"I'd be willing to see her try," Rossi told him.
"A few months…" Sestola turned down the corners of his mouth and shrugged. "See what happens."
"Then we let the Lentini Family dissolve?" DiRenzo asked. "Their capos…"
"We shouldn't try to tell a man like Carmine Samenza that suddenly he works for another Family," Rossi advised. "Let them bid for him. If he were younger, if he wanted it, I'd say let Samenza take over the Lentini businesses, all of them."
"Ask him again if he wants them, before we give any away," DeMaioribus suggested.
Joe Rossi reached for the brandy bottle. "Actually," he said as he poured, "our biggest problem in New York probably isn't the Corone or Lentini Families. It's Luca Barbosa."
"No." DeMaioribus shook his head firmly. "Your biggest problem in New York is Bolan."
"That name is a rationalization for everything that goes wrong in business," Sestola scoffed.
"Maybe," DiRenzo said, "but what are we doing about it?"
"We have a million-dollar contract out on him," Rossi stated. "We've used our political contacts to get a twenty-man detective force assigned to tracking him down. I've assigned the best hitter I've ever seen to do nothing but find and kill Bolan." He shrugged. "The man is still loose."
"I imagine we have to leave the Bolan problem to you," DiRenzo said. "I don't know what more we could do to help you. He took out the best hitters I had."
"Joe," DeMaioribus said grimly, "who murdered that woman who worked for the Organized Crime Task Force?"
"I have to confess something," Rossi announced. "It was my hitter. She made a mistake. She was trying to take out a woman that Bolan's got some kind of attachment to, to smoke him out and she hit the Warnicke woman when the other woman's boyfriend knocked her down and out of the line of fire."
"A mistake like that!" DeMaioribus protested. "How good can she be?"
"She did the Grieco job. The council of the Five Families agreed that he wasn't the man to take over the Corone Family. Besides, he held Arturo Corone practically a prisoner in his own house and treated him with total disrespect. Her assignment now is Bolan. Nothing but Bolan."
"It was a big mistake, Joe," DeMaioribus growled.
"I agree."
"Who is this hitter?" Sestola asked.
"A black woman, from Detroit originally. She's absolutely cold. I think she'd shoot her own mother if you paid her enough. She's smart, quiet and she almost never fails. She's done damned good work for me, for some time. I've trusted her, and she's redeemed my trust."
"I would suggest to you that she knows too much," DeMaioribus said. "The killing of that lawyer is the worst thing that's been done in New York for a very long time. If your involvement becomes known, nobody can save you."
"The Commission will want your ass," DiRenzo added. "Heat won't be your worst problem."
Rossi blanched. "The, uh, Commission…" he stuttered.
Lucky DeMaioribus smiled wryly, sucked the smoke from a cigarette and nodded. "What you have confessed to us, Joe, stays in this room. The other members of the Commission need never know it." He sighed. "Assuming you take care of it."
"Taking care of it means…?"
"Well, let us hope you succeed in eliminating Mack Bolan, the legendary Executioner," DeMaioribus said. "If you achieve that, the world is your oyster, my friend. In any case, your hitter is dead. However you do it, Joe — she's dead. She must be dead."
Rossi nodded. "I had meant to get rid of her as soon as she gets Bolan. The million… We can live with that. Salina Beaudreau alive and able to testify… no. I never thought so. Is it your judgment, gentlemen, that she must go, whether she gets Bolan or not?"
"No," Sestola said emphatically. "Nothing is more important than getting Bolan. Anyway, she won't betray you while she's looking at a million for the Bolan job. Let her try. But if you talk to her, tell her it's Bolan, and nothing but Bolan — as you put it yourself. Five minutes after she hits Bolan successfully, this Salina Beaudreau isn't worth a plugged nickel."
"Except to the cops and Feds," DeMaioribus added. "Her testimony would be worth a lot them."
"I'll take care of her, one way or another," Rossi told them glumly.
* * *
Joe Coppolo had taken his 9 mm Browning from his shoulder bag. "I guess we know all we need to know," he whispered to Bolan. "Rossi sent the hitter that killed Joan. And in that room are four members of the Commission!"
Bolan shook his head. "What's the point? What did Joan die for? Not to get rid of four big mafiosi, Joe. To break their hold on the construction industry in New York. And more, on the city itself."
"Hey!"
Bolan seized Joe by the arm. "Listen!" he muttered under his breath. "I don't know who those men are, but from the sounds of their voices I'd guess they're old men. Eliminate one and some younger guy jumps in and takes his place. Kill Rossi, somebody picks up where he left off. I didn't come to New York to take out a few big criminals. I came to break their hold on the town."
"Yeah, but what are you going to do right now?"
"I'm not going to burst into that room and kill everyone. I don't work that way."
Coppolo let out his breath. "So, what do we do?"
"I want your promise you'll do exactly what I tell you to do."
He nodded. "You got it."
"Okay. We've talked about rattling their cage. Suppose the Commission gets the idea that New York is entirely out of control. Like, suppose they find out that Rossi can't even promise them safety in his own apartment. I want to shoot it up in there, but nobody dies."
Joe Coppolo nodded once more.
"I mean nobody," Bolan emphasized. "This is an apartment building. Slugs will go through the walls. Every shot fired has to be toward the outside wall." He gestured to his right.
"I got it."
"If somebody pulls a gun, that's something else."
"Okay. Let's do it."
Bolan kicked the swinging door and jumped to the left, putting himself at an angle to fire toward the outer wall. His first shot, from the unsilenced Beretta, shattered a wine bottle on the dining table and sprayed wine over the four members of the Cosa Nostra governing Commission. Coppolo's first shot, from the barking Browning, plowed into the table, shattering a serving plate, and passed on to explode the plaster under the window behind Lucky DeMaioribus. Bolan fired a 3-shot burst at the chandelier above the table, blowing it to pieces and showering broken glass on the table and the four stunned mafiosi.
DeMaioribus threw himself sideways and to the floor; Sestola sat petrified, just staring at the two men who were firing at the table; Rossi ducked under the table. Only the Miami don, DiRenzo, went for a gun.
Bolan saw that. He took quick but careful aim on DiRenzo's right shoulder and put a 9 mm slug through it.
DiRenzo howled, then groaned and slumped over the table as if mortally wounded.
Coppolo exploded the brandy bottle, then put a slug through the telephone that sat on a credenza behind where Rossi had been sitting.
Women in other rooms — the maid probably, and Rossi's girlfriend — shrieked in shrill terror. A child began to wail.
Bolan and Joe exchanged glances.
The warrior tipped his head toward the door.
Joe Coppolo leveled his Browning on the cowering men under the table and for a moment stood sneering. "Good night, brave gentlemen. We'll see you later, no doubt."
* * *
"We don't just walk out of here, you know," Bolan said as they walked toward the service elevator. "In fact I don't think the elevator is a good idea. An elevator can be a trap."
Hiking his light skirt high to make longer strides possible, Coppolo hurried into the stairwell. They trotted down three or four floors, then stopped.
"Any kind of smarts," Bolan told him, "and they'll have the stairs covered at the bottom."
"Three guns outside, the wise guy said," Joe recalled. "Not enough artillery to cover everything."
&n
bsp; "Plus four senior men upstairs. What will they do?"
"I bet Rossi sits tight and does nothing," Coppolo said.
"Probably. But he could have a man or two around somewhere, besides the guys on the street."
Coppolo was taking this moment to push cartridges down into the clip of his Browning. It had a 13-shot clip, but he replaced the cartridges he'd fired just the same. Bolan shoved a new clip into the Beretta.
"Hell of a lot of banging up there," the Justice agent observed. "Somebody in the building has called the cops for sure, which means we've got to get of here pronto."
Bolan screwed the silencer onto the muzzle of the Beretta. He nodded. "Stand back, Joe. I'll go down ahead of you."
Coppolo frowned but said nothing. He took off his high-heeled shoes and stuffed them in his shoulder bag.
Bolan went down quietly.
They saw after a moment that Joe could hang out over the railing on each landing and peer down as Bolan slipped down each flight. They followed that routine — Bolan edging down, staying near the wall, Coppolo leaning out above, aiming the Browning, watching for anyone who stepped out.
The hardmen from the streets were pros. They weren't waiting on the ground floor. As Bolan worked his way cautiously down from the fourth to the third, a door suddenly opened at the third-floor level, and a heavyset man stepped out into the stairwell. He spotted Bolan immediately and raised his revolver.
Immediately wasn't soon enough. Bolan was alert and had the Beretta up and ready. It spit silently, and the heavyset man fell back.
Coppolo hurried down, but Bolan raised a hand and stopped him. He wanted to follow the same routine-floor by floor, Joe alert above while he edged down cautiously.
Bolan reached the ground floor. He signaled to his companion to hold back. The door into the foyer was heavy, but the sound of angry voices was clear enough, even if he couldn't understand the words. What was worse, he couldn't be sure who was out there. Police? He wouldn't fire on them. Tenants of the building?
He slipped back up the stairs, halfway to the second floor.
"Lobby's full of people making conversation," he said. "Let's give them reason to go somewhere else."
"By…?"
Bolan nodded at the Browning. He opened the door between the stairwell and the second-floor hall. He pointed down into the stairwell, then at the Browning.
Coppolo got the idea. He loosed three quick shots into the concrete-and-steel stairwell, the bark of the pistol reverberating off the hard walls.
"C'mon!"
Bolan ran down the stairs and out into the foyer. Half a dozen startled men gaped and cowered.
"Police!" he yelled.
Coppolo followed. "Clear the way!" he screamed, in the highest voice he could muster.
"Get an ambulance!" Bolan yelled at the lobby crowd as he and the Justice agent raced out the door. He pointed toward the door to the stairwell. "Wounded man up there!"
They were on the street. The flashing red lights of police cars dominated the scene. One after another, they careered onto Seventy-second Street.
The driver of the Cadillac with the Rhode Island plates stood beside his car, conspicuously terrified by this show of police force. Because they were alert to him, Bolan and Coppolo saw him toss his automatic into a window well.
"Out of here," Joe muttered. He paused to take his high-heeled shoes from his bag and slip them on his feet.
They crossed the street and walked toward York Avenue.
"Hey!"
"Oh, God!" Joe yelled. "Somebody shot somebody in the building! All kinds of shots! Ohh…"
The policeman gaped for a moment at the dark-haired little woman who clung to the tall, hawk-faced man. "Uh, you were where when all this happened?"
"Our friends the Dugans!" Joe feigned weeping. "Fourth floor… Shooting all up and down, above us and below us and all over! Somebody's dead! I know somebody's dead!"
"Do me a favor, ma'am — and sir," the officer said. "See the car at the end of the street. Number 434? Stop there and give the lieutenant your names, in case we need to ask you some questions later."
Bolan nodded. "For sure. We'll do that, but I do want to get her out of here."
"Sure," the policeman said sympathetically, frowning at Joe Coppolo and never suspecting he was anything but a frightened woman. "Just take a sec to say hello to the lieutenant."
Bolan nodded again. "Right. And be careful. I think they're still in there, with their guns."
As they rounded the corner and walked south on York Avenue, Bolan pulled his arm out of Joe's grasp. "Want an acting award?" he asked. "I'll nominate you."
Chapter Fifteen
Bolan ordered breakfast, brought up by room service, and Coppolo waited in the bathroom until the waiter had left the cart. He was wearing pants and a white T-shirt, his own face, and no wig. As he came out of the bathroom and was about to sit down to eat, the telephone rang.
"Hal," he suggested.
"It had better be," Bolan replied, meaning that no one but Hal Brognola was supposed to know where they were.
The call was from Brognola. "I've checked out the name you gave me," he said. "Salina Beaudreau. Absolutely clean. A black female hitter… Negative again. So I ordered a check of murders committed by black women who remain unidentified and presumably at large. There are several of those. Does the name Jesus Domingo mean anything to you?"
"Not to me," Bolan said. "Let me ask Joe." He turned and asked.
"Damn right," Coppolo replied. "Colombian cocaine baron. Reputedly a billionaire. Made a visit to New York in 1987 and… poof! Blown away on the street in front of the Waldorf. A rifle shot from across Park Avenue. Explosive bullet — Hey! Same way Phil Corone got it!"
Bolan spoke to Brognola. "Joe knows the case. He was taken out with an explosive bullet fired from a rifle, the same way Phil Corone was."
"Right. And ask Joe later how many Barbosas and Corones died when the Colombians took their revenge. Those guys play hardball, Striker. Okay. Two witnesses talked about the shot being fired by a tall black woman."
"Interesting."
"I focused the file search on victims tied to organized crime. That brings up the file on the Domingo killing. Two witnesses out of thirty-four. Thirty-two swore to all kinds of things. Two witnesses swore they saw a black woman out on a marquee. One said he saw a rifle. Whoever fired the shot had to be at a window or on a marquee. You couldn't fire across Park Avenue at ground level, through the traffic. Damned fine shooting, in any case."
"A pro."
"Professional enough not to get caught," Brognola said. "Professional enough not to acquire a record."
"And dangerous," Bolan added. "Only she's gotten careless, Hal. I mean, lately. She hit Michael Grieco in view of witnesses. She killed Joan Warnicke in view of witnesses."
"She's getting ready to retire — after she takes out Mack Bolan," Brognola told him. "And she gets around. Now she's working for Rossi."
"She's been working for Rossi all along," Bolan countered. "It fits. The Colombians knew the Rossi Family wasn't into the cocaine trade. They knew the Corones and Barbosas were — or wanted to be. When Domingo was killed, they went after the Corones and Barbosas. Their revenge weakened those two families. To whose benefit? Rossi's. Rossi killed Domingo, which was smart. And Rossi had Phil Corone killed. Last night they talked about splitting up the Lentini businesses. The Corone Family is in the hands of a woman. Rossi figures he'll take care of her, sooner or later. Luca Barbosa is old. Segesta is a Mustache Pete. Rossi sees himself godfather of New York. Five Families? No more. One Family."
"Do I hear you changing your focus, Striker?"
"No. Rossi makes his chief money by corrupting the construction industry. Some of the others make a lot by corrupting the unions. Either way, it's a multi-billion-dollar jackpot for the Five Families. Or the One Family."
"Your targets?" Brognola asked crisply.
"Rossi, for sure. He killed Joan."
"S
triker," Brognola said quietly. "Something else is coming down. The Man wants to know when you'll be available to look into something ten times more dangerous than what you're looking at in New York. We've got reports that Colonel Khaddafi and some other crazies are building plants to manufacture chemical-warfare agents for export. Poison gases may become the poor man's A-bombs, and suddenly the world's a lot more dangerous. The Man wants to know when you'll be available to tackle this one."
Bolan glanced at Joe, who had poured himself a cup of coffee but was otherwise waiting before touching the food.
"Striker?"
"Give me a few more days," he said.
"I don't give you anything, big guy. I'm just telling you there are other jobs waiting."
"Less than a week," Bolan said grimly. "Count on it."
* * *
Just as Bolan was finishing his conversation with Hal Brognola, Luca Barbosa was leaving St. Bonaventure's Church in Riverdale. Don Barbosa was a widower whose children lived in Florida and Texas, and he had attended Mass alone.
He had sat in church without even a bodyguard, secure in a strange, fatalistic sense that no enemy would attack him in God's house, or if he died there he would be translated to heaven, after only a short stay in purgatory, as a reward for his confidence in divine protection. Sins lay heavy on his soul, he knew. Some things a man couldn't confess. But he had considered what he had to pay for, and what he had counterbalanced by good works, and he remained confident that he wouldn't remain forever excluded from heaven.
This morning he had put a hundred dollars in the collection. He put in a hundred from time to time. Not more. Putting in too much aroused suspicions among the priests that a man had much on his conscience. The hundred now and then was a nice balance.
Two good men were alert outside, his driver and a guy recently made, who had proved reliable. As he emerged into the summer sunlight, the new guy stood halfway down the walk. The driver remained in the car.
"Thank you, Father," Barbosa said to the priest who stood by the door.
"Thank you, Mr. Barbosa. Your generosity is appreciated."
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