And then the two men who had first escaped death, and then imprisonment, drove on in silence toward the city of New Orleans.
BOLAN TOOK THE ELEVATOR to the top floor of the old mansion-bordello, the ice chest cradled in both arms. He had sensed no tension when he’d entered on the ground floor, but he knew he was taking another calculated risk by even returning to McFarley’s place.
He’d have to assume that the phone calls from Jackson and Westbrook had informed the New Orleans crime boss that “Matt Cooper” had taken Kunkle out of Pat O’Brien’s without violence, and that the two men had passed on the information that they’d taken a cab out of the city to the marina. At that point, he was going to have to “twist” the story to fit whatever intel Westbrook and Jackson had relayed back to their boss via their cell phones.
He’d have to think on his feet. And fast. Somehow, he had to get McFarley to reveal as much of what he already knew as he could, then fill in the gaps of the story.
Bolan would emphasize three things. First, it hadn’t made sense to kill the police detective in front of witnesses in O’Brien’s. Second, the marina was empty during the wee hours of the morning, and third, alligators were a perfect way to get rid of a body.
The part of the story Bolan didn’t yet know how to cover was his connection to the boat. Jackson and Westbrook had probably seen the ice chest being off-loaded when they returned to the dock. If they’d reported that to McFarley, Bolan was going to have to come up with a reasonable explanation.
And so far, he hadn’t been able to do that.
The elevator reached the top floor and Bolan stepped out to be greeted by the other Irishman—Felix O’Banion. O’Banion motioned for the soldier to put the ice chest on the floor, then turn and put his hands on the wall. Bolan complied. Carefully patting him down, O’Banion came first to the Beretta 93-R in the shoulder rig. Jerking it out of its holster, he stared down at the sound suppressor on the end.
After stuffing the weapon into his belt, O’Banion’s hands moved on. When he found the Desert Eagle on Bolan’s hip, he pulled it out as well. “Mother McGee!” he said as he stared at the giant .44 Magnum pistol. “You don’t take any chances, do you, boyo?”
“Not when I don’t have to,” Bolan said. “But I’m not sure why you’re going through all this again. Surely your boss didn’t expect me to kill Kunkle bare-handed.”
O’Banion’s hands went back to work, checking Bolan’s crotch area more carefully this time. When he found nothing there, he said, “So you didn’t bring your little wheel gun this time?”
“I figured the .44 and 9 mm were enough,” Bolan said. In his mind’s eye, however, he pictured the .22 Magnum Pug pressed against his back by the twin-magazine caddy. O’Banion’s hands had passed over it twice during the search and missed it both times.
Showing McFarley that he had slipped the hidden .22 Magnum pistol through his security had served a purpose, earlier. But this time, it would be better that the crime boss and his minions didn’t know all of his secrets.
When O’Banion had finally located and removed the Cold Steel Espada fighting knife from Bolan’s waistband, he said, “Let’s go on to the office.”
“When do I get my guns and knife back?” Bolan asked as he picked up the ice chest once more.
“When McFarley says you do,” O’Banion said bluntly. He led the way down the hall.
Bolan followed, carrying the ice chest. He wasn’t sure exactly what the pecking order had been around here, but with Jo-Jo Gau, Jackson and Westbrook dead, it looked like O’Banion was McFarley’s number-one goon. He probably had been all along, considering the fact that McFarley had brought him all the way from Ireland. But in any case, the upper echelon of McFarley’s criminal empire was thinning out fast.
Which should make the Irishman even more anxious to use Cooper’s skills.
O’Banion came to McFarley’s office, knocked twice, then opened the door. He stepped back to let Bolan through, then entered and closed the door behind him.
McFarley sat in his desk chair, his feet crossed and resting on the desktop. “Need a hand or two?” Bolan asked as he entered the room.
“Extremely funny.” McFarley looked sternly at Bolan and said, “Put it on my desk.”
Bolan complied, then stepped back away from the desk.
O’Banion’s hands and arms were full of the Executioner’s weapons. He stepped forward and set them on the desk next to the ice chest.
McFarley chuckled. “You don’t travel light, do you?” he said.
Bolan saw no reason to answer.
McFarley opened the ice chest lid and took a quick look at the contents. Then he closed it again and motioned for O’Banion to take it. “We’ll run the prints and find out if it’s really Kunkle,” he said. “If it turns out that the hands are his, I’ll give you your toys back.” He gestured toward the pile of weapons on his desk. “But while we’re waiting, there are a few things we need to clear up.” He opened a drawer in his desk, and Bolan watched as he pulled out a British Webley revolver with pearl grips. Aiming the big .455 at the soldier, he said, “Where’s the rest of Kunkle’s body?”
“In an alligator’s intestinal tract by now,” Bolan said simply.
“You shoot him?” McFarley demanded.
Bolan’s face took on a deadpan expression. “Nope,” he said. “As I’m sure you know, gators like to kill their own find. That’s why I knocked him out, sawed off his hands and then fed him to the big lizard before he could bleed out.”
The Webley stayed trained on Bolan. “I haven’t heard from Jackson or my other man, Westbrook,” McFarley said. “They were following you.”
“I know that,” Bolan said. “And I’d be pretty surprised if you did hear from them again. Ever.”
“Why’s that?” McFarley asked, pulling his feet off the desk.
Bolan stared him in the eyes. “Because I killed them both.”
McFarley smoothed out the wrinkles in his slacks and leaned inward, the Webley still pointed at Bolan. “Why?” he asked. “You weren’t even supposed to see them. I ordered them to stay back out of sight and report on your actions.”
Bolan laughed. “Well, that’s not what they did,” he said. “It sounds like both of them shooting Uzis at me violated your orders. I didn’t have much choice.”
By this point, O’Banion had carried the ice chest out of the office, but McFarley looked toward the door where he’d last been. “What was the ice chest doing on the boat?” he demanded, his knuckles whitening around the pearl grips of the Webley.
There it was. The weak spot in Bolan’s story. Jackson and Westbrook had seen him and Kunkle take the ice chest off the boat, and they’d told McFarley.
Bolan had no choice but to gamble. “Ice chest off what boat?” he said.
McFarley was still staring him in the eye. “They called in and told me that you and Kunkle took an ice chest off an airboat. And that Kunkle was still alive, and looked like he was helping you instead of getting his hands cut off and preparing to become Purina Alligator Chow.”
Bolan laughed again. “Well, guys who’d violate your orders not to shoot us just might stoop to telling a lie now and then, don’t you think?” he said. “Jake was pissed off at me because I kicked his ass twice yesterday. Sounds to me like he convinced Westbrook to come up with a story that would be a good reason to kill me.” Bolan paused. “I don’t know anything about a boat. I took the ice chest with me.”
“In a cab?” McFarley asked.
“Yes, in a cab,” Bolan came back. “This is New Orleans, Tommy,” he said. “In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, cabbies have seen far stranger things than being asked to drive two men to a marina with an ice chest.”
McFarley leaned yet closer and his eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I’m buying all of this, Cooper,” he said. “How did you get Kunkle out of O’Brien’s without a fight?”
“By showing him that little .22 Magnum you saw the other day,” Bolan said.
“I told him you wanted a final drug pickup escorted into town in safety. After that was over, you’d respect his newfound religion and leave him alone.”
“It’s hard to believe he’d buy a story like that,” McFarley said.
“Men will believe almost anything if they want to bad enough,” Bolan said.
Slowly, McFarley nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll know more when the fingerprint results come back. But if it turns out you did your job, you’ve earned a spot on the starting lineup. I had to kill my man Gau. You took out Westbrook. The only heavy hitter I’ve got left is O’Banion.” His eyes narrowed even further as the Webley continued to point at Bolan. “Of course if you’re trying to pull some trick…” His voice trailed off. But a few seconds later he finished with, “You’ll be alligator bait yourself.”
“That sounds fair enough to me,” Bolan said.
“Then sit down,” McFarley said, “and wait.” He put his feet back up on his desk and leaned back in his chair again. “It shouldn’t take long. We’ve got a great fingerprint contact inside the NOPD, and that AFIS system is really helpful.” He laughed at the irony of the Advanced Fingerprint Identification System making his work easier as well as that of the police.
Bolan turned toward the chairs against the wall opposite McFarley’s desk. Sometime since he’d been there last, someone had cleaned the blood and brains off the wall. He dropped into one of the chairs. As he waited, he thought back to his actions after he and Kunkle had taken the police car. They had passed several other parish deputy cars heading out to the scene of the gunfight. With Frantz’s cowboy hat pulled down low over his eyes, the Executioner had exchanged waves with the drivers coming toward him. A few radio transmissions had come for them, but Bolan had ignored them. By the time the other deputies figured out something was amiss, he knew he’d have ditched the patrol car with Deputy Frantz still handcuffed in the backseat.
And that was exactly what had happened. Bolan had driven on into New Orleans, then spotted a small shopping center a block from a low-rent hotel. He had let Kunkle out in front of a drug store amid the other businesses with orders to pick up the items he needed to change his appearance. When he’d done that, the reborn detective was to walk to the hotel, rent a room, then leave his necktie around the doorknob so Bolan could find him without going through the desk clerk.
While Kunkle did all this, Bolan would take the severed hands to McFarley, then return to the hotel at the first opportunity.
Bolan and McFarley sat silently in the office. Roughly fifteen minutes after the soldier had taken his seat, O’Banion opened the office door, stuck his head inside, then glanced from Bolan to McFarley. Finally, he nodded. “They’re Kunkle’s hands,” he said.
McFarley’s mood changed instantly from skeptical to a satisfied, bordering on excited. “Good work, Cooper,” he said, pulling his feet off the desk and standing up. He extended his right hand across the desk.
Bolan moved from the wall and shook it.
“Stay in here, O’Banion,” McFarley called out before the other Irishman could shut the door again.
O’Banion stepped inside.
“From now on,” McFarley said, “Cooper’s taking the place of Gau and Westbrook.”
“That’s one man taking the place of two,” O’Banion said. “He can’t—”
McFarley didn’t let him finish. “It appears to me that Cooper can do the work of two of you,” he said sharply. “And until I find another capable man, you’ll both just have to make up for the slack.” He had kept his grip on Bolan’s hand but then dropped it.
“I’ve got another assignment for you, Cooper,” he said, “but you’ve been up all night. You need a little rest first?”
Bolan thought of Kunkle. By this point, the man should have checked into the hotel down the block from the shopping center. He still wasn’t thoroughly convinced that the detective had experienced a true conversion to Christianity, and he needed to check up on him. “It wouldn’t hurt anything,” Bolan finally said. “I’m not at my best.”
“Well, you’re going to need to be at your best for what I have for you next,” McFarley said. “So…how about you go downstairs, pick out a room and I’ll send a couple of girls in to help you relax before you nod off?” His voice had taken on a tone as sleazy as the hotel where Kunkle was waiting.
Bolan chuckled. “I appreciate the gesture,” he said. “But I sleep better when I’m on my own.”
McFarley frowned. “You want to go back to your condo?” he asked with a small amount of the skepticism returning to his voice.
“I do,” Bolan said. “It’s a place where I can close my eyes without worrying about jealous employees of yours like Jake trying to kill me.” He glanced toward O’Banion, making it obvious that he didn’t trust the man.
McFarley nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I don’t particularly like it, but I can understand it. You’ve pretty much proved yourself to me, Cooper. Now I suppose we’ve got to prove ourselves to you.”
Turning to O’Banion himself, he said, “Felix, let Cooper go and make sure nobody tails him this time. If anything—anything at all—happens to him, the same thing’s going to happen to you. You understand?”
O’Banion didn’t like it, but he nodded.
McFarley held out his hand again and Bolan shook it once more. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to go places, you and me,” the New Orleans kingpin said. “So go catch a few hours of sleep. I’ve got one more sort of ‘test’ job for you before I trust you a hundred percent. It’s a bit unusual, but I want to see how you handle it.” The New Orleans pimp and racketeer went on to give him a few details of the next job.
And Bolan had to admit, it was unusual.
The Executioner nodded his understanding. He had a few questions about this final so-called test job, but he thought it better not to ask at this point.
“Is there anything else you need before you go?” McFarley asked.
“I could use a vehicle,” Bolan said. “I’m getting sick of cabs. And I’m also getting sick of wondering which cabbies might remember me to the police later on.”
“Felix,” McFarley said, “take him down to the parking lot and fix him up. Something good but not too flashy.” He smiled at Bolan. “We don’t want him attracting too much attention.” Then, without further words, he nodded toward the Beretta and Desert Eagle on his desk.
Bolan holstered both of his guns. Then, with a final glance at McFarley, he walked out of the room, down the hall and rode the elevator to the ground floor with O’Banion.
And a few minutes later, the Executioner was driving away in a nearly new Cadillac Escalade.
9
The drugstore was just opening as Kunkle got out of the deputy sheriff’s car. He waited as the man inside the glass door pulled a ring of keys from his belt and inserted one into the lock. A moment later, he became the store’s first customer of the day.
In his mind, Kunkle tried to picture how he could change his appearance to the fullest, but he didn’t try to kid himself. No matter what he did, anyone within McFarley’s circle of crime who had known him before would recognize him again. At least close up. The cold hard fact was that if there was any doubt left in the New Orleans crime kingpin’s mind as to his death, they’d all be looking for him. And expecting him to try to change his looks.
Kunkle grabbed a small basket from the stack next to the entrance and proceeded into the store. Above his head, he saw a sign on the aisle against the wall that read Shaving Products. He walked slowly down the side of the store, picking up a package of disposable razors and a can of shaving cream.
Should he shave his face and head? Maybe. That would make for the most dramatic change between his longish hair and beard. But it would also be the most obvious if anyone in McFarley’s power structure was in the least bit suspicious. Perhaps there was a better w
ay.
In the far corner of the store, Kunkle saw an unusual-looking item called a HeadBlade. Stopping in front of the display, he pulled one off the rack and looked closer. He might need it. The device came with several extra cartridges and he dropped one into his basket.
Moving along the back wall of the store, Kunkle looked up to see a variety of electric hair clippers. He had been lucky so far, and whatever gene had caused his father to go bald by his age seemed to have skipped him. But on this day, he needed a different look, and he reached up and pulled down a cardboard box that read Wahl. It came with attachments that ranged by eight of an inch lengths from one-eighth to one inch. The detective laughed inwardly. It would do. And he would have a new look to go along with the new life he was beginning.
Kunkle thought about that new life as he moved to the next aisle over marked Hair Care. Ever since he had attended the revival meeting featuring the son of a world-famous evangelist, he’d felt like a different man. He had found himself leaning forward in his seat and focusing on what the man was saying. Suddenly, as if he’d been hit by lightning, Kunkle had developed a conscience, which brought on a wave of guilt as powerful as the winds that had swirled around Hurricane Katrina.
As the sermon went on, Kunkle had begun to realize that he could not go on being a dishonest cop, or committing the other sins that were part of his lifestyle. And with that realization came a new and strange conflict of emotions. He continued to feel guilt about all of the bribes he’d taken, and the times he’d looked the other way when McFarley’s men had committed crimes. But along with that guilt—and in seeming contrast to it—came a newfound joy that he had never before experienced.
Kunkle had been saved. At some point during that sermon, he had begun to realize just how lost he had become. And as he listened to the preacher he had felt tears forming in his eyes. When the invitation to accept Christ as his personal savior came at the end of the service, Kunkle had been surprised to find himself joining dozens of others in the aisles, walking toward the front of the huge stadium. He had received some literature, and a small copy of the New Testament, as had the others. Looking around he had seen that some people were crying. Others appeared to be in shock. But all looked sincere about giving their hearts to Jesus.
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