not fallen off a bed since he was six years old. Of course, it had been a hell of a bad day all the way around. One thing after another—the hit on the hill, the heist, eating shit from the Taliferis’ plates, trying to run bastard Bolan to ground, the embarrassment at the Duster when the bastard rousted Vito—right under Joe’s nose, then that Godawful hit at McCarran, the ordeal with Vito screaming and pleading for his life all during that long, hot desert ride … yeah, and it had been a rotten day all the way along, and without any sleep even. For thirty-six hours no damn sleep. No wonder he fell off the damn bed, he was probably having nightmares in his sleep as bad as they had been all day with his eyes wide open.
All this passed through his mind as he was struggling to get his swollen eyes opened and he was thinking that, hell, he might never see again. Then he saw the pair of legs walking away from him, and he remembered where he was, and something swam up from his subconscious to make him realize that he hadn’t fallen off—some bastard had drug him off.
Stanno rolled to his side and explored his face with probing fingers. The nose burned and it was throbbing some. He pulled his fingers away wet and warm and he knew that he was bleeding a little from his nose. What bastard had drug him off onto his nose?
He groaned and sat up, swaying drunkenly and wondering if he really was awake, after all. The guy perched there on the edge of the desk didn’t look like anybody he knew personal, except for the expensive silk threads that a hundred guys he knew wore all the time.
Instinctively Joe’s hand moved beneath his coat and came out empty. What bastard had relieved him of his hardware?
The guy at the desk was looking away from him, toward the wall, just sitting there and swinging his foot and staring off no where.
“Who the hell’re you?” Stanno said in a raspy voice. “What the hell is coming off?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Stanno, I shouldn’t be talking to you,” the guy said.
What the hell did he mean by that, why couldn’t he talk to him? Shit, it was too hard to think about. His goddam head was throbbing and he had that sick feeling in his gut, that hungry grabby feeling of not eating anything all night and all day.
Stanno struggled back to the couch. He pulled himself up and sat on the edge with his head in his hands.
The guy wasn’t saying nothing.
Stanno looked up and asked him, “Where’s that guy?”
He just swung his foot and didn’t say nothing.
“Didn’t you hear me, you creep?” Joe the Monster yelled. “Where’s that guy, that smart-ass? Did he turkey out?”
Very quietly, the guy told him, “That’s old history, Mr. Stanno. Look, you understand—nothing personal, I mean—but I can’t afford to get heard talking to you.”
“What the hell d’you mean? What not talk to me? What old history?” The bewildered man lurched to his feet. “Where’s my rod?” he growled.
“Pardon me, but do you always wake up this hard?” the guy asked him. He slid off the desk and walked past, then returned and said, “You look like hell, Mr. Stanno.”
And then the bastard threw a glass of cold water in Joe Stanno’s face. It jerked him upright, though, and the red film in front of his eyes started going away, and his mind slipped into focus. And he knew with a terrible swiftness what the guy had been talking about.
“You don’t wanta talk to me?” he asked, unable to accept the finality of that message.
“No sir, I’m sorry.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“You know, Mr. Stanno,” the guy told him.
Yeah, Stanno knew, how well he knew. How many times had he gone through this very same routine? How many times, and never ever believing that it would some day be coming back at him.
But … why? For God’s sake, why? Shut up, Stanno, for God’s bleating sake, shut up. You don’t go out begging and screaming like Vito, hell no.
“They want to see you, Mr. Stanno,” the silksuit said.
“Oh is that right? And where are they?”
“Well you should know.”
“Don’t get assy with me, boy.”
“No sir, I wouldn’t.”
The kid was real polite. At least it was going to be dignified.
“I, uh, Christ I don’t remember what’s been going on, I guess. I mean I’m not woke up good yet. I was up thirty-six hours.”
“Yes sir.”
The guy came over and opened Joe’s coat and, dropped a rod into the leather. Quietly, almost sorrowfully, he said, “I wouldn’t send nobody out there naked, Mr. Stanno. Not my worst enemy.”
“Is that fuckin’ thing loaded?”
“Of course it’s loaded, Mr. Stanno.”
“Well what—I mean. …”
“You got a right.”
“Thanks. I know you, don’t I?”
“Not very well,” the guy said. He was holding a big black rod in his own paw now, a silenced rod. “Goodbye, Mr. Stanno.”
He shoved him toward the door. Actually shoved Joe Stanno.
The big man staggered into the wall and turned crazed eyes to the smirking silksuited polite bastard. He swiped at his bleeding nose with the back of his hand and growled, “Where’d you say they were, tough?”
“Same place,” the guy said. “You’d better get going.”
The guy popped the desk buzzer and the door swung open.
Stanno lurched through the doorway and down the short hall to Max Keno’s station. He bent low to whisper, “What the hell is going on, Max?”
“I’d rather not say, Mr. Stanno,” Max replied.
A cold sweat broke out above Stanno’s eyes. It was one thing to get the leper treatment from a stranger … Max was something else again. He recoiled from the masked pity in those eyes, then he jerked himself erect and found a handkerchief to hold against the nosebleed.
He took three steps down the stairway before being struck by the eerie silence.
His head jerked around and he gawked across the railing at the deserted tables and the utter desolation of a casino without people. It seemed to Joe the Monster like a Vegas version of the last-man-on-earth.
He snapped back to Max Keno and said, “God’s sake, Max, what’s going on?”
“I guess you better just keep on going, Mr. Stanno,” was all Max would say to him.
The red film settled back over his eyes again and Joe Stanno descended into the pits of Mafia hell.
Behind him, faintly, he heard Max calling out, “It’s eight forty, Mr. Vinton.”
16: JACKPOT
Bolan-Vinton strode past Max Keno and said, “Okay, Max. On me.” He started down the stairway and saw Joe the Monster in his side vision, prowling about the deserted casino.
Bolan kept his eyes front and went on down.
Max fell in behind him.
From behind the partition was coming the muted sounds of a happy party in the adjoining dining room. That was great. Bolan grinned to himself; the house was living it up, and keeping most of the action where Bolan wanted it.
It was going by the numbers now.
Almost. Just as he reached the casino floor, four men swept in through the lobby entrance.
One of them yelled, “Hey there!”
Bolan swung around to confront the foursome.
The Talifero brothers, Pat and Mike.
Two tagmen flanking them, running on the quarters like a couple of destroyers in escort of capital vessels.
They were cruising toward Bolan, and they had reached about the midpoint between the door and the stairs. One step around the corner and Bolan would be out of it … very briefly.
He took a step in their direction, then swung his arm up in a dramatic sweep from the sh
oulder to point out Joe Stanno, moving like a sleepwalker along a row of gaming tables.
“There he is!” Bolan yelled.
The four came to a confused halt, their eyes tracking along Bolan’s point.
Joe Stanno froze and his head snapped up.
The instincts gained by a lifetime of violence were all mirrored there in the big guy, in the street-fight stance, in the way the massive head swayed back to the rear of the shoulders—like a cagey old ostrich laying an eye into the situation.
And the situation he was laying into must have appeared as natural and inevitable to Joe Stanno as any of the hundreds of other similar incidents to which he had been party over the years.
Except that this time Joe Stanno was at the wrong end of the party.
Death … and eerie silence … where always before there had been action and at least a synthetic gaiety.
The pointing finger of doom.
And the execution party.
Joe Stanno was obviously having none of that crap. He was not going out bleating and pleading like Vito, hell no.
“Okay, I’ll take you all!” he yelled.
Bolan saw him go for his gun, then he swung quickly away in the other direction and Max Keno scampered in close pursuit.
An excited voice screamed, “He’s crazy!”
The roar of gunfire and the zinging of bullets in confinement accompanied Bolan and his tagman to the rear of the casino. They were passed quickly through the security network, Bolan marling to the guards, “It’s a rumble, don’t let nobody in!”
More money than Bolan knew existed was stacked up all over the joint. Heavily braced wooden shelves along the walls were straining under the burden of thousands upon thousands of coin rolls, and the machines were still ticking.
Currency was stacked in foot-high bundles on four large counting tables, and the controller was pacing nervously back and forth and urging the ladies Jong.
Bolan speared the guy with a hard gaze. “You got it?” he yelled.
“Yes sir, it’s all out. Do I hear gunshots?”
“Every damn nickel?”
“Yes sir, every damn nickel.”
“What are you running, so far?”
“Just over a half-million, Mr. Vinton, but the confirmation count is just going into the—”
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