Knockdown

by Don Pendleton

  "You told him Hog worked for me?"

  "Mr. Corone, everybody knows that. I mean, Johnny DePrisco, he didn't find that out from me!"

  The mafioso put his cigarette between his lips and sucked hard on it, bringing a bright glow to the tip. He saw how she stared at it, her eyes bulging with fear. But he had no intention of burning her.

  "That's right," Corone agreed. "He didn't find out from you. But what did he find out, Rose? Or, to ask the question another way, why did Johnny DePrisco buy you a beer before he hit Hog Porcelino? What was the connection?"

  She drew a deep breath. "You wouldn't know he did, except that I told it. If I had somethin' to hide, why'd I finger DePrisco?"

  Corone nodded. The corners of his thin lips turned down, and his eyebrows rose. "Not a bad point. Still… Still, Rose, I don't think you're telling us everything you know."

  "Mr. Corone," she murmured tearfully, "I've told you everything. I was a hooker. I got a habit, and Hog was good to me. He let me earn my fixes. He's the last man in the world I'd want something bad to happen to. Where am I going to get my fixes now?"

  Phil Corone smiled. "We'll take care of you. You shaking now?"

  She nodded. "I need it, Mr. Corone," she said quietly. "I do need it."

  He nodded to one of his men. "Augie," he said. "Give Rose a fix."

  The man handed Rose a length of rubber laboratory hose to tie around her arm. She fumbled with the hose but managed to tie it and jerk it tight. He handled the syringe with a piece of tissue, careful not to leave his fingerprints.

  Rose didn't notice his precaution. She accepted the syringe with a grateful glance at Corone, and with the carelessness born of experience, shoved the needle into the vein that had been raised by the tight hose around her arm.

  Rose slumped in orgasmic reaction to the rush of heroin into her blood. She threw her head back and gasped for breath. Her eyes turned heavy, and she smiled languidly.

  Then, "Mr. Corone…" she whispered. "How much was that?"

  "More than you usually take, Rosie," he replied with a cruel smile. "And better stuff, too."

  "You son of a bitch…" she breathed hoarsely. "You OD'd me!"

  "What a way to go, huh, Rosie? Your life's ambition."

  Rose pondered that as she slipped out of this world. For her last conscious expression, she shrugged.

  * * *

  Johnny DePrisco sat in his favorite restaurant on the Upper West Side. He was popular there. The citizens applauded him and saw to it that he never wanted for anything.

  The upper-middle-class neighborhoods of that part of Manhattan had been terrorized for a decade by a gang of young thugs who called themselves the West Siders. Some of them were the sons of old, prominent New York families. Most of them were vicious hoodlums who acknowledged neither law nor the traditions that did impose a few limits on the Mafia. The processes of the law had managed, after a long, laborious process, to decimate the gang. But «decimate» meant eliminating one of ten. Nine more remained.

  Until Johnny DePrisco, with the sanction of Alfredo Segesta, moved into the Upper West Side.

  He had killed no one. His soldiers had, however, castrated three leading members of the West Siders and had put shotgun blasts through the kneecaps of four others. The gang had disintegrated. It was difficult to find anyone who would admit he had ever been associated with the vicious, swaggering Yuppie mob called West Siders.

  Tina's was a small restaurant that had experimented over the years with a variety of cuisines — nouveau, Cajun, Vietnamese, whatever was chic. Johnny DePrisco sat over a platter of mussels, which were deliciously submerged in a buttery sauce.

  His resemblance to Mack Bolan was uncanny. He was a tall man — dark of hair and complexion and solidly muscled — who held himself with an air of confident masculinity.

  The Upper West Side wasn't his turf. Now that he had eliminated the West Siders, it was no one's. He accepted tribute here — and businessmen paid far more than little gifts of wines and foods — but it wasn't his turf, assigned to him, where nothing happened without his okay. It was his retreat from the hard world, where he could live and walk on the streets as a respected, welcomed citizen.

  Johnny wasn't married, but he never lacked female companionship. Tonight he enjoyed the company of a bright, talented actress who didn't expect him to finance her next play, but did know that being seen with him couldn't hurt her career.

  Two bodyguards sat together at a table nearer the door. They were relaxed, splitting a bottle of wine. Here in the Upper West Side, Johnny was a loved figure — and safe.

  He couldn't have guessed how safe he was.

  Bolan was outside. He had identified the double-parked red Maserati outside the restaurant as Johnny DePrisco's. He might take his date for a spin around the island, maybe for a run across some of the country roads in Westchester County, before he took her home.

  The two bodyguards would follow in the white BMW parked just behind the Maserati.

  DePrisco staggered for an instant in the door. He would drive though he was drunk, confident that he would beat any rap, anywhere, even cheat death. That was his attitude. He beat them all.

  The blond actress steadied him. He was supposed to be guiding her with a gentlemanly hand, but it was she who was supporting him. Even so, in the bright light just outside the restaurant, Bolan could almost see the glint of calculation in her eyes, reflecting her willingness to do whatever this man required for whatever he could do for her.

  Johnny DePrisco, drunk or not, opened the passenger door of the vehicle, assisted the actress into her seat and closed the door. He didn't fail to glance around to ensure his bodyguards were in place.

  Bolan huddled in the shadows, just outside the glare of the light under the restaurant's sidewalk canopy. Expecting to take a shot from a distance of fifty feet or more, he had fitted the Desert Eagle with a four-teen-inch, 375 Magnum barrel — a little less than maximum firepower, but maximum accuracy.

  He had no intention of killing Johnny DePrisco.

  Bolan's carefully aimed shot whipped past DePrisco and punched through the right rear fender and tire of the Maserati. The muzzle-flash blazed for an instant, and the blast of the big pistol was deafening.

  DePrisco threw himself to the ground. A man careful of the law, he didn't carry a gun of his own. His bodyguards drew theirs, but they were cautious about facing an adversary with such a powerful weapon.

  DePrisco shrieked as if he'd been hit.

  Bolan shot another slug into the frame of the car, just above where DePrisco pressed himself hard into the pavement of the sidewalk.

  The bodyguards ducked behind the BMW.

  The warrior fired another round, this one through the front tire of the BMW. He'd be leaving on foot, and preferred to have them do the same.

  He backed into the shadows and moved south, leaving DePrisco sprawled on the pavement and his bodyguards cringing behind the BMW.

  * * *

  "Maybe Bolan shot at you," Joe Rossi suggested. "He's in town."

  Johnny DePrisco shook his head. "If it was Bolan, I'd be dead."

  Rossi slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. "Damn! In one day, somebody blows away Porcelino and tries to blast you. Somebody trying to start a war?"

  "Maybe they already started it," Segesta offered.

  Segesta had summoned the heads of the Families to a sitdown at his home on Staten Island. So far, only Rossi had arrived. As always, Segesta served food at a sitdown. His daughter Claire brought in the platters from the kitchen. The young woman was infatuated with her father's handsome capo. DePrisco didn't even know she was alive.

  "Anybody could have blasted Hog Porcelino," Rossi said. "The Colombians, one of his addicts…"

  "Well, not just anybody could have tried to drop me," DePrisco growled. "Not only that, it's where he did it! I was questioned by an assistant police commissioner, no less."

  "He missed you," Segesta said thoughtfully. "Why? Doesn't fi
gure. Three shots, two disabled cars. Maybe he didn't want to hit you. Maybe it was a warning."

  "Well, if it was, it was no damn good," DePrisco replied. "Since I got no idea what I was being warned about, I can hardly back off from anything."

  Rossi slapped the front pages of the morning paper. "This is what we don't need," he said grimly. "Listen to this.

  'Yesterday afternoon a kingpin narcotics dealer was shot and killed in the Financial District. Last evening an attempt was made on the life of a reputed Segesta caporegime, on the Upper West Side. These shootings represent an alarming increase in Mob violence. Not only that, the violence has spread to neighborhoods not ordinarily visited by gang warfare. Assurances by the mayor and commissioner of a tough crackdown are for the present a hollow echo of promises made before and never kept, by this administration and its predecessors. We can hope they mean it and will follow up. The city will be watching.»

  Segesta shrugged. "Newspapers… Always bitchin'. That's their stock-in-trade, something to bitch about."

  "We…"

  Claire touched her father's shoulder and bent down to say something in his ear. He nodded.

  "Don Barbosa has arrived," he said to Rossi and DePrisco, "with his new lapdog."

  Claire opened the dining-room door, and Luca Barbosa entered, followed by Phil Corone. Segesta motioned toward chairs, and they sat down. He reached for their glasses and poured wine.

  Phil Corone fixed a steady eye on Johnny DePrisco. "Rose had a little accident last night," he said. "OD'd."

  DePrisco frowned. "Rose who?"

  "Sweet Rosie O'Battery."

  "You talk in riddles," DePrisco said. "You got somethin' to say, say it."

  "She fingered you, Johnny. Maybe I did you a favor."

  "This is riddles," DePrisco sneered.

  "No," Rossi said coldly. "Not riddles. Maybe I understand what he's saying. I hope I don't."

  "Translate," DePrisco demanded.

  "Who took a shot at Johnny last night, Phil?" Rossi asked, his voice hard with anger.

  "Well, not me, for damned sure." For once his pallid face colored. "Not me! So, ask him a question."

  Rossi turned toward DePrisco. "Who killed Hog Porcelino?"

  The capo slapped the table. "How the hell would I know?"

  Rossi glared at Corone. "You figure he killed your man Porcelino. So it was you who had shots fired at him last night." He glanced at DePrisco but returned his eyes to Corone. "And maybe he did kill Porcelino."

  "Like hell…"

  Rossi stared DePrisco down. He began to tap the little pile of newspapers — a rhythmic light slap that continued as he spoke. "Luca," he began, "Alfredo. We are senior here. We must control a situation that seems to be developing. Phil suspects that Johnny killed Porcelino. That's the meaning of his riddle. And he has killed a woman — whoever she may have been — to eliminate a witness. Which was an error, Phil, because she was the witness we may now wish we could hear. A man was killed yesterday. And now this woman. Shots were fired on a street where shots ought not to be fired. This is bad for business. For everybody's business. Phil, if you believe Johnny killed Porcelino, you should have come to the council of the Five Families with it."

  'That's what I'm doing now," Corone said sullenly.

  Segesta spoke. "Any Family that makes war on another makes war on all the Families. Any two Families that go to war against each other have gone to war against all the other Families. That is why, Phil, neither Johnny or I will make war on you, even if you fired those shots at Johnny last night. If you did that, we will submit it to the council as to what should be done."

  "I'm willing to submit everything to the council," Corone told him. "I sent no one to shoot at him last night. I was glad to hear you had called the council for a sitdown, Don Segesta, because an eyewitness told me that Johnny hit Hog. Hog Porcelino made a lot of money for the Corone Family. We're damaged by his loss."

  "I didn't kill the son of a bitch," DePrisco snapped.

  "Why does a witness say you did?" Corone demanded angrily.

  "Why'd you kill this witness, if she was so damned convincing?"

  Luca Barbosa raised his hand. "Of all of you, I am most senior. I was senior even to your father, Phil. Among some men…" he paused and cast an accusatory glance around the table"…I am accorded some respect." He paused again to let his words have their impact. "Among us," he went on, "a man's word is accepted. Otherwise there would be war always. Johnny, Phil, I ask you to stand and swear to us, by the trust we must have in one another, that you didn't do these things of which you suspect each other."

  The old man stared at them from beneath his formidable black brows. He nodded, laboriously drawing breath.

  Corone rose from his chair. "I swear, Don Barbosa. I didn't fire a shot at Johnny DePrisco. I didn't send anyone to do it. I don't know who did it." He glanced at each face, then sat down.

  DePrisco glared at Corone, not believing. Even so, he stood up and swore, too. "I swear I didn't whack Hog Porcelino, or send anybody to do it, and I don't know who did."

  Barbosa smiled. "Then shake hands and embrace, like two friends."

  Reluctantly the two men approached each other. They extended their hands and shook. Then, with obvious distaste, they grasped each other in a traditional abbracio.

  "How good it is," Barbosa said, not without irony, "for brethren to dwell together in peace."

  * * *

  Rossi and Segesta stood together in the vineyard behind the latter's house, sipping their final glasses of wine and looking out over the Bay.

  "He's a lying son of a bitch," Segesta said, meaning Phil Corone.

  Rossi nodded. His thought was that maybe Johnny DePrisco was, too. Maybe Don Segesta was lying. Maybe he had authorized DePrisco to kill Porcelino, the opening shot in a move to take over the Corone drug business. And maybe Corone had responded by giving DePrisco — and Segesta — an emphatic warning.

  "A lying son of a bitch," Segesta repeated.

  "Barbosa's little trick stopped us when we might have found out."

  "A trick. That was what it was, too. An embrace… Damn!"

  Rossi remained uneasy about the peace. It was as if he alone understood its value. "It was you, my friend, who said that any Family that makes war, makes it on all the Families," he reminded.

  "I sometimes lie myself, when it is convenient," Segesta muttered dryly.

  * * *

  Bolan stood looking up at the naked steel of the new office tower on Seventh Avenue. It was where John Bear Claw had died less than three weeks ago, knocked off a beam by Vince Grotti.

  Bolan was wearing a hard hat, a white T-shirt and jeans. His weapons were in the plastic lunch kit — not the best carrier from which to draw them if he had to, but at least they were accessible. He walked up to the shack.

  "Hey," he called. "Whitey been here?"

  The foreman inside made no pretense of liking the name Whitey. He shook his head, looked back at the clipboard and made a notation.

  "Whitey sent me to look around."

  The man looked up again. He regarded Bolan with hostility but shrugged and tipped his head toward the inside of the construction fence.

  Bolan walked in.

  Some things you get used to, and some things you don't. Most kinds of danger Mack Bolan could take, with healthy respect that generated care, but without irrational fear. Heights didn't bother him, but when he came out on the high steel, forty stories above the street, he couldn't deny that this was a tough place to be. He knew he respected the men who worked up here. Now he was reminded just how much they deserved it.

  "Well, don't just stand there. You got a job or don't you?"

  He turned and faced a woman who looked to be about thirty. Her blond hair stuck out all around her hard hat, on which was stenciled ASMAN, the name of the construction company.

  "Whitey sent me."

  Her face darkened for an instant, then she turned and walked away from him as if he had said
he suffered from a deadly and communicable disease.

  Okay, the name Whitey produced a reaction. He wasn't surprised.

  Bolan didn't walk out on a beam. He found a welder working in a corner, where planks made a platform.

  "How's it going?" he asked the welder when the guy pushed up his mask.

  The man looked at him. "Who asks?"

  "I'm a friend of Whitey's."

  The welder pushed down his mask and touched the rod to the steel. The arc flashed, and Bolan turned his eyes away.

  The company woman and the union man were together in their contempt for Whitey Albanese, yet neither had said a word. They went about their business, and if they didn't like Whitey, they didn't say so.

  Sure. John Claw had spoken out.

  The welder raised his mask and stared hard at the joint he had just welded. He glanced around and was surprised to see Bolan still there. "You got a problem?" he asked.

  "Grotti's dead," Bolan said.

  "I didn't kill him."

  "The people he worked for killed him."

  "The people you work for."

  "I don't work for them. I mentioned Whitey to see how you'd react."

  The welder looked around to see if anyone was watching. He was a big, beefy young man, blond, with a yellowish mustache. His bushy brows rose, showing more of his pale blue eyes.

  "Then who do you work for?"

  "Nobody. I'm unemployed, you might say."

  "How'd you get up here?"

  "By saying I was sent by Whitey."

  The welder grinned. "Why?" he asked. "What's the idea?"

  "Like to meet me for a beer later?" Bolan asked.

  "Where?"

  "Your favorite place."

  * * *

  The welder had chosen a bar in Flushing, within sight of Shea Stadium. It was a test, probably, to see whether the stranger on the site was serious enough about having a beer to travel to Flushing, Bolan was serious enough. He entered the bar a little after seven.

  "The name's Belasko," Bolan said, extending a hand toward the welder.