The possibility that Lazarus was lying, for whatever reason, had not escaped Minelli. Anything was possible, and no one knew that any better than the capo for Manhattan.
He himself was living proof that miracles can happen. He had emerged from the ashes of destruction to conceive a dream of an empire, see it come within his grasp. And he could almost feel it now, could almost taste the fruits of victory. No man alive would stand between Minelli and his goal.
His time was coming, but he had not come this far by ignoring danger signs. If Lazarus could not pin down the latest threat, Minelli would be forced to do the job himself.
And there would be no shortage of suspects.
The Ace was right in pointing out that Jules and Cigliano could not be absolved without a second glance. The sniper's pinpoint accuracy, their amazing fortune, all demanded closer scrutiny before he wrote them off as the intended victims of a hit.
As for the others...
There were candidates right there, in Don Minelli's own backyard, among the other New York families. Frank Bonadonna. Tom Gregorio. Vito Aguirre. Giuseppe Reina. The first two were almost openly hostile toward Minelli's new expansion, and none of them, he knew, was above suspicion.
Bobby D'Antoni, the Jersey capo, was a friend. Or was he? He possessed the muscle to become a major problem if he underwent a change of heart.
Santos Bataglia, out of Boston, was at best a friendly neutral. That was fine with Minelli, as long as he remained that way. But might a better offer sway him, move him firmly into the opposition camp? It was something to think about.
Chicago's Paulie Viccarelli had some problems of his own, with the IRS, the federal strike force peering up his asshole with a spotlight. By rights, he should be too damned busy to initiate a war... but on the other hand, he might be feeling insecure enough to read a threat in Don Minelli's sudden growth. Another possible.
Vince Galante, the Cleveland capo, was a wild card, dabbling in business with the Jews and Cubans as if they were all his long-lost relatives or something. It was possible that he would move on their behalf or on behalf of other outside forces, to consolidate his strong narcotics base and open new supply routes to the south and east.
Jerry Lazia, boss of the Dixie Mafia with his base in New Orleans, was tight with Viccarelli and Galante in the smuggling of heroin, cocaine, you name it. He had as many Cubans and Colombians on the goddamn payroll as he did amici... and he was another wild card.
In sum, Minelli realized that none of the expected delegates was totally above suspicion. Any of them might harbor some hostility, turn thoughts to action, and if two or more were joining hands against him...
No matter.
The Manhattan capo dismissed it, secure in his belief that there was nothing they could do to stop him now.
He had Eritrea on ice to show them his connections were the very best. That he was able to succeed where each of them, in turn, had failed.
And if Eritrea was not enough, he had his clincher in reserve. The damn-sure winning card securely tucked inside his sleeve. When he had let them see the pigeon, when he had revealed himself for who he really was, they would not dare to stand against him, singly or en masse.
He ran his eyes along the line of trees, two hundred yards away across the lawn, and picked out tiny figures laboring with shovels there. Two graves... and it could be two dozen, for all he cared.
Minelli's hands were steady when he turned back from the window. No longer trembling inside, he knew that he was equal to the challenge he had set himself. It was his destiny to occupy the brotherhood's long-vacant throne as the boss of bosses.
It was his birthright.
And there would be last rites, yes, for anyone who stood in opposition now. The future was his. As for the rest, they were expendable.
Within the hour they would be arriving from the airport, from their homes around Manhattan and Long Island. Minelli would be there to greet them with open arms and welcome them into the fold. The wise and loyal among them jwould be going home when he was finished, after they had jput their seal of approval on his coronation. The rest would stay to keep him company and beautify the grounds.
He smiled.
Tonight was his.
Tonight he would fulfill his destiny.
11
Bolan tested the fire escape, keeping his grip on the edge of the roof until satisfied that it would hold his weight. It was an eighty-foot drop to the alley below, with nothing but trash cans and overflowing dumpsters to break a fall. When he was confident the scaffolding would not collapse beneath him, Bolan released his handhold, started down.
The target was a South Bronx tenement, identical to countless others in the blighted neighborhood. Officially condemned, they were more or less abandoned, save for rats and roaches, homeless drifters, any one of half a hundred street gangs thriving in the squalid urban jungle. Others had been torched — by landlords, angry neighbors, someone — until the neighborhood resembled London in the blitz.
The tenement was owned by a Manhattan corporation that in turn was owned by Don Francesco Bonadonna. On its seventh floor, it housed a full-scale powder factory, devoted to the cutting and repackaging of heroin, cocaine and other drugs for retail distribution on the streets. The plant was one of half a dozen in the Bronx, and Bonadonna had at least as many in Manhattan, cranking out more poison by the kilo, day and night.
The target tenement was marginally protected by a local gang, the Mau Maus, who presided over three square blocks of wasteland like an occupying army. Bonadonna might have wiped them out as easily as stepping on a cockroach, but he chose instead to put them on his payroll and let them take the front-line risks and give his own amici breathing room.
Bolan reached the eighth-floor windows, crouching to peer through filthy glass, alert for any sign of sentries lurking there.
Nothing.
The soldier passed on, scrambling down the rusty steps, his Ingram MAC-10 ready to respond if he was challenged.
There would be no Mau Maus, Bolan knew, inside the cutting plant. They were too unpredictable to work around the lab, and any one of them might grab a fistful of the magic powder, try to force it up his nose before the gunners standing watch could turn him into dog food.
They would be the outer guard, and if they were around, they would respond to the sounds of warfare once his strike began. If they appeared, the Executioner would deal with them as ruthlessly and finally as he would any cannibal adult, and let them know, damn right, about the pain that went with playing in the major leagues.
He hesitated just above the narrow landing of the seventh floor, and he bent to check out the windows. Where all the rest were coated with grime, the panes of these few were painted on the inside, guaranteeing privacy. The soldier smiled, knowing he had found his mark.
He donned a surgical mask and double-checked the Ingram's safety, making sure there was a live one in the firing chamber and extra magazines were readily available. Unclipping an Army-issue M-12 frag grenade from his web belt, Bolan hefted the lethal egg, calculating range and angles. Then he jerked the pin and let it fall, maintaining his grip on the curved safety spoon as he leaned into the pitch.
The grenade shattered the blacked-out pane, long shards cascading down like broken stalactites. Bolan backtracked, scrambling up the stairs and hugging gritty bricks.
Three seconds later, a smoky thunderclap cleared out the other windows, raining glass and plaster on the alley below. A shudder gripped the fire escape, but Bolan was already moving, vaulting through the open window frame and dropping to a combat crouch inside, his Ingram tracking, seeking targets.
One of three long laboratory tables had been overturned by the blast, tossing to the floor beakers and retorts, a hissing burner, flame extinguished now, a snowy drift of heroin and coke. A drifting haze of smoke and magic powder hovered over all, reducing visibility to well below the danger point. You could OD in there just breathing, right, and Bolan homed in on the choking, gag
ging voices of his enemies as he moved out of the light.
A sudden movement on his left, and Bolan pivoted, the Ingram an extension of himself, already locking into target acquisition as a slender lab attendant lurched erect behind the upturned table. He was decked out in hospital white, his surgical mask dangling useless below his chin, the strap — and half an ear — clipped neatly by a piece of shrapnel from the frag grenade.
The Ingram stuttered, parabellum shockers opening the lab coat and the tender flesh beneath, before the impact punched his target out of sight behind the fallen table. For an instant, Bolan's muzzle blast had cleared a section of the fog bank, and he watched it close before his eyes like the evaporation of a dream.
Or nightmare.
A pair of gunners loomed before him, navigating by the sound of gunfire, probing with their handguns as blind men do with canes. They never saw Grim Death in front of them as Bolan hit them with a blazing figure eight and blew them both away.
A door banged open on his right, and Bolan swung in that direction, found himself confronted by a member of the Mau Maus. Long and lean, with scrawny arms and an outlandish Afro hairstyle, he resembled a B-movie alien.
But there was nothing otherworldly about the sawed-off shotgun in his hands, and Bolan took an instant to decide if he would live or die. The punk stepped in, and Bolan's Ingram zippered him from crotch to throat, slamming him back against the doorframe; he hung there for a moment, finally slumping into a death sprawl.
Panicking, a pair of lab attendants broke from cover, sprinting for the open doorway; Bolan chased them with a burst, saw one man stagger, clutching his side; then they vanished. Seconds later, barking pistols told him they had found the Mau Mau rear guard.
As Bolan left, he fed a new magazine into the Ingram. From his web belt, he withdrew incendiaries, dropping them along his track, among the bodies, scattered pills, the drifts of heroin and coke. He cleared the window and was halfway to the roof before the fuses sizzled to life and tongues of greasy flame licked out behind him, lapping at the masonry, devouring the lab.
The fire would not put Don Francesco Bonadonna out of business. But it would make him stop and think. Inevitably he would start to shop around for enemies, for anyone who might desire to do him harm.
And given time, the finger of suspicion would be aimed at Don Minelli.
* * *
The tall blonde shrugged off her blouse, let it fall behind her. She wore nothing beneath it, and her breasts stood firm, the nipples aimed at Benny Spitteri's face.
"Tha's nice. Let's see the rest."
"My pleasure."
The pimp rocked back in his swivel chair, and wondered if there was another man in all Manhattan who got so much pleasure from his work. Forget about the numbers, running smack, the rest of it. For Benny's money, there was nothing that could match the ladies, and at one time or another he had worked the best.
He was the manager of New York's most exclusive whorehouse, with a clientele composed of politicians, UN diplomats and businessmen who ranked among the top four hundred nationwide. A conscientious businessman, it was his duty to test each product before offering it for sale, to make sure that his customers were getting their money's worth. The rejects were passed to other houses or returned to the streets, and if it took him several trials to make his mind up, well, no one would ever say that Benny Spitteri had been less than thorough at his job.
Like now, for instance.
On the other side of Benny's desk, the blonde peeled out of tight designer jeans, then the panties, and stood before him, hands on hips. He shifted in his chair, attempting to accommodate the swelling in his loins, and beckoned to her.
"Over here."
She moved around behind the desk and did not protest as Benny made her kneel in front of him.
"So far, so good," he told her. "Let's get down to business."
"Mutual, I'm sure."
Actions spoke louder than words, and he could hear the tall blonde loud and clear.
"Hey, take it easy there. We got all day."
The first explosion rocked his office like a muffled sonic boom, the shock wave rippling beneath his feet. An abstract painting fell from the opposite wall, its glass frame shattering as it hit the floor.
Rising from his swivel chair, Benny shoved the blonde away. He found his zipper, tugged too hard, rewarded by the pain of pulled hair.
"Goddamn it!"
He reached the center desk drawer, pulled it open, and the damned thing kept on coming, spilling pens and paper clips and all that office shit around his feet. The little AMT .380 backup bounced once off his instep, disappearing underneath the desk.
"Goddamn it!"
Scuttling around on hands and knees, he angrily combed through the mess, finally found the little pistol and retrieved it. As he straightened up, his scalp made solid contact with the sharp edge of his desk.
"Well, Jesus H.Christ!"
Tears welled up in his eyes as he lurched erect, almost colliding with the naked blonde who was attempting to retrieve her clothes. He aimed a roundhouse at her head and missed by inches, cursing as she pulled back out of range. No time to settle with her now, as yet another blast ripped through the high rise, rattling the so-called soundproof walls.
The doorknob momentarily defied him, slipping through his sweaty fingers, but he got it on the second try and threw the door back on its hinges, banging it hard against the wall. For just a moment he was framed there in the doorway, glancing up and down the corridor.
Outside, the smell of smoke was powerful. An avid movie fan, the pimp immediately flashed on mental film clips from The Towering Inferno, and his blood ran cold.
He started for the stairwell with gun in hand, nothing on his mind now but survival. He was halfway there before he heard the third explosion, louder now, and closer. Benny Spitteri hesitated, racking his brain for an alternate exit, coining up empty.
And then, the gunfire.
Benny picked out .38s unloading in a panicked rapid fire, their rounds exhausted in an instant. Those would be his buttons, shooting windows out for ventilation, maybe blowing locks off fire doors to clear the way.
Spitteri was running when he reached the staircase, and he froze there as a cannon opened up beneath him, answering the smaller weapons with a voice of thunder. No shotgun, that. No weapon carried on the premises by any member of his staff. And that could only mean...
He started down, his legs leaden; he was very much aware the .38s were deathly silent now.
Benny never saw it coming. For an instant he was poised there, one leg raised to take another step, and then his kneecap suddenly disintegrated and his leg turned to useless rubber, and he fell forward on his face. He struck the banister, rebounded, and was airborne for a second prior to impact at the bottom of the stairs. The little AMT bounced free and disappeared.
The world was upside down, distorted through a looking glass of pain, and Benny heard the thunder now, reverberating all around him, telling him precisely what had happened. His lower body was on fire. When Benny tried to move, his muscles never got the message.
Swimming in and out of focus, Spitteri saw the giant coming for him, seemingly suspended from the ceiling. The specter was dressed in black, and he was looking down the barrel of the biggest goddamned silver handgun in the world, pointed directly into Benny's soul.
"I've got a message for your capo.1'
Benny tried to answer, finally discovered that his tongue was out of order, too.
The specter bent closer to him, making sure he could hear every word.
"Tell Don Aguirre he should watch his ass."
The looming shape retreated, leaving Benny Spitteri there to wrestle with his pain in solitude. He would convey the message, certainly, if he survived, and someone would be made to pay for what had happened there. His injuries. His buttons lost. The damage to Don Vito's pleasure palace.
When the message was delivered, there would be-hell to pay, and someone woul
d be picking up the tab. In spades. It would be entertaining to observe the capo as he collected on that debt, with interest due.
Before the pain and darkness took him, Benny Spitteri hoped he would live long enough to see the show.
* * *
The Harlem numbers bank was set behind a soul-food restaurant, accessible directly through the kitchen, past a guard, or through a private entrance from the rear alley. Bolan opted for the front, aware of sullen eyes that followed him across the room, the angry stares attracted to his whiteness like iron filings to a magnet.
He felt no prejudice within himself, except toward savages who made themselves his targets by their choice of lifestyle. If his tours of Vietnam, his campaigns in the urban hellgrounds, taught him nothing else, he knew that color — just like beauty — was only superficial. The good or evil in a person was what counted, and it ran soul deep.
There was a sentry posted at the door, outlandish in his purple velvet coat and wide-brimmed hat. The guard's eyelids were half shut, and he was attempting to look casual as he watched Bolan. When Bolan drew abreast of him, he moved to block the doorway, arms crossed, glowering.
"Say, man, what it is?"
"It's business, dude. Why don't you step aside?"
The Black Ace in his hand restrained the lookout from a hasty move.
"So, how I know tha's straight?"
"You wanna bet your life it isn't?"
Momentary hesitation, then the sentry shook his head.
"G'wan in, man."
He held the door and signaled to another sentry stationed on the other side. The Executioner brushed past them both and through a second set of soundproof doors that opened onto the bank itself.
Inside, the place was jumping. Betting slips were piled along a cafeteria-style table and were being sorted into smaller stacks by number, and at the far end, a couple of hard-eyed types were busily cramming bills into suitcases, scraping coins into deep burlap bags. Bolan moved toward the table, already spotting the banker, with his bodyguards in tow, closing on an interception course.
"Hey, what is this, some kinda open house?"
Shock Waves Page 7