For the third time Bolan had inquired and was reassured regarding the disposition of Frank's Sicilians. They were on their way, the Kid swore, half of them going to join Jules Sticatta, the other half to Carmine Drasco.
Bolan stepped out at the gate and sent the conquering hero off with a wink, and he was hurrying back to the house when a scuffle on the front lawn commanded his attention.
Some guy over there was getting the hell beat out of him, or so it looked. Three of the yardmen had the guy on the ground and were giving it to him with fists and feet when Bolan broke into the fray and began pulling boys off.
"Lousy cop!" one of the guys yelled.
So it was. The young plain-clothes man whose path Bolan had repeatedly crossed that day now lay at his feet.
The guy's eyes blazed up at Bolan and he wasbreathing like a steam engine, mad as hell—probably more so at himself than anything else.
Bolan pulled the guy to his feet, brushed him off, examined him for damages and found none. He'd probably have tender ribs and a sore belly for a day or so, but he'd live through it.
The dignity, though—that might be another mat¬ter.
A hardman was dangling the cop's revolver from a finger, giving Bolan a questioning stare.
Bolan accepted the gun and jammed it into the guy's holster. He told him, "You can't blame the boys for jumping you. It's your neck that's out, you know. You have no business in here. That was no annual permit you boys brought in here tonight."
Sammy had heard the commotion also and was coming running. He slowed at the sight of Bolan /Cavaretta, sized up the situation and said, "Geez, now what?"
Bolan replied, "Now, nothing The guy was just leaving."
The yard boss protested, "Hell, Johnny, if the guy has been prowling around here . . . well, I don't know."
"Nah, it's okay," Bolan said. "The guy wants the same thing we want. He's a soldier of the same side. Right? Beat it, cop. Good hunting."
The detective spun about, without a word, and headed for the wall.
Sammy's face was twisted with an inner torment. He cried, "Mr. Cavaretta, I don't think—"
Bolan snapped, "No you don't! That's my department! He goes!"
The cop went, and Bolan continued on to the house.
It was an incident he could have done without. He needed to get damn quick to the telephone and get some more numbers into the game.
He went directly to the library and picked up the desk phone just as someone somewhere else in the house was hanging up an extension.
Bolan re-cradled the instrument, his gaze shifting to the ceiling directly overhead, then he picked it up again.
He got a no-interference dial-tone but again waited several seconds, then called the number which Drasco had left with him.
Carmine himself answered the first ring. Bolan told him, "This is me. You know what is coming at you right now, this very minute. You better be ready."
Drasco's cautious reply was reassuring. "Thanks, we are. How many?"
"Forty-two all told. Half to you, half to Jules. You better call him."
"Okay. You know we appreciate it."
Bolan said, "Wait. I heard this much, also. What's that recognition signal you boys been using?"
"You mean with the lights?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, well, just two clicks high beam and hold, two clicks low and hold, another high and fast back to low."
"That's the one," Bolan said, hoping so. "Watch for that. It means something else tonight. It's their signal to each other. It means everything looks okay, crash right in."
"They'll crash, all right," Drasco muttered, and hung up.
Smiling solemnly, Bolan consulted the telephone directory and made another call, reached his party after some haggling over names and departments, quickly had his say, and hung up.
Then he went upstairs to see why the Don was playing with the telephone.
Captain Thomkins was hunched over his desk, staring glumly into a pint carton of milk. He told Joe Persicone, "When they bury me, I want them to make my tombstone out of recycled milk cartons and sandwich wraps. I've spent half my life in their company, I may as well go on through eternity that way."
The FBI man was stretched across two chairs. He shifted his feet and grunted a tired groan. "We may as well hang it up, Wayne. I think we missed our guess. I don't think we'll ever hear of the guy again."
"Don't start that," Thompkins growled. "I haven't given up yet."
As if to reward his perseverence, Bolan's call came at that precise instant.
The Captain snatched up the phone and his eyes found the interested gaze of Persicone as he said, "Yeah, yeah, this is the big cop in the dirty gray suit. Who's this?"
The eyes blinked at the FBI man as he said, "Who?"
Persicone kicked his feet clear and slid to the edge of his chair.
The cop was saying, "Sure, I know where. You say there'll be—wait! How do I know you're really who you say you are?" The eyes crackled. "Okay, fella. Hey! Do me a personal favor, will you? Get the hell out of our town!"
The FBI agent could hear the crisp crackling of the telephone receiver, the methodical voice that rattled it.
The Captain's eyes were alternately narrowing and widening, in some weird rhythm of attentive listening.
Finally Thomkins yelled, "Wait, dammit! Did he -? He did!" He flung the telephone down and said, "He hung up on me!"
"Who did he say was calling?" Persicone in¬quired, knowing already.
"He said it was Mack Bolan. He said the foreign army, what the hell ever that is, is storming the hall of horrors, whatever the hell that is, and we should rush right out to Drasco's and Sticatta's ready to pick up the pieces."
Persicone was on his feet. He said, "Well? Are we going?"
"Well, wait, I want to. . ."
"I think we should."
"I already have a force at each place. Let me. . ."
"Was that all he said?"
"It's not all he said. I hope I got a recording of that. He says we should send fingerprints on all those mala—macaroni or something to—"
"Malacarni?"
"That's the one. What's it mean?"
"I'll tell you later. Go on, what else did he say?"
"We should send these fingerprints to Interpol, we might be very interested in the results. Joe. . . ?"
The Captain was giving the FBI man a very searching gaze.
Persicone found it discomforting. He said, "What?"—a bit testily.
"Level with me. Is this guy working with you people?"
"Bolan? You know better! Come on, what else?" Thomkins sighed. "He just said the numbers were falling. And he hung up."
Persicone was fidgeting, at the door. "I think we should go."
"You're convinced it was him?" the Captain asked.
"It was," Persicone sighed, "for damned sure him."
Chapter 23/ All Numbers In
The Don was seated at the window, precisely as Bolan had left him earlier, except that a telephone rested upon his lap. He was staring at it and humming, sort of, a discordant tune.
Bolan had him in the side view, the tired old features in sharp profile. They were tired with good reason. Stefano Angeletti had been one of the busiest and nastiest hoods in the business for nearly fifty years. He'd hacked his way through that jungle of deceit and brutality, giving more suffering than getting, and he'd made it through that jungle at the head of the pack in a crowded and viciously competitive field.
But it had been a rotten trip—and the evidence of that was all hanging out, here, tonight, in this time and place. The ravages of fifty years behind the footlights were there for anyone to see, and Bolan was seeing a lot.
The pity of it all was that the guy was still in that jungle—he hadn't made it through anything except fifty years of sheer survival.
And the guy was sitting there humming a song— a song of something. Something, no doubt, as rotten as himself.
Bolan lean
ed against the wall, arms crossed, and asked the humming man, "Trying to conjure up a call, Stefano?"
"I already had my call," the old man quietly re plied.
Bolan bent down to take the phone. He did so, and an ugly little black revolver replaced it in Angeletti's hand.
In that same motion, a silencer-tipped Browning auto slipped its snout between Angeletti's lips.
It was not exactly a Mexican stand-off. Bolan could have blasted him then and there, or so he figured, and walked away. . . maybe. But there was something in those watery old eyes that stayed him, and pulled him back, and instead he told the Capo, "I'll wait if you will."
"You got longer than me," the Don replied in a very dry voice.
Bolan said, "That must have been some call " "It was and it wasn't."
Bolan carefully put the phone on the table and leaned a shoulder against the wall, the Browning there and ready.
"I got one and I sent one," Angeletti was telling him, in a voice so tired it almost wasn't there. "Philippa called to say good-bye. She's not coming back, she says. But blood is thicker than water, isn't it? Our kind of blood, I don't know about yours. She told me I should check you out. Said you had buckshot wounds, and it was bothering her." He cackled but those eyes never left Bolan's trigger finger. "Imagine that. She was worried about her Papa."
Bolan said, "Well, it figures, doesn't it?"
The old man went on as though he had not heard the comment. "So I called Augie. I would've called earlier, I was going to. But the damn phones were out. Then by the time they came back in— hell, guy, by then you had me up your tree but good, didn't you? So I called Augie. He says this Johnny Cavaretta didn't leave there until late. Couldn't possibly get here before six. Not possible, he says. I'm gonna put a bullet right up your nose, mister smart-ass. Whatta you think about that?"
Bolan shrugged his free shoulder. "It comes to all of us, Steven. Question now is—which of us first? Even without me, though, yours is on the way. What did Augie have to say about your temporary insanity?"
"You crazy? I told Augie nothing! I got to figure out the damage you did, first."
Bolan wondered if the old man was still in touch with reality. He seemed to have lost the awareness of the Browning.
"Irreversible," he told the Don.
"What?"
"The damage is irreversible. Can't be patched up. One way you look at it, Stefano, you're a total ass. The other way, you hauled off and wiped out the delegations from three friendly families for no good reason at all. Unless maybe you're trying for a takeover."
"Aaagh, you think—"
"Or unless Frank is."
"What? What'd you say?"
Bolan shrugged the free shoulder. "It could look like Frank the Kid is trying for a takeover." "Nobody will ever know," the old guy said, his voice sinking again. "You'll get all the credit for those dead boys down there."
"No good, Steven. It'll never hang together. Anybody seeing that mess down there will know what happened. They'll know I couldn't have engineered something like that. Besides, it has your brand all over it. And too many boys know what really happened here tonight."
The gray chin was quivering, eyes watering. "What other kind of dirt have you been doing here under my nose?"
"Not much more. Except that Jules and Carmine are right now fighting for their lives against Frank's Sicilians."
The old man lunged forward in the chair and cried, "What!?"
Bolan nodded and watched that gun hand. "That's right."
The hammer of the revolver was back and ready, the snout angling at Bolan's face. He saw the hand that held it shake, and he was tensing into his own pull.
But it didn't come off. The old man wasn't,
through with him yet. "That stiff you showed me," he was asking. "Is that Johnny Cavaretta?"
Bolan nodded. "It is."
The hand shook some more.
Bolan could appreciate the emotional pressures building inside that tired old head. This was a bitter pill for a bigshot boss like Angeletti to have to swallow—the overnight destruction of everything he'd labored to pull together for the past fifty years. Yeah, there were plenty of emotions there.
He thought, what the hell?—and tossed in another number for contemplation.
"I sold it to Frank," he said.
"You did what?"
"I sold the stiff to Frank the Kid."
"What the hell would he want with—?"
"Well, just the head. Easier to handle. He dumped the rest in the basement."
"Oh . . . God!"
"Besides, walking in with just a head is classier. You can toss it on a guy's desk and snap your fingers and say hey, look what I brought in."
"Oh, God, no!"
The old boy hadn't lost touch with anything. He'd picked that up damn quick . . . and he knew. . he knew. All the pain and heartbreak and anxiety over a kid and heir with no legs at all under him broke through that massive hatred and anger, that bitter will to survive and punish. He was shuddering all over as he asked the Executioner, "Has he already left?"
"He's left," Bolan said quietly.
"Go get him back!" Angeletti screamed. "You can do it! I'll give you anything—I'll give you everything I got! Just don't let the kid do that to hisself. No telling what they'll think! Or do! My God, that guy was a Talifero! Dammit, you run get 'im back!"
Bolan leaned down and plucked the revolver from limp fingers and thrust it into his waistband.
"No way, Steven," he said. "That one was my grand-slammer."
There was no way for Stefano Angeletti, either.The yelling fit or the new hopelessness or something had defeated him and he sank back into the cushions of the chair with a rattling sigh, hardly a drop of gas left in his tank.
"You'll get yours some day, guy," the old man promised the Executioner. The eyes were looking yellow now, blazing purest hatred as though all the strength of an abused lifetime had been consolidated into that moment.
Bolan sighed and said, "Don't we all," and turned to leave.
The house captain came through the doorway about then, attracted probably by the old man's emotional shouting.
Stefano spent his last drop of gas to whimper, "Take him, Tony! God, take him!"
"Take who?" the houseman asked, the face that had suffered the idiosyncrasies of this inner family group for perhaps half a lifetime twisting in patient puzzlement.
Bolan showed the guy a sad smile and told him, "He thinks I'm Mack Bolan."
"Oh, Jesus," the guy whispered, and backed out of there shaking his head.
Bolan paused in the doorway for a parting look at success, Mafia-style.
Don Stefano Angeletti was bent forward on his throne, leathery hands clutching at the mahogany arms.
"Kill me, you prick!" he wheezed.
"I already killed you, Steven," Bolan told the Don, then he went away from there, down to the carport, into the Maserati.
A familiar figure detached itself from the shadows as he was cranking the engine, and Sammy the yard boss stepped to the side of the vehicle.
"You checking out, Mr. Cavaretta?" the yardman asked, the voice a trifle uneasy.
Bolan grinned as he replied, "Right, and you haven't even learned to call me Johnny."
"I guess I never would," Sammy told him. "Uh .. . the house captain told me about the Don. Is he . . . is he . . .?"
"He's alive," Bolan assured the guy. "Listen, Sammy . . ."
The yard boss was giving him an anguished, sorrowful gaze—and Bolan was gazing back but he was seeing instead of Sammy a little tag-man at Las Vegas—Max Keno by name, instant-loyalty by game— and he knew that Max and Sammy were formed from the same mold. Nothing particularly admirable . . . not especially bad . . . they were just .. .
Guys like this had never been torpedoes or hit- men or squeeze-men; they'd spent their lifetimes in loyal service to a cause they didn't even understand —and they served a crown, not the man beneath it. Soldiers of the court, spending mo
st of their days and nights just standing around to make some rotten old man feel important and deserving of kisses upon the hand.
Soldiers of the other side. But soldiers, still.
Bolan sighed and quit wrestling with himself. For Max, then—and probably for Sammy as well, he told the guy, "The old man is alive and he isn't, Sammy. You'd better go up and sit with him. The stage is falling in."
"What is?"
"All of it, the whole lousy hall of horrors is tumbling down. Put the old man to bed .. then you better round up all your boys and either split or get as hard as you know how, because tomorrow is going to be some kind of hell day around here, believe me."
"I—God, I knew something was sour. A crew of your boys just relieved us down at the gate. I guess I knew. . ."
Bolan felt a familiar iciness enveloping his heart. He kept the voice casual, though, as he inquired, "What crew is that, Sammy?"
"Taliferi. Crew boss is a guy named Chianto. Uh, does this mean that we're . . . ? Uh, Frank is . . . ?"
"Frank won't be coming back," Bolan muttered. "Neither will Philippa if she has the brains I think she has. Naw. It's falling, Sammy. Get your boys together, cross your fingers, and sit tight."
The guy was obviously confused but he said, "Thanks. I—thanks, Johnny."
The Maserati was already in motion, gliding silently along the drive toward the gate.
So. One of those chance numbers had dropped into the game, and now it was all numbers up for grabs.
This could be a reaction to the "second front" effort he'd sent to New York with Leo Turrin. If so, then this elite crew of Commissione enforcers had already been on hand, in the background somewhere, hovering, awaiting a signal to join the game in Philadelphia. Maybe they had even come
down with the real Johnny Cavaretta. Whatever and however, it was one of those unpredictables which Bolan had been gambling against . . . and twice in the same night he had pushed his chances one number too many.
There would be no brazening past these boys . . . not the Taliferi. Whatever they had come for, they would most likely tumble quickly to the fact that something was very much out of place, and they would certainly not be politely "sirring" Bolan through that gate down there.
One thing would inevitably lead to another .. . and maybe another head would go rolling toward Manhattan on this night of nights.
Pendleton, Don - Executioner 015 - Panic In Philly Page 12