6: FRIENDS
Freddie Gambella was seated casually in the big swivel chair, a telephone held to the side of his head by a softly manicured hand, when Sam the Bomber pushed hesitantly into the panelled library and made his way softly across the cushioned floor. Sam never had felt overly comfortable in this room—maybe it was the books that made him feel so depressed—and he was feeling particularly out of sorts on this visit.
Gambella threw his visitor a flash of the eyes that told him to have a seat, and he growled softly into the telephone, “He traded a what for it?”
Sam sat down and watched the muscles bunching and unbunching in the Capo’s jaw, then he studied his own hands and picked nervously at the bandaids on his fingers. Sam always hated to come in and find Freddie on the goddam telephone, Jesus he hated just sitting there watching and listening and wondering when his turn would come.
“Well I guess I just can’t figure it,” Freddie was saying. “Were they all hypnotized? You mean he just walks in there and passes himself off as a made cop and starts giving orders and they all just snapped shit?”
The first gaze rested on Sam the Bomber as the receiver rattled a longwinded response, then Freddie cut in on it. “Stop,” he commanded in a thick voice. “Don’t tell me any more about it. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear such dumb … I just don’t understand Feldman, and I don’t want to. All these years and he—listen, we got telephones, right? You just pick up the little gadget and you tap out a number, right? And you get instant advice, right? I want to know why Feldman wasn’t looking for some instant advice. You get me, Tommy?”
That would be Tommy Doctor, Sam was thinking. And he was wondering what the doctor had done to get on the carpet this way, Freddie didn’t usually talk this way to his people. All that anger was usually buried in a quiet manner and a gentle tone, only you always knew it was there when it was there—Freddie had a way of letting you know without getting himself all worked up on the outside. Sam just hoped that what the boss was saying to Tommy Doctor had nothing at all to do with Sam Chianti. And then Sam’s heart lurched as the next words came—yeah, they sure had something to do with him.
“Now you listen to me, Tommy. I want Bolan, and I don’t want no excuses, I want the man. You put the boys in cars, and you put them walking the streets. You put boys sitting on their asses in bars and cafes, and you put boys everywhere in this town. I want boys in subway stations, air terminals, bus and train depots. I want our cabs alerted, and I want every street worker, every union hall, every precinct station, every committee, every club, every joint, I want everybody in this town looking for Bolan.” Freddie’s eyes were starting to bulge and he was running out of breath. A bad sign. “And Tommy … don’t you talk to me again until you’re telling me that you’ve got Bolan. Have I made myself clear?”
The receiver made one or two faint sounds and Freddie said, “Just don’t forget it,” and he hung up and turned his undiluted attention to his lifelong friend, Sam the Bomber.
“I guess you got the most of that,” Fred told Sam.
Chianti nodded his head miserably and fingered a bandaid at his chin. “Yes, and I understand exactly how you feel, Freddie.”
“You couldn’t have the merest notion of how I feel, Sam,” the Capo told him. “Bolan just knocked over my Harlem bank.”
Chianti sucked in his breath and his eyes began to grow. “Well that …! How the hell did he do that!”
Gambella raised both palms, then turned them over and let them fall to the desk. “He just walks in, trades Feldman a marksman’s medal for a bag worth twenty-five thou, and he just walks out.”
Sam the Bomber’s eyes were flitting rapidly from Freddie’s eyes to Freddie’s hands, big manicured hams trying to claw something off the desk that wasn’t there.
He said, “Listen Freddie. You’n me have been friends for a long time, and I don’t feel like I’m overstepping my place by mentioning that. The thing is, I wouldn’t bullshit you. Not you, not ever. Everything I got in the world I owe you, and I realize that. Listen, this Bolan boy is pure poison. That boy is as dangerous as a bag of snakes with a rip in the side, and you know it the minute he comes up and looks at you. What I’m saying is this, don’t hold it too tight against Feldman and those boys in Harlem. This Bolan has a way about him. Whatever he done to get that money, you can bet your ass he did it like a real pro. I mean, he—”
“I know what you mean, Sammy,” Gambella broke in with a tired sigh. He was looking at the adhesives on Chianti’s hands and face. “From the broken glass, eh?” he commented in a sympathetic tone.
Sam said, “Yeah, and I got off lucky. Oh and I—what I really came in to tell you is this—we dumped the car and all in Brooklyn, and I guess I’m clean on that. We left it where they’d be found, so I guess they can get a decent burial. Jesus I’m glad I didn’t have to explain all that to a bunch of unfriendly cops.” He touched the facial bandaids and added, “So I come out with just a few scratches. I figure I got off lucky.”
“So did I,” Gambella replied heavily. “He knocked me over for only twenty-five thou. He could have had a quarter mil just as easy, from what I hear. Had ’em all running around gathering it up for him. Even that dumbass guard out trying to steal a truck to haul it away with.”
Sam shook his head and said, “Well I guess he just wanted to prove something. That’s what I figured, over in the Bronx. He didn’t come in after me. I guess he never meant to all the time.”
“Yeah, he proved something,” Gambella said thoughtfully. “Look—I’m not afraid of this boy, Sammy, but I’m worried about him. I mean, he’s a damn pest and I want him out of my hair. We have this big thing coming up, and I don’t want this guy roaring around town and lousing it up. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sam the Bomber replied. “You’re right, the guy is a damn pest. He needs to get swatted, and good. I’m not afraid of him, either. I just wish I could get a long enough look at him to swat him. I didn’t even see him out there today. Just suddenly wham, and all hell is breaking loose.”
Sam shivered, then chuckled self-consciously. “I was lying. I’m scared of this boy, Freddie. Listen, there’s no bullshitting between old friends. This boy scares the pee outta me. But that don’t mean I’m going to turn tail and run from him. I’ll swat that boy, Freddie, if I get just half a chance.”
“I know you will, Sammy,” the boss told him in a quiet voice.
“Tommy Doctor is one damned good engineer. If anybody can run a find on Bolan, it’s him.”
“College boys,” Gambella sneered derisively.
“Well college boys ain’t like they use to be, Sam. They got a lotta starch in their ass nowadays.”
Gambella’s eyes were focused on the window in a blank stare. Quietly, he said, “You know, I wish Bolan had waited just two months. If he louses up this big thing we got going …”
He sighed and gave his friend a tired smile. “You know it was no more’n a couple of weeks ago I voted to give Bolan this peace offer. I guess he spit on that. And now here he is in my town and raising hell here. I got to go to a special meeting tonight, over this very thing. The other four are nervouser than I am, and I guess with good reason. They got more tied up in it, I mean more at stake. Why didn’t Bolan just wait a couple more months? Now he’s come here looking for a war, and I guess we got to give him one. But I just wish …”
After a quiet moment, Chianti suggested, “Maybe he’s just passing through, Freddie. Maybe he wanted that twenty-five thou to just blow with.”
“Naw,” Gambella replied, sighing. “He’s starting out just like always. With that famous 1-2-3 of his. Just look at it, Sam. He hits you over in the Bronx at what?—one o’clock?—a quarter ’til?—then he pops up in Harlem at a little after two and knocks over my bank. So he’ll be hitting again, pretty soon, just hold your breath and wait, it’ll come. The number three punch, he may already be throwing it. I just wish I knew where.”
“Tommy Doctor will—”
“Bullshit Tommy Doctor!” the Capo yelled.
Chianti jumped and stiffened in his chair. Boy, this was getting under Freddie’s skin in the worst …
“Don’t tell me no more Tommy Doctor!” Gambella said coldly, regaining outward control, but the street language filtering back told Sam that the surface calm only thinly covered a seething storm just below. “Listen, Sam, what are friends for? Huh?”
Chianti fidgeted and puffed out his throat and said thickly, “No greater love has a man but he will put it down for his friend, Freddie. And that’s me, you know that.”
“Exactly,” the Capo said.
“Well, uh …”
“Just don’t tell me no more Tommy Doctors. You get out on those streets, Sam. You put it on the pavement for me and thee.”
Sam the Bomber came awkwardly out of the chair and stood there for a moment, his eyes flicking sickly from item to item on the Capo’s desk. He muttered, “I been off the streets a long time, Freddie.”
“Too long,” the Capo said.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so. I guess I’m pretty rusty. I guess I better go see what I can do about that.”
“I guess so, Sam.”
Chianti whirled away and went back across the spongy floor, knowing now why he hated to come in there, knowing the spongy floor was actually a bed of quicksand, not thick carpeting; quicksand that drags a guy down to his choking, floundering doom, just like some friendships could.
He paused at the doorway and turned a pained face upon his friend the Capo and quietly told him, “See you, Fred.”
“Give regards to Theresa.”
“Yeah,” Sam the Bomber murmured, and went back out to the streets where he had started. And where, he guessed, he would finish.
7: SPECIES
It was just past five o’clock, it was dark and a light snowfall was beginning, and Bolan’s busy day was barely underway.
He had gone from Harlem to the East Village where he took on an entire new wardrobe, from buckskin trousers and vest to high moccasins and campaign hat. He also picked up a headband and numerous strings of beads, freak glasses with purple lenses, and a leather hip pouch. Then he took another tip from his invaluable little poop book and found a place in the old Jewish community of the lower East Side where a guy could buy wheels fully equipped with license and all the legalties, on a moment’s notice and without red tape, provided he had the ready cash.
Bolan had the cash, and he drove away in a four year old VW micro-bus in excellent condition with daisies painted across the outer surfaces.
From there he proceeded directly to the midtown parcel service and picked up his shipment from William Meyer & Company, and now he was in the rush hour crush at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. An airport bus from the East Side Terminal, jockeying for position into the tunnel approach, did its best to cancel out Bolan’s proudest purchase of the day, but Bolan hit his brakes, skidded into an adjacent lane, stood a glistening Caddy on its nose there, and listened to a traffic cop yell at him for at least thirty seconds until the line lurched forward and he eased out of earshot. And then he was into the tube and wondering why any sane person would go through all this twice a day every day of his life. Bolan would take the battlefield, thanks, and leave the traffic ulcers to those who worked for them.
Things moved swiftly in the underground tube and he was approaching the toll gate in Queens before he could find his change. He took some more berating while he dug for it, and then he was off and running along the suicide trail toward Long Island.
The VW was slow on the takeoff, but once she got fully wound-up Bolan was hanging in there with the best of them, and the ugly duckling of the auto world turned out to be a pretty sweet little roadrunner, after all.
Bolan knew precisely where he was going, though he had never been there before—the place was no more to him than a spot on a map and a flag in his memory of many whispered conversations. The mob called the joint Stoney Lodge. It was a hardsite, a home away from home for rankholders in the organization and a place where a guy could relax, let go of the cares of the streets and forget territorial competitions. Women, it was said, were absolutely taboo and even the waiters and bartenders wore gunleather. There were grassy fields where a guy could go out and shoot a tethered pheasant, or try his luck chasing down a fenced deer in a jeep. The chef had once been a noted Manhattan restauranteur, or so the story went, and the wine cellar had all the best years of France, Italy, and California.
The five bosses of New York held many of their business councils there and, if the stories Bolan had heard were true, some of the best known politicians in the East had been wined and dined at one time or another at Stoney Lodge. As a hardsite, it boasted a formidable palace guard throughout a twenty-four hour day, and it was regarded as an impregnable fortress. Or so the stories went. Yeah, Bolan knew precisely where he was headed.
He left the Long Island Expressway at Jericho, climbed northward past East Norwich and Oyster Bay, then he was navigating by the seat of his pants and the VW’s odometer, carefully marking the tenths of miles between one obscure little road and the next, and picking his way along the inlets and points of Long Island Sound.
It was seven o’clock when he located his target and began a soft recon of the area on foot. The snow was just beginning to come in light flurries out here. It was melting as it hit and the earth underfoot was becoming a bit tacky. The night had a friendly blackness, though, and Bolan had no weather complaints.
A six-foot high brick wall with barbed wire strung along the top separated the site from the rest of the world. Floodlights were emplaced at intervals of about every fifty feet. Bolan remained clear of the lights and walked off one entire side of the plot, and from this he computed the total area behind that fencing at about ten acres. Then he backed off and found a high point of ground from which to make a binocular survey of the interior grounds. The place was lit up like Christmas, and there was little difficulty in picking out the salient features.
The main building was a three story job of stone and heavy timber with porches jutting out here and there at all three levels. A long veranda traversed one entire side at ground level, and Bolan found hints of a larger patio area to the rear. There would be a pool back there, he surmised, and all the gaudy pleasures that normally accompanied the good life. Several smaller buildings were clustered about the primary structure, and the entire building complex was set in about one hundred yards from the front gate. A well-lighted macadam road ran straight as an arrow from the gate to the lodge area, then looped about a good-size parking area and angled off somewhere into the darkness.
Bolan had kept his mind loose as to his reasons for trekking out here. He had known about the joint, he had wanted to see it, and perhaps in the depths of his mind somewhere had been a vague plan to go out there and level the joint, smash it to powder, kill everything that moved, and show the Five Families that there was no such place as an impregnable fortress of safety where they could R and R things up. But there could be no practical value to such a hit—not unless he could chance upon a gathering of the clans. Even so, as purely a mission of psychological warfare it would be a worthwhile operation if he could pull it off properly. But his surveillance was suggesting to him that he could not. There was no way of knowing the defenses until a guy actually got down in there, and then an awful truth might come.
Bolan pondered the situation and finally decided firmly against a hard hit. There were too many variables, too many unknowns, and he was not exactly in the best form. A soft probe, though, as long as he was out here, might be entirely in order. He went back to his bus, wrapped himself in a black poncho, and returned to the observation point. There he stayed for one hour, watching the windows of the big house, occasionally turning the binoculars onto the grounds and along the wall, watching for some activity about the gatehouse. He found no activity anywhere, except for an occasional shadow moving across a lighted window in the lodge, and once he tho
ught he glimpsed something moving through a patch of light on the grounds.
The time was shortly past eight o’clock when Bolan returned to the VW the second time and stripped down to his midnight combat suit. It was a thermal outfit and would provide protection from the cold if he did not stay too long in one spot. As other items of protection, he kept the Beretta and the shoulder rig and added a web belt with ammo pockets to his waist. A light chatter gun from the Meyer arsenal went around his neck and he clipped a pair of fragmentation grenades to the web belt.
Several minutes later the Executioner was over the wall and moving silently on a parallel course with the macadam road. The ground was smooth like a golf green and trying to freeze, and the snow was coming a bit thicker but still not laying on the ground. Soon it would begin to accumulate. He knew that he would have to conclude his probe with all speed and get the hell out before he started making tracks about that hardsite.
Bolan was about halfway to the building complex when he thought he heard something moving toward him through the darkness. He dropped to one knee and froze, the Beretta up and ready, eyes straining ahead to pierce the night and hopefully to get that initial advantage of first glimpse.
The opponent of the moment, however, had a much greater perceptual range and a sense development far surpassing the mere human faculties of Mack Bolan. Almost. Bolan heard the thing snorting and sensed the rush of the attack, and he went over on his side just as the foe loomed out of the blackness, lips curled back and teeth gleaming in a low-pitched snarl, a charging German Shepherd in a killing mood, a black devil of the night, and Bolan nearly tore his head off with two quick phuts of the Beretta.
Bolan was silently damning himself for not knowing better, for failing to understand the total absence of human activity on those grounds. He was in a no-man’s-land ruled by killer canines—and the big question now was how many more of them were about. He got an immediate partial answer as another item of snarling death came in from the other flank. The Beretta dropped this one in mid-leap and one of the fangs grazed Bolan’s gun hand as the furry ball hit the ground and slid past him.
Nightmare in New York Page 6