The big guy leapt clear of the passenger compartment, hardware now visible in his hand, and moved with surprising agility to join the other two. He saw, and also reacted violently, lunging immediately forward to get both big paws inside there for a tactile verification of what his eyes were telling him. Then he straightened up and turned a frozen stare toward the Chianti residence. A door cracked open over there and a peevish voice called out, “Well what the hell is it?”
The heavyweight yelled back, “It’s them three engineers from Brooklyn, or what’s left of ’em.”
The door at the house immediately clicked shut. That decided Bolan’s course of action. He grimaced and eased the Beretta up, clamping down on the peak of the roof with his armpit, letting his elbow find comfortable support on the opposite downslope. He had already calculated the firing range at roughly twenty yards. Ordinarily this would be an ideal range for the Beretta—he had worked it in with consistent two-inch groupings at twenty-five yards, pretty accurate for a handgun—but now he had to calculate the effect of the silencer on muzzle velocity and track deviation. And he definitely wanted that silencer in operation, especially now that Sam the Bomber was obviously not going to expose himself. Bolan had not really counted on getting Chianti this time, anyway. It would be enough, for now, to rattle his teeth a bit. And whispering death, Bolan had found, had a peculiar psychological effect on Mafia hardmen.
He was sighting down the short range now, allowing for gross error through the silencer, and knowing that he would have to get all three in rapid fire if he was to get them at all. They were still clumped at the rear of the vehicle, the heavyweight continuing to stare toward the house, the other two darting nervous glances into the bloody trunk.
Bolan fired once, twice, three times in quick succession—the 9mm Parabellums singing down to the street on slightly diverging paths and each finding solid-soft matter to stop their travel.
The heavyweight yelled something in a twangy falsetto and pitched forward with both hands scrabbling for the raised trunk door, then he fell away to the side and rolled onto his back. The other two had gone down without a sound, the skinny one crumpling onto the rear bumper and hanging there, his clothing apparently caught on something; the thick one folding down on rubber legs to sprawl face down in the street.
Bolan was not yet done with the Human Engineering Contractors. The Beretta angled toward the far side of the street and continued its abrupt little coughs. The big picture window fronting Chianti’s office began sprouting a rash of round holes, then shattered with a loud crash. An instant later, the glass porthole of the massive door exploded inwardly.
And then Bolan was done. He released his grip on the peak and slid slowly down the far side of the roof, throwing in a fresh clip in a rapid re-load of the Beretta as he went and taking care to favor the bad shoulder. That’s twice, Sam, he was saying to himself. The third time around will be all for you.
Across the way, Sam the Bomber was lying face down on his office carpet in a sea of shattered glass and wondering if he was shot or just cut up. Numbly he realized that he had not even seen the bastard, had not even heard any gunshots. Where the hell had the guy been firing from? All Sam had seen was his boys toppling over like rubber toys deflating, then wham and Sam’s whole damn world was exploding around him.
This was going to look bad, damned bad. The word would be all over town now that Bolan was doing a job of human engineering on the contractor’s contractor, and that was going to look bad as hell. That, he knew, was going to be the big crack in the dam of Sam the Bomber’s life’s work. He was being engineered by one hell of an engineer.
Well … at least now he could call Freddie and tell him that he’d made that contact. Yeah, he sure had made that contact.
5: PURITY
Bolan’s withdrawal from the scene of combat was via the public transportation system. When he left the subway at 125th and Lenox, he hopped a bus to 110th and walked into East Harlem. According to his poop book, he would find an enterprising businessman there by the name of William Meyer who sold objects de la guerre at reasonable prices and without questions.
He found Meyer in a little machine shop in an alley behind a bakery, and it took no more than a minute or two for the arms expert to decide that young Meyer knew his business. The guy was an ex-GI and an armorer like Bolan—but, unlike Bolan, completely warred-out and barely able to get around. He showed his visitor the stump where his right foreleg had once been and the synthetic marvel which had replaced his entire left leg from the hip down—and they talked briefly about land mines and the hells of warfare in a hostile land. Then Meyer took Bolan to the basement in an elevator he’d built himself and showed him some of the fine weapons he’d also built himself, and some he’d modified or rebuilt, and some he’d merely picked up from one place or another.
He sold a lot of stuff to the Panthers, he explained, also to various fascist and militant leftist groups, and even a couple of cops did business there from time to time.
Meyer’s cynical smile told Bolan as much as his words did, and Bolan understood that smile. He had seen it on a lot of warriors who’d left parts of their bodies on the battlefields. This particular smile told Bolan that a munitions maker did not take sides … he was pure like Rachel Silver and just did his thing building destruction for whatever damn fools wanted to come along and set it loose upon the world. Yeah, and Bolan was one of those pure fools who came along. It seemed like a lousy way to run a world, but this was no time for Bolan to go into that again. He’d searched his soul so many times it was getting raw. Like God, Bolan did not propose—he merely disposed. He made his selections from Meyer’s arsenal and paid the man from his rapidly dwindling war chest, adding an extra fifty for special delivery to a midtown parcel depot.
While returning to the surface in the elevator, Bolan elicited the information that a guy could pick up some action in the rear of a barber shop just around the corner—anything from lottery to craps and horses—he could even get contact numbers for business girls, if Bolan was so inclined, but they would run from fifty to a hundred per wallop. Meyer also assured him that the place was secure against busts, a point which Bolan seemed very concerned with. Sure, the joint enjoyed the protection of one Freddie Gambella. Yes, Meyer had met Gambella once—big in the rackets, but a nice guy after all. No, Meyer had never supplied arms for Gambella. He understood that the mob had their own sources, legit ones—they couldn’t be bothered with a small businessman like William Meyer.
Bolan could. There were times when Bolan simply had to believe in fate. The Executioner left the small businessman and went directly to the “protected” back room just around the corner.
He found quite an operation going there. The “back room” was four times larger than the shop itself. There were slots, card and crap tables, football pools galore, and bootleg lottery and offtrack racing stalls in direct competition with the State of New York. Bolan drifted through and counted more than a dozen obvious employees—how many not-so-obvious ones would be anybody’s guess. He located the inevitable back-room-behind-the-back-room where all the goodies would be kept, the door to which was being protected by two guys in honest to God security-guard uniforms.
It was simply too much to pass up. Bolan had not dipped into the Mafia’s wealth since Los Angeles, and the war chest was about flattened. He debated the advisability of pulling a soft recon first and returning later with a battle plan, then decided that he would probably do just as well to simply play it by ear and dive right in. The recent skirmish in the Bronx would no doubt have Gambella presently somewhat off balance, and Bolan would probably find no better time for a knockover than right now.
He ran a hand inside his jacket and fingered the outline of the shoulder wound. It felt fine. Okay Freddie, stand by for a ram.
Bolan composed his face into a scowl and marched right at the door to the goody chamber. One of the uniformed guards moved uncertainly to one side, no more than half a step but it was all Bo
lan had been looking for. He elbowed the guy and growled, “Come on, come on.”
His hand was on the door and the guards were exchanging uneasy looks with each other when the one who had yielded came out with a confused challenge. “Who are—I don’t seem to—you gotta have a ID to get in there.”
“Aw shit,” Bolan said, his voice dripping with disgust. “You fuckin’ clowns better learn what’s what or you’ll have Freddie’s ID stamp all over your ass.” He fixed the worried one with a cold stare. “Are you gonna push that button or aren’t you?”
The guard’s eyes wavered and his hand fumbled to the wall behind him. In a very dry voice he said, “Mr. uh …”
Bolan snapped, “Mr. Lambretta, and you better never have to ask again.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Lambretta, I’ll remember that.” The guard’s finger found the button and punched out a code. Seconds later a buzzer sounded on the door and the guard pushed it open and held it wide for Bolan’s entry. “Sorry about the foul-up, Mr. Lambretta. Go right in.”
Bolan growled, “Forget it,” and went right in.
It was a typical setup. A vault and several desks with adding machines and calculators behind a wire fence, a short counter with a mixed assortment of men and women, some old and some young, perched on stools counting money and feeding coins into roller machines. Two more uniformed guards, one at the door through which Bolan had just entered, another at a door to the rear—alleyway, Bolan guessed—holding burpguns, no less.
Typical but big—it was one hell of a big operation. Bolan read central station all over the place. It was a clearing house and bank for street runners. This joint was not just being protected by Gambella. Bolan was betting his life that it was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the mob. His eyes found the controller with no difficulty whatever—a harried-looking little man with white hair and gold-rimmed glasses.
Bolan slapped the front door guard on the rump as he strolled past and went directly to the wire cage and caught whitehair’s eye and summoned him with a crooking finger. The little man came over and peered at Bolan through the wire mesh, the eyes inquisitive and wondering where he’d seen Bolan before.
Bolan did not give him much time to wonder. In a voice low-pitched and edged with urgency, he told whitehair, “Don’t panic now. I’m Lambretta, Central Precinct. Don’t worry. Freddie’s on his way over.”
The guy blinked his eyes and grunted, “Huh?”
“I said don’t worry.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the controller told him, his breathing staggering a bit. “Why is Mr. Gambella coming over?”
“Didn’t you get the …? Well for Christ’s sake!” Bolan’s eyes rolled and he leaned closer to the wire mesh and dropped his voice even lower. “I thought Freddie was going to … never mind. There’s a raid called. Three o’clock. Feds and everybody, the full bit. You’re supposed to be getting the stuff out of here. You telling me you haven’t done anything yet?”
Whitehair’s lips firmed up and he whirled about without a word and began moving quickly among his bookkeepers and clerks. Things began happening, quickly and quietly. Ledgers and tapes began disappearing into canvas pouches. A youngish man with a deformed spine spun the wheel in the vault, opened the door, and stepped inside. Bolan heard a woman clerk call the whitehaired one “Mr. Feldman” and a big brawny guy started tossing canvas satchels in a pile on the floor.
Feldman stepped back to the mesh fence and told Bolan, “Yes, we’re taking care of it. What about out front?”
Bolan shook his head and turned a thumb toward the floor. “We’re letting them have the front.”
The controller nodded his head in understanding. His face fell into sorrowing lines and he confided to Bolan, “All these years with Mr. Gambella and this is my first bust.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Bolan philosophized. “These goddam feds are running wild.”
“It’s a damn shame,” Feldman said, and spun around and went into the vault.
Feldman had no idea, Bolan was thinking, how big a shame it was. The pace was picking up, clerks dashing about in excitement, slamming things about in an ever-rising noise level. The guards were beginning to fidget and obviously wonder what the hell was coming off. Bolan walked down to the one at the rear door and asked him, “Is the truck here?”
“What truck?” the guy asked, his eyebrows gathering into a perplexed scowl.
Bolan threw up his hands in a resigned gesture and he cried, “Well kiss my ass! Nobody sent for the truck?”
The guard shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he replied, “If you mean the armored car, it ain’t due ’til five o’clock.”
“I know when it’s due!” Bolan yelled. “We gotta get this stuff outta here now! You get your ass out there and get something!”
The guard gawked at him with rising bewilderment, then he threw a pleading look toward the wire fence. Feldman, drawn by Bolan’s yelling, was coming through the gate with a worried face. The guard asked him, “What’s this guy talking about?”
“We have an emergency, Harry,” the controller told him. “Have to move everything out, and quick. Get us some transportation. We’ll need … oh hell, we’ll need several cars or a fairsize van. You’d better see what you can do.”
“Well how much time’ve I got?” the bewildered Harry wanted to know.
“You’ve got about ten damned minutes!” Bolan snarled. “You better get your ass in gear!”
The other guard had come down to join the discussion. Harry thrust his burpgun at him and muttered, “Shit, I’m a security man, not no goddam transportation expert. Awright, somebody let me out.”
Feldman went back behind the cage and pressed the door release. The buzzer squawked and Harry stepped into the alleyway muttering to himself. The other guard was standing there with a dumb look and a burpgun under each arm. Bolan took one of them, saying, “Here, give me th’ damn thing. Listen, you may as well go out there too. Don’t let anyone get curious and start hanging around.”
The guard looked to the controller for an okay. Feldman nodded his head and again operated the doorlock. The guy went out, greatly perturbed and fiddling with the visor of his cap.
The man with the crooked spine came out of the vault pushing a wheeled cart bearing neatly wrapped packages. Bolan stepped in through the open gate and placed the burpgun on the counter as the crippled man was reporting progress. “These are the tabulated receipts through noon today, Mr. Feldman. We’ll have the balance in about five minutes. We’re just going to sack it, if that’s all right.”
The controller jerked his head in a quick okay. “And leave the coin,” he commanded
Bolan picked up one of the packages from the cart and was looking it over. It was a five-grand bundle. Yes, this was definitely a central station. There were at least fifty of those packets on the cart. And someone had said that legalized betting in New York would put the mob onto hard times.
Bolan grabbed a canvas satchel off the floor and began stuffing it with five-grand packages. Feldman watched him for a moment, then said, “Why don’t we just leave it on the cart? If Harry gets a van …”
Bolan replied, “And suppose he can’t? You just want to toss these packages loose into the seat of a car?” He zipped the bag shut and threw it at the rear door, twenty-five thousand dollars worth, then grabbed another.
Feldman stood there through a brief moment of indecision, then he too began transferring the packets into a bag. Bolan completed his second baggy job and gave it a toss, then told the controller, “Hey listen, I’m going to go out there and see what that clown is doing.”
Feldman nodded his head agreeably, obviously happy to lose “Lambretta’s” company. Bolan picked up the burpgun and walked to the door, then turned to stare at the whitehaired man. “The fuckin’ door,” he growled.
The controller grimaced and moved impatiently to send the unlock signal to the door mechanism, then turned away with
an unhappy scowl. Bolan pulled the door open, kicked a money bag outside, quietly dropped a marksman’s medal to the floor, and went out. The door clicked behind him and he told the waiting guard, “Watch that satchel, it’s got twenty-five thou in it,” then he walked quickly to the end of the alley, a matter of twenty-odd steps, peered into the street briefly and immediately returned to the doorway.
He told the guard, “Okay, you keep your eyes peeled. Here, take this damn gun.” He shoved the burpgun into the guy’s hand, picked up the satchel of money, and walked away.
Bolan did not look back as he made the turn onto the street. He was afraid to. The corners of his mouth were beginning to twitch out of control, and he might burst out laughing if he had to look at that guard’s face one more time.
The Executioner could not feel a bit bad about stealing from the mob, and he could think of no one he would rather have contribute to his war chest than Freddie Gambella.
Somebody was going to be catching a lot of hell, of course, but Bolan would save his sympathy for people who deserved it. That den of thieves back there would get everything they had coming to them. As for Gambella, if he thought this hurt then he’d better wait awhile.
The tall man with the canvas satchel went on unhurriedly along the quiet street and stepped aboard a downtown bus, and the corners of his mouth were still twitching, and he was wondering if Harry would ever come back with those wheels.
Bolan dropped into a seat across from an elderly black lady, and he allowed himself to break down and laugh a little. The lady was darting curious glances his way, but Bolan didn’t mind. A pure fool had engaged the enemy in an act of pure war, and he’d exited laughing. Yeah, it was a hell of a way to run a world. But it would have to do until something better came along. Pure love, maybe. Yeah, and Bolan found himself thinking about Rachel Silver. Yeah. Pure love.
Nightmare in New York Page 5