Friday’s Feast

by Don Pendleton

  “She’s there, too. Or she was. Didn’t you know that?”

  He muttered, “No, I did not know that. Well what the hell…?”

  “Run the tape, you’ll hear it all,” April flounced back. “It’s there in all its lurid—I can’t believe a girl like that. I couldn’t do it. And tell me something, Mr. Brognola, does every damned woman in the world have to fall in love with that man? How many more Tobys are there in the woodwork?”

  “Not nearly enough,” Brognola growled in quiet reply. “You’re out of line, honey. The kind of love that passes back and forth between a couple of pros like those two is very much like the sharing of a life preserver in a shipwreck. So don’t get your nose out of joint over—”

  “Is it that obvious?” she asked, coloring brightly.

  “Like in neon,” he replied, smiling faintly. Then he sobered abruptly and told her, “Give me a line. I’ll flash a pickup on Papriello. Did you say Lauderdale?”

  The girl threw a switch and pushed a headset at her boss. “Yes, and it sounded as though he were calling from some location, which would be obvious to Santelli. He just said, ‘In Lauderdale, you know where.’ So if that—”

  “It does,” Brognola assured the lady. He donned the headset and climbed aboard that fabulous communications system.

  Backboarding, yeah.

  Hell … someone had to do it.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE ELEVENTH FACT

  The curious thing, to Mack Bolan’s mind, was that none of these men seated here seemed to be particularly concerned over the death of their chief. That little moment of tension out there in the front hall had provided the only real reaction, and even that reaction seemed to be bedded in jealous suspicion much more so than in any anger toward the death of their king.

  Very curious, yes.

  They had toasted the fallen chief, and symbolically buried him, when Bolan decided on a bold move.

  He asked the question of none in particular: “Who sent for the Baldaserra brothers?”

  And none responded.

  So he asked the question again, directing the question to La Carpa, diplomatically rewording the query, “Have you seen those boys lately, Tony?”

  La Carpa spoke around a cigar, “Not since—no, I thought they were doing time. Are they here?”

  “They were,” Bolan replied enigmatically. His gaze fell on Damon. “Bobby?”

  The political arm of the Santelli empire shook his head in a decisive negative. “Wouldn’t know them if I saw them. Heard of them, of course. Like you.”

  “Not like me,” Bolan informed him. “I am sent. The Baldaserra boys are sent for. There’s a big difference.” He moved the probing gaze along the table to big Mario Cuba. “Mario?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Did you send for Ike and Mike?”

  “Hell no, sir. What makes you think they were here? I guess I would’ve seen them if they were here.”

  “When did you first see me?” Bolan asked pointedly.

  The guy dropped his gaze and played with a fork, pushing down on the tines and rocking it along the table. “So maybe I wouldn’t have seen them,” he growled. “I was out in the apartment for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. But I really didn’t mean me personally. My boys are me. Nobody comes walking in here past my boys.”

  “How many boys you got out there?”

  “I got two at the gate. I got two at the docks. I got two inside the walls, up front. And I got two outside the house, front and back.”

  “You dead sure about that?”

  “Huh?”

  “Have you checked them lately?”

  “Not since …” The head cock looked at his understudy. “When’s the last time you checked the set, Billy?”

  “Just before—well, I was starting the rounds when all the hell came down. I run into Sonny Palo just outside the apartments, and he said Frankie was looking for the head cock. I commenced to giving him hell for being off his set. That’s when you come out. I was up front talking to Jimmy Jenner, then, when the excitement broke loose inside here. But I guess they—well, except for Sonny Palo, I guess—but then I sent a boy out to take Sonny’s set because I wanted to talk to that kid. Well, then—”

  The guy had been speaking directly to Cuba. But Bolan took it up from there. “So you don’t really know what you got out there right now.”

  “Well, I ain’t eyeballed …”

  “Not since we found Tommy with his throat cut, right in his own palace. Right?”

  The guy’s eyes were buckling. “I better go check,” he muttered.

  “You damn sure better,” said Frankie the Ace.

  Mario Cuba struggled to his feet, too, saying, “I’ll go with ’im.”

  Bolan waved the big guy back to his seat. “Jimmy can eyeball the set just fine. You stay, Mario.”

  Mario stayed.

  The others had grown very restless. Fingers were drumming all about that table. A couple of chairs had been pushed back from the table, their occupants rocking rhythmically back and forth on the two rear legs. Leo alone was gazing directly at the man behind Santelli’s desk … and it was a baffled gaze.

  Bolan lit a cigarette, and let silence reign until Garante was clear of the room. Then he sighed heavily and announced, most emphatically, “The Baldaserra brothers were here. I saw them leaving.” The gaze leveled on Larry Haggle. “Maybe you saw them, Larry. They were going as you were coming.”

  “You saw me coming?” Cold eyes shifted to Leo Turrin. “Did you see anyone, Leo?”

  Turrin shook his head, looking straight at Frankie the Ace. “I wasn’t paying much attention. I been up all night. Guess I was trying to cop a quick nap in the car. I saw nothing.”

  Robert Damon noisily cleared his throat and said, “You’re suggesting, I guess, that one of us sent for the Baldaserras. And you’re further suggesting that it was those boys that hit Tommy.”

  “I’m suggesting nothing,” Bolan told him. “I’m just trying to develop some facts. So that you gentlemen can come to your own conclusions about this thing.”

  Damon bit his cigar and replied, “Fair enough. The first fact, then, is that Tommy is dead. The second fact is that somebody cut his throat from ear to ear. The third fact is that you discovered the body. The fourth fact is that both you and Leo, here, were sent down from the headshed, you say, to help us out with our Mack Bolan problem. The fifth fact is that you say you saw the Baldaserras here just before we find Tommy.” The guy held up five fingers. “Now … is that all the facts?”

  “The sixth fact,” Bolan replied amiably, “is that the Baldaserras boys owe allegiance to nothing but the cash in their pockets. And the seventh fact …” He crushed out his cigarette and let his gaze move around that table. “The seventh fact is that Tommy is dead and nobody here seems to give a damn.”

  Dead silence again descended.

  Bolan took a sip at his wine.

  Presently, Larry Haggle released a loud sigh and said, “There’s an eighth fact, Frankie, and I think everyone here will back me up on it. I mean, I’m speaking for us all. The eighth fact is that every one of us here, ’cept maybe you and Leo, were damned glad to see Tommy dead.”

  “Speak for yourself, counselor,” Mario Cuba rumbled from the end of the table.

  Weintraub smiled solemnly and said, “Okay, except maybe for Mario. But even he knew what Tommy was doing to the family.”

  “What was he doing?” asked Frankie the Ace.

  “Robbing us.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe you should ask the men in New York about that.”

  “Maybe I will. Right now I’m asking you.”

  “You want to look at our books?”

  “I’d love to. Do you have them?”

  “I have them,” the consigliere replied calmly. “But you’ll play hell seeing them.”

  “I guess I would,” said the Black Ace. “Because when I walked in here and found Tommy, I also found his wall safe empty and h
is desk ransacked. So how do you happen to have them?”

  Weintraub was still displaying that solemn smile. He said, “Push that button just under the lip of the desk, left corner rear.”

  Bolan slowly lit another cigarette, then ran a finger along the underside of the desk. He found a button and depressed it. One of the panels at the back wall slid soundlessly open, revealing a small bedroom.

  “There’s Tommy’s hardsite,” said Larry Haggle. “No windows, please note. Steel walls, Steel floor and ceiling. Automatic defenses right out of a James Bond movie. He kept the books in there. Everything out here is a damned front. The whole damned joint is a front. Did you know that, Bobby?”

  Damon shook his head, coldly eyeing the little cubicle behind the sliding panel.

  “Everything that was dearest to his heart, meaning his pocketbook, he kept in there. I even had to do all my own bookwork in there, and usually under his watchful eye. So whoever ransacked the office was just pounding sand. The heart of the empire is buried behind those steel walls. The whole damn room is a vault.”

  Bolan bent down to examine the pushbutton. He straightened up and said to Larry Haggle, “Damned easy combination, isn’t it?”

  “It’s set for easy. I set it myself just a little while ago. It’s got interlocks. I turned ’em off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had to go in there and check to see if everything was okay.”

  “Was it?”

  The lawyer jerked his head in a quick nod. “Everything in its place.”

  “Where are those interlocks?”

  “Go to hell, sir.”

  The Black Ace smiled, and replied, “Maybe I’ll meet you there, counselor. I was sent to protect the investment. I intend to protect it.”

  “So protect it. Leave it be.”

  “For the moment, I will,” Bolan replied, smiling coldly.

  “Fuck the investment,” said La Carpa. “The point is, none of it belonged to any of us. We have no piece of this action. It was Tommy’s own private little gold mine. And we all know damn well that he was taking from us and putting into this thing. Not only that, he was neglecting family business. My take is off by ten percent from this time last year. In real dollars, that’s more like thirty-five percent. Meanwhile Tommy is running here and running there. If he’s not in Switzerland or Germany or Holland, then, dammit, he’s in Florida or California. While all of us are losing our ass.”

  “And we’ve been getting heat,” Damon put in. “Plenty of heat, from everywhere. We’re losing our faces right along with our asses. It’s getting harder all the time to squeeze the juice or grease a fix. Just because Tommy won’t stay home and tend to business. Our business.”

  A mighty unhappy family, yeah. And now it was all coming out.

  Something else, too, was coming out. Billy Garante hurried into the room, his face all flushed with excitement and anger. He spoke directly to Mario Cuba. I got two dead boys out there!”

  “Where?”

  “The dock set, Nick and Willy! Both of them has got chokers buried in their throats! And they’re cold and getting stiff!”

  “Those rotten bastards!” La Carpa yelled, leaping from his chair—meaning, no doubt, the Baldaserra brothers.

  Big Mario Cuba was also struggling to his feet. “Get a couple of cars ready, Billy,” he rumbled angrily. “We’ll run those cocksuckers to ground before they can …”

  Now this was more like it.

  This was the savage mob, snarling and mad as hell over an incursion into their territory, girding for a counterpunch.

  But Bolan put a lid on that.

  “Sit down, Mario!” he said harshly. “You’re going nowhere!”

  “Listen, sir, I—”

  “I said, dammit, sit down!”

  Mario sat down, the face going dark with repressed rage.

  “You go running crazy now, and there might not be no tomorrow! You’re forgetting why I’m here, why Leo is here! You put your ass in both hands and sit here, all of you, and listen to Leo! He knows this guy, knows his sets, knows what to expect! Now listen to him!”

  Bolan got to his feet and caught the eye of Larry Haggle. “You won’t need this, counselor. You come with me.” He took the house boss by the arm. “You, too, Carmen. We’ve got to parley.”

  He took the two men upstairs, to Weintraub’s apartment, and sat them down, then stood with his back to the door, arms folded at his chest. “So much for show and tell,” he said coldly. “Now let’s go on to the eighth fact … just the three of us.”

  “What do you mean?” Weintraub asked, a nerve pulsing in his throat.

  “I mean that I turned the Baldaserra brothers away. They never came inside this house. They never saw or touched Tommy Santelli.”

  “So what the hell was all that…?”

  “Oh, okay, you’re ready for the ninth fact, eh? Well, so am I. The ninth fact is that Tommy was killed by somebody who was able to walk right up to him and lay a knife to his throat. Somebody who knows the house, knows the routine, somebody who knew just where to go, and when and how. I’m nominating you two gentlemen for the tenth fact. So now tell me how wrong I am.”

  Carmen Reddi became fascinated with the sight of his own shoes.

  The counselor sat back in his chair and raised both hands to his head, interlocking the fingers across the forehead. Presently he sighed softly and said, “So why didn’t you spring it down there, with all the others as witnesses?”

  Bolan ignored that, for the moment. “What d’you say, Carmen?”

  The guy did not look up. Like Mario Cuba, a bit earlier, he was obviously terribly embarrassed. “I cut him,” he admitted quietly.

  “Counselor?”

  Weintraub let all his air out like deflating a balloon. “Okay, sure, we put it together. Had to. The crazy son-of-a-bitch was pulling it down around our ears. He didn’t care. Had all his eggs in the other basket. So we put it together just last night, after we heard about the Florida disaster. You wouldn’t believe—”

  “I have no interest in your reasons why,” Bolan commented coldly. “That’s family business. Did you have a consensus?”

  The two men exchanged quick glances.

  Weintraub replied, “Not exactly, I mean, not specifically. But there has been a lot of talk that someone would have to do this sooner or later. In that sense, yes, we had a solid consensus.”

  “Then you did right,” Frankie the Ace agreed.

  “So why’d you pull us up here for the private parley?”

  Bolan shrugged. “You saw Mario. There could be a few others like him. I wasn’t sent to save a capo. And I sure wasn’t sent to save the whackers … or to judge them. I was sent to save the investment. Are you ready for the eleventh fact?”

  “What?”

  “The eleventh fact, counselor.”

  Weintraub sighed, cast a sidewise glance at his co-conspirator, and said, “I guess I already know what it is.”

  “Right,” Bolan said. “So, now, why don’t you just run down there and get those books.”

  The eleventh fact, right, was that Frankie the Ace was little more than a guided missile, remotely controlled from La Commissione.

  And he would tear that whole goddamn place apart to “protect the investment.”

  CHAPTER 12

  IN THE BOOK

  Those were some books, all right. The most interesting set for Mack Bolan had to do with the influx of more than forty million dollars over the past several months, and a steady conversion to gold and silver—in bars and ingots.

  Most of the money had come from mob sources throughout the country. But at least a fourth of it had obviously funneled in from “legit” sources.

  Bolan could not afford to ask too many questions about that money.

  He growled at Weintraub, “How straight is this?”

  “Straight as an arrow, on paper,” replied the counselor.

  “How ’bout off the paper?”

  The guy
shrugged. “It would take a team of auditors and months of digging to say for sure. I’d say roughly ten percent. A figure like that would appeal to Tommy. It’s easier to figure.”

  “You’re saying you suspect he was skimming off the top?”

  “I’m saying I know damned well he was. But it’s all very cleverly concealed. Phantom broker’s fees, market fluctuations, and so forth. It would be a cinch to manipulate a ten percent skim.”

  “Then plow it back in, eh?”

  “I think so, yes. As his own contribution.”

  “How would the books show that?”

  “They wouldn’t. Except that I know his income. And it’s nowhere near the amount of money he’s invested in this thing.”

  “You keep the income books?”

  The lawyer nodded. “That’s right. But I was never allowed to touch the other. Except for monthly reports to the investors.”

  “But you touched them anyway.”

  Weintraub grinned. “Sure I did. I didn’t want to end up with red hands. Unless it was from Tommy’s blood.”

  “You really loved the guy, didn’t you?”

  The lawyer sobered as he replied to that. “There was a time when I could have. All of us. But this thing made him crazy. Too much money here, Frankie. Just too damned much money. And this forty mil is mere investment capital. The return will be a hundredfold, maybe more. It made him crazy.”

  “I’m not supposed to know this,” Bolan said quietly. “But …”

  “I know you’re not. So don’t ask.”

  “But I think I’d better know. So I’m asking.”

  Weintraub got to his feet and stepped to the window. He gazed outside as he casually inquired, “What’d you do with my woman?”

  Bolan yielded to that personal concern, though he knew that his hourglass was quickly running out of sand. “I sent her away.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask Carmen.”

  Weintraub’s gaze shot to the other man. “Carmen?”

  The house boss spread his hands. “She was there. She saw.”

  “She was where?”

  “With Tommy. I wouldn’t have done it that way, counselor, if there’d been another way. But she walked right into it. I’d already opened the dummy safe and pulled the junk out of the desk. Messed it up good. And I was about to go take Tommy in his bed when I heard her coming. So I ducked. Then Tommy came out and started playing around with her. Well, really, she saved me a worse problem. We figured him to be asleep by then. He wasn’t. So what the hell could I do? When Tommy saw the mess, I knew I had to take him then and there.”