In effect, Marco had succeeded Marinello. Augie had been the boss of bosses. Ergo, Marco should now wear that crown. He had, in fact, been acting as though he did.
Which accounted for Billy Gino’s unhappiness with the guy.
As for Johnny Grazzi, certainly he did not share Billy’s assessment of the new boss of Manhattan. It was common knowledge, moreover, that Grazzi despised and feared Minotti with passions that spanned the years. So although he did not buy the favorable comparison between himself and a feared enemy, it must have felt nice to get his fur stroked in such strong company. Evidently the stroking had proven sufficient to provoke a commitment of sorts. That was all Bolan had been going for—a state of mind which would be conducive to later manipulation.
It was, after all, a damned game.
A deadly serious one, to be sure—and a terribly important one—but a game, nevertheless. The conversation in that riverview apartment had been numbingly accurate, in at least one detail. No one man could have ever hoped for such extravagant successes against a worldwide organization of savages such as this one. Unless that one man happened to be a damned good gamesman—and unless he could pick up a few strong friends along the way.
Bolan had been fortunate in both departments. He’d been trained as a gamesman, by experts in the biggest game of all, and he had indeed been joined in the game by some of the largest friends a man could have.
“With a little help, maybe,” he’d suggested to Grazzi.
Mack Bolan had received a damn lot of help, and he knew it, and it was an item of pride with him.
Not every “human being” in Mack Bolan’s world had elected to roll over and play dead for the bully boys. That was, yes, an item of considerable pride.
But it was time, now, to get on with the game. The first move was Bolan’s. And he knew exactly where to begin.
Bolan touched a small selenium dot embedded in his left lapel and said to it, “Are you on me?”
April Rose’s voice murmured back via a small, thickened area in the frame of his sunglasses. “Loud and clear, Striker. Your wires are firm.”
Which meant that every word spoken in that apartment had been preserved on tape in the Warwagon’s intelligence console.
He told his helpmate: “Track loose. I’ll be taking a bath on Central Park West.”
She would understand that. And the big GMC motorhome would orbit that next check-point, listening to transpiring events and maintaining a support posture in this deadliest of all deadly games.
He smiled grimly to himself and put the Ferrari into the traffic flow.
The last day of the last mile was underway.
The Roman Nights “bathhouse and spa” took pride in the fact that it was open 24 hours a day and that it employed “New York’s most beautiful attendants.” It was a “private club” which sold memberships in the lobby to anyone with the price—and, of course, all major credit cards were gladly accepted.
The guy at the counter was not particularly beautiful, nor even attractive. He showed Bolan a hideous smile and told him, in a gutteral monotone, “You came at a good time, sport. Day shift just came on, fresh and ready, so you get the choice of the house. You a member?”
Bolan flashed the death card at the guy and said, “Better than that, sport. Is he here?”
The phony smile stayed but the gravelly voice undertook a new strain as the guy replied, “He’s never here this early.”
“That’s the problem,” Bolan said, his gaze roaming the empty lobby. He wore a black raincoat over a $500 sharkskin suit, a snapbrim black hat, yellow-tinted lenses in white bone frames, and a face to chill Antarctica. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Lou Nola,” said the growler, nervously. “I manage the day shift. What’s wrong?”
“Who’s here?”
“Just me’n the girls, Tony and Jake.”
“Who are Tony and Jake?”
“You know, the muscle. What’s wrong?”
“No customers?”
“Oh sure, it’s early but we got a few. What’s wrong?”
Bolan grabbed the guy by an arm and pulled him from behind the counter. “Let’s go.”
“Where we going?”
“Inside. Quickly. Move it.”
The guy moved it, leading Bolan up a curving staircase to where the action was while growling over his shoulder, “What the hell is going on?”
Bolan showed him a solemn smile as he replied, “Right now, Lou, I want a look at your customers.”
Nola was beginning to enter the spirit of the thing, whatever it was. His eyes were dancing with excitement as he led Bolan into the second floor lounge. “You never been here before, sir?”
Bolan assured him that he had not.
“Well this’s the hots room. The customers can meet the girls here and look ’em over if they don’t already have one in mind. We get a lot of repeat business, of course. Class joint. Best girls in town. And we get a classy trade. No ten dollar hand jobs in this place, bet your ass.”
The “hots room” had a stale atmosphere, poor lighting, a small self-serve bar in one corner, several large couches, soiled harem pillows strewn about, and a large-screen projection TV being fed nonstop porno from a video tape player.
But the girls were not so bad. Two of them, rather loosely draped in thigh-length garments which probably were supposed to be togas, were at the bar with an arrogant looking muscleman who had to be either Tony or Jake. He wore pants too tight to sit and a red T-shirt with “Get Screwed” emblazoned across the chest.
Nola called the bouncer over and told him, “We’re checking the johns. Where are they?”
Tony or Jake, whichever, replied, “Two in the whirlpool with Janie and Paula.” He curiously eyed Bolan as he added, “Wilma’s balling one upstairs. What’s the problem?”
Bolan asked, “How many girls on duty right now?”
“They’re all here,” the muscleman said coldly.
“Twelve,” Nola hastily added, with a rebuking frown at the other.
Bolan commanded that other, “Round up all the unattached girls and take them out of here. I mean all the way out, across the street, to the park. On the double quick and just as they are.”
“I can’t take them out there like that, with their asses hanging out! What the hell is—?”
“Just do it!” Bolan snarled, giving the guy a hard shove for emphasis.
Nola cried, “Well wait, I—”
Bolan halted that nervous protest with a throaty growl and a hard look. But the voice was coldly controlled as he told that guy, “This joint is wired to go up in flames. I don’t know when. It could be any minute. Show me the baths, then you scout around and make sure everybody gets out of the building.”
“A bomb?” Nola gasped.
“Don’t waste time with dumb questions. Do like I said!”
“Hey, if the joint’s gonna go …!”
The guy wanted to just run away, and to hell with everyone else. Bolan grabbed two fistfuls of shirtfront and slammed the reluctant manager against the wall beside swinging double doors. “You do exactly like I said!” he commanded. “Make sure everyone gets out!” He jerked his head toward the doors. “Are the baths in there?”
“On through the locker room!” Nola replied, choked with fear and with Bolan’s big fists buried, as it were, in his throat.
Bolan flung the guy away with a disgusted growl and went through the swinging doors.
The locker room was clean and antiseptic smelling. Varnished wooden benches lined a double row of lockers. A stack of towels and a large carton containing disposable footwear stood on a table beside a door labelled “Private.” At the other side, a single swinging door led to the baths.
In there, three large sunken tubs provided the focus for relaxed frolic, around which were scattered massage tables and miscellaneous toys of the erotic variety. A small room beyond contained a wall-to-wall water bed, at floor level.
On almost any night of the week
, these “baths” would undoubtedly be wall-to-wall living flesh, a “spa” in every sense of the word for those who enjoy communal sex and are willing to rent partners. Bolan had no particular grudge against the concept nor took any particular pleasure in disrupting the fun of the two “Johns” who were presently cavorting rather self-consciously with the busty young ladies in the center tub.
But it was Saturday and this was New York—and the larger game had already begun.
He threw a stack of towels at the foursome and gave them the message. They departed with proper dispatch, fleeing soundlessly on naked feet and clutching their towels about them. Bolan followed them to the locker room door, then gave it a five count and opened his raincoat.
Affixed by a spring-clip gadget strapped to the outer right leg just above the knee was a specially modified M-79, a 40mm grenade launcher. In its normal configuration, the ’79 looked like a short, fat shotgun, the 14-inch barrel accounting for only half the overall length of the weapon. This one, with a cutdown stock, measured only 20 inches overall. The rear leaf sight had been removed. Now it looked like a long, fat pistol.
The M-79 does not hurl a “hand grenade” but fires a 40 millimeter exploding round which may contain buckshot, flare, gas, smoke or high explosive. The high explosive or “HE” round can be quite devastating, especially in contained areas. In a readybelt at his waist, Bolan carried six HE and several smoke rounds. He backed into the locker room and held the swinging door with his hip as he thumbed in a round of HE and let it fly toward the tubs, releasing the door in the same moment and dancing back to avoid the shock wave.
The floor moved, in there, and windows exploded. He kicked the door open once again and sent a smoke round to the wall beneath the shattered windows, then moved swiftly through the locker room and into the central lounge.
Lou Nola was disappearing down the stairway to the ground floor. A guy dressed identically to the other bouncer was frantically urging a dishevelled, near-nude couple across the room and toward that stairway.
Bolan concealed the ’79 beneath his raincoat as he yelled at that guy. “Is that everybody?”
“That’s it!” the bouncer yelled back.
Bolan watched them to the safety of the ground floor, then he crossed to the ascending stairs and was about to send a firestorm to the third floor landing when some quiver of the psyche stayed the trigger finger and sent the feet, instead, up those stairs.
It had been a damned fortunate quiver, indeed.
A pretty kid who looked far too young to be working in a joint like this was in a small room at the end of the hall. She lay nude and unconscious upon a soiled mattress on the floor and she was in a hell of a mess. The room smelled of vomit and so did the girl, some of it encrusted in her tangled hair.
Bolan draped her across his shoulder and carried her to the second floor lounge. Smoke was puffing into the room from beneath the double doors to the baths. He lay the girl on a couch, stripped off his raincoat and wrapped her in it, then hoisted her again to his shoulder and went down the stairs.
Water was pouring through the ceiling and was already ankle deep in the lobby. The blast in the bathhouse had evidently ruptured a water line. The front door stood open and water was flowing outside.
Bolan had planned to level the joint. Maybe it would level itself, with the small help that he had given it.
A curious crowd was gathering at the edge of the park, across the street, as Bolan exited with his burden, much of the attention seeming to center on the scantily clad young women who stood in mute but agitated contemplation of the flames erupting through the second floor windows.
A nervously indignant Lou Nola scampered to Bolan’s side as he crossed the street, eyes shifting rapidly from the weapon in Bolan’s hand to the raincoat-draped burden draped across his shoulder.
“You should have left the kid,” Nola growled. “What the hell am I supposed to do with her, now?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bolan growled back. “Call Marco. Tell him what happened.”
“He sure ain’t gonna like it,” Nola said quietly. “Roman Nights was his favorite toy. He ain’t gonna like it a bit.”
“That,” said Bolan, coldly, “is the whole idea, sport.” He pushed the guy aside and went on to his car, carefully placed the unconscious girl inside, and went away from there.
April Rose whispered in his ear: “Are you clear? Police and firemen are responding.”
“I’m clear,” Bolan assured her. “Let’s rendezvous. I have a casualty aboard.”
“Somebody we know?”
“Nobody we know,” he replied.
But it could have been. He glanced at the pathetic mess curled into the seat beside him and shuddered. Yeah. That was the hell of it, the tragic commonality of it; she could have been anyone’s kid sister.
As it turned out, the girl was the daughter of someone very special—very special, indeed. But Bolan would not learn of that until the morning flames of Saturday had run their course. For now, it was enough to know that the game had begun … and that someone else knew it, now, as well.
CHAPTER 4
VECTORS
The fire was out. Only one fire truck remained, also a special unit from the arson squad. Traffic flow along Central Park West had returned to near normal, with the assistance of a traffic detail of cops. Earlier, a SWAT team had cruised through but did not stop. Most of the onlookers had drifted away and the people from Roman Nights had departed in taxicabs, except for Lou Nola, the day manager. Lou had remained behind to try to explain the happening to his boss, Marco Minotti.
It was not a pleasant task. Minotti was an explosive individual, quick tempered and unpredictable. He listened quietly to what Nola had to say but the storm signals were blazing from his eyes throughout that discourse.
When Nola had run out of words, Minotti stomped over to a park bench and kicked it, then again, as edgy bodyguards smiled nervously at one another. But the anger was under control when the boss turned back to Nola. “I didn’t send a guy, Lou,” he declared coldly. “Especially I did not send an Ace. Those guys don’t cut no ice around here any more.”
Nola replied, “No sir, I didn’t mean to say that you sent him. In fact, he asked for you. I figure he was acting on a tip from somewhere, not sent by you.”
Minotti’s voice was dangerously calm as he said, “And he took the kid away with ’im, eh?”
“Yes, sir. Said he’d take care of it. Put her in this fire red Ferrari. I figure—”
“Exactly what did this guy look like?”
Nola cracked his knuckles and set his gaze about two inches to the left of the boss’s as he replied. “Tall guy, Mr. Minotti. More’n six feet easy—maybe six-two or three. Shoulders enough to fill a doorway. I wisht I could afford his clothes. And he had a … he was … when he talked, you felt like jumping. You know? Authority, real authority. But very cool. I know he was the genuine article. Showed me his card.”
“You ever see one of those cards before?” Minotti growled.
“No, sir. But I knew what it was when I saw it.”
“Did you get the number? Did you even think to check it out before you let him waltz in there and take the joint over?”
Nola was developing a cold sweat. He said, “There was no time for—he said a bomb, it could go off any minute. That’s all I could think of. It didn’t seem no time to be—”
“What’d he look like?”
“I told you, he—you mean his face. Uh, well, cold … cold is what I think of. Uh, square—I would say square jaw. Strong chin. Good teeth. Sort of a good looking guy, I guess. I mean, women would think so. He wore sunshades so I couldn’t see his eyes but you got the feeling all the time he was staring holes through you. Oh—he has this smile but it’s not a smile, if you know what I mean. Christ, sir, he’s a Black Ace. What else can I say?”
Minotti’s gaze had gone somewhat glassy about midway through that description. It wavered and fell to the ground then he turne
d about for further contemplation of the park bench. “Did this so-called Ace wear a hat?” he mumbled at the bench.
“Sir?”
Minotti turned his head only and angrily bit the words. “Did he wear a hat?”
“I think so, yessir. Yes he did. Wore it sort of square.”
“Sort of military?”
“Military? I guess—well, yeah, all over. I guess that’s what I been going for. Now that you mention it, he looked kind of like a soldier in civvies. But damn nice civvies.”
Minotti sighed and turned his whole body around, dropped onto the bench, raised both arms to the backrest, crossed his legs. He sat like that for a long moment, staring at the ground.
The bodyguards walked softly about, as though awaiting an explosion.
Nola lit a cigarette and sucked at it hungrily, stealing glances toward the continuing commotion across the street.
Then a torpedo approached with a report on the disaster. Minotti saw him coming and raised expectant eyes. “So?” he asked quietly.
“It wasn’t a bomb, Marco.”
“What was it, then?”
“They don’t know, yet, for sure. But definitely not a bomb. They’re digging shrapnel out of the walls, up there. And something is very funny.”
“What, funny?”
“They found something that—well it looks like a smoke shell.”
“A what?”
“For setting off a smoke screen.”
“Son of a bitch!” Minotti exclaimed disgustedly. “A smoke screen!”
“There’s not really that much damage, either. Mostly water and smoke. The fire was contained inside the baths.”
Minotti rose slowly to his feet, sent a withering look at Lou Nola, and said, “A bomb, huh?”
Nola shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands. “How could anyone know? When a guy yells bomb, you gotta believe it. They evacuated a big office building just up the street two weeks ago, same thing. But no bomb. What can you do?”
Minotti squared off, flexing his shoulders at Nola as he growled, “You don’t just run away and leave something I told you to watch. That’s what you don’t do.”
Satan’s Sabbath Page 2