This one had bent toward the ashtray to crush out the cigarette. The topcoat fell away from her. She sighed and let it remain where it fell. The limited airspace of the Ferrari cabin was beginning to heat up. She neatly folded the coat and arranged it over the backrest. Then she repositioned herself to face Bolan and drew one leg onto the seat. Bolan cooly inspected the display of living flesh, then directed his eyes to the business of piloting the vehicle.
“What you see is what you don’t get,” she told him in a matter-of-fact tone, paraphrasing a famous black comedian. “That’s the house rule at the Lair. It’s an exercise in male frustration, I guess.”
“What are the house rules for Mafia molls?” he quietly inquired.
The blue eyes flared but the reply was just as quiet. “Believe it or not, this was my first time at that place. I knew what Mr. Aurielli was, of course. But you have to understand … in this town, that’s almost a mark of distinction. There was nothing personal between us. I’d just met him this afternoon.”
Bolan was watching for roadsigns, trying to orient himself. Almost absently, he commented, “Okay.”
“It was an assignment,” she explained. “It’s in our contract. We get outside assignments. Not uh … not what you might be thinking.”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s a public relations thing. The Foxy Ladies often make appearances at private parties. It’s good for us, or so we’re told. We get more exposure that way.” Her eyes flashed down to the costume. “If that’s possible.”
Bolan said, “Okay.”
“Do you want to hear this or don’t you?”
“I’m listening,” he assured her. He was also trying to find his place on a map of the city.
“Mr. Aurielli is—was—a keyholder. Do you think I’d go on a date dressed like this? In the middle of the afternoon? I was out there to serve a special meeting. Mr. Aurielli called it a board meeting. But I didn’t see any other board members present, and I was already beginning to smell a rat when the shooting started. This man, the bartender I guess, had just taken my coat and was headed off somewhere to put it away. When the first shot sounded, he ran toward the back of the house. I went to the window, and by that time the shots were coming one after another and I saw Mr. Aurielli and two other men lying in the drive. I guess I panicked. I ran outside … and then I saw the men upstairs shooting at the place next door. Then the car caught fire and blew up. I heard someone yell something about Bolan—and that’s when I started running. I don’t know why I ran to you. I guess I just suddenly realized where I needed to be.”
Bolan glanced at her and caught a wry smile pulling at her lips. “My suspicious and romantic mind, I guess,” she continued. “I had suddenly understood that I was practically alone with that … that terrible man—and in some sort of a hideout. So I had already begun to panic. And I guess I thought Prince Charming had come to rescue me from my awful fate. I don’t know what I thought. I just lost my head. And I ran for the arms of Prince Charming.”
“And found him to be no prince,” Bolan commented dryly.
“You carried me away in your white charger, didn’t you,” she quietly observed.
“Call it a white coffin,” he suggested. “That’s what it could turn into.”
“I guess I knew what I was doing,” the girl murmured. “We—the girls at the club—we were talking about you just the other night. They had that special from New York on Channel 4, and we were talking about your—uh—battles there. Someone said you’d never come to Chicago. The people around here are kind of crazy—or have you noticed that? They seem to be proud to be the crime center of the universe. Anyway, I suppose all this was in my mind—and the shooting started—and I heard that man on the roof shout your name. I guess I knew where I was running. Still I guess I didn’t know for sure until I saw you walking toward the car in that black suit. Then it all came together. The Executioner had come to Chicago.”
Bolan said, “And right in the nick of time, eh?”
“I guess that’s how I thought of it,” she admitted. “Very egotistic, huh. Just the same, you did save my life back there, you know.”
“Not quite,” he told her.
“What?”
“Look, I believe your story,” he said. “I could just as easily disbelieve it, but I have to lean your way. And you have to lean with me. Now you think carefully and answer the same way. How many people knew you were going to that joint with Aurielli?”
She blinked her eyes rapidly and replied, “Lots of people. It was an assignment. I told you. I was sent—”
“Okay. Now what do you suppose is going to happen when the mob begins looking into the thing? They’re going to discover there’s a chick missing from the woodpile. They’re going to wonder what happened to the chick and they’re going to wonder if there was any connection between her and Bolan. These guys don’t miss any bets. They’re as good as any cops anywhere when it comes to pulling evidence together. They know their business, and they conduct it with a notable absence of tenderness. Sooner or later they’re going to start wondering about a certain Foxy Lady. And if they develop any suspicion whatever that maybe this lady helped set up that little slaughter out there this afternoon, then that lady will be not very long for this world. Are you leaning with me?”
She was. Bolan had to believe that the reaction was genuine. Her eyes fluttered, the veneer of sophistication cracked a bit further, and she exclaimed, “Oh wow! That’s what you meant by ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire.’”
Bolan assured her, “That’s exactly what I meant.”
“So what do I do now?” she asked in a small voice. “Go back?”
He shook his head. “It’s too late for that. The cops are already swarming the joint. No, you have to go on. But we have to build you a story. You panicked and ran. A guy picked you up and took you into town. You …” The look in her eyes stopped him. He asked, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s no good,” she replied miserably. “They saw me. Two men. I saw them watching me from the kitchen window as I was running. They had to know where I was headed.”
Bolan said, “Well damn it.”
“I guess you could take me to a police station,” she suggested in a frightened voice. “I could ask for protection.”
He shook his head. “That wouldn’t buy you a thing. Not if these people decide to get to you.”
“Then take me home,” she said, suddenly flaring with defiance. “I live in Elmhurst. I’ll call the club and tell them what happened, and I’ll just go on as though nothing had happened. If the mobsters come to me, I’ll just tell them exactly how it was. And they can like it or lump it.”
Bolan was obviously neither liking nor lumping it. His face was etched with trouble lines, and again he said, “Well damn it.”
Perhaps he was remembering the gruesome remains of what had been an equally beautiful and innocent girl, left behind in a New York morgue; or maybe he was thinking of an exotic French actress who had offered him Eden on the Riviera and who had found in return nothing but an echo of Bolan’s hell—or a valiant little Cuban exile who had given her blood for his in Miami and died in agony with a blowtorch at her breasts. And perhaps he was viewing the entire procession of beloved dead.
He turned tortured eyes to the latest most likely candidate and told her, “Like it or not, Foxy, you’re a part of my jungle now.”
It was all Bolan needed to make his job doubly impossible … another defenseless ally to worry over. He jerked the wheel viciously into the exit to an east-west arterial and left Lake Shore Drive behind. He had found his orientation.
This new development called for a change in the battle order.
And Bolan knew precisely what had to be done next.
3: THE DEAL
“For God’s sake, Pete, where you been? I been looking all over for you!”
The king of the highways, Pietro D. (Pete the Hauler) Lavallo regarded his “Executive Vice-President” with a supe
rior smugness and a condescending smile. “While you been running around looking for me,” he replied, “I been out nailing down a deal.” He went on to his desk and dropped, tiredly, into a massive chair. “So what’s your problem, Rudy? What’re you so lathered-up about, huh?”
Rudy Palmer (nee Colombo Palmeiri) was swaying nervously from one foot to the other. His eyes went to the wall behind his boss’s head as he said, “I don’t know just how to tell you this, Pete. I got some bad news.”
“Well just tell it and let me figure out how bad it is, huh, Rudy?”
“Louis Aurielli is dead.”
“Did you say dead?”
“Yeah. He’s dead, Pete.”
Pete the Hauler’s eyes shaded into a dull gaze while the message tried to locate a level of acceptance in the gray matter behind those eyes. Disbelief registered there even as he was replying, “Hell, I warned him. I told him those pains were trying t’ tell him something. You mean he’s really dead?” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”
“No!” Palmer exclaimed. “Not like that. I mean his brains are splattered all over Lakeside. Him and about a dozen boys. City Jim says bodies are strung all around the joint, just shot to hell.”
Lavallo slowly pushed his swivel chair away from the desk and eased to his feet. As if in a slow-motion reflex he opened a drawer and picked up a .45 Colt autoloader, checked the clip, and placed it on the desk. Then he went to the window and stared out upon the warehouse complex that surrounded the modernistic office building. In a barely audible voice he asked, “And where does City Jim come into it?”
“Hell, I guess they got half the police force out there, that’s where he comes into it. He said to tell you—”
“He said?” Lavallo snarled, whirling away from the window. “You mean he called personal?”
“Yes he did, and let me tell you about it, Pete.” Palmer took time to light a cigarette, exhaling with the burst of words. “You remember a Lakeside soldier called Johnny Vegas? Tall skinny kid, always doing card tricks?”
Lavallo cried, “Get to it! What the hell happened out there?”
“This Johnny Vegas is the only soldier left alive up there. He says it was a Bolan hit. He says he stood eye-to-eye with the bastard and—”
Lavallo had scooped up an ashtray from the desk and thrown it the length of the office. It struck the far wall and shattered, dislodging a heavy plaque.
Palmer yelled, “Calm down, Pete! God, listen to what I got to tell you!”
“Awright I’m listening.” Lavallo picked up the .45 and thrust it into the waistband of his trousers. “I’m listening! Go ahead!”
“Johnny Vegas says Bolan left a message for you. That’s why City Jim called direct. He says you better take a vacation, and damn quick. Bolan gave the kid one of those medals—you know, those calling-cards of his. He said Johnny should give it to you, because you’re next.”
Lavallo’s eyes twitched. He muttered, “Smart son of a bitch. Where the hell does he get off with—just who the hell does he think he is?”
“Who? You mean City Jim? He’s just trying—”
“Hell no, I mean that smart bastard!” Lavallo yelled. “Where the hell does he think he’s at, still in New York or somewheres? He can’t pull that stuff in this town, don’t he know that?”
“God, I guess he already pulled it, Pete,” Rudy Palmer quietly pointed out. “The guy’s a nut, you know that. You can’t figure a nut. He’s probably all horsed up, you know how those guys come back from Vietnam. Popping four or five caps of horse a day and clear outta their skulls with the stuff. I think you ought to—”
“Aw shut up,” Lavallo muttered. “Lemme think. Hell I ain’t even got used to Lou being dead yet. Lemme think.”
“Well listen to one more thing first. I already sent for Nicko and Eddie. I told them to round up plenty of soldiers and get a convoy out here to take you home. I don’t want you taking no chances with this nut.”
“Yeah, yeah—okay.” Lavallo was staring at the window, his eyes glazed and unseeing. “And tell City Jim thanks if he calls back. Tell him I appreciate the personal interest.”
Palmer nodded and went to the door, then turned back to examine his boss with a searching gaze. “There was a doll with Louis when he got it,” he announced quietly.
“It figures,” Lavallo muttered.
“And she up and disappeared. The chef says he saw her running across the grounds to meet Bolan. He says she knew right where she was going.”
Lavallo’s chin quivered. He said, “I told Lou those dollies would kill him. A man fifty-five years old shouldn’t try acting like a young stud again. I warned him those pains meant something.”
“The point is that—”
“I know what point it is!” Lavallo yelled.
“Well I’m going to put a crew working that angle.”
“You do that, Rudy. And tell ’em to bring this doll to me. I want to talk to her personal.”
“I figured you would,” Rudy Palmer replied, and went on out, carefully closing the door between the interconnecting offices.
Lavallo absently patted the grip of the .45 and sank onto the corner of the desk, still staring unseeingly at the window. Shock and anger and fear and outrage all seemed to have become resolved in a consummate sadness. Louis Aurielli had been a good friend, a lifelong companion. They had come up together, through the bloody ranks of family competition to a plateau of unchallenged power. They’d seen a lot together, and done a lot together—and together they had become a lot. Now Lavallo felt strangely alone, exposed to the vicissitudes of a cruel world. And because of what? Because of a smart-ass soldier boy on a dumb vendetta. What had Louis Aurielli known of this smart-ass? What did Pete Lavallo care about him?
Okay, sure, there had been that thing at Miami Beach. And some of the Chicago boys caught hell at Miami. But Lou and Pete had been a hundred miles away at the time, and why should they take it personal about Miami Beach? Let the street soldiers worry about the blacksuited bastard, that’s what they were paid to do. Not Lou and Pete. But now here was Louis dead and Pete worrying.
There just wasn’t any justice.
Well … it was personal now for Pete Lavallo. People didn’t go around gunning down his lifelong friends and live to smile about it. Not nobody, not Mack Bolan, not a hundred Mack Bolans.
Lavallo sat there for a long time … remembering, wondering, hating … and then he realized that the sun had gone down and that it was getting dark outside. He went to the window and pulled the blind, then turned on his desk lamp and punched an intercom button to connect him with a desk situated deep in the maze of warehouses. A nervous voice responded immediately and Lavallo asked it, “Did that guy from Rockford show up yet?”
“Not yet, Mr. Lavallo,” came the strained response.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” Lavallo snarled. “I told him four o’clock, and here it is five.”
“They were having an ice storm across Interstate 90, sir, up near Belvidere. Possibly he got caught in that.”
“Don’t bullshit me no ice storms!” Lavallo raged. “When he gets in, if he ever gets in, you tell him it’s all off. Tell him he’s not hauling for Lavallo and Aurielli, not if he can’t show up on time for the first haul!”
The choked voice replied, “He’s leased fifty trucks for that job, Mr. Lavallo. I don’t believe we could just arbitrarily terminate his contract, especially if an act of God is the cause of his delay.”
“Arbitrary, who the hell said anything about arbitrary? You tell that guy the contract is tore up, and if he wants an act of God, ask him what he thinks about a spanner wrench against the side of the head. I ain’t holding still for no smart-ass out-of-town hauler that thinks he can walk all over L & A. And the same goes for a smart-ass dispatcher that talks about arbitrary stuff. Don’t you forget that.”
“Yes sir. I’ll tell him to run his fifty leased trucks up his ass, Mr. Lavallo.”
“You do that!” Lava
llo punched off the connection and settled into his chair, puffing with anger.
The side door opened and Rudy Palmer stood there stiffly framed in the rectangle of light. “The convoy is downstairs, Pete,” he announced quietly. “Let’s go home.”
“Go on down,” Lavallo said. “I gotta take a piss, then I’ll be right with you. Did anybody tell Mrs. Aurielli about Louis?”
“We’re trying to locate her,” Palmer replied woodenly. “She’s usually in Nassau this time of year.”
“If you don’t find her there, try that hotel at St. Thomas. She likes it there, too. Go on, Rudy. I’ll be right down.”
Palmer backed out and closed the door. Lavallo smiled wryly to himself and picked up the telephone. A moment later he got his connection and told it, “Hello, John? This is Pete Lavallo. You know, L & A Trucking. Say, uh, one of my subcontractors has crapped out on me. You know what I was saying last week about something big for your campaign fund.”
A clipped voice rattled back a brisk response.
Lavallo grinned and said, “Yeah, well that was a drop in the bucket, I don’t even count that. I meant something big. That, uh, kid of yours—John Junior, is it? Listen, I know where he can pick up long-term leases on fifty heavy haulers at a fraction of the regular cost.”
A delighted response rattled the receiver.
The Lavallo grin widened. He said, “Sure, it’s the cheapest way I know to get into the trucking business. Listen, you send John Junior around in the morning, eh? We’ll see what we can come up with.”
Another rattle, then: “Oh, hell, don’t mention it, John. What are friends for if they can’t look out for each other, eh?”
Lavallo hung up and studied his fingertips with a smug smile. One man’s ruin always meant another man’s gain. And what the hell could the punk from Rockford possibly mean to Pete Lavallo?
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