Bolan asked her, “Is that one of Paula’s designs?”
She shook her head in that feline way and replied, “No, I conceived this myself.”
Bolan grinned. “Your concession to prudery,” he suggested quietly.
Her eyes flashed to his, then skittered away. “There is nothing vulgar about the human body. I simply want to get that into the record. Vulgarity is a mental creation.”
Bolan asked her, “Did you pull that discovery out of The One?”
“Don’t joke about that,” she warned him. “There are many names for God.”
Hell, Bolan thought, a nudist holy roller. Aloud, he replied, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you took it so seriously.”
“I take it very seriously,” she assured him.
“Why don’t you just call him God?”
“The word is too fraught with superstitious ignorance. Words are very important, don’t you think? They are symbols of our mental content.”
He told her, “I guess you’re right. So what sort of symbol pops out when I’m thinking about sex?”
She watched him warily for a moment, then replied, “I don’t know about you. For me, the word is purity.”
“Purity,” he echoed, sliding the word through his mind for size. “Sorry, the ideas seem to clash.”
“In your mind, yes, because you think in vulgar terms. You kill, and you terrorize, and you thump your chest like a jungle ape, and of course you take your sex in the same frame of mind.”
She was striking back, and Bolan was finding it uncomfortable. He told her, “My killing and my sexing have no connection at all. I don’t want a fight with you, Rachel. But I’m curious. In what frame of mind do you take your sex?”
“I do not take sex,” she replied coolly.
“All right,” he said, thoroughly subdued.
“It takes me,” she explained.
“Oh.”
“This is the only purity, you see. A man and a woman meet, something sparks between them, and sex immediately takes them if they are wise.”
Chuckling, he asked, “You mean they just flop down immediately and let sex take it, wherever they may be when the sparks fly, on the sidewalk at Times Square or on the floor of the Brooklyn subway.”
She smiled and told him, “You’re thumping your chest again. It’s not necessary to ‘flop down’ anywhere. For the wise, it is enough to merely let sex take you, and lead you to the proper time and place.”
He did not even wish to mull that one over. “And if you’re not wise?” he prompted her.
“Then you fall into impurity, into vulgarity, seductive maneuvers, thinly covered repressions, with nothing left of the pure impulse but lecherous thoughts and dishonest actions. It is the birth of pornography. We sparked, Mack Bolan, you and I, yesterday. And you flung my spark back into my face.”
That was not, Bolan was thinking, where he had flung it—and indeed he had not known even what he had been flinging. So now he knew.
He solemnly told her, “I wasn’t even half here yesterday, Rachel.”
“I know. Even so, you flung me into impurity.”
The girl swayed away and left him sitting there staring out the window onto a crisp December day. It was a conversation he would not forget, but now he tucked it away for future reference. There were more pressing puzzles to think about. For openers, how long could he expect to sponge on the generosity and good nature of his hostesses? To how much danger was he exposing them by his mere presence there? And what sort of city-shaking gyrations was the mob putting itself through for Bolan’s head? And how about the cops? Were they all just sitting back and waiting for him to show? He doubted it.
The answers to those questions were, of course, approaching critical mass. He realized in a flash, then, that the talk with Rachel Silver did have a bearing on his own mode of living. She had been speaking of sex and purity, but the application for Bolan was warfare and purity. There was purity in warfare. A hellish kind of purity. An army gets soft and undisciplined when it’s off the line; the same truth applied equally to a lone warrior. Each moment that he remained in this R and R camp, he knew, he was falling that much farther into gross impurity.
He had to get back on the line. The sooner the better. He got up, carefully made his way to the bathroom, unbandaged his wound, and stood in front of the mirror to inspect it. Paula’s stitches were a bit uneven and raggedy-ended, but the flesh surrounding them seemed healthy and alive. He guessed she’d known what she was doing. Then he glanced at his face. A two-day accumulation of whiskers was already radically altering his appearance. He would let them grow, he decided, and try to hang on with the girls for a couple more days, at least until the wobbles left his legs. Then he for damn sure had to get back on the line. A war awaited him.
On Tuesday morning, Bolan rolled off the couch to which he had been unceremoniously deported the previous evening and was delighted to find that he could walk swiftly across the room without becoming dizzy. A bit of bounce had returned to his step and he could lift the left arm to shoulder level with only a moderate degree of agony. He consumed a twenty-ounce steak from Paula’s grill and confessed to her that he felt “ready to rassle a grizzly.”
Perhaps because of that remark, Paula decided that Bolan should be left alone thenceforth, at least during the working day, and all three girls were packed off to the salon. Evie darted back into the apartment to hang a moist kiss on Bolan’s lips and whisper, “Don’t go way, huh?”
Bolan grinned and shooed her back out. Alone for the first time in days, he took a lingering shower and then gingerly tested his shoulder with a series of limbering-up exercises.
Later that morning, Paula took time from her busy schedule to go to the East Side Air Terminal and claim Bolan’s luggage. She delivered it to him and found him performing push-ups on the living room floor and gritting his teeth against the pain in the shoulder.
“I guess you know what you’re doing,” she told him, and hurried back out.
Bolan knew precisely what he was doing. He had to get that shoulder functioning, and quickly. Some deeply welling instinct had been working at him all morning; he knew that his time had come.
He took the bag into the large bedroom and opened it, then immediately checked the false bottom. It was intact, and so were the contents—the hot little 9mm Beretta automatic he’d picked up in France, plus the sideleather and a stack of spare clips. He double-checked the Beretta’s action, then slid in a clip and chambered in a round at the ready, hesitated momentarily, then added the silencer to the muzzle and carefully installed the piece in the sideleather. Then he got into fresh clothing and buckled on the shoulder rig, wincing and readjusting the strap to clear his wound.
He left the bag lying open on the bed and carried his jacket into the living room, seeking pencil and paper to leave a note for the girls.
A small wall secretary occupied a spot just off the L-shaped foyer. It was here that Bolan was headed when the front door swung open and a guy in a brown suit stepped into the apartment. He was holding one of those clever little sliding-blade door-jimmies and softly chuckling to himself with some secret joke, and he was more upset than Bolan by the surprise encounter. The chuckle died in his throat and his eyes were bugging at the display of gunleather crossing Bolan’s chest. The jimmy slipped through his fingers and he made a fumbling move toward the inside of his jacket.
Bolan’s Beretta cleared leather much quicker and he commanded, “Freeze!”
Brownsuit froze and gawked and stuttered, “Wh-what the h-hell is this?”
Bolan said, “You tell me.”
“Police,” the guy squawked. “I’m a policeman.”
“Prove it.”
The intruder showed Bolan a sick smile and nothing else. “So I’m not,” he admitted. The look in Bolan’s eyes turned the smile somewhat sicker and he added, “I didn’t expect to find you here, Bolan. Not standin’ on both feet, anyhow.”
“I guess not,” Bolan said coldly.
They stood there silently staring at each other for a moment, then Bolan told him, “When you stop talking, soldier, you stop living.”
Brownsuit’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times before the words started, then they fell in a torrent. “Sammie had us staking out th’ baggage room down at East Side. We had a man in back. You know. Watching the bags from Kennedy, the ones that came in Saturday. We been checkin’ all of ’em, and this was the last one left. This broad come in and got it and we tailed her here. That’s all, Bolan. Christ, I ain’t no triggerman.”
“You’re with Sam the Bomber,” Bolan reminded him.
The guy nodded vehemently and said, “Yeah, but not like you think. Only temporary, I’m on loan from Jake Sacarelli. I run girls over in Brooklyn. I never got in on no contract before.”
“So you’ve fumbled your big chance, soldier.”
The guy’s eyes were getting frantic. He said, “Christ, I was just following the baggage, that’s all.”
“You and who else?”
“Me’n Tony Boy Laccardo.”
“And where is Tony Boy now?”
“He’s waiting down by the elevator, just down th’ hall.”
Bolan nodded curtly and asked, “Okay, and who else?”
Brownsuit swallowed hard and replied, “We got a wheelman waitin’ down at the curb.”
“What kind of car?”
“Chivvy, I think. Yeah. A blue Chivvy.”
Bolan commanded, “Finish pulling that gun out, but use the other hand, and just let me see two fingers. Pull it out and set it down easy.”
The Mafioso complied, then quickly straightened up and croaked, “Christ, don’t wipe me, Bolan. I got nothin’ against you personal.”
“Who knows you came here, other than your two partners?”
Brownsuit must have thought he saw a glimmer of hope. He quickly replied, “Nobody else, I swear. We been watchin’ those damn bags since Saturday. We really didn’t expect no payoff, it was gettin’ to be a drag. Nobody knows, Bolan. And I got nothin’ personal against you. Lemme go, huh? I mean, wing me or something if you think you gotta, but Christ don’t cut me down cold, Bolan.”
This was the part of warfare which Bolan thoroughly hated. No man went willingly to his death, no one was ever quite prepared for the cold and utter finality of that moment, especially when he was standing there helplessly waiting for it. Bolan did not like to kill cold.
But his dilemma reminded him again of the cool words of Rachel Silver, about not taking sex but rather allowing sex to take her. To Rachel, that was purity. Well, there was purity in warfare too. A good soldier, likewise, did not take war; he let war take him. An impure or unwise soldier became just another dishonest politician, or gouging businessman, or something worse. Still—Bolan found himself squirming under his distasteful duty.
Of course, if Brownsuit had walked in and found Bolan lying half dead and helpless in bed, he would have finished him off without a qualm, and then he would probably have hacked off Bolan’s head with a penknife and carried it proudly to the Commissione in a paper sack. Even so, if this were simply a case of Bolan versus the pleading Mafioso, he would not feel so compelled to kill. It was highly important, though, to Paula Lindley and her roommates that this man die. Bolan knew what would happen to the girls if this guy walked out alive. Their lives would not be worth a nickel.
Bolan told the brownsuited pimp from Brooklyn, “I’ve nothing personal against you either, soldier,” the Beretta phutted softly through its silencer and Brownsuit died without even knowing it, a high-velocity Parabellum angling in through the bridge of the nose and displaying several cubic inches of brain tissue in painless and instant death. If Bolan had to kill cold, this was the way he preferred.
He pulled the suitcoat up over the guy’s head and stuffed in a small throw-pillow to lessen the spread of blood, tying the bundle into place with the coatsleeves. Then he put on his own jacket and stepped over the body for a tête-à-tête with Tony Boy Laccardo, “just down th’ hall.”
He found him there, and killed him there, without a word and without a warning, as Tony Boy raised surprised eyes from a racing form. Bolan shoved the remains into a janitor’s closet where he found a huge mop with which he sponged up the pool of blood on the floor of the hallway. Then he returned to the apartment, transferred Brownsuit to the same dress cart which had brought Bolan there, and he stopped off at the janitor’s closet for a quick pickup of Tony Boy. He tossed the mop in too, covered the bodies with rags from the closet shelf, and took his cargo into the elevator down to the garage.
A dull-faced attendant glanced at Bolan without curiosity as he wheeled the cart to a loading dock near the exit.
Bolan yelled over to him, “I gotta bring my car in.”
The attendant moved his head in a bored nod and went back to his funny book or whatever he was reading.
Bolan went out and proceeded unhurriedly to the corner of the building, then along the front toward a waiting blue Chevrolet idling in a no-parking zone at the curb. He approached from the rear, opened the right-front door, and slid in beside the wheelman. The guy did a double take on his unexpected guest, the eyes freezing still on the Beretta.
An icy voice told him, “I want Sam the Bomber’s address, and I want it with no shitting around.”
The wheelman’s voice came choked and ragged and with no shitting around as he replied, “Look in the glove box, I think there’s some cards.”
Bolan looked and found a thin stack of business cards, embossed with Chianti’s name in fancy gold lettering and the interesting announcement: Human Engineering Contractor. Bolan found that almost funny, but he pocketed one of the cards and slammed the door on the glove compartment with no show of humor and told his temporary companion, “Okay, let’s roll. Around the building and to the garage entrance, west side.” He restrained the driver for a moment to pull a small calibre pistol out of the man’s waistband and toss it into the back seat, then he waggled a finger at the wheelman and the vehicle lurched forward.
Moments later they were easing into the underground garage and backing to the loading ramp. Bolan took the keys from the ignition, pushed the man out and slid out behind him, then handed him the keys and commanded, “Open the trunk.”
The wheelman meekly accepted the keys then went reluctantly to the rear of the car, his eyes searching for some hint of help in the offing but finding nothing of comfort. The only other sign of human presence was the attendant in the little glassed-in office, hunched over his desk and utterly absorbed in something there.
Bolan leapt onto the dock and positioned the cart with his foot, then told the wheelman, “Get up here.”
The Mafioso gave Bolan a questioning look, but did as he was told without overt challenge to that indisputable authority, even though the Beretta was no longer in view. He joined his captor and awaited further instructions.
They came coldly and simply. “Clean that junk out of my cart.”
The man shrugged and seized a hand full of rags and tossed them into the trunk of the car. Then he saw the blood on his hands, and his knees buckled and he almost fell. Calmly the death voice commanded, “All of it!”
The guy already knew what was beneath the remaining rags. He shivered and clawed them away from the corpses, then quickly averted his gaze and whispered, “My God, oh my God.”
Bolan’s jacket opened and the Beretta peered out at the shaken man. “You’ve got about one heartbeat to get busy, soldier.”
The man nodded and sent furtive glances in all directions, then leaned into the cart and lifted out Tony Boy and set him in the trunk with a distasteful grunt. Brownsuit was a bit heavier and the wheelman’s legs were going rubbery on him. Bolan lent a hand and they got the big man fitted in atop Tony Boy, then Bolan put his prisoner to work mopping out the cart. When the job was finished, the bloody rags and the soggy mop went into the trunk over Brownsuit and Tony Boy, and Bolan told the wheelman, “Okay, you too. Get in there.”
The guy’s face went dead white and he gurgled, “God no, not that, don’t make me get in there!”
Bolan told him, “You won’t mind,” and phutted a painless Parabellum through an eyesocket. The guy fell over into the trunk and Bolan helped him stay there, shoving him on in beside his companions and doubling the legs over to clear the latching mechanism.
A muscle twitched in his jaw and he muttered, “Pure war, Rachel, is pure hell. How are you making out?”
Then he closed the trunk and returned the dress cart to the apartment. Moments later he was behind the wheel of the blue Chevrolet and tooling out of the garage. The attendant looked up and nodded at him as he passed, and Bolan waved.
He pulled out into the street. He took out Chianti’s business card for another look at the address engraved thereon, then he grunted and swung north toward the Triborough Bridge. He did not know the Bronx too well, but he would find Sam the Bomber Chianti, and he would deliver this hot shipment of rapidly cooling cargo.
Corpses were something that Sam the Bomber would understand. He had trafficked in them for almost as long as Mack Bolan had been alive.
Sam was going to discover, though, that the supply was beginning to greatly exceed the demand.
And he was going to discover that damned quick.
Buy Nightmare in New York Now!
About the Author
Don Pendleton (1927–1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean War. His first short story was published in 1957, but it was not until 1967, at the age of forty, that he left his career as an aerospace engineer and turned to writing full time. After producing a number of science fiction and mystery novels, in 1969 Pendleton launched his first book in the Executioner saga: War Against the Mafia. The series, starring Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan, was so successful that it inspired a new American literary genre, and Pendleton became known as the father of action-adventure.
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