“That dude” was, of course, Mack Bolan. The men in the other vehicle were later identified by police as “mob torpedoes—some of the new bunch that we’ve noticed around town lately.”
All four in that vehicle were dead of gunshot wounds, undoubtedly while the big car was still in forward motion. The chase vehicle “stayed right with it, just sort of guiding it down and keeping it nudged over against the guardrail. When it stopped, he stopped. And then I stopped, damn quick. I could see then that the guy wasn’t no cop. He was dressed in this skin-tight outfit, all black, and he looked like he was ready for war. The other traffic was going on around, but I didn’t. I knew who the guy was by now, hell I couldn’t hardly believe it at first, I mean I actually saw the guy, you know, pulling off one of his hits.
“No, I wasn’t worried. I was right behind, so I just pulled over and sat there watching. Some other cars had pulled in behind me, but most of them were going on around, rubbernecking, you know, but going on around.
“The guy was pulling those bodies out of the car and going through their pockets. And he shook that car down good, I mean he even opened the trunk and looked in there. He was looking for something, bet on that.
“Hell, he was going about it just cool as hell. He wasn’t worried about cops or anything, I guess. Would you be? If you was that guy? He just calmly shook everything down, then he walks around the rear of the Continental, heading back to his car, and he kind of paused there for a second as he was getting in and looked back at me.
“Yeah, he looked right at me. Hell I just sat there and looked back. He didn’t look like what I would’ve thought—in the face, I mean. You know, he didn’t look like a killer. He just looked tired. Yeah, tired as hell, and maybe sort of sad.
“But can you imagine that guy. He chases this car along a busy expressway, shoots all four of the goddam guys dead where they sit, then maneuvers that big Lincoln to a rolling stop with his own car—and not another damn car got involved in it—you know, nobody else got hurt. I call that amazing.”
The foregoing eyewitness report was given to a television newsman and recorded at the scene. It was typical of other stories gathered at the same time.
Later that morning, Leo Turrin was to privately comment, “Crazy, huh? Stampeding blindly, huh? Bull! It’s the same old Bolan. A little madder, maybe, a little deadlier. But it’s the same old Bolan. I say leave him alone. He knows what he’s doing!”
Indeed, it would appear that the blitzing warrior knew precisely what he was doing. Less than an hour following the incident on the Northeast Expressway, he made an appearance in the offices of a telephone-answering service, in a building just off the Boston Common.
According to the supervisor there, he was wearing a business suit, shirt and tie, carrying a light topcoat draped across one arm.
“He seemed very tired. His eyes were dark-circled and rather bloodshot. He very quietly and politely told me who he was and what he wanted. I told him that I could not give him information from my files. I also told him that he should call the police, that it was all over radio and television about the mixup in Rockport.
“He seemed stunned, and he made me repeat it twice. All I could tell him was what I’d heard myself that morning. I’m not sure that he believed me. Anyway, he insisted on going through my files and I wasn’t inclined to argue with him. It was sort of sad, anyway. He’s a beautiful man, you know, truly beautiful. I don’t believe all the stories I’ve heard about him.
“Yes, he took some information from my files. No, I don’t know what he took. When he came in he was holding a little black notebook. It had dark stains soaked into the pages, like blood. He was referring to some numbers in the notebook while he searched our numerical cross-index records. He jotted down information from several of our cards and replaced them in the card file. He thanked me as he left.
“No, I have no idea what he was looking for. We have hundreds of clients. We also have a mail-forwarding service, you know.
“Yes, he checked those files also. He was here for about ten minutes. Frightened? Of course not. I told you … he is a beautiful man.”
At sometime between nine and ten o’clock on the morning of Day Two, Bolan entered an office building near the new Federal Center and invaded a suite of rented offices on the 14th floor. According to the building management’s records, the tenant was “A. Montgomery Enterprises”—but no such business was licensed or registered with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the City of Boston, or any of the trade associations.
“A. Montgomery,” it later developed, was actually one Alonzo (Hot Al) Mantessi, a syndicate enforcer with a national reputation. He was not directly associated with any of the local Mafia families, and apparently he had come to Boston several months earlier with a sizable crew of sharp-dressing and “classy” torpedoes.
Bolan left behind him at A. Montgomery Enterprises six classy carcasses, including that of Hot Al Mantessi, now Cold Al. Each of the men met death via one or more 9 mm slugs in the head. Desks in the offices had been ransacked, and a small safe in Mantessi’s private office had been blown.
At 11 o’clock that morning, Bolan established contact with Leo Turrin, by telephone. He told him, “I’m hot on the trail of Al 88. Is it true about Johnny and Val?”
A greatly relieved and concerned undercover cop assured Bolan, “It’s true. That’s not them, Sarge. The guy pulled a switch on you, but I can’t imagine why.”
“I can,” Bolan replied. He sounded weary and wrung-out, but a hint of fire remained in that voice. “He didn’t want me, Leo—he wanted Boston. And I think I know the only option left for him. I’m tracking it now, and I’ll try to keep you posted. I’m hoping the trail will end at Johnny and Val.”
“We’re talking about Skip Sicilia now, right?”
“Right,” came the tired response.
“You sound like you’re at the edge of death, buddy.”
“Pretty close,” Bolan admitted. “I’ve taken a couple of hits in the flesh and I’ve lost a bit of blood. But I’m okay, so don’t start fussing.”
“Put it down, man.”
“Can’t. I’d take a nap if I thought I’d ever wake up. I’ve got to keep on it. Now that I know …”
“Yeah,” Turrin said, understanding that unfinished statement. The time element was as important as ever, with Johnny and Val still in the picture. He told Bolan, “Weatherbee cracked the thing at the Pittsfield end. Sort of ironic. Want to hear how Sicilia tumbled to Johnny, or do you already know?”
“No, tell me.”
“Talk about your small worlds. Sicilia sent his wife to Europe and his kid to a private school some months back. Guess which school he was hiding the kid in.”
Bolan’s weary sigh carried across the distance. He said, “Okay, I guess that ties it up pretty well. I guess Johnny and the Sicilia kid got to know each other.”
“Worse yet, they were close buddies. Each had a secret, bursting to be told. You know how those things go.”
Bolan replied, “Yeah. I know how it goes. Okay, Leo. Thanks.”
“For nothing,” the cop said ruefully. “You’re, uh, okay now?”
A quiet ghost of the old Bolan chuckle came across the wire. “I haven’t lost my springs, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well you had a lot of people worried. Be careful. Trantham has you on a shoot-to-kill alert. He thinks you’ve gone bananas. And, uh, Brognola has hit town.”
“How’s his leg?”
“Fine and so’s his temperament. Mack … he really didn’t have his heart into that Vegas thing.”
“Yeah, I know,” Bolan replied wryly.
“But you watch it. This town is primed for you.”
“I’ll watch it,” Bolan assured his friend. “Uh …, Leo … who were they? The … uh … people at Rockport.”
“Erase it.”
“Can’t. Who were they?”
“A Chelsea prostitute. Skip probably grabbed her on a sudden inspiration, to
ok her up there with him. The boy hasn’t been positively identified yet. But a kid is missing, up that way. An uh, retarded kid, Mack.”
Turrin heard soft swearing, then Bolan said, “Well, let’s contact every hour, okay? It’s getting close now.”
“Will do. You’re still tracking Sicilia?”
“I’m trying a bit of reverse English.”
“Whatever that means, eh,” Turrin said. “Never mind, I don’t even want to know. But you’d better shift gears down to a slow crawl … if you intend to see this thing through to the end.”
“Yeah. Talk to you in one hour, more or less.”
That was the end of the conversation.
Bolan, however, was not “shifting gears” downward. If he was shifting at all, it was from deadly to deadlier.
He had new life blown into him, new hope … and he had a new angle of attack.
Day Two was to be the final day of the Boston blitz … but that day had very barely begun.
14: Reverse English
Geographically speaking, the city of Boston is far removed from the center of the nation. Historically and spiritually, though, Boston is actually where it all began and could be regarded as the ovum of the American dream. It was from this successful colonial. settlement at the northeastern edge of North America that the torch of liberty flared out to engulf a continent, to change the maps of the world, and to alter the course of human history.
Boston Common, likewise, is not the geographic center of the city—but any discussion of “the cradle of liberty” must and does begin right here in the oldest public park in America.
British troops once camped here. Less than a hundred years later, Civil War soldiers pitched their tents on the same ground. Pirates were hung here, as were “witches.”
Directly north of the Common rises historic Beacon Hill. The citadel of Victorian Boston, fabled Back Bay, lies directly west. Just north and east stands the magnificent new Government Center, a sixty-acre complex of modern buildings, plazas, and malls—on the same ground which sailors and other adventurers of many generations once knew as Scollay Square.
For the Boston visitor, the Common is the starting point for that historic backtrack known as “the Freedom Trail”—a colorful trek along the landmarks of the spirit of ’76.
For Bolan, the Common was merely a reference point from which to travel another kind of freedom trail—in his own language, a “nerve path”—and the track led him along Beacon Street to the western edge of the Public Gardens, down to Commonwealth Avenue, and into Back Bay.
At one time Back Bay had been one of the more fashionable residential sections, with more blue blood, acre for acre, than any plot of land in America. Many of the nineteenth-century town houses of the early Boston aristocracy now serve as rooming houses or apartment buildings. Some have become institutionalized and preserved, while others have been restored to their original elegance and maintained as upper-crust family residences—and it was upon one of these latter that the Executioner had set his sights.
The name of the guy who lived there was supposed to be Albert Greene … but Bolan knew better. It was Alberto Guarini. He was supposed to be a reputable financier and a respected “patron of good government” in Boston, a civic godfather no less—but again Bolan knew better.
Guarini-Greene was as vicious a shark as had ever rippled the surface of American society … a syndicate trouble-shooter with unlimited reach and unrestrained sprawl … and he had been assigned to these troubled waters to gather in all the little fishes which seemed to be slipping through the voracious Mafia nets.
He was known in some quarters as Al 88.
The guy had more than a code name … he had an entire code life. He’d come to town and married that Back Bay house, via a desperate widow and a crumbling family which had plenty of Boston pride and little else.
Guarini had “restored” the family right along with the mansion. He’d even taken their place in the social register, their civic honors, and all the prestige that accompanied the package.
But he had not accomplished all this in the space of two short years.
According to the intelligence brief which Bolan had worked up on the guy, his infiltration of the genteel set had started more than ten years earlier.
Guarini had spent much of those intervening years trotting around the world on missions for his masters, while at the same time establishing a “legit” reputation as an international financier at home base.
He wasn’t the kind of guy you’d find at an “Appalachia meet” or in a smoke-filled conference room at some hardsite.
He would not pack hardware, nor would anyone around him.
There would be no way to tie the guy to any mob-dominated interests. He was “legit” all the way, Mr. Class himself, the respectable face to be worn as a mask by the international association of goons and hoods around the world.
He was a guy who could lunch with kings and presidents, bankers and industrialists; yeah, and he was a guy whose name could appear on directorial boards of important foundations and institutions—it was a name which could influence economic barometers, civic undertakings, and national-level politics.
Yeah.
It was even a name to stand in the forefront of a “reform” movement toward better local government.
A guy like Guarini-Greene would use only about 10 percent of himself in direct syndicate operations, and even that heavily covered. Of course, that 10 percent was the tail that wagged the rest of the dog. The other 90 percent was sheer front, a facade from behind which the ugly face of international hoodlumism could appear at a critical moment to gobble up some choice unsuspecting tidbit or to annihilate some threat to its masters.
So, sure, many of Guarini’s involvements with the outside world, in fact the bulk of them, could be viewed as entirely legitimate and respectable—even, perhaps, laudable. This was necessary if the guy was to be an effective trouble-shooter when those critical moments arrived.
But that whole 90 percent of solid respectability was nothing but fuel for the flames with which the syndicate meant to roast the world. And Alberto Guarini, alias Albert Greene, alias Al 88, was a 100 percent rat.
Bolan had a bit of trouble connecting a guy like Guarini with the “Al 88” operation. It was not the usual assignment for a bigtime front man like Guarini.
Something big … something really big must be at stake in Boston. Something that would be felt far beyond this spawning ground of the American Revolution—yeah, something rotten was definitely brewing beside the cradle of liberty, and it did not smell to Bolan’s sensitive nose like anything which boded well for the American nation as a whole.
Manhattan was the national nerve center in the financial sphere.
Washington was the political center of the nation, maybe of the world.
But what was Boston?
Bolan would think about that, and wonder about it at more length, at a better time. For now, a rescue mission was on tap … and Bolan meant to involve Al 88 in that project.
Yeah. The mob had screwed up, they’d played their ace as a deuce. They should never have compromised the big man in this way.
The guy just wasn’t built for such games.
Maybe he was a mystery man as far as the cops were concerned; maybe even the local Mafiosi had never caught a sniff of the guy.
But Bolan’s jungle instinct had led him straight to Back Bay and Al 88.
An Al 88 type of operation could not operate without muscle. “Hot Al” Mantessi had provided that muscle … and very briefly Bolan had wondered if the coincidence of names—Al 88 and Hot Al—contained any significance. He had quickly dismissed the idea, however. Hot Al could not possibly also be Al 88. Hot Al was an enforcer, pure and simple—a “classy” one, sure, but any order of enforcing was a very limited role for an entirely limited mentality.
Al 88 was the “finesse” man, the brains behind the Boston takeover—and the “brains” had to have an access route, a nerve
path, to the “muscle.”
Finding that nerve path had been no terrible task … not for a searcher who was not straitjacketed by legal restraints.
Business contacts between the two Als had been accomplished via the telephone-answering service, and Bolan had quickly ridden that path directly to the “brain”—and now here he was, looking at the skull itself.
It was a nice-looking joint. Large, impressive, the cream of Boston society had probably entered those doors upon one occasion or another—generations of it.
And now the Executioner was going to do so.
His ring brought a response from an honest-to-God English butler, an Arthur Treacher type in living pallor and all done up in tie and tails.
The guy sighted along his nose in a manner which was probably supposed to discourage pests and unsolicited guests, and he chilled the air about Bolan’s head with a haughty, “Yes?”
Bolan shoved the guy out of the way and stepped inside, kicking the door shut behind him. “Mrs. Greene,” he said coldly.
Bolan had to give it to the guy, he had a good supply of cool. The eyes shifted blankly from the visitor to the closed door and back to the visitor again before he asked, “Whom should I announce, sir?”
“You should announce Mack Bolan,” the Executioner quietly suggested.
Living Pallor’s face went even paler and the eyes twitched a bit, but he waltzed smoothly about and led the way along a richly paneled hall and to impressive double doors which he opened with a restrained flourish, like opening the doors to a kingdom.
“If you will wait in the library, sir,” he buttled in that starched British voice.
“No, I guess I’ll tag along with you,” Bolan told him.
The guy didn’t like the idea, but he was no dummy. He went through the ritual of closing the double doors, then he led Bolan to the rear of the house and into a pleasant room with plenty of glass along the back wall.
Boston Blitz Page 11