“Maybe I am,” Staccio calmly replied. “Then again, maybe I’m not. I’m just saying it ain’t all that far out an idea. Maybe we been acting like old-time hoods about this thing. You know? And even the old-time hoods found out there was more than one way of getting out of a problem. You know what I mean?”
Augie Marinello was giving Staccio a thoughtful gaze. Castiglione’s lips had curled into a snarl as the full implications of Staccio’s suggestion registered. The man from Jersey was watching Marinello.
Castiglione sneered, “What do you want us to do, Joe? Throw up our hands and beg for mercy?”
“Now wait,” Marinello said, as the noise level began to rise in the conference room. “Joe has brought up the question I’m sure all of us has thought about at one time or another. So now that it’s in the open, let’s talk about it. Maybe he’s right and maybe we’re going about this thing all wrong.”
“I was just thinking about the days of the old man,” Staccio quietly put in. He was referring to Salvatore Maranzano. “Everybody was shooting at everybody else, nobody knew who to trust. I mean those wars got out of hand too, you know. If Charley Lucky hadn’t made his peace, and forgave and forgot and patched things over, then none of us would be sitting here right now. Right?”
“You’re right, Joe,” Marinello agreed.
Arnie Farmer drily observed, “Charley Lucky Luciano and Mack the bastard Bolan are not exactly the same two people.”
“Yeah, you’re right there, Arnie,” Staccio replied. “But that’s not the point, and it’s not the right comparison. The point is, there’s more than one way to end a war.”
“We’re getting hurt,” the man from Jersey put in. “And bad. Nobody is going to deny that. We’ve got to get this thing over with, one way or another.”
Marinello nodded and asked Staccio, “Just exactly what was you thinking about, Joe?”
“A deal,” Staccio replied.
“What kind of a deal?”
“He forgives, we forgive. And we bury the hatchet.”
Arnie Farmer exploded with, “What the hell has he got to forgive?”
“We gotta be realistic, Arnie,” the upstater explained. “This boy lost his whole family, and he figures their blood is on our hands. Now if we understand anything at all then we just got to understand a debt of blood. Right? So I say let’s agree that one debt cancels out the other. Let’s be realistic and see if we can’t end this damned war.”
Arnie Farmer fumed silently.
Marinello said, “Okay, let’s say that both sides agree to bury the hatchet. Then what?”
Staccio shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t sat around and thought it out. But I think maybe Charley Lucky had the right idea, way back when.”
“You mean we invite Bolan into the organization,” Marinello said quietly.
Staccio again shrugged. “Why not? It worked before, it could work again. He’d be a hell of a good boy on our side of the fence. We could all respect him, right? Wouldn’t that boy make one hell of an enforcer?”
Arnie Farmer rose jerkily to his feet and delicately fingered the fabric of his trousers. “I got a hole in my ass the size of a golf ball,” he announced in a voice thick with emotion. “That bastard put it there, and I’ll never sit down in peace again until—”
Staccio said coldly, “You’re not the only one. We all got our reasons for hating that boy’s guts. But that’s not the point. We got to be realistic. Our whole thing is going to fall apart around us if we don’t start using our heads instead of our hots. Now we got a crisis, just like with the old wars. We got a crisis and we got to face up to that!”
Castiglione shivered. “Cop a plea with Bolan,” he muttered, “… never! I mean never!”
“Hey, hey, let’s cool it off,” Marinello suggested. “You’ve both made your point, now let’s sit down and discuss it, eh.”
Castiglione sat, but growled, “You try burying the hatchet with this Bolan, you’re gonna tear our thing apart for sure. There’s too many scars, Augie, entirely too much to try forgiving and forgetting.”
“Okay, okay, let’s just talk about it,” Marinello urged.
The Pennsylvania boss said, “What if we just made Bolan think we wanted to deal? Huh?”
“Don’t you think he’d be smelling for that sort of thing anyway?” Staccio replied. “He’s going to be suspicious as hell. I doubt if we could get him to listen even if we were a hundred percent sincere.”
“So we’re just wasting our time anyhow,” Arnie Farmer commented. “Why are we wasting our time talking dumb ideas?”
“I got a boy,” Pennsylvania said quietly. “He could get to Bolan.”
“You mean Leo Pussy,” Marinello replied thoughtfully.
“That’s the boy. Sergio’s nephew. He’s running my Pittsfield action now. I think he—”
Staccio interrupted with, “That’s the boy was with Bolan back when?”
“Yeah. I guess he could make the pitch if anyone could.”
“What pitch?” Castiglione cried. “We ain’t decided on no pitch!”
“I mean,” Pennsylvania explained, “if we decide to go that way.”
“Save us all a lot of time: I’m not deciding that way!”
Marinello said, “No harm in talking it over, huh Arnie? Let’s think of it as flexibility, huh? Maybe we could have two things going at once. Like Appaloosas and stevedores … you catch?” He winked again, while shielding his face from the view of Joe Staccio. “Like a horse race, eh?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Arnie Farmer Castiglione said sullenly.
“Well, let’s just talk the possibility. Suppose we set up two programs. Huh? We turn Joe loose at this end, turn you loose at yours, see who gets to the finish line first. Huh?”
“Bullshit,” Arnie Farmer replied.
“No, I’m serious.” Marinello’s glance flashed to the Pensylvania boss. “You really think this Leo Pussy could get next to Bolan?”
The other shrugged his shoulders. “If anybody can, he can.”
The shrewd eyes moved to Staccio. “How about it, Joe? You want to sit down with Leo the Pussy and discuss things?”
The upstate man nodded solemnly. “I’ll give it a try.”
“I say bullshit,” Castiglione coldly commented. “I already tried that route. Trying to get next to Bolan, I mean. I sent him a nigger friend. He sent me back a planeload of dead soldiers.”
“I still think it’s worth a try,” Staccio insisted.
“All right, let’s talk it up this way,” Marinello suggested. “Arnie, you head up the contract campaign. You’ll have Nick Trigger as your number one boy, and you sure can’t complain about that. You also got Danno and his crew. You add whatever else you think you need, and you go after Bolan’s ass. Joe, you take whatever you need and go after his head. How about it? Does it make sense? I’m asking all of you, now. What do you think?”
“I still say bullshit,” said Arnie Farmer. “But I’ll go along with it, even if it is dumb … if that’s what everyone wants. But understand this. I take no responsibility for what happens to Joe or this Leo the Pussy. We’ll just get in each other’s way, and my boys are going to be shooting first and talking afterwards.”
“Why do you keep saying it’s dumb?” Staccio asked.
“Because,” Castiglione replied, “if this Leo can get next to Bolan, he can get there also with a gun in his hand … and I don’t see—”
“What you don’t see is that Bolan is more than a common rodman. That boy has a sixth sense about this stuff. I been studying him, ever since Miami. I keep thinking about the Talifero brothers. Also I just can’t forget this fantastic stuff he pulled off at Palm Springs, against Deej and his boys. He’s got something going for him, I don’t know what. But you got to remember, every cop in the world is after this boy’s ass, just like us. And he keeps dancing away from them just like he does us. It’s a sixth sense, that’s what, and he can smell a trap two days before
he gets to it. He’s—”
The boss from New Jersey interrupted with quiet laughter. “Maybe he uses black magic, Joe,” he said. “He puts on this black suit and turns into a devil or something.”
Another man at that table shivered and said, “Shit, don’t even kid about that.”
“What I’m saying,” Staccio went on grimly, “is that I have to go into this thing with a very sincere approach. No tricks, no traps, straight all the way. The horse race ends the minute I make contact. We got to get that straight right now. And whatever I make with Bolan, I make with all the authority of the full council. It’s got to be like a contract hit—all the families have got to honor it. That means everybody, not just us here now, but all of us, and that means also Arnie the Farmer Castiglione and the Virginia bluebloods.”
Marinello had been watching Castiglione during the speech. He nodded, his eyes still on the man from Virginia, and said, “Our word is our honor, Joe, like always.”
“Okay, just so we all understand that. Otherwise, if I got doubts myself, then Bolan will tumble to it, and then Joe Staccio is in one bad spot.”
Castiglione smiled wryly and observed, “I believe Joe is superstitious.”
“No, he’s right,” Marinello said. “I go along with that, Joe. If we can come to an agreement here, between us, then we’ll set up a telephone conference with the others and we’ll get it all ironed out. So what do we say. Are we agreed to try it?”
“We gotta know the terms and the details, Augie,” Pennsylvania said.
“Well we got all night to knock it around, huh?” Marinello replied.
“Let’s talk my end first,” Castiglione suggested. “I’m already thinned out over Bolan. I’d like to have a crew from each family, and that means they pay their own way, too.”
“I’ll loan you Jimmy Potatoes and his crew,” Pennsylvania shot back.
“I’ll send Tommy Thompson and company,” said Marinello.
“Scooter Rizzo,” chimed in another New York boss.
“Okay, that’s great,” Castiglione said. “When you set up that phone council, I’ll want talent from each of them, too.”
Marinello solemnly nodded his head. “Okay. This is a great approach. Now let’s talk about the other end. How do you figure we can support your effort, Joe?”
“Well, first of all, let’s talk about the package I’m going to offer Bolan. It’s got to be attractive. I mean, not just a truce, but something he’d really go for, something with a future. Let’s talk about rank in the organization. With the Talifero boys temporarily out of the picture, we need a hard arm for the Commissione. I’m thinking—”
“Aw shit!” Castiglione cried, aghast with what Joe Staccio was thinking.
“No now, wait a minute, Arnie,” Marinello said, favoring his old buddy with a sly wink. “Let’s let Joe talk about it. Go ahead, Joe, I believe we’re getting somewhere.”
“Okay,” Staccio said, “what I’m thinking is …”
And so it went, into the long night at Mafiaville, with frayed nerves, heated passions, cold fears, and a stab at reality. The final result of this “crisis conference” would find a terrifying impact on Mack Bolan’s violent domain, and the severest test yet of his holy war with the underworld. Bolan’s long night had not ended. It had only just begun.
Chapter Eight
PSYCHED IN
Bolan awoke to total darkness. His hand found the grip of the Beretta and he lay very still until his mind had found its place and he knew where he was. With this knowledge came a wavering image of a beautiful girl with flawless flesh snuggling to him in a warm embrace, and he had to wonder if the memory was valid. He was alone in the bed now, that much was certain; he pushed silently away and reconned the darkness until satisfied that no other presence shared the apartment with him.
He returned to the bedroom and turned on a lamp. His digital calchron revealed that fourteen hours had elapsed since his arrival at Queen’s House, and the clutching at his stomach was indicating that he’d been much too long without food. The flat’s heating system was functioning now; he had no sensation of discomfort as he padded nakedly about the bedroom for his clothing. He donned the black nylon nightsuit and strapped on his gunleather, then went straight to the kitchen. Eggs, milk, and bacon were in the refrigerator. He immediately stirred two raw eggs into a class of milk and consigned this to his clamoring stomach, then lit the fire under the coffee pot and returned to the bedroom.
It was then that he found the note from Ann Franklin. It lay across his stack of money and read, “Meet me at Soho Psych at 11:00 P.M.” Lying atop the note was a glossy book of paper matches, the embossed cover proclaiming that Soho Psych was the swingingest place in London. It also provided the address of the meeting place.
Bolan finished dressing, adding herringbone tweed slacks and jacket and a fresh shirt and tie over the skinsuit. He pondered briefly over the money, then transferred most of it to the little pouch at the waist of the nightsuit. The only small bills, two American fifties and five British 10-pound notes, went into his wallet.
By 9:30 he had consumed a comfortable mass of bacon and fried eggs, and the quart of milk, and was topping off with lukewarm coffee. It was time to move out. He went quietly down the rear stairs to the garage, opened the trunk of the Lincoln, and contemplated his arsenal. The Uzi submachinegun went under the front seat, along with a stack of ammo clips. It was a fine little weapon, using the standard NATO round and featuring a folding stock which reduced overall length to about seventeen inches. After a brief mental debate, Bolan took the Weatherby and a belt of ammo to the apartment and stashed it in the bedroom closet. Then he returned to the car and drove to the edge of the Soho district, found a parking place on a side street around the corner from Ronnie Scott’s, the renowned jazz club, and joined the foot traffic on Frith Street.
Here was London night life in all its late twentieth century splendor … and squalor. It was Greenwich Village and Fisherman’s Wharf rolled into composite, an assortment of joints, dives, stripperies, fish-and-chip houses, fine restaurants of all nations, and the ever-present discotheques and go-go palaces. Bolan strolled casually through the neon jungle, orienting himself and getting the feel of the area, walking in an atmosphere of far-out jazz, electronic flashers, and the jarring crescendos of rock amplitudes. He found Soho Psych precisely where the matchbook advertising promised he would, “on Frith, just off the square,” snuggled in between a Pakistani restaurant and a rundown theatre whose billboards offered “the best in London flesh.”
Bolan was an hour early, and this was by design. He went on by the club, crossed the street at the corner, and wandered back slowly. Diagonally across from his target was a budget self-serve restaurant, calling itself a tea house but very obviously a cafeteria. It provided tables near the front windows, and though Bolan’s appetite had been fully sated in Ann Franklin’s kitchen, he entered and went through the motions of purchasing a meal, filling his tray with an assortment of selections from the buffet.
The girl at the cash register glanced at his tray and said, “That’ll be six and six, sir.”
Bolan was reaching for his wallet. He said, “Six and six what?”
She smiled understandingly and inquired, “American?”
Bolan nodded and slipped a ten pound note from the wallet.
Still smiling, the cashier explained, “Your bill is six shillings and six pence, sir.” Then she saw the ten pound note, the smile faded, and she asked, “Is that the best you can do?”
He muttered, “I’m afraid so.”
The girl made change for his seventy-eight cent purchase from an equivalent twenty-four dollar note, gave it to him rather grumpily, and watched disapprovingly as he casually dropped the change to the tray and made his way to a front table.
He dawdled there for forty minutes, forcing himself to eat some of a steak and kidney pudding, grilled tomatoes, and several other tidbits of English diet. His view of the street was unobstructed, and
he was cataloging all traffic in and out of Soho Psych.
At ten minutes before eleven a cab stopped at the club and Ann Franklin emerged. Bolan lit a cigarette and watched as she leaned back in to say something to another passenger, a man, who was obviously staying with the cab. Then the vehicle went on and the girl entered the club. Bolan waited and watched. Another cab came up minutes later—perhaps the same one, Bolan surmised—and a man got out. Bolan recognized him as the big one who had chauffeured them from Dover—Harry Parks, the girl had called him.
In the corner of his vision, Bolan became aware of another vehicle quietly edging to the curb some yards behind the cab. It was a smallish car of English make. Two men debarked and threaded their way casually along the sidewalk, then entered Soho Psych a few steps behind Harry Parks. The car moved forward and another man stepped out just above the club, and crossed over to Bolan’s side of the street. Bolan watched this last man, studying him intently, as the man lit a cigarette and leaned back against a lamp pole as though waiting for someone.
Bolan knew who the man was waiting for. He sighed and unbuttoned his shirt, withdrew the Beretta and held it in his lap as he affixed a silencer to the barrel, then returned the pistol to the side leather. The stage was fully set, it seemed, awaiting only the appearance of the principal.
So the principal left his observation post and went outside.
Bolan stood at the curb, gazing up and down the street for any further obvious signs of the hardset awaiting him. There were none, but the man at the lamp pole immediately stiffened to attention and flipped away his cigarette. Somewhere along that street, Bolan knew, another outside man had been waiting for that cigarette to fly. Bolan casually stood his ground and waited. Evidence came quickly from the direction of Soho Square, as another man hurried across the street and took up a position on Bolan’s other flank.
Bolan smiled grimly to himself and crossed over to the club. He was not overly appreciative of intrigue; the time had come to make the cut between friend and enemy, to determine precisely where Ann Franklin and the Sades stood in that separation, and to engage the enemy—whoever they might be—in open combat. As he entered the club, the two men behind him started across the street.
Assault on Soho Page 6