Knockdown

by Don Pendleton

  Johnny DePrisco kept an eye on her from where he stood, near the bar just inside the main lounge. His loins ached from his experience with her. She was as tough and demanding about intimacy as she was about everything else. Some of the men grinned knowingly at him, but he kept a solemn face and was careful not to acknowledge their leers. It would be the biggest mistake of his life to let her see him joining in any kind of joke about their half-hour visit to the cabin. On the other hand, an alliance with her could be the best thing that ever happened to him.

  If he could stomach her. Apart from the aggressive coarseness of her lovemaking, she had nearly choked him with the smoke from her cigarettes in that little wedge-shaped cabin. And she salted her conversation, not only with profanity, but also with slang terms from her life in prison. "Hell, I was iced before they got me unhooked," she had said, meaning she'd done something to win herself a term in an isolation cell before they had even removed the chains she had worn during the ride from jail to prison. And, from the look of things, she was going to be staggering drunk very shortly.

  On the other hand, Phil Corone was afraid of her for some reason. He'd asked Segesta for political help in getting her paroled, which meant he'd asked the other dons, too. Hadn't he been better off to leave her inside?

  One of Corone's hardmen was talking to her now. His name was Augie something or other, a rough sort of street hoodlum that Johnny DePrisco wouldn't have had around him.

  "Nice work," Segesta commented.

  Alfredo Segesta had come up behind Johnny and hadn't been noticed until he had spoken.

  "She say anything interesting?" Segesta asked.

  "Colorful description of life in the federal slammer," Johnny muttered.

  Segesta grinned. "She any good in bed?"

  "She's a woman," Johnny answered laconically.

  "Well, you bought yourself a problem. Phil Corone doesn't like what you did. Be damned careful of him. I hope you get something from her that's worth making him an enemy."

  "You mind if I take care of him?"

  Segesta frowned, then laughed. "Such talk! But, seriously, don't even think of it. We can't have a war. Listen to me, Johnny. The Commission is looking at us. You understand me? The Commission. I don't dare think of hitting Phil, and you don't dare. We gotta keep the peace."

  Johnny DePrisco nodded. He had noticed that the subjects of their conversation — Phil and Angela Corone — were talking earnestly at the rear of the yacht. They were talking so earnestly that everyone had edged away from them.

  "You've been out of touch a long time," Phil said to her.

  "The old man saw to that," she replied bitterly. "No help. No visitors. No letters. Nothing."

  "He didn't help me, either. I helped myself. I kept my nose clean and got my release. Then, as soon as I could, I…"

  "Yeah. You know, the old bastard suckered us. We did three years for him…"

  "For ourselves," Phil interrupted. "Keeping him out of stir till he died, we kept the business intact. If he'd gone to Danbury instead of me, I couldn't have held it together. Neither could you."

  "You almost lost it as it was," she said. "What about that Grieco character? Who hit him? They say you didn't."

  "Somebody did me a favor. I had a first-class hitter here on loan to take out Grieco, and somebody did the job for me. Anyway, listen to me. DePrisco works for Segesta. He may play like he's independent, but he works for Segesta. Segesta helped me get you out of Alderson, but he's no friend."

  "We got no friends, little brother," she said acidly.

  "For the moment we have Barbosa. But in the long run, if it can be worked out, the key is Rossi. Rossi's got more power than any two of the rest of us. I have a suspicion — just a suspicion, mind you, but it makes sense — that it was Rossi's hitter who knocked off Michael Grieco."

  "So…?"

  "So, what I'm telling you is, enjoy DePrisco as a stud if you want to. But politically, the key man is Rossi. One way or the other."

  "Meaning?"

  "We make our alliance with Rossi, say a few months down the line. Or we have to take him out. Okay?"

  Angela nodded. "If you say so, little brother."

  * * *

  Bolan was ready. He sat securely astride the beam and would be able to take careful aim. He had established his escape route — he'd drop down into the water and swim under the pier to the opposite side, then back to the pier where he'd left his bag.

  He'd promised to take out another don. He wasn't sure which ones were on board the yacht, but he thought he had recognized Barbosa and Corone. Okay, either one of them.

  Barbosa had given the order to kill John Claw, then his father, then the witness, Whittle. Barbosa's men had tried to kill him in the New Jersey parking lot and again in Bedford Beach.

  Corone had called Tokenese to New York, first to kill Michael Grieco — which someone else had done first — and then to stay and do another service, which almost certainly was to kill Mack Bolan. Besides, since Grieco had been killed by the black woman who then killed Joan Warnicke, it was still very possible that Corone was responsible for the murder of Joan. Even if he wasn't, he was a man who earned a living by selling heroin — hooking people, including children, on his vile poison and then exploiting their slow deaths for maximum profit.

  He need have no qualms about taking out either Barbosa or Corone. Barbosa had deserved it a thousand times; Corone maybe not so many but certainly enough.

  * * *

  Claire Segesta had watched Johnny DePrisco all evening. She knew he had gone downstairs with Angela Corone. But Claire could forgive that, easily; she understood it was business, and men did many things for the sake of business. Now he was becoming gentle from drink, and she decided to approach him.

  "Johnny…"

  He glanced down into her worshiping dark eyes. For the barest instant he flushed with annoyance, then abruptly allowed a warm little smile to come over his face. "Claire…"

  "Can we have a drink together, Johnny?"

  He glanced toward the bar. "Sure."

  "I mean… someplace else."

  His smile widened, and he tipped his head to one side. "I doubt that your father would approve our going off somewhere."

  "He'd be as pleased as I would," she said simply.

  A world of new ideas revolved in his drink-fogged brain like the changing color patterns in a kaleidoscope. So why not? She was small, chubby and soft, and she conspicuously adored him. Did Alfredo really…? Probably. Claire wasn't devious enough to lie about a thing like that. So. Heir to Segesta. An apple to be plucked. He looked down into Claire's eyes, then took her hand.

  * * *

  Bolan watched and waited. Some of the party goers would stay on the yacht all night, probably too drunk to stumble across the gangplank. The important ones would leave. He was counting on it.

  Then he recognized Johnny DePrisco. As he'd been that night on the West Side, Johnny was a little wobbly. As he'd done that night, he let a woman steady him. This one was short, plump, dark, and clung to Johnny as if she loved him. Maybe Johnny had a wife.

  Some others came up the gangplank, climbing awkwardly. Almost all of them were men. Few women had been aboard Napoleon IV.

  A woman came on deck with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Bolan had never seen her, but he could recognize Angela Corone from her description. She walked forward, weaving, until she reached a point where the curve of the hull left open water between yacht and pier. At that point she was only five or six feet from Bolan's position.

  For a moment she stood there. On deck she was still a few feet above the beam where he waited, but she could have seen him if she had peered searchingly into the darkness.

  "Angela?"

  It was her brother. Phil Corone walked forward, but stopped halfway to her and looked back. A hardman was following him, looking all around, searching with his eyes as Angela had not.

  Bolan eased the Desert Eagle out of its holster. Phil Corone
. There wouldn't be another shot as good as this. He took time to aim. No hurry.

  Bolan was ready. It would be a clean shot, and he would only need to fire once. He checked the hardman out of the corner of his eye. The guy was lighting a cigarette.

  A rifle shot cracked the night open. Across his sights Bolan saw Corone's head explode. The gore flew in a red spray, onto Angela, onto the cabin wall behind Corone, onto the deck. Corone was dead, the almost decapitated corpse slumping to the deck.

  Angela didn't scream. "I'll be damned," she muttered as she threw herself to the deck, anticipating a second shot.

  The hardman did the same.

  Bolan couldn't see where the shot had come from, but it had to be from somewhere above on the pier. A marksman with a good rifle could have made the shot from a hundred yards or more — though he doubted it had been fired from that distance.

  After a long moment of caution, people began to come out of the cabin. They had two anxieties: first, not to be the next victim, and second, to be far away before the police arrived. The first people out were the bodyguards. Then a hurried exodus began. The aged Natale Plumeri was the first man across the gangplank, followed quickly by Luca Barbosa.

  Angela stood. She didn't so much as glance at the body of her half brother. "Augie!" she yelled.

  Augie, the bodyguard who had followed Phil Corone out on deck, had scrambled up and was on his way toward the gangplank. He glanced back at her but didn't stop.

  "Augie Karas, you son of a bitch! You work for me now! You're driving me out of here! You got that? You work for me now!"

  Augie hesitated, then stopped and went back.

  Barbosa and Plumeri had paused on the pier for a brief moment to listen and observe. They exchanged glances, and Barbosa shrugged.

  Segesta, too, had heard her shout. He stood just outside the cabin door and watched her seize Augie by the arm. He nodded and pointed toward the pier where he had parked Phil's car. She led the way up the plank, and he followed her.

  There was nothing more Bolan could do. He let himself slip to the water.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bolan left the Barclay Hotel at ten o'clock, walked around the corner and stepped out into the street as if to hail a cab — but didn't. Even so, a cab came up fast and stopped for him. He got in. The driver turned around and grinned at him — Saul Stein.

  "I've been doing it for almost a year," Stein said. "I've covered meetings with some hot guys this way. The best cover I've ever used."

  He wore a white shirt, open at the collar, as well as a Mets baseball cap. His black beard was a little too luxuriant for a typical New York cabdriver — orthodox Jews didn't tend to drive cabs — but he wasn't atypical.

  "I speak English too well to drive a cab in New York. But what the hell? The guys I drive around don't worry about that."

  Bolan was dressed in his Joe Businessman suit. He relaxed in the back seat of the cab. Stein did something else very few New York drivers would do — he turned on the air-conditioning.

  "You get no congratulations," Stein told him.

  "You don't owe me any. I didn't do it."

  "I didn't think you did. The word on the street is that you didn't. Not your style. They think it was done by one of their own, but they can't imagine who."

  Bolan had decided to withhold, at least for the time being, the information that he had witnessed the death of Philip Corone. He'd been wondering during the night if it had been DePrisco, since Johnny had hurried away from the yacht five minutes before the hitter struck.

  "The chief suspect is Angela," Stein said. "She took command of the Corone Family on the spot. Conventional wisdom is, she can't hold it, no woman could. I wouldn't make book on that."

  "Home a few days, she hired a hitter and had her brother taken out?" Bolan asked. "I wouldn't make book on that, either."

  "She's her father's daughter, though. The old man was a Sicilian, in both the best and worst senses of the word."

  Stein pulled the cab up to a hot dog vendor's cart. The water wasn't boiling yet at this hour. The vendor was pushing his heavy cart down Third Avenue, on his way to his day's work. As the cab pulled up, the man abandoned the cart, opened the door and got in beside Bolan. He waved at the real hot dog man, who'd been following along on the sidewalk, and turned to grin at Bolan.

  "Nice work last night," Joe Coppolo said.

  Bolan shook his head. "Wasn't me."

  "We've been talking about that," Stein said. "But it's the wrong subject. We've got real problems to talk about. Problems? Maybe I should say opportunities."

  Stein turned east and down onto FDR Drive. He headed the cab toward the Triborough Bridge and Kennedy Airport. He could drive there, circle through the traffic complex and return to Midtown, giving them an hour to talk without interruption.

  "They've shut down construction on the Seventh Avenue building. A swarm of inspectors is all over it this morning. The building will be condemned. It's in danger of falling down. Asman is screaming about shoddy work by union people. The welders' local issued a statement at eight o'clock this morning that it wouldn't let its men on the steel again until the foundations are strengthened."

  "Who's Asman?" Bolan asked. "I know the name, but what's the affiliation?"

  "At the top of three or four levels of corporate structure, it probably comes to Rossi," Stein informed him. "That's what we suspect. We can't prove it — yet."

  "Somebody's going to lose a bundle," Coppolo said.

  "The Seventh Avenue job is only the tip of an iceberg. Every building inspector who's been on the take is suddenly meticulously honest. Two district attorneys have suddenly discovered that building inspectors can be bribed and are talking about indictments."

  "In other words," Coppolo began, "what our friend came here to do…"

  "Yeah," Stein interrupted. "You've rattled them. To what I've just said, add the real possibility of a war among the Families. They know you're in town, but they know you didn't kill Grieco and they don't think you killed Corone. They also know you didn't kill Joan, which most of them think is the stupidest thing that's been done in this town in many, many years. What's more, they're upset because they can't get you. There's a million-dollar contract out, payable to anybody who gets you. That's a hell of a big danger, man. Remember how Corone got his last night — with a small explosive bullet fired from God knows how far away, with a powerful telescopic sight."

  "Could have been the black woman," Bolan said. "She's a pro."

  "Right. Well, don't forget she's seen you. She knows what you look like, and the mustache isn't going to fool her. She could be in any window, in any car."

  "What do you suggest? That I leave town?"

  Stein shook his head. "No. You've shaken up this city the way nobody's been able to in my memory. But don't forget something else — you've made as many enemies as friends. A hell of a lot of guys, including guys who think they're honest, were living comfortably with the cozy arrangements they'd made with the Families."

  "To make money in business, you need calm and certainty," Coppolo interjected. "To borrow a phrase from politics, 'He may be a crook, but he's our crook. The Families rip them off for millions, but they've learned how to deal with the Families and don't want the uncertainty that goes with change."

  "I suppose there's some point in all this?" Bolan asked.

  Stein sighed heavily. "It may be too big for you."

  "You getting heat?"

  Stein nodded. "Even from Albany. The director says hang in there. So do I. But I have to sneak around like this to talk to you. Another thing. There's a fund. I mean, the honest — well, sort of honest — contractors are raising a fund. It's going to be a lot of money. The idea is, if anyone can contact you, it will be offered to you to get out of town. If you don't accept, it becomes a reward for your arrest."

  "Pay off a hitter?"

  "No," Stein denied emphatically. "Reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man who twic
e robbed Teddy Brannigan, collector of union dues. If they could get you in custody, they could hold you on the strength of Brannigan's identification. He has a record, but they can make him out as a reformed character with an honest job collecting dues. All of which makes for one more danger to contend with."

  "Who's more dangerous?" Bolan asked dryly. "The Families or the citizens?"

  "If the city and state authorities had their choice…" Stein began.

  "They don't have a choice," Bolan said coldly. "Even before Joan was murdered, they didn't, and they sure don't have one now."

  "What are you going to do?" Stein asked.

  "You don't want to know."

  * * *

  "One last thing," Stein had said when he dropped Bolan on a Midtown street. "A couple of old friends of yours are back in town — released from a New Jersey slammer. Sandy Mac and Louey Vig."

  He was talking about Luigi Vigaldo, the gunman who had tried to kill Bolan and Coppolo on the Garden State Parkway, and Patrick McMahon, the driver that night. A pair of free-lancers. Stein had said. They worked for any Family that paid them.

  The fact was, the Families didn't trust either man and didn't want them as members. Neither was a made man, a member of the Mafia. Vigaldo was thought of as mentally unstable. McMahon, besides being of the wrong ancestry to be accepted, was known as the man who had beaten and scarred a nineteen-year-old girl just for the fun of it. La Cosa Nostra had its standards. Neither would ever be accepted.

  Even so, Barbosa had used money and influence to get them out of the New Jersey jail. His lawyer had come back saying they were thinking about telling who hired them to shoot the federal agents. Better to have them back in New York, where, if nothing else, they could be disposed of.

  Saul Stein had informers. One of them had told him Sandy Mac and Louey Vig had been offered the same deal as everyone else: a million dollars to the man who knocked off Bolan.