Executioner 023 - St Louis Showdown

by Pendleton, Don

  Janice had always been a great gal. Cool and calm, always cool and calm—except in bed. Would the next guy understand Janice's bedtime needs? Would he adore her as Tom Postum had adored her? And would he take care of the kids the way—

  God! This was crazy!

  Someone would come along! Any minute now—any second! All those explosives and gunfire. Surely someone would get involved to the extent at least of phoning it in.

  Someone heard it, surely!

  Sure. Sure.

  And there he was.

  A pair of hands were gripping that door, up there. Here I am, guy, right here, look inside, I'm down here on the damn—well, dammit, Postum's throat wasn't wrapped in that steel vice!

  "Down here," he croaked, surprised by the reedy sound his voice made.

  A head poked in up there, a rather handsome head though a bit grimy and obviously greatly fatigued. A pair of steady blue eyes glared down at him, sizing up the situation with a single glance, and a coldly familiar voice told him, "Hang tight. We'll spring you."

  The head disappeared but that same voice was giving instructions to a third party. "Tool box at the rear. Get the crowbar and the torch. Guy's trapped in there."

  Mack the damn guy Bolan.

  How poetic.

  Another voice out there, droll but a bit disturbed: "Better make it quick."

  "Get the foam bottle, Gadgets. Saturate this strip of ground and try to work it around to the gas tank."

  Then the guy was back at the window and lowering himself inside. He looked intently into Postum's eyes, then placed a thumb on one of them and peeled the eyelid high.

  "Much pain?" that cold voice inquired—but it was not all that cold, not really—there was an undertone of, believe it or not, compassion.

  "Not much," Postum said throatily. "Am I all there?"

  "What I can see is." The guy was feeling of him, and reaching into intimate places. "Give me your hand." Postum did so automatically, without wondering. Bolan was positioning it, carefully but forcefully, into the inner thigh just off the groin. "Keep a pressure there. More, bear down hard. You're losing blood, and it could get worse when I start prying around down here. Hold that pressure!"

  The cop assured the fugitive that he would do so.

  A crowbar appeared at the window, followed closely by a dark head—Mexican, Puerto Rican, something like that. A bland voice belonged to that concerned face. "Better not risk the torch, Sarge, except as a last resort. The fumes out here are terrible."

  How 'bout that? Sarge, was it?

  Postum was surprised to hear himself saying, "Leave the crowbar and beat it. I probably have more time than you have."

  The Sarge ignored that twaddle. He had the crowbar positioned across Postum's thighs, and those shoulders were going into a flex. "This may hurt a little. Keep that pressure."

  "I said beat it, Bolan. I'm a cop."

  "Do tell," the guy grunted as he lay into the bar. "I'm Tom Postum."

  The veins were popping in that neck, muscles bunched and rippling across that tired face. "Yeah, I know."

  Omniscient, sure. Perhaps omnipotent, as well. That metal was creaking, giving, lifting. A rush of warmth shot along those pinned legs.

  "Keep that pressure!"

  Postum saw what he meant. Blood was spurting down there, now. The guy grabbed his hand and jammed it into the groin.

  "Like that!"

  "I guess I don't have the strength."

  "Pol! I need a tourniquet!"

  A length of clear plastic tubing dropped through the hole. Bolan grabbed it and applied it to the right leg, just above the knee. Then those strong hands were running along both of Postum's legs, exploring, squeezing. He turned in half profile, showing the cop a solemn smile "No breaks, I guess. I don't hear you yelling."

  The Chicano reappeared at the window. "Need me in there?"

  "No room, Pol. I'm going to hand him out. Get Gadgets over here."

  Almost instantly, it seemed, Postum was being lifted and dragged from the wrecked vehicle. Someone looped a dark bandage across his eyes. He wanted to tell that guy there was nothing wrong with his eyes but then it occurred to him that the bandage was for their benefit, not his.

  A voice he'd heard quite a bit of lately on the radio quietly confirmed that. "It's okay, this is just 'til we get you inside."

  Another voice, that hard one, commanded, "Shag it. We're into negative numbers."

  Postum was carried quickly to another vehicle, a large one, to judge by the way those guys were moving him, and almost immediately they were in motion. He was deposited gently on a soft surface and that voice, distant now, again commanded, "Get me a situation, Gadgets!"

  Someone was kneeling there beside him—the Chicano, probably—fiddling with the tourniquet and making deft touches farther down.

  "We're on county property," reported the soft voice of "Gadgets" from nearby. Right, right, Postum was out of jurisdiction. "Scan recorders have no contacts, no reaction."

  Unbelievable.

  Nobody had phoned this in? This?

  The Chicano removed the blindfold.

  Postum was in a bunk. This was an RV. A bunk down the way was occupied, also. An old man, hands taped to his belly, blindfolded. What the hell was this?

  The Chicano looked terrible. He wore combat fatigues and they were torn, dirty, blood-streaked. An angry red welt traversed his forehead an inch above the eyes—and it looked to Postum like a bullet graze. But the guy was smiling at him—wearily, but smiling.

  "You had a close one," the Chicano told him.

  "Don't I know it," Postum replied weakly.

  That voice from up front called, "You want to come take the con, Gadgets?"

  Postum saw the soft-voiced one then—a mild-looking guy with what must have been a perpetual smile. He threw a sympathetic look at Postum and went forward.

  A moment later, the big guy himself was coming back. He, too, looked like hell but more so. That good face was powder-blackened and sort of scorched looking. Postum had seen the look on a battlefield or two. The left hand had been seeping blood from a welt similar to the one on the Chicano's forehead. An area the size of Postum's head was missing from the black jersey, up near the right armpit, and the flesh showing through there was raw and oozing.

  Postum had never seen a man who looked so weary.

  Something inside of him reacted to that, reached out to it, and his detached mind was again surprised to hear his own voice telling the guy, "You need to lay it down, man."

  The big guy smiled at him and dropped into a padded chair.

  Postum knew. He knew all about combat and what it did to a man Pitched combat takes it out of any man, summoning all the vital juices to the demands of survival—and a guy had just so many of those juices. From what he'd heard of this one, this damn guy, he should have run out long ago.

  But something perverse and wicked was tugging at the psyche of this cop. He realized that when he overheard himself digging the weary warrior. "I just came from your little My Lai."

  "From my what?"

  "The massacre at River Road

  ."

  "Didn't like what you saw, eh?"

  "Not exactly."

  The guy lit a cigarette and released the smoke on a shuddering sigh. "Well, neither did I. If you were just a bit better at your job, Postum, maybe neither of us would have to see a thing like that. You and the other cops, all of you, the hundreds of thousands of you. Why the hell aren't you doing your damn jobs?"

  "You're right," Postum admitted. "It was a cheap shot. Particularly since I am here through your courtesy. Take it back."

  The Chicano was attending the wounded leg.

  Postum winced with something the guy was pouring into the gash.

  The "damn guy" was staring at his cigarette. "Want a smoke, Postum?"

  "Thanks, no. You're right, you know. If we cops . . ."

  The guy could hardly hold himself erect. Postum wondered how long it'd been since he'
d slept. A guy on the run, a guy covering his ass from both sides and still trying to strike back, a guy in this situation .

  "That was 'weary' speaking, Postum. Forget it. We're all soldiers of the same side. None of us make the laws or write the rules of procedure."

  That voice was fading. The guy was hurting.

  "You cops aren't losing your war on the streets. You're losing it in the courts, in the city halls, in the legislatures and the congress—you're losing it to the lawyers, guy."

  "You should take a strike vote," the Chicano put in with a sour smile. "Turn the thing around. No convictions, no arrests—see? Drive them all crazy. No arrests, no legal fees—see? No arrests, no clout money at city hall. No arrests, no political influence. No arrests, no damn judges at all. Who needs 'em—see?"

  "I see," Postum replied, smiling weakly. "It would drive them up the walls, wouldn't it? It'll never happen, though."

  "'Course it won't," the Chicano or whatever replied. He stretched around to pluck the cigarette from the big guy's fingers, then dropped it into an ashtray.

  Yeah—the guy was asleep. Sitting there upright—dead asleep.

  The tough intelligence cop—with one or the other of his minds—had an uncomfortable desire to weep.

  "I don't believe that damn guy," he quietly declared.

  "Nobody does," the dark one said. "All these years I've known him, and I still don't, You're a fink, Postum, if you ever lay one finger of weight on that man's head."

  "I'm a cop. I'm—"

  "So what sacred damn rap is that? What's so hidebound about being a cop that you have no eyes to see and no ears to hear? We're dropping you at a hospital, guy. The Sarge says you're to have some books and stuff we 'My Lai'd' out of that shit palace back there. We'll drop that off with you. If that's not enough for you, then you can go to hell, and I'm seceding from this damn human race."

  And suddenly Postum had it—he knew—and the two halves of himself came together in that understanding.

  "No need to do that on my account, Pol," he said weakly, but feeling stronger than he'd felt in years.

  No. Not on Postum's account, Pol.

  If it took a "Stonehenge" to unseal the eyes and unplug the ears, then there should be one on every street corner.

  That damn guy there in the chair, that Mack the guy Bolan—he was the ultimate Stonehenge—a blazing anachronism from an heroic past when men could draw a firm line between right and wrong, and stand on that line—and die on that line, if necessary.

  Stonehenge was ultimately revealed.

  And Tom Postum felt more the man because of it. Better than that, he was more the cop because of it.

  17: THE GAME

  Bolan awoke to the aroma of sizzling bacon and perking coffee. He was in his bunk, stripped to the shorts. A battle compress had been lightly taped over the buckshot scrape-wound on his chest.

  Blancanales was bent over the bunk, dabbing at his face with a vile-smelling sponge.

  "Situation," Bolan requested in a thick voice.

  "You have some powder burns here, Sarge. How long since your last tetanus booster?"

  "It's been awhile."

  "It figures. Okay." Blancanales had worked with the medics during the early days in Vietnam. And he'd been the unofficial Able Team medic in the field. "Let's have the arm."

  Damn guy was giving him a shot.

  Bolan grunted and asked, "What time is it?"

  The Pol withdrew the needle and lay it on a pad of gauze. "Nearly noon."

  "Damn! You shouldn't have …”

  Bolan was struggling to get upright and finding that task difficult, due to a couple hundred pounds of pressure being exerted from the other side of the struggle. "Stay put, dammit," Blancanales commanded. "Take every minute you can! Look, Sarge, you've got to start taking better care of yourself. You don't sleep, you don't eat---how long you expect to keep it together that way?"

  Bolan relented, with a grin. "The food does smell good. Is it a Schwarz production?"

  "Yeah. But I guess you'll survive it. What can you do to mess up scrambled eggs and bacon?"

  "I heard that," came the soft voice from the galley. "They're not scrambled. They're fluffed. See, I put in some cheese chips—that adds to the protein count—and I chopped up some little red peppers and folded them in, then I—"

  "He can mess it up," the Pol said, rolling his eyes in despair.

  "You don't have to eat it," Schwarz amiably replied to that.

  Bolan's gaze was bouncing about the warwagon. "Looks like you've been working around me," he observed.

  "Yeah. I figured to let you sleep through the routine. We dropped the cop at the hospital and turned over the stuff to him. Then we stashed Jules and went to look in on Toni."

  "So?"

  The Pol's face was a deadpan mask as he unfolded a sheet of lined writing paper and handed it over for Bolan's inspection. It was a crudely lettered message in spidery block print, unsigned—but there was no doubt as to the author.

  "The bambina's okay as long as you don't get cute so don't worry none about that. IOU thanks but don't mean we got a love affair here. A truce okay(?) while you get out of town and leave the rest to me. We let the bambina go when you show up out of town." Bolan bitterly commented, "Dammit "

  "Sounds, uh, not too bad—for right now," Pol said.

  "How long is right now?" Bolan asked him

  "Somehow I just don't feel worried about her," Pol insisted. "She can charm a puff adder. Aside from the complication of . . ."

  Bolan grimaced and said, "Yeah. It's a hell of a complication, Pol."

  "When are you going to let me in on the secret, Sarge?"

  "These old men?"

  "That's the one."

  Bolan sighed and pushed himself upright. Blancanales made room and handed him a fresh shirt and slacks. Schwarz announced from the galley, "Okay, it's here if you want it."

  Bolan lurched into the bathroom and carefully patted water onto his smarting face, then got into the clothing. When he emerged, the other two were seated at the mess table—Blancanales peering glumly into a cup of coffee, Schwarz carefully cutting into a large omelette.

  Bolan joined them, accepted the food from Schwarz with a grateful smile, then launched into an explanation of his "game plan" as he hungrily attacked the chow.

  "I haven't told you the secret because there hasn't been one," he explained. "I've just been feeling it along, playing the ear and hoping for things to fall in. I think maybe they're beginning to, now—although, Pol, I wasn't planning anything like this for Toni."

  Blancanales waved his hand at that apology.

  "Here's the situation—which you both know already, but let's run it past once again, anyway. This town has been a mob sleeper for a lot of years. Very quiet, no waves at all—no flamboyant personalities strutting around, no national attention from congressional committees or federal strike forces, nothing. The town has been asleep."

  Blancanales nodded and Schwarz said, "From the neck up, yeah. There's plenty of action down on those streets, though, Sarge."

  "That's the situation," Bolan said, agreeing with Schwarz. "But look at it now. Cops prowling everywhere and harassing everyone, strike forces working their quiet games, rumbles in the congress, a ground swell of reform politics."

  "Sure, Blancanales said. "Someone's disturbing the sandbox."

  "Exactly. Jerry Ciglia, with a franchise from New York. St. Louis will never sleep again. Not in the same old way, at any rate. Whatever happens now, the town will never again be the same."

  "Couldn't happen," Schwarz softly agreed.

  "These eggs are damn good, Gadgets."

  A triumphant glance went to Blancanales. "Thanks. It's the cheese and peppers."

  "Cheese and peppers, okay," Pol grudgingly allowed. "Just so you don't start crediting electronic enzymes and solid-state proteins."

  Bolan chuckled and continued. "I've been trying to wage a war of attrition. Well, it never worked in 'Nam—I d
on't know why I thought it would work here. These guys are like jacks in the box. Close the lid on one, up it pops immediately with a different jack. It's an endless game, and it's a game I'm losing. I thought maybe here—given the place and the unusual circumstances—well, I thought I'd try on a new game."

  His companions exchanged glances.

  Blancanales said, 'We were wondering. About Artie, I mean, then 'Vino Jules. It, uh, it just didn't figure." "If I can't control the lid to the box," Bolan explained quietly, "then at least maybe I can hand pick the jacks. Follow?"

  A grin spread across Schwarz's face.

  Blancanales said, "Artie and Jules are more acceptable jacks than Ciglia and Annunzio."

  "That's the idea," Bolan said. "They're old, semi-retired, running a few quiet games here and there, nothing big—they're more like fleas on the lamb's back, not wolves waiting to devour the whole animal."

  "You couldn't play a game like that just anywhere," Blancanales decided.

  "No, I couldn't. And maybe it won't work here, even. But I think it's worth a try. Look—the territory will always be here. Once established, it never dies out completely. I could come back here once a month and whack everything in sight, and every month there'd be new heads to whack. So let's suppose that I whack Artie, I whack Jules, and the whole cadre. Then I turn to Ciglia and I whack him and his cadre. And when I fade over the horizon to the next battleground, there's a vacuum here in St. Louis that's going to suck a whole new regime into the box. There'll be another Ciglia and, after him, another one—and on and on."

  "Frustrating, isn't it," Schwarz said with a droll smile.

  "Worse than that," Bolan said. "These young turks are like a pack of ravenous wolves. Give them a territory and they start ripping through it and devouring everything in their paths."

  "Won't New York just send someone down to continue the penetration if you take out Ciglia and leave Artie?" Schwarz asked.

  "Depends on how well I stack Artie's box," Bolan replied. "It's a delicate game and I'm not sure I can work it. But I'm going to try. When I leave this town, I hope to leave the locals in firm control—from the mob standpoint, that is. I want Little Artie to stand up and thumb his nose at New York—maybe even shake his withered old fist in their gluttonous faces—and dare them to by God send him another Jerry Ciglia."