The lawyer from Cambridge obviously felt the situation slipping away from him. He lit a cigar and toyed with the lighter for a thoughtful moment, then he cautioned, “Look, let’s not go off half-cocked. We all know what this war has cost us already. Now Al has been working miracles. We know that. Would he bring in a madman like this Bolan, at a time like this, just to tear everything apart again?”
“Maybe they already decided to write us off,” Manny Greco said sourly. “Maybe they figure Boston is the least costly place to cold deck the guy. Maybe they’re even doing it behind Al’s back. Maybe they’d rather have Bolan than Boston. Eh?”
The Medford boss soberly nodded his head in agreement. “I been thinking pretty close to that,” he declared solemnly. “I mean, just look at it. The guy has got the whole organization running scared. Everywhere. He don’t care who he hits, or where. So just look at it. We ain’t even in good national standing since BoBo took the powder. Why not, right? Why not maneuver this Bolan into a dead territory, get him all pissed off and hope he does something dumb, I could buy that.”
Figarone was scowling with displeasure at the suggestion. He said, “We could be overlooking the most obvious answer.”
“Like what?” Greco asked, leaning forward with interest.
“Well … what if the whole thing in a plant? I mean, what if the Bolan kid wasn’t really snatched? You know?”
Manny Greco’s eyes narrowed. “You mean,” he replied, “what if Bolan is just inventing the snatch. Why would he do that?”
“The guy’s a slicker,” the lawyer said, sighing. He delicately shrugged his shoulders and added, “He’s a divide and conquer guy. He works that way.”
Silence descended and reigned as the troubled Mafiosi labored to pull together in their own heads the full ramifications of the problem confronting them.
Presently Andy Nova, the man from Medford, declared, “Well, whatever, we got to figure out something to stop the guy. I already sent my family to the island—Helen and the kids, I mean. They’re staying there ’til this thing is settled.”
Another boss growled an unintelligible comment which sounded like an agreement.
Silence again descended.
At fifteen minutes past the hour, Manny the Clock was glaring at his pocket watch, an impressive “railroad special” in a gold case. Someone knocked on the door to the game room. Manny returned the watch to his pocket and yelled. “Awright, it’s open!”
An Andy Nova hardman pushed head and shoulders into the room and, in a tone of controlled excitement, announced, “We found something downstairs. Tramitelli thinks you should come see.”
“Who come see?” Nova growled.
“All of you, boss. He says you’d all wanta see this.”
The conclave of bosses exchanged a nervous round of puzzled glances, then they silently got to their feet and straggled from the room, Nova leading the procession.
The underlings in the lounge were all on their feet, hovering about in tense groups. Obviously they had already been alerted that something was up. Individual sets of eyes located respective bosses in the procession from the game room and followed their silent progress through the lounge and onto the stairway to the basement level—but neither word nor signal was passed to alleviate the tension.
The bodyguard who had summoned them pushed open the heavy door to the soundproof pistol range and stood back to allow the bosses to file past, then he entered behind them.
Hoops Tramitelli was standing woodenly in the center of the firing area, hands on his hips, staring thoughtfully at the floor. Tramitelli was Manny Greco’s chief triggerman and—at any meeting of the Middlesex Combination—security chief for the entire group. A large man, heavy through chest and shoulders, veteran of many wars, the 50-year-old triggerman was also respected throughout the Boston area as an intelligent and crafty operator.
Greco called out, “What the hell, Hoops? What you been doing down here?”
“Nothing,” Tramitelli replied quietly. “That’s just the trouble. Nobody’s been doing nothing down here.”
The condition of the place seemed to be calling Hoops a liar. Private pistol cases in the weaponsstorage racks had been broken open and the handguns scattered along the firing line. Ammunition boxes were smashed, their contents carelessly dumped in piles all about the place. The three automated targets were in operation and moving smoothly along their programmed paths in the target pits.
Andy Nova angrily cried, “Who the hell did this? What nut …?”
The other bosses were strolling woodenly about, tentatively kicking at ammo piles on the floor and avoiding the more heavily littered areas.
Tramitelli was explaining, “I just come down here a few minutes ago, just a security check. I found it like this. Nobody else had been down here. The lock was still on the door. But this is just the way I found it.”
Books Figarone quietly asked, “Who’s the head cock out here this month, Hoops?”
“Charlie Sandini. I already sent for him.”
A skinny youth with nervous eyes entered the pistol range and came to a frozen halt just inside the doorway, his eyes flaring.
In a choking voice he exclaimed, “Well Jesus! What’s been going on here?”
“That’s what we wanted you to tell us, Charlie,” Tramitelli advised the duty steward.
“God I—this is the first I—God I don’t know nothing about this, Mr. Tramitelli!” the man insisted.
“You’re the head cock, you damn sure better know,” Manny Greco declared coldly.
“I didn’t even open up down here,” Sandini protested. “You said just a business conference, just booze and snacks, and that’s all I got ready for. I didn’t even come down here all day. I didn’t even …” The worried eyes swiveled toward Books Figarone. “That guy!” he cried.
“What guy?” the lawyer growled.
“That guy you sent out here this afternoon!”
“I sent nobody out here, Charlie,” Figarone said.
“Yessir you did—remember the guy from the gun factory?”
Figarone said, “You been smoking marijuana again, Charlie. I told you to—”
“Wait a minute,” Manny Greco put in angrily, “When was this, Charlie, this guy from the gun factory?”
“About five-thirty, six o’clock I think,” Sandini replied quickly, gratefully riveting his attention to the other boss.
“Well what was it, either five-thirty or six, what was it?” the clockmaker wanted to know.
“God I don’t know exactly, I was—wait, it was before the six o’clock news. Yeah. The guy stood there at the bar and watched the news with me for a minute before he took off. Wanted to see how the Patriots were doing. So … he was here altogether about a half an hour, maybe less. I guess.”
The bosses had formed a semi-circle about the jittery steward. Tramitelli was standing off the side a little, staring down the range toward the whirring targets.
Figarone was saying, in that quiet purr of his, “You mean you let a perfect stranger just walk into our club, Charlie? You let him just come in here and look around and do whatever he wants to do? You didn’t even come downstairs with him?”
“God, he had your card, Mr. Figarone. He said you wanted him to do some work on the pistol range. He showed me his stuff, he was from this gun factory. It all looked on the level to me. But why would he come in here and tear everything up? I mean, what is the guy, some kind of nut?”
Tramitelli was still staring at the moving targets. His voice overrode a comment from one of the lesser bosses as he said, “This nut of yours, Charlie. What’d he look like?”
“Just a guy. Wore coveralls, you know, like these service guys wear. Carried this tool kit.”
“What’d he look like, Charlie?”
“Uh, big guy. You know, tall. Kinda young, I guess. Yeah, no more’n about thirty. Laughed a lot. You know, joking, carrying on a lot. Okay guy, I thought. You know. Lotta fun. We, uh, I even set him up a beer. Go
d, now that’s thanks for you, the guy comes down here and leaves a mess like this.”
Tramitelli sighed loudly and sadly. “Where were the other boys while you were setting up beers?” he asked.
“Uh, well there was just Paul and Lacey. You know. We were soft until—I mean, we didn’t go on alert until Mr. Greco called, about seven o’clock. We were eating supper when this guy got here.”
Tramitelli again sighed and walked off toward the target pits. Greco followed a few steps behind him. Figarone was arguing loudly with the hapless steward and the lesser bosses were standing by in a strained silence.
Andy Nova pulled loose from that group and trailed after Tramitelli and Greco.
The chief triggerman reached the pits first and stood there with hands on hips and watched the automated figures go through their motions.
Nova and Greco pulled up beside him, and Nova softly exclaimed, “Well, do you see what I see!”
Tramitelli growled, “Yeah. I thought I saw it all the way from the firing line.” As one of the target figures moved past, he reached out to snare an object which was dangling over the target heart.
Greco silently leaned forward and snatched another, then Nova picked off the third one.
Each object was an identical military marksman’s medal, drilled cleanly through center with a neatly punched bullet hole.
Tramitelli remained in the pits, thoughtfully tossing the mutilated medal into the air and catching it, while the other two returned to the firing line.
Greco turned his souvenir over to Books Figarone and said, “Well, there you go.”
The Cambridge lawyer’s facial lines settled into a deadpan expression. He said, “Let’s get out of here.”
The other bosses were quietly examining Andy Nova’s medal.
No explanation was necessary, and apparently none could think of a fitting comment.
Tramitelli came up from the pit area and solemnly declared, “I think you’d all better beat it, Mr. Greco. The guy could’ve planted bombs, anything.”
Greco’s eyes were worried, almost panicky. He nodded and quietly commanded, “We go out in hard convoy, Hoops. See to it.”
The triggerman grunted and hurried out.
The others quickly followed him up the stairs, and the lawyer from Cambridge was heard to remark, “Don’t take it so hard, Charlie. You’re not the first to fall for a Bolan stunt.”
“He was such a straight Joe, Mr. Figarone,” the duty steward was insisting. “I just don’t think it could’ve been him. I mean this guy was … well he was an okay guy, know what I mean?”
And at that very moment, the “okay guy” was less than 200 yards away, patiently waiting for the Middlesex Combination to quit their “impregnable” hardsite.
He was attired for night combat, and he was no more than a softly breathing black shadow of death on a landscape carefully made ready for war.
In a snap-out rig beneath his left arm rode the silent black Beretta. A big silver automatic, the .44 AutoMag, was worn in a flap holster at his right hip. The same weapons belt which supported the AutoMag also provided berths for a number of personal munitions. At his right knee stood an unimpressive little artillery piece which thousands of ex-GI’s would recognize as a field mortar; beside it was a neat stack of 40mm mortar rounds.
The peace and quiet, out there on that no-man’s-land, was but a deceptive lull before the storm which would soon engulf all of Boston in a savage sea of blood.
His time was at hand, and the Executioner was ready for the first pitched battle of the most important war of his life.
This one is for love, he told himself.
And let those others sink into their own stinking sea.
4: The Middlesex Strike
Charlie Sandini and his small garrison force remained behind, inside the Shot’n Feathers, while the other hardmen assembled in the vehicle area, under the direction of Hoops Tramitelli, forming the motor convoy.
The “point” vehicle—an eight-passenger limousine carrying nothing but granite-faced gunners—was a typical crew wagon, glossy black and gleaming with chrome. This car went on to the gate and idled there while the other vehicles formed a line at the canopy outside the lodge to pick up the VIP passengers.
Manny Greco was the first boss to appear, sandwiched between his two lieutenants and hurrying into the rear seat of a white Cadillac. One of his personal bodyguards slid into the front beside the wheelman, and another hopped into the jumpseat and swiveled about at a right angle to the three men behind him.
Books Figarone was the next man out, but his vehicle had somehow fallen into line closer to the rear; he hung back into the shadows with his bodyguards and quietly watched the operation, as one by one the Middlesex Combination exited from the club when the big vehicles inched forward to receive them.
Figarone’s car appeared then—the last slot ahead of the two rearguard crew wagons. He paused beside Tramitelli for a brief conference, then he slid inside his vehicle and made himself small behind the human barricades surrounding him.
Tramitelli was the last man on the ground. He climbed into the tail vehicle, another gleaming Continental with six gunners already inside, and contacted the point vehicle by radio.
“We go,” he announced tensely. “Keep it slow and easy until I’m across the bridge, then open ’er up.”
“Okay,” came the reply from the head of the procession. “How about the boys out on the road?”
“I already told them. They stay until we’re clear. Then they go inside and help Sandini shake the joint down.”
“Right, here we go.”
The gate swung open in response to an electronic command from the point vehicle and the ten-car caravan moved smoothly forward.
Tramitelli’s crew wagon was swinging into the turn to the gate. The worried triggerman was sighting along the lineup of vehicles and breathing a sigh of relief when the leading car reached the narrow wooden bridge just outside the walls. The convoy was about halfway through the gate and there had been no show of hostility from the darkness out there.
He touched the mike button and told the point car, “Slow’n easy now, let’s don’t get too strung out.”
“Okay, we—”
Those were the last words to be uttered into the synthetic peace of that war zone. A brilliant flash-up there at the point of the procession was followed by an earth-shaking explosion. The wooden bridge and the point vehicle were momentarily haloed in a wreath of fire, then bridge and vehicle fell into the drainage ditch and a fireball whoofed into the sky as a secondary explosion shattered the car, sending pieces of it raining back along the convoy.
Tramitelli’s wheelman gasped, “What …?”
The chief triggerman yelled, “He blew the bridge! Out! Everybody outta the car!”
Even as he spoke—and before any reaction could occur—the vehicle which at that moment was occupying the open gateway erupted into a smaller explosion and swiveled to a quivering halt, sealing the only opening in the ten-foot wall surrounding the joint.
The delayed reaction began then, with men scrambling from the vehicles all along the line, voices raised in confused alarm. From somewhere in the din were issuing bloodcurdling screams—probably from one of the wrecked vehicles.
Tramitelli hit the drive beside his car and sprinted forward along the stalled convoy, shouting angry commands. “Outta the cars! Take cover! Get the bosses back inside!”
Then a walking line of explosions descended, traveling the shoestring pattern of the assembled vehicles, unerringly on target, car-by-car transforming the gleaming convoy to smoking heaps of shattered metal and glass.
A chain reaction of fires was already erupting, fed by flaming streams of gasoline.
Guys were running around crazily like ants in a burning mound, their senses stunned by the rapidity of the attack and the shattering series of explosions.
Someone screamed, “That’s a mortar attack!”
Tramitelli had flung himse
lf clear of the target zone and was on hands and knees beside the wall. It was like a battlefield out there, with balls of fire erupting and smoke clouds forming and drifting skyward.
The security chief threw back his head and screamed, “Jess—Jess Accoura!”
“Yeah, boss,” came a shaken reply from somewhere in the confusion.
“Take your crew outside! The guy’s out there some-where! Go smoke him out!”
It was a command which neither Accoura nor anyone else present was taking too seriously.
A voice which Tramitelli recognized as belonging to his boss, Manny Greco, screamed, “Hoops! I’m hit, I’m hurt!”
That was too damned bad, Hoops was thinking. Manny the Clock was out there in no-man’s-land, outside the wall. Three other bosses were out there also—and if they were smart, they’d be a lot quieter about it than Manny was being.
Tramitelli was the war department now, and he came to a quick command decision. “Forget that, Jessie!” he yelled. “Don’t nobody go out there! Everybody inside, into the joint! Come on, come on, everybody take cover inside!”
Hoops himself was already halfway there.
There was everything to lose and nothing—absolutely nothing—to gain out there in that darkness with Bolan on the blitz.
And obviously, there was little to be gained inside, either. Tramitelli was less than ten paces removed from the sanctuary of the front door when the whole joint seemed to lift itself and move away from him. Flames and thunder rose up beneath it to pummel the night, and suddenly there was no “inside” anywhere.
It was just Bolan now, leaping flames in a crazy night and a civilian army in full rout.
Indeed, “the guy could have planted bombs, or anything.” And he had.
It had been a gamble worth taking, and now Bolan was thanking the universe or whatever supplied combat instincts for directing him to that Middlesex hardsite. There had been no assurance that the northwest mob would congregate there on this night of nights … but the instincts had suggested: Go to Middlesex—and the Executioner had gone.
Boston Blitz Page 4