Panic in Philly

by Don Pendleton

  “Oh, yeah, we just been talking about you.” Bolan recognized this voice as belonging to one Augie Marinello, boss of all the bosses everywhere. “Listen, be careful. They found our, you know, stunt-box. So we’re talking plain out.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Angeletti replied. “How much longer before we, uh, get another one? I really need to talk to you.”

  Bolan understood the meaning of “stuntbox.” It was a rig similar to a scrambler which automatically encoded/decoded telephone conversations—a security measure against phone taps.

  “Another day or two,” Marinello was saying. “Maybe you better just come in.”

  “I can’t. Listen. It’s really bad here.”

  A brief silence, then: “That’s what we been talking about.”

  “Is everybody there? I mean, all of you?”

  “Yeh,” said the unofficial Capo di tutti Capi. “We been having a session, wondering what we could do for you.”

  “Well, listen. You can do a lot. I want everybody that’s ever seen this guy before, I mean the merest glimpse. How’m I supposed to spot a guy that nobody’s ever seen before, huh? Listen, you got somebody that’s even smelt his farts, I want that somebody here with me. This thing is getting bad.”

  “There’s not many of that kind around,” Marinello replied quietly.

  “There’s a few,” the old Don argued. “There’s that Leo the Pussy. You sent him all the way to London. Why not send him to Philly for a short vacation? I could use the guy. And, uh, that nigger. From Washington. You know? Our late friend Arnie’s controller. What’s his name, the football guy?”

  “Wils Brown,” Marinello said, sighing.

  “That’s the guy. I need ’im here.”

  “He’s not one of us.”

  “Who cares? Let’s not be proud. At a time like this. Right?”

  “Right, I guess so,” the third voice from New York agreed. “Listen, Steven—I don’t wanta say too much. But … we been putting heads together here. We’re sending you, uh, some help. So relax. Uh … maybe you better tell me. What’s going on there now?”

  “That guy just now walloped the hell out of us. You tell me how, I don’t know, I really don’t. I never saw nothing like this. Hey, the Bronx was never like this, not even back when.”

  “Anybody I know get carried out of the game?” Marinello asked.

  “Not all the way. Our friend Jules is going to have some pain for a while, but he’s okay. The rest was those, you know, those boys from over there. I think maybe twenty or thirty won’t be with us no more.”

  “Gee, that many, that’s too bad,” Marinello said, the tone shocked and sympathetic.

  “I still got plenty more, but I don’t know. I mean, you know, those boys didn’t stop a thing. I mean, like paper dolls. I’m not so sure about these boys, Augie.”

  “Yeah.” A pause, then, “I guess we can talk about that later. Right now, I want you to feel assured. You know. We’re not letting you down. We got a … listen … I can’t say too much … we got a specialist on the way to you. He’s—just a minute.”

  Bolan heard off-telephone whispers, then Marinello’s voice came back directly into the line. “He’s on his way there now. Driving. Look for him in about another thirty minutes.”

  “One guy?” old man Angeletti fumed. “Just one guy?”

  “Well, one, yeah, but not just a guy, Steven. I told you, a specialist Listen … relax. This guy is recommended by the very best. Our friend Mike sends his best.”

  Bolan also remembered their friend Mike. Talifero. Bolan had last seen their friend Mike lying in his own blood on a Vegas casino floor.

  “I thought Mike was … is he up and around now?” Angeletti was asking, voicing Bolan’s own interest in the matter.

  “He’s getting around some now. He’s here now, right beside me. Sends you his best, Steven. You understand me.”

  “I understand you,” the old man replied, sighing. “But one man, Augie …”

  “Oh, we’re sending more than just the one. Buffalo is sending down a delegation. We got a couple groups leaving Manhattan in another hour or two. You know, it takes awhile to round these delegations up. And with, uh, you know, our little troubles over in Brooklyn, uh …”

  “Yeah, I know,” the Philly boss said, understanding. “Well, I appreciate everything you can do, Augie. You know that. This thing is looking real serious. This, uh, specialist. Do I know him?”

  A pause, then, “Mike says you do and you don’t. Nobody really knows this guy, Steven.”

  “Oh, that guy!” Angeletti crowed, the old voice crackling with new interest.

  “Yeh. So, look, take it easy, eh? Just keep yourself covered the best you can and let nature take its course. Everything is in our favor, you know that.”

  “Sure, okay, you know how much I appreciate—listen, I still want those other guys I mentioned. Leo the Pussy and the football player. And any more you might know about.”

  “That might be hard to engineer, Steven. But I’ll try. You have my word.”

  “Look, it’s no time to be holding out trumps,” Angeletti pointed out.

  “I know that. We’re not holding anything out on you, Steven. You have my word. How’s, uh, how’s Frank?”

  “Frank’s just fine,” Frank’s papa reported. “I been real proud of him today.”

  It was a lie. Bolan knew it, and he knew that Marinello knew it.

  “It’s nice to have a son who can take some of the pressures away,” Marinello was saying. “Most of ’em today aren’t worth a damn. You know that, Steven.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Angeletti agreed stiffly.

  “Well, I know it’s a comfort to have a good strong son in the house. I never had a one with legs under ’im. You know that. But … we gotta accept some things. Right? We gotta learn to live with pain sometimes.”

  It was a gentle hint from the boss of bosses to the boss of Philly. Bolan knew it. Angeletti knew it. The old man sighed and told New York, “Frank’s coming along. Don’t worry, Augie, I’m no idiot. I know what I know. Well, listen. I better hang up. I got a jillion things to do. That, uh, that specialist. How will I know him?”

  A whispered consultation preceded: “Mike says you’ll know him when he wants you to.”

  “I need more than that,” Angeletti complained. “We’re not taking chances on anything that moves around here. You better give me something for recognition.”

  A new voice came on from the New York end, a hard businesslike talker with a Harvard accent that set Bolan’s teeth on edge. It was Mike Talifero, lord high enforcer of all mafiosi everywhere. “Steven, hello, I’ve been listening in. Do you understand who it is we’re sending you?”

  “Hi, Mike, sure I know who you’re sending. Problem is, the guy’s a wild card. Never the same face two times outta the deck. I gotta know what to look for.”

  “Look for a Maserati.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, a car. That’s what he’s driving. Just let him in the gate. He can handle the ID from there.”

  “Oh, I get you. I guess that’s good enough. You just better hope the guy doesn’t switch cars on the way.”

  Talifero laughed and replied, “No way. He just blew his last dollar on that bucket. Listen, Steven. This boy is good. Give him his head. Don’t try to tie him down.”

  “You sending him down here to take charge?” Angeletti asked soberly.

  “It’s the only way he works, Steven. You know that.”

  “Yeah. Well. I been letting Frank run herd on … on these boys here.”

  “Let’s be men, Steven.”

  “I see what you mean. Okay.” The old man sighed heavily and said, “Put Augie back on.”

  Marinello reported, “I’m still here, Steven. Listen. Soon as this all blows over, come up and see us. We need to have a long talk.”

  “Yeh. Thanks, Augie. And thank all our friends up there for me. Oh, and don’t forget, you’re sending me more than just t
his wild card from Mike.”

  “I’ll do all I can, Steven.”

  “Thanks, ’bye, Augie.”

  “Good-bye, Steven.”

  Bolan waited until both clicks canceled the connection entirely, then he pulled his patch out and pushed that conversation through his mind several times around.

  Things could be coming to a head quicker than he’d expected. Bolan had heard about this “wild card”—a Talifero trouble-shooter who carried Commissione credentials and who acted with all the authority of that ruling Mafia body.

  The guy was an elite hit-man. He was usually saved for very special jobs, like hitting outside VIP’s who’d earned themselves a contract, or errant capi who refused to knuckle under to Cosa Nostra edicts. The rumors were out that this very same “wild card” had been very busy of late in Brooklyn and Jersey.

  Bolan had once impersonated the guy.

  Maybe, just maybe, the Philadelphia problem was deserving of an encore performance by Mack the Wild Card Bolan.

  But … the wild card could turn out to be a Black Jack. Few men living had ever seen Mack Bolan’s face clearly enough to recognize it the next time around.

  Leo Turrin could, of course.

  So could Wilson Brown.

  It could get sticky, damned sticky. One slip, one wrong jerk of the eyes or catch in the voice and …

  Hell, he could try, couldn’t he?

  Maybe not.

  Maybe he’d never try anything, ever again.

  A police cruiser wheeled into the intersection just above Bolan’s position and halted there, sealing the narrow street. Another had eased up just down-range from him, at the opposite corner. And suddenly the Executioner sensed movements on the ground all about him.

  A spotlight flared, pinning him to the pole in the brilliance, and an electronically amplified voice wafted up from the darkness somewhere out there:

  “Mack Bolan, this is the law. You’re sealed in. Throw down your weapons, one by one.”

  So okay.

  He’d pushed the thing one damn number too far.

  “Don’t crowd us, Bolan. We’re going to take you, dead or alive. It’s your choice. Five seconds, man. Don’t crowd us.”

  Bolan was not crowding anybody.

  He was simply hanging there, in the spotlight, seeing the end of a very vicious, very tiring and very brutal war.

  It looked as though the hands of the universe had decided to rid themselves of Mack the Bastard.

  Chapter 9/ An Intervention

  Capture by the police could have but one meaning for Bolan.

  He would be stripped defenseless and placed inside a box where his million and one enemies could take turns trying to potshot him out of there.

  Sure, the law would give him all the protection at their command. He would be treated like a VIP and accorded the most stringent security that probably any prisoner would ever find. Bolan, after all, was quite an authority on the mob, its operations, its chain of command, its inroads into various legitimate business areas. A dozen crime committees and federal agencies would love to get into his mind.

  Also, he had become something of a folk hero. Some of the most prominent trial lawyers in the country had publicly proclaimed that they would like to represent the Executioner if and when he should fall into police hands.

  Somebody would probably want him to write a book from Death Row, and probably every magazine in the country—and maybe a few movie producers—would be fighting for exclusive exploitation rights to his personal “story.”

  Sure, it would be quite a circus.

  Except for one flaming fact.

  None of it would ever have time to come to pass. Despite the security, the lawyers, the hoopla and the sensational public interest angle—despite it all—Bolan would not live through the first twenty-four hours in jail. Someone, somehow, would get to him. The mob had their ways. They would find a way to him. We’re going to take you dead or alive. It’s your choice. What choice? There was no choice for Mack Bolan. Except to die like a rat in a trap … or to die trying. He had elected, long ago, to die trying.

  The little Doomsday Device was clipped to his utility belt, an inch and a half away from the hand that held him to the telephone pole.

  He closed that gap between life and death, quickly and decisively, letting go and pushing off with his feet to arc over backwards in free-fall towards the ground, out of the hateful glare of that police spotlight—and in that same instant he found the doomsday button and triggered the charge in the warwagon.

  A shotgun had ba-loomed out there the moment he moved, and other weapons immediately chimed in for the kill, but all—the night, the cacophony of gunfire, the death-reel in Bolan’s brain—all of it was eclipsed and set aside by the earth-shaking blast of the warwagon as it went into self-destruct and lent its parts to the expanding universe.

  Bolan had been going for a catlike backflip away from the pole, trusting entirely to instinct to bring him to earth in the most survivable position, feet down, crouched for impact absorption, his senses flaring out into the darkness for some split-second orientation and warning before the shock of contact came.

  The shock of the explosion came first, however, and some frozen timeless compartment of the Bolan mind knew that he was too close and that he was being deflected in mid-air, hurled sideways by the concussive force of that blast—being hurled, perhaps, into infinite timelessness.

  Then he was into something soft-solid, something that moved with him and cushioned, something that seemed to reach out and gather him in. His spinning mind seized around the idea of the hands of the universe reaching out to snatch him back even while some tenaciously clinging fragment of consciousness told him that the cushioning bosom belonged instead to a sweet-smelling tree in Spring blossom.

  Outflung arms instinctively closed around softly supporting young branches, and he swung on like some weirdly costumed ape, without seeing and without really knowing, moving swiftly from limb to limb and then down free and clear onto the ground.

  He crouched there in well-cultivated shrubbery, willing his mind and his systems to stabilize, fighting an advancing curtain of inner darkness, which could only be unconsciousness or perhaps death.

  That compartment of mind which knew seized upon the abundant stimulations of the immediate environment to drag him through crisis and into reality, tugged him into a recognition of leaping flames, excited voices and bawling commands issuing from an electronic amplifier.

  And he knew with a jolt that he was alive and—by some miracle—functioning, separated from the threat out there by a low brick wall, screening shrubbery, and monumental confusion.

  He wished the cops well, genuinely hoped that none of those soldiers on the same side had been close enough to run afoul of the warwagon’s final contribution to Mack Bolan’s war effort—and he left them there with his well-wishes and moved quietly out with the shadows into the no man’s land of Don Stefano’s home grounds.

  Bolan was not afraid, but as cool as life resurrected.

  He was “retreating to the front”—bolstered, strengthened and revitalized by the certain knowledge that something far larger than himself had worked some sort of miracle.

  The universe had intervened. The Executioner was alive and kicking in Philadelphia.

  For the moment, anyway.

  Chapter 10/ The Benediction

  The firefighters had come, found no remaining fires to extinguish, and departed—leaving only a cleanup crew and an arson/bomb squad at the scene.

  Fifty wary and heavily armed cops were scouring every inch of ground in the immediate vicinity.

  Just for kickers, a special squad was awaiting arrival of a search warrant to get them into the Angeletti property to extend the search into that unlikely area.

  An emergency medical crew was on hand, smoking and drinking coffee from paper cups and wondering why they were there.

  A police bomb squad, lab men and every dicky kind of specialist the department
could dream up had arrived; and began fine-combing the street, the wreckage and a fifty-yard radius around the blast area.

  The scene was sealed off completely and additional roadblocks were set up to contain a foursquare-block area of the surrounding neighborhood.

  Emergency telephone and power company crews had been summoned, but orders had been left at the blockade to keep them out until further notice.

  Sullen clumps of uniformed and plain-clothes policemen had returned to the ground-zero area to stand around-looking helpless during these anticlimactic moments.

  A disconsolate Chief of Special Details, Captain Wayne Thomkins, had been standing with hands in pockets for some five minutes, staring steadfastly at the ground between his feet.

  FBI Agent Joe Persicone was kneeling a respectful distance from the twisted pile of hot metal which marked the remains of Mack Bolan’s last known vehicle, staring at it as though he could unlock its secrets through some process of psychic osmosis.

  Detective Ed Strauss, who had been added to the main body of Bolan Watchers upon their departure from the Emperor’s hit, vaulted over the low brick wall which bounded the private property on the south side of the street and strode up to break into Captain Thomkins’ meditations.

  Thomkins glowered at the young officer and growled, “Yeah?”

  The detective spread his hands at shoulder level and replied, “Zero, nothing.”

  The Captain sighed and said, “Can’t catch moonbeams in a fruit jar, can you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Forget it.” Thomkins paced over to the wall and glared at it. “Should’ve found him right here,” he said. “His back broke over this wall.”

  Strauss was measuring the distance with his eyes, mentally triangulating the drop from a point in space where the pole had been, probably re-enacting in his mind’s eye that spectacular free-fall into nowhere. His gaze traveled that imaginary path and he shuddered as it rebounded from the brick wall. “Yessir,” he quietly agreed. “That was my first impression. I saw the guy go sailing off that pole backwards and I remember thinking, ‘Far out, what a way to go!’ I fully expected to—”