“In exchange for what?”
“There’s your crisis,” Turrin replied sourly.
“You said kids.”
“Mostly, yeah. Seem to be taking their cues from some old dogs from the Vichy-Nazi days of the French occupation.”
“These kids are well armed?”
“A lot of sophisticated weapons have been moving this way, Sarge.”
“Uh huh. Okay. Thanks, Leo. You better get it up to the penthouse and cover your tracks with Staccio.”
“I can hold off on that awhile. If you insist on keeping your ass flying here, well …”
“Don’t wait too long, Leo. It’s going to get grim.”
“It’s already grim,” Turrin replied, sighing. “By the way, Hal wanted you to have something.”
“Leg irons?”
Turrin chuckled. “Naw. He thought you might need a contact in the Quebeçois. He says if things get desperate, get to a guy named Chebleu. Andre Chebleu. Oh—you know the name?”
“Remember the Ranger Girls, Leo?”
“How could I forget?”
“Andre is Georgette’s brother.”
“Well I’ll be damned. I never put it together.”
“We’re already in touch. He’s been working the militant angle with Joe Staccio.”
“Oh. Well. Okay. Hell, I don’t know why you always ask me for intel. You seem to know it before any of us.”
“Cover yourself, Leo. It’s starting.”
The little guy grinned. “Hell, I thought it already did.”
Bolan walked him to the door, shook his hand, and shoved him out.
Some things made life worthwhile.
Leo Turrin was one of those things.
And Leo Turrin was, thanks to Bolan, at this moment in very grave jeopardy. He would have to figure the little big guy into every move he made, from this point forward.
In such a game, one of the ever-present options was that Bolan may—God help him—end up putting a bullet in Leo Turrin’s head. If Georgette had drawn fifty days in the chamber, it was difficult to imagine what they would do to a “traitor” like Leo. And, yes, Bolan would award a bullet to his best friend in preference to seeing the guy go that way.
There had always been a bullet in Mack Bolan’s gun for Leo Turrin.
And, he hoped, Leo carried one for Bolan, as well.
It was that kind of world, Mack Bolan’s.
As the only option, perhaps, another strange world was now uppermost in Bolan’s concern. It was a world in which cute kids with timid habits could pop in and out of locked hotel rooms without leaving a trace of the route of entry—and without leaving, even, a coherent hint as to the reason for the visit.
Quebeçois Français? Maybe.
He stared at the strand of raven hair—a rather flimsy object upon which to base so much of life and death.
He had to figure it out, make it work. Otherwise, bullets for both Leo and the Sarge could be the only option left.
He dropped his head to gaze intently at the strand of hair. A strand of the universe. A living substance, intertwining his life. A rope to freedom. Or perhaps a net for victory.
Where the hell had she gone?
And when the answer came—as he’d known it must—it was, of course, the only answer possible.
Betsy Gordon had come from the universal maze of cause and effect which had so impacted Bolan’s life ever since that fog-shrouded cemetery at Pittsfield, so many, many lifetimes ago.
Yeah, and she’d escaped back into it.
All that was left now, for Bolan, was to find the doorway—and to find it quickly. Otherwise, he’d have to start preparing that bullet for Leo.
Nothing else would do.
He had to find that doorway!
10: ROLL CALL
“What the hell do you think I am?” the boss fumed. “A stupid old man? Huh?”
“God no, Mr. Staccio,” DeCristi purred. “Nobody never said nothing like that about you.”
God no. Not about Joe Staccio. In the first place, he wasn’t old. Fifty-eight wasn’t old. Joe was still a bull, hard as nails, tough as they come. And no guy who’d managed to survive forty years and more in this business could be called stupid. God’s sake. Never mind just surviving, but coming up the road Joe had traveled, to become boss—and a respected one, at that. What the hell, some day Joe Staccio would be the number-one boss in the whole country—probably even in the whole world.
“I think you’re the greatest guy I ever knew, Mr. Staccio,” the loyal bodyguard assured his boss. “It ain’t disrespect, sir. I just worry about you. It’s my job to worry. You wouldn’t want a tagman that didn’t worry.”
“You’re right, Al,” the boss told him, relaxing a bit. “It’s been a tough day. I guess I got too much of my ass in this thing.”
“You’ll get back away from the windows, huh Mr. Staccio?”
The boss chuckled and said, “Sure, Al—you know what’s best, eh.” He stepped away from the glass wall of the penthouse apartment and dropped into a leather chair near the bar. “Get me some wine. Chianti. Bring the bottle. And bring me the phone. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this business and damn quick. Who the hell is this guy Ruggi? I never heard of no Ruggi, Al. Have I?”
“I don’t think so, boss,” the bodyguard replied. He’d moved behind the bar and was inspecting the wine rack. “Course—we never know about those guys. Frankly, I don’t like it. I think it’s a bum setup. Give those guys a license to change their faces and their names any time they feel like it, give ’em a license to come and go as they damn please, a license to—well, it’s a bum setup and I don’t like it none.”
“You know how those things get started,” Staccio said, sighing.
“I bet you know how to stop ’em too, boss.”
“Welll … things have gone to hell, Al, since Mike Talifero bit the dust. I think it’s time for a change.”
DeCristi brought the Chianti and a sparkling glass. He gave the glass to the boss, draped a towel over his arm, popped the cork, and poured the wine. “Mike was a real iron ass, wasn’t he, boss?”
“Not iron enough, I guess,” Staccio replied with a sigh. He sipped the wine. “Hey, they got pretty good juice here, Al. Try it.”
The bodyguard grinned and went to get himself a glass. He poured his own ration, tasted it, and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “This boy Bolan has taken a lot of ours, hasn’t he?” The boss did not reply right away, so he added: “I mean, besides the Talifero brothers.”
Staccio sighed and put his wine down. “He took my old friend Sergio. He took Deej—who I never really gave a shit for, anyway. Then he took—let’s see, just at Miami he took Johnny the Musician, George the Butcher and Ciro—you gotta count them, ’cause he really set it up.” The boss was counting them off on his stubby fingers. “He took Arnie the Farmer and most of his headmen. He came stompin’ into New York and took Freddie Gambella—and boy wasn’t we all surprised about that. He took Don Gio at Chicago, not to mention Pete the Hauler and Larry Turk and Joliet Jake—shit, he wiped Chi clean. He got Pat Talifero at Vegas.” Pained eyes raised to the wine glass and the boss from upstate took another taste of wine. “Pat’s a vegetable, they say. Same as dead, I wish he was. Mike never got over that. I think that’s what killed his nerve, and it damned near got Augie killed in the bargain.”
“Who else did we lose?” De Cristi prompted, his own face screwed into the effort.
“Aw hell, Al. Stop counting. It’s terrible. Quick Tony Lavagni. Old man DeMarco and Tony the Tiger Rivoli. West Coast—I didn’t know them very well. Tony the Tiger, they say, was a crazy man. Some of the guys, Bolan did us a favor. But then there was men like Books Figarone, Manny Greco—an old friend—Guarini, valuable man, big loss to the combine. There was Smilin’ Jack Lupo, hell—on and on, Al. Yeah. We lost a lot to that boy.”
“I was just thinking of the bosses,” DeCristi said. “How ’bout Angeletti, in Philly. Mr. Vincenti, at Detroit. Marco Vann
aducci. Eh? God, he had a right to die in bed, boss, old as he was.”
“Yeah,” Staccio said sadly. “Get me that phone, Al. I got to make some calls.”
The roll call of the dead had produced a profound effect on Little Al DeCristi. He got the phone and placed it on the table near the boss’s knee then went to check the palace guard—feeling down, very down.
He had ten good boys up here, as a living shield for Joe Staccio. And he wished he had ten more. He wished, more than that, that he could just pick the boss up and carry him downstairs, put him in the car, and blow this damn place entirely.
Mack Bolan was a goddamn kingslayer.
Al DeCristi did not wish his king slain.
That guy Bolan was a walking disaster. Somebody needed to stop that guy. Walkin’ around like he had a damn license—a license … yeah, like a guy with a license.
DeCristi ran out to the terrace and tapped his number-two boy. “Get back down there,” he growled. “Check that Ruggi guy. I don’t like his smell. Haul his ass up here, and I mean haul it if you have to. Kick the damn door down, anything you have to do. But get him up here.”
“I’d better get some backup boys, Al.”
“Take all you want, but not from here. Get it moving.”
The kid hurried off, and DeCristi continued his anxious rounds.
Two minutes later, he was convinced that everything looked swell—all the boys were on their toes, ready, even a bit anxious to see something going down.
But the chief bodyguard still did not feel right.
He returned to the lounge and quietly approached the boss. He was sitting just as DeCristi had left him though slumped over a bit, the wine glass on the table, telephone in his lap.
It had been a rough day, yeah. Maybe Mr. Staccio was getting a bit into his years, at that.
DeCristi had never known him to fall asleep at the switch, like that.
But then something harsh and unmovable lodged in Little Al’s throat, something worse than that post-mortem roll call, something that sent him quivering and shaking all over. He moved jerkily to the chair and placed a hand on Joe Staccio’s lolling head—and then he let out a screech which was heard throughout that penthouse.
Joe Staccio was dead. He was very, very dead. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.
And that wine glass, the one which Little Al had filled with Chianti such a few unbelievable moments ago, now contained a chillingly familiar object.
It was metal—an iron cross, with a bull’s eye at its center.
The kingslayer had struck again.
Joe Staccio had answered roll call.
Things, in Montreal, had definitely “started.”
11: FLIGHT PLAN
Leo Turrin came charging into the penthouse behind a wedge of bodyguards, responding to the mournful screeches from within and wondering what the hell was going down in there.
Little Al DeCristi was standing over the still form of Joe Staccio, holding the head with both hands and bawling like a baby.
Turrin took charge immediately, sending the inside men to a quick search of the apartment and pulling Little Al off of his dead boss.
“Jesus what happened here, Al?” he asked, not exactly feigning the shocked tone.
“His throat, his throat—Christ, Mr. Turrin—why’d he have to do it that way? That ain’t no way to …”
Leo had not exactly been “friends” with Joe Staccio. They’d had a business relationship, a few times—that was it. But he could not help being moved by the genuine anguish of Little Al DeCristi—the upstater’s number-one tagman for more than ten years. Any number-one boy of that long a standing would be much more than a mere bodyguard. He would be friend, confidante, manservant, mother-hen. Sure, Leo Turrin could appreciate such anguish.
“Who did it, Al?” he asked mildly.
“The bastard did it.” The tears were still flowing. “And I know who he is. I mean really. And I’m gonna cut his heart out, Mr. Turrin. I got rights, and he’s mine.”
“Sure, sure,” the Pittsfield underboss agreed soothingly. “But who’re you talking about?”
Tortured eyes swept to the medal in the wine glass. “Him.”
Turrin said, “Aw hell.”
“I know who he is. He’s that Ruggi guy.”
Larry Attica had just come running in. He squalled, “Jee-zus! Ruggi did this?”
“Al is all tore up and don’t know what he’s saying,” Turrin explained. “Ruggi couldn’t have done this. He’s down in his room. I just came from there.”
A crackle of gunfire sounded from the terrace, abruptly diverting all attention to that area. Little Al, tears and all, was the first to come unstuck. He had gun in hand and was two paces across that room before Turrin and the others found their reaction.
When Leo Turrin arrived at the edge of that lighted terrace, the whole story was there in frozen frame and living panorama. Standing atop a brick wall about ten feet from the building’s edge was the tall man in black, standing large in the silhouette and methodically blowing hellfire and thunderation from a hand howitzer. Two guys lay sprawled in fluid along the patio and another had just lunged shrieking into a potted tree.
Little Al had his own cannon up and talking in rapid fire. The fire from that black silhouette tracked across swiftly to pick up on that threat and three fast rounds whistled past Leo Turrin’s nose and buried themselves in the wall behind him.
He hit the dirt, fast, and threw a couple of rounds into the air, just for the show.
Little Al was reloading his revolver on the run and charging the wall. The big guy up there saw him coming, and let him until the last possible moment—then he parted Little Al’s hair with a hot zinger.
The little guy took a tumble and went on rolling across the artificial lawn. Turrin briefly watched that plunge—and when he lifted his eyes again to the wall, the fantastic man in black was no longer there.
The firing had ended with eerie abruptness.
Larry Attica showed his head at a patio post and called over, “Mr. Turrin! You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Turrin growled back. “Where’d he go?”
“Christ, I dunno.”
Turrin gave it a five count then sighed and issued the standard command. “Check it out!”
“Yessir. You boys move it on out there. Keep it down, keep it down. Charlie—take some boys to the other side. We got the bastard this time! Don’t let ’im off this roof!”
Grimly quiet men were scurrying all about that lighted roof, now. Turrin got to his feet and stood there in silent contemplation of the battlefield.
What the hell could he do now?
The Sarge had torn it.
There was no damn way out of this.
He took a dispirited walk to the twitching figure of Little Al DeCristi. The guy was groggy and there was a shallow furrow along his scalp—but that seemed to be about the extent of it.
“Did we get ’im?” were DeCristi’s first words.
“I think so,” Turrin said quietly.
“I guess I went crazy, Mr. Turrin.”
“Naw, you were great,” said the up-and-comer from Pittsfield. “And you got it lucky. The guy only gave you a quick kiss.”
“I was lookin’ right up his barrel.”
“Count your blessings, then,” Leo the Pussy advised the lucky tagman, and he went on back to the apartment.
He was gazing dejectedly at the remains of Joe Staccio when Attica came in, scowling.
“I don’t understand this,” the crew boss reported, “but that son of a bitch ain’t out there. He ain’t nowhere. I even had the boys link hands and sweep it, parapet to parapet. How the hell does he do it?”
Another man came in to report to Attica. “No ropes, no grapples, no sign of anything, Larry.”
“Check the ground below,” Turrin muttered.
“It’s fifteen stories down,” Attica pointed out.
“That’s the idea. Maybe he fell over.”
Little Al wandered in, his eyes dazed, an ooze of blood sliding along his forehead. “You sayin’ we didn’t get him?” he inquired of no one in particular.
Attica told him, “It looks like he maybe pulled it off. We’re still looking, Al. Geez, I’m sorry about the boss. This is terrible.”
“I’m gonna settle something once and for all,” the little guy said. He was checking his pistol. “You wanna go with me, Mr. Turrin?”
“Where we going?” Leo asked, brow furrowed, eyes worried.
“I think we should look at that room down there. Your room. Ruggi’s room. I’d like to see what’s in it.”
“Go to bed, Al,” Turrin said quietly. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“No disrespect meant, Mr. Turrin, but I never thought straighter. And I got to go see for myself.”
“We’ll all go,” Attica suggested.
“Okay,” said the man from Pittsfield, the Bolan expert. “Let’s go.”
And Leo Turrin knew how a doomed man felt, walking his last mile.
Attica was saying, “Until we all know exactly where everything stands, I guess I better speak for Mr. Staccio. Give me your gun, Leo.”
“You crazy?” Turrin snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re saying? And to who?”
“The gun, sir. I’m sorry. You know I gotta do this.”
The son of a bitch was grandstanding, Leo Turrin knew that. There was no way he could howl the guy down. He was right and Leo was wrong. Even Augie would say so, at this very moment, with all the cards still in the deck.
He handed over the Colt and led the procession from the penthouse.
Last mile?
For damn sure. If that suite down there was empty, as Leo Turrin now knew that it must be, then there was but one sane way to go. He was mentally drawing that floor plan down there—rehearsing the choreography—planning his own death.
Last mile, no. Last flight. It would be about ten paces from the door to the window. And, yeah, he just might make it.
12: NIGHTLIST
Canadian Crisis Page 6