“Yes, sir, your honor. We’ll get right on it. And we’re going to be prosecuting these Mafia goons as fast as we can.”
Jansen was sweating when he turned and motioned to Bolan. They went out a side door. When they were outside alone Jansen said, “Is it always this hot at the top?”
“You haven’t even started to feel the heat yet. Wait until you blow out that second assistant chief.”
“Yeah, and I have to find some black captains and sergeants in a hurry.”
“I’ve got another problem for you. I didn’t see that evidence on Tattaglia. You need to make a phone call.”
“About Tattaglia? We’ve got him good.”
They drove to a pay phone where Bolan dialed a number, and when someone answered he grinned.
“Hope I got you away from a fantastic dinner party,” the Executioner said.
“No chance, cowboy. Know that voice anywhere. What’s happening?”
“Want you to talk to a friend of mine, Chief Jansen of the Baltimore Police. Tell him about Nino.”
“Easy. Put him on.”
Bolan looked at Jansen. “This man is Phillip Hardesty of the federal Department of Justice. He wants to talk to you.”
Jansen took the phone.
“Mr. Hardesty, is there something I should know about Nino Tattaglia?”
“Yes indeed, chief. Nino is ours. He was Mafia and we turned him around to take my place as our high-level informant. You can pick him up and hold him for a couple of days, but then the evidence against him has to be compromised or lost. He won’t do us any good rotting in a Maryland jail somewhere.”
“This is news to me. Your friend isn’t overly talkative.”
“Neither one of them is supposed to be. I’ll send you a letter through channels, and I want you to call the department tomorrow and double-check that I’m who I say I am. We need Nino right where he is, and higher up in the mob. I’m sure you’ll cooperate.”
“Yes. I guess all this evidence against the Mafia is ours partly because of Nino’s work with your tall friend here.”
“Affirmative.”
“Okay, it can be arranged. We’ll push other cases, drag this for a week and let him go without any formal charges. Mr. Hardesty, we thank you for your help.”
“Just doing my job. Put Mack back on.”
Bolan took the phone.
“Yeah, Leo?”
“Leo’s dead, didn’t you hear? Went to Italy on vacation and died in a fiery car crash.”
“May he rest in peace. So now Leo is off the Mafia hook.”
“Completely off. How’s Nino doing?”
“Fair. He forgets sometimes. You better give him a couple of reminders.”
“I’ll do that. Take care.”
They hung up.
Chief Jansen frowned. “Who the hell am I going to move up to captain?” He shook his head. “Up to now I’ve only been working fourteen hours a day. From now on it will be twenty-four hours on, zero off.”
“I’m crying for you,” Bolan said, grinning. “You love it. I’ll let you get back to work. I have a few loose ends to take care of. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
They waved and went their separate ways. He was sure now that Chief Jansen was clean. Otherwise he never would have told him about Nino.
* * *
Chief Smith had touched his own private panic button. When he got the rental car that first day he had driven fifty miles north of Baltimore. That put him on the outskirts of York, Pennsylvania. He took a motel room there and tried to call Nazarione. No one there would talk to him. They simply asked where he was, but he would not tell them.
He had walked around town most of the day, trying to decide what to do. Now he knew. He had to return to Baltimore, go to the big house and talk with Carlo. Almost any problem could be worked out face-to-face.
It was dark now, and he remembered this was the day of the mayor’s State of the City speech. He wondered how it went. He would hear some of it on the evening news. But he could not find a good news station on the car radio.
Just after ten that evening he arrived at the front gate of Nazarione’s mansion, told the guard his name and requested to see the capo. It was an emergency. The sentry went into the gate house and used the telephone. He emerged a minute later, nodded and opened the heavy gate by pushing a button. Electric motors rolled the steel framework to one side.
“Mr. Nazarione said you should come right up to the house. Leave the car in the lower parking lot and go to the front door.”
“Thank you,” Smith said. Some of his old confidence was coming back. Things were not as bad as he thought or Carlo never would have let him in. The guard did not even search him.
He swept up the curving, beautifully landscaped drive and turned into the lower parking lot, which was about fifty yards from the front door and the small upper parking lot.
Chief Smith locked the far door, got out of the car, locked the driver’s side and was about ready to pocket the keys when he felt someone touch his shoulder.
Smith snapped around, surprised, startled. Behind him was a man almost six and a half feet tall, with a hulking kind of brutish body that he had grown to recognize over the years. An enforcer!
“I’m Chief Smith. Mr. Nazarione said I was to come up to the front door and then see him.”
His confidence slipped when the huge man grinned.
“Yeah, that’s what the man told you. He told me something different.”
The big man swung a huge fist. Chief Smith saw it coming, wanted to move out of the way but couldn’t. The heavy knuckles slammed into the side of his face. His head snapped back and his glasses flew off. Then he saw another fist coming; it jolted into his right eye, and the world became dark and dull. Soon something else hit his face, and the whole scene wavered and switched from dark to deep black.
Chief Smith felt something touch him. It was soft, then sharp and pointed and piercing his skin.
“He’s coming around,” a voice from the blackness said.
“No damn fun if he don’t!”
“Smith, you bastard, wake up.”
Strong hands pulled him to a sitting position, and he nearly tipped over. He struggled to open his eyes. They refused. A sharp slap on the face brought him from dreamland.
He sat on a rough wooden floor. The room was chilly. He was in a circle of light with nothing but blackness beyond.
“Well, look who’s here — our wonderful chief of police, that bastard Smith.” The voice was harsh, irritating, frightening. Smith tried to remember where he had heard it before. No luck.
He blinked. This was not right. Carlo had sounded friendly.
“I’m not supposed to be here. Didn’t Carlo tell you guys? I’m on your side. I have been for two months now. Tell Carlo that I’m here, would you please?”
“Carlo ain’t here.”
“We’re wasting time,” a third voice said.
“We got all night.”
The third voice argued. “You might have all night, but I don’t and neither does the machine. I have to start it in just under ten minutes so it can finish by 4:30 A.M. when the first trucks come.”
“Yeah, hell, okay.”
A small penknife sliced through the air and hit Smith over his kidney. He swore softly, dived to the floor and doubled his legs up to his chest, then turned and threw up.
“Guy can’t hold his lunch, let alone his booze.”
A bucket of ice water sloshed over the writhing form. Smith stopped retching and shivered.
“Strip,” one voice told him. Smith kept shivering on the floor. The iron tip of a cattle prod, wired for electricity, touched his bare neck. Smith stiffened and vibrated like an automatic cement finisher.
“This guy has no staying power at all,” a voice said.
“Hell, no. Remember that guy who took over a hundred jolts before he finally passed out? This sucker ain’t good for more than two or three.”
“Get his clothes off,�
�� the impatient voice demanded.
Hands reached in and jerked at buttons, belt and shoes. Two minutes later Smith lay naked on the wet planking, the intense stream lights still blasting into his eyes every time he looked up.
The cattle prod touched Smith’s scrotum and he screamed in pain as the electricity jolted through his genitals.
“Damn, but he’s sensitive. Smith, you bastard. Stand up and hold out your left arm, or you get the cattle prod again.”
Smith stared in the direction of the speaker. Then he stood and held out his arm.
A baseball bat swung down sharply against the white, hairless forearm. The crack of bones breaking came almost instantaneously. Smith roared in pain and terror as he dropped to his knees, cradling his broken arm against his stomach. His scream ended but the pain remained and he swore again and again.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” a different voice said.
“Smith, you bastard. This is just a sample of what happens to guys who double-cross the family and Carlo Nazarione. They get pounded around.”
Another bucket of ice-cold water sloshed over Smith and his whole body shivered and shook.
“I worked with you guys. I never... never finked out!”
“What about those dozen guys you got slaughtered on that simple little pickup job?”
“I explained that to Carlo. I never knew this Bolan character was around. So he rescued me. Why didn’t you let us go? I would have been at Carlo’s gate half an hour later.”
The cattle prod touched Smith and he jerked away but it followed. Then he attempted to hold out through the shock waves, but at last screamed and fell to the floor on his back, protecting his broken arm.
“We’re wasting time,” the heavy voice said again.
“Yeah, sure. But he has to know. He has to know why.”
“I didn’t do nothing! I was coming over on your side. Why do you suppose I been getting all those Mafia guys off on easy plea bargaining?”
“Sure, and then you sell us out, bring in the Executioner, and the bastard rips us to shreds!”
“So now he knows. We’ve got four minutes.”
“Okay, okay.” One of the men in the shadows took out a knife and threw it. The five-inch blade plunged deeply into Smith’s bare thigh. He shrieked with pain, but before he could remove the knife, a dark blur jumped into the light, pulled out the blade and returned to the shadows.
Smith looked up, his pain etching a grotesque mask on his face, then passed out.
“Just as well,” a voice said. “Help me get him over there.”
Three men lugged the unconscious form to the side of a large metal tank, and laid him in a metal box five feet long, eighteen inches wide and two feet high, one of sixty such boxes in the huge tank.
“Hell, play your games,” one of the voices said.
The man who had been rushing everyone pushed two buttons on a panel, then two more and the metal forms inside the big tank began to move slowly forward.
The boxes were in three rows, each twenty boxes long. The first three came to a series of high-pressure nozzles. A finger touched a button and chilled water gushed from the nozzles into the containers. They filled and the next three empty tanks moved into place.
The casket-shaped box containing Chief Smith was next in line. He came to as the container ahead was filling with water.
One of the men took out his .45 but the others shook their heads. The cattle prod touched Smith’s bare shoulder and he pulled away, bellowing in pain and anger.
Then he saw the nozzles and the water surging into the tank ahead of him.
He tried to stand. A baseball bat swung around and slammed into his back. He slumped into the box. He tried to crawl out, but the cattle prod and the bat touched him again and again.
Chief Smith screamed as his container moved forward on the cog machinery and the heavy chain. When the first splashes of water hit him he realized what was happening.
“I got a wife and three kids! You don’t want to do this. You scared me, you hurt me. I’ve learned my lesson. Let me out. For God’s sake, let me out of here!”
The water chilled him immediately, making his legs useless. He lifted his good arm and the ball bat swung, breaking the bone.
Chief Smith stared at the men. Someone had turned on the lights and he could see them now. There were two Mafia thugs and a smaller man in a white shirt and tie, probably the manager of this plant. He knew at once what it was, but he couldn’t believe what was happening.
“You can’t do this! Call Carlo, he’ll tell you I been cooperating great for six months now, and nobody knew. Not even that slime Captain Davis.”
The chief’s voice went high then, as the ice-cold water covered his legs and worked up his torso. His heart was pumping wildly to bring warm blood to the frigid areas.
The water rose to his chest, four inches from the top of the container. Automatically the weight of the box tripped the off switch and the container moved ahead.
Chief Smith looked forward and screamed. His head was above water, and over the top of the metal container. Two feet down the chain the boxes passed through an opening barely large enough to let them slip inside. There was only two inches leeway into the freezer box, where the containers would “cook” for eight hours to turn them into five-foot blocks of crystal-clear ice.
Chief Smith’s screams were endless. Both of the Mafia men laughed, making a bet on whether he would or would not pass out again before entering the freezer.
The container behind his was full and began to move slowly forward.
Chief Smith looked at the sheer side of the heavy metal opening ahead. He had to lower his shoulders and head or be decapitated. Slowly he sank into the water, immersing his shoulders, neck, chin, mouth. The water was now within an inch of the top of the container. Expansion would move it up to the top. Now he had two inches between his nose, the water and the oncoming top of the freezer.
His head moved yet lower.
Then he relaxed and smiled. Hell, he was in his own swimming pool and diving for marbles on the bottom with the kids. Damn, they were good! He took a deep breath and headed for the bottom, wondering why his arms would not work. It was going to be a great day of swimming with the kids. Hell, he’d taken the day off from work. That was why they built the pool!
The two Mafia killers stared in amazement.
“See that? He just went under, no scream, no getting his head chopped off.”
“Must have been out of his skull. Hey, think of the big surprise some ice man is going to have tomorrow when he starts taking the big slabs of ice out. Inside one of them there will be the former chief of police. Bet you fifty bucks that asshole Smith will even have a smile frozen on his face.”
“No bet. Give the man the five hundred and let’s get out of here.”
“Five hundred? I thought this was Carlo’s ice house.”
The taller hit man shook his head.
The other one went to talk to the plant operator.
“All automatic, right?” the Mafia goon asked.
“Yeah, right. I pushed the buttons. It will fill the cubes, feed them into the freezing area and even turn out the lights in this section.”
“Good,” the hit man said. “That makes it easier.” He shot the operator twice in the face, made sure he was dead, then left for the car.
“You didn’t think we could leave a witness who wasn’t in the family to a kill like that, did you?” the hit man asked. He split the five hundred with his partner. They went to the car and drove away.
16
The form huddled on the dark Maryland ground did not move. When the sudden coolness of the thunder-shower erupted over the land, the body twitched, writhed, then returned to consciousness.
Vince Carboni sat up in the rain-drenched wheat field. He lowered his hands to support himself. When they touched the ground he cried out in terrible, agonizing pain.
Carboni looked at his hands and saw the charred flesh. Sw
eat beaded on his forehead.
Damned near burned to death, he thought as he looked around. It was dark. The hard shower was a quick one, soaking him thoroughly, dumping an inch of water on the land in fifteen minutes, then charging away.
He could not move his fingers. His arms were hairless, black in spots with heavy burns. His pants had burned halfway to his knees, and he wondered if he could walk on his blackened legs.
Carboni remembered that the wind had shifted suddenly and blown the wall of fire toward him, cutting off his escape route. The flames had danced all around him like a fire storm. He had tried to run through the fire, but the flames had been so intense he could not breathe.
Now he took a deep breath and screamed. A new pain seared inside him. His lungs must be scorched, too.
Move. He had to move or die. He had to get to a doctor or a hospital or he might not even live until morning. His head felt strangely cool.
His hair!
It had burned off. He felt damned lucky to be alive. Vaguely he remembered crawling from the blackened stalks into this unburned part. Or was it across a road?
Road.
The word touched his logic center. He should move toward the road. Where was it?
He heard something disturb the stillness of the countryside. It sounded again, closer. He looked and saw lights — headlights! The road was that way, and not far. He tried to stand. He cried out in pain when he pressed down with his hands to rise.
Slowly he moved to his knees and balanced there a moment before he attempted to straighten up.
Three times he tried. Three times he fell. On the fourth try he windmilled his arms and gained his balance.
But could he walk? He tried one short step and did not fall. Took a second step, then a third. He turned toward the road. The car had long since passed. He had no way of knowing how far away the road was, but even a hundred yards would be a marathon for him.
His feet were not burned inside the shoes. That might be all that saved his life... if he could get to the road.
Another car came, and he saw he was now less than a hundred feet from the road, but he would not get there in time to stop the car.
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