"What if you're wrong? What if it's someone else?"
Stone shook his head. "I know the talent that's available. I know my men. We closed the net around him quick enough this morning, and we would have had him if it wasn't for the fireworks out front. That's Bolan, all the way."
Scarpato frowned, no longer certain of himself. "So what's he want from me?"
"What does he ever want? He's got it in for the brotherhood, and don't forget he helped Giamba once before."
"That goddamn Artie! What the hell's so special that he charms this Bolan, anyway?"
Stone shrugged. "Who knows. Who caresl Giamba won't be charming anyone this time tomorrow."
"Yeah? I wouldn't be so sure."
"You need more confidence," the Ace informed him, not without a trace of sarcasm. "Anyway, this new approach will tie the soldier's hands."
"You say."
"That's right, I say. The bastard's never dropped the hammer on a cop, not even when they had him cornered. Hell, he's queer that way, I guess. Once Newman sends his uniforms against Giamba and Pattricia, it's over."
"Supposin' Bolan doesn't know that?" Vince challenged, glaring at his chief enforcer.
"Then we take him out," the Ace replied, as if it was the least of his concerns.
"You had one crack at that already."
"We were unprepared."
"Goddammit, I'm not paying for your men to sit around here on their asses unprepared!"
"I meant that we were unprepared for Bolan," Stone amended, looking somewhat shaken for the first time in the conversation. "It takes a special kind of preparation for that guy"
"You think you've got it in you?"
Stone was giving off defensive vibes, and Vince Scarpato was elated by the tiny victory but kept the feelings to himself.
"He's as good as in the bag," the Ace replied, but there was something of a hesitance about his tone.
"Okay." Scarpato spoke with a confidence he didn't feel. "I leave it in your hands. But if you let me down..."
He did not have to spell it out. The Ace was not exactly shaking, no, but now he knew his life was riding on the line along with Scarpato's and the rest.
"It's done," Stone said as he excused himself. The study door clicked shut behind him, and Scarpato was alone.
Mack Bolan in St. Louis.
Dammit!
If Stone was right, there was a chance the soldier might be going for a clean sweep of the Marinello family remnants, making sure there were no loose ends left to haunt him later. And then again, the bastard might be working for Giamba, though Scarpato would not hope to puzzle out the hows and whys of that arrangement if he took a thousand years.
But what if Stone was wrong?
Worse yet, what if he was deliberately lying through his teeth, deceiving his superiors for some ulterior reasons of his own?
If he was wrong, or lying, then Bolan wasn't in St. Louis, after all. And that would mean that someone else had conned his way through Vince's troops and right into his goddamned house.
Who had that kind of nerve, aside from Bolan? Who possessed the skill and guts to risk it all on an explosive grandstand play such as Scarpato had been witness to that morning?
Vincent knew the answer, and it chilled him to the bone.
An Ace would have the guts, the knowledge. Sure.
A real Black Ace.
Like Stone.
And if Omega was legitimate, then what of Stone's "exposure," his revelations on the phony calling card? Was Stone the victim of a lethal prank himself, or was he setting up Scarpato for a long, hard fall?
The questions jostled for position in the mafioso's throbbing skull until he finally forced them back into the shadows, concentrating on the task at hand.
He had a war to win, and he had already put the wheels in motion for a bold end run that would deprive Mack Bolan — or Omega, or whoever — of his edge in siding with Giamba. With the law on Vince's side, applying heat to Artie's family all over town, there would be no way Vince could lose.
Unless, of course, some stranger waltzed into his house and blew his brains out.
A shiver raced along Scarpato's spine, and he was scowling, more from anger than from fear. It didn't matter to him now if Bolan was the opposition. Let him come. Scarpato had some scores to settle — for himself, for Ernie Marinello, for the whole damned brotherhood.
And if it should turn out that Stone was working on an angle of his own, deceiving his superiors, Scarpato would have time enough to deal with him when he had finished mopping up Giamba and Pattricia, securing St. Louis for himself.
He would have all the time in the world to deal with traitors and false friends.
Before he finished with them all, they would be pleading for the sweet release of death, and maybe he would let them find it. In his own time. In his own way. When he was satisfied that they had been repaid for all their treachery.
The bloody vision brought a beatific smile to Vince Scarpato's face. The chill was gone, and he was in control again. As it was meant to be.
He would be looking forward to the next encounter with his enemies. They would be in for some surprises, including Stone, and now the mafioso felt a rising sense of expectation, almost an elation, he had not experienced in years. Not since he killed a human being for the first time.
13
The numbers bank was situated one flight up, above a pool hall on the fringe of the St. Louis ghetto. Like the bars and pawnshops that surrounded it, the pool hall had a black proprietor but was, in fact, the property of a Caucasian landlord. With the exception of the owner's front man and his muscle, members of a local street gang called the Mutilators, no one in the seamy neighborhood had ever learned the landlord's name.
But Bolan knew it.
The landlord's name was Vince Scarpato.
He had moved in among the street gangs early, alternating punishments with payoffs as he sought to undermine Giamba's source of income from the numbers racket. And he had succeeded, to a point. His beachhead was substantial, but the cut demanded by New York was larger than Giamba ever claimed, and many of the locals were resisting, siding with Giamba and Pattricia in a business on the brink of civil war.
The war had been a long time coming, thanks to Art Giamba's tolerance, his fear of biting off a bigger piece than he could chew, and now the neighborhood was ready to explode.
And Bolan had come to light the fuse.
A single drive-by told him all he had to know. He marked the flashy Lincoln pimp mobile out front, a pair of Mutilators lounging in the alley to the rear, protecting their employer's flank. They could be trouble if they stopped him on the street, before he had a chance to get in range, and he decided it would have to be the front door.
He circled once around the block and parked beyond the Continental, in a corner slot that guaranteed he would not find himself wedged in if it was necessary to depart at speed. A short walk back, and Bolan felt the hostile curiosity of passersby, examining his whiteness with suspicion and mistrust before he ducked inside the poolroom.
An ancient ceiling fan was struggling to move the musty air around inside the place, and it was failing miserably. The billiard parlor stank of perspiration, urine and accumulated smoke from cheap cigars. Bolan shied away from contact with the scattered furniture as he allowed his eyes to grow accustomed to the murk.
Behind an imitation hardwood bar, a white-haired man was polishing what had to be the only clean glass in the place, deliberately avoiding any glance in the direction of the door. A single Mutilator, long and lean, was perched upon a bar stool, eyeing Bolan with contempt and sucking on a Coors.
The Executioner moved past a standing rack of cues, toward the stairs in back. He heard the Mutilator slide off his stool and hesitated in midstride, expecting an attack, but when he looked around the lanky youth was disappearing through the double doors.
He would be back, no doubt, with reinforcements to assist him if the boss should need some help, but
for the moment Bolan put him out of mind. His business lay upstairs, and there was ample danger there to occupy the soldier's mind.
The stairs were covered with a leprous carpeting that muffled Bolan's footsteps. The stairwell was in darkness save for pasty daylight pooled around its base and the anemic glow of one tired light bulb on the upstairs landing. Bolan had the sleek Beretta in his hand before he started climbing, safety off, and halfway up he knew that he would need it.
A sentry was on station at the entrance to the numbers bank. Kicked back against the wall in what appeared to be a metal folding chair, the guy was half asleep and fading fast. From all appearances, he was about to drop the sawed-off scattergun that lay across his lap.
And Bolan could have taken him that way except for purest chance. Another stride, and the thirteenth riser groaned beneath his weight, became a muffled squeal... once more the warrior knew that nothing ever came the easy way.
The sentry jerked erect, his shotgun rising, tracking onto target now before his mind could struggle back to consciousness. A sleepy finger missed the trigger guard, came back to try again...
And Bolan never let him have that second chance.
The 93-R whispered, once, a silenced parabellum round closing the gap between them, opening another in the sentry's forehead and propelling him against the wall. His folding chair collapsed and pinned him there, propped back against the wall, his knees against his chin, the stubby shotgun barrel poking between his knees like some outrageous phallic symbol.
Bolan rushed the door and one explosive kick beside the lock drove it against the inside wall. He entered, the Beretta probing ahead of him, its muzzle swinging back and forth to cover everybody in the room.
Four men, three of them black, were sitting around a desk. The fourth was a Mafia gorilla complete with pinstriped suit. One hand was already tucked inside his jacket, reaching for the iron he carried there. On either side of him the lanky dudes in flashy suits were scrambling for daylight, digging for hardware, intent upon the exit Bolan occupied.
He took the mafioso first, a parabellum double punch drilling him and driving him backward, out of frame and out of mind.
On Bolan's left, the number two had reached his weapon, had it in his hand... but he would never have the chance to fire. A silenced mangier punched between his snarling teeth and lifted him completely off his feet, propelling him against a filing cabinet, then he began to slide away, responding to the call of gravity.
And number three had time enough to squeeze the trigger once, his bullet high and wide, deflected by the filing cabinets, drilling through a flimsy plaster wall. The Executioner replied with smooth precision, stroking off a single round that stretched his target out across the desk, his leaking head directly in the startled banker's lap.
Bolan stood before the desk, his autoloader leveled at the bulging eyes, its muzzle picking out a point between them. But the guy was rigid in his chair, with both hands showing, his fish-lips working soundlessly for several heartbeats until he finally found his voice.
"Hey, man... there must be some mistake."
"You made it," Bolan told him simply, watching nervous perspiration bead along his brow.
"Well... say... le's talk, awright?"
"Let's not. I've got a message for Scarpato, and I'm leaving it with you, unless you think it's more than you can handle."
Sudden hope behind the eyes — and instant recognition of the grim alternative for failure, for resistance.
"Hey, we're jus' like that." One hand came off the desk top, two fingers crossed, and then the guy thought better of it, eased the hand back down, fingers splayed to let the soldier see he had no weapon. "Tell me what you need — I pass it on."
"Scarpato's got a package that belongs to me," Bolan said. "I want it back. If it's been damaged, he can kiss it all goodbye."
The banker soaked it in, already nodding, dredging up a feeble smile. He was anxious to please, to survive.
"I got it, man. I'll pass it on."
"You do that, man."
A sudden thought traced worry lines between the banker's eyes. "Supposin' he should ask who left the word? I mean... we ain't been introduced, you know?"
When Bolan reached across the desk, the banker flinched instinctively, recoiling from the touch of Sudden Death. His progress was arrested by the wall, two feet behind him, and he sat there, staring, as the soldier placed a small, metallic object in the middle of the faceless gunner's chest, above the silent heart.
A marksman's medal.
"I'll be in touch again if Vinnie doesn't get the word."
The banker's voice was trapped between a whisper and a wheeze. "He'll get it, man. It's on the way."
The soldier moved away from there, relieved to find that none of the expected Mutilator reinforcements had arrived downstairs. He had no wish to spark a bloodbath here. He had achieved his purpose with the banker, and he still had other stops to make before he risked a major confrontation with Scarpato's men.
He had begun to spread the word, and he was far from finished.
Before the afternoon was out, Scarpato would be sick of hearing from him.
Sick to death.
* * *
Joey Spinoza had a great respect for science. Never mind that he had been a sixth-grade dropout in the Bronx, with numerous suspensions on his record for assault, theft and vandalism in the public schools. You live and learn, and Joey, in adulthood, had his reasons for appreciating all that modern science had achieved.
It was a miracle that half a dozen eggheads in their starchy whites could take a dash of this, a pinch of that and turn out so much PCP in record time. He marveled at the way they worked together, understanding everything the printed labels had to say, avoiding the mistakes that would have blown them all to hell and back again.
He knew that PCP was actually a tranquilizer used on animals... and that was just another mystery to puzzle over on those long rides to the bank. Whatever its effect on cows and horses, it had never tranquilized a human being in Spinoza's own experience. It energized them, sure, and gave them strength like Superman or Wonder Woman in the comics Joey liked to "read," avoiding words and concentrating on the pictures, where the action lay. Another miracle. You bet.
Of course, the profits made on PCP could not compare with those on good cocaine, but Joey and his eggheads handled both, supplying high-school punks and members of the Gucci crowd with equanimity, accepting pocket change and crumpled dollar bills or crisp new C-notes, either way it came.
Another month or two of rising profits, and Scarpato would begin to realize how much Spinoza had been doing for him since they hit St. Louis and began attacking Art Giamba's pocketbook. Another month or two, yes, and Joey would be ready to request a place beside Scarpato in the family he was forming to run the city. With Vince Scarpato, there would be room for swift advancement through the ranks.
Providing that Spinoza played his cards right.
Spinoza watched the lab technicians in their whites, intent upon their business, the bunsen burner flames reflected in their horn-rims, giving them that wild mad-doctor look that made him shake his head and chuckle through his surgical mask. He didn't have a damned idea of how they did it, but he didn't care, as long as they kept grinding out the magic powders for his salesmen on the streets.
One of the chemists straightened, his head cocked toward the blacked-out windows, listening, straining to hear a sound that had escaped Spinoza altogether. The enforcer craned forward on his stool, watching the chemist and listening...
To nothing.
The guy shrugged, looking foolish in his mask and horn-rims, the loose-fitting lab smock. He went back to his job, and Spinoza began to relax, silently cursing the inbred paranoia of the academics he was forced to baby-sit around the lab.
They wouldn't know a danger situation if it slithered up one leg and bit them on the ass, he thought. Unless their problem came out of a test tube, they were helpless, children afraid of the dark.
And Spinoza had to admit that he liked it that way.
The paranoia kept them sharp, and the attendant insecurity kept all of them in line. The lab men were afraid of him as much as of arrest, and rightly so. If one of them should try to rat, go into business for himself or someone else...
Spinoza thought he was hallucinating when the blacked-out window imploded into razor shrapnel, peppering the lab. The gunner vaulted off his stool, already digging for the Magnum underneath his jacket as a tall intruder came out of a shoulder roll behind the tables, suddenly erect and shooting from the hip.
The guy was dressed in military camouflage from head to heels, and he was handling his Uzi submachine gun like a pro. One burst demolishing several hundred dollars' worth of glassware on the trestle tables, kicking up a priceless cloud of flake and PCP that had the lab men gagging, running back and forth. A second blast caught two of the technicians on the run and rolled them up, their whites all flecked with scarlet now.
Spinoza had his Magnum out, tracking onto target when the soldier spotted him and hit a crouch, the Uzi sliding out to meet his challenge. He saw the wrinkling muzzle flash, and then his legs were cut from under him, the short, staccato sounds arriving on the heels of monumental pain as Joey felt his kneecaps go, the floor rush up to meet his face.
You never hear the shot that kills you, but he had heard those shots all right, and he was still alive. So far.
A pair of military boots monopolized his field of vision, one detaching from the other long enough to catch his Magnum with a toe and send it skittering across the floor. Spinoza tried to roll away, but pain had sapped his strength, and he was helpless when the soldier reached down for him, catching him beneath the arms and lifting him.
The guy half dragged, half carried Joey through the dusty litter of the lab, his limp extremities describing bloody patterns in the crystal snowdrifts. At the windowsill, his captor stepped outside, then reached back to hoist Spinoza clear, not speaking, scarcely breathing hard as he proceeded with his human bundle up the fire escape and to the roof.
Missouri Deathwatch Page 9