Panic in Philly

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan bit his teeth and went out of there.

  It was a little before eight o’clock when Bolan helped Frank the Kid upstairs and to his bedroom. He steered him on to the bath, bent him over the toilet, stuck a finger down his throat and urged up everything in the guy’s stomach.

  Then he washed his face with cold water and put him to bed fully clothed.

  The guy was still out of it, marginally conscious, babbling something in the old tongue.

  Booze, Bolan knew, often talked—but never in its own words. It merely released those which were ordinarily repressed by a more prudent consciousness.

  He patted the Kid’s face with a cold towel and growled, “Talk American, dammit.”

  “Agrigento … told ’em … hell … the best, see … hell’s coming and we got to. Don Cafu, fuck that guy … I told ’em, I told ’em.…”

  “Gradigghia” Bolan prompted.

  “Damn right, I told ’em. All or nothing. But … shit!”

  “What’d you say about Agrigento?” It was a Sicilian province, one of the early homes of the Mafia.

  “Don Cafu says a thousand a day. Can you beat that? A day?” The guy sniggered, choked, retched—Bolan yanked his head to the side of the bed and he vomited some more, onto the floor.

  The interrogation went on, Bolan patiently probing through alcohol-wreathed mutterings and mumblings and retchings. It ended ten minutes later with the guy bawling his heart out and promising over and over to do better next time.

  Bolan quietly assured him that he would, and left him with his heartbreak.

  He rapped lightly on the door to Philippa’s room and went in.

  She was sitting up in bed, pillows plumped behind her, gazing broodingly at a small, personal-sized bedside television.

  She looked up briefly at his entrance, then returned her visual attention to the TV. “Privacy,” she said in a low, unemotional tone. “That’s what I like about this house, the total privacy.”

  “Put some locks on the doors,” Bolan suggested.

  “Put in a word to Papa on that, will you?” she replied acidly.

  She was not looking at him, not yet.

  Bolan moved a chair to the bed, lowered himself into it, relaxed, lit a cigarette. He knew immediately that he’d done the wrong thing. It was the first relaxed moment he’d had all day, and it all came out—all the stress, all the vital systems too highly peaked for too damn long, all the small physical damages overlooked and awaiting their proper share of attention.

  He was bushed.

  His stomach growled and clutched at its neglect.

  Overused and abused arms and legs ached. A dull throb was finding room to play at the back of his neck and along the base of the skull. Hot little twinges told of raw places in the flesh of his chest and shoulders.

  In that moment of self-awareness, he also found a new awareness of the girl. She didn’t look her thirty-two years, except where her mad showed through. She was wearing a frilly pink bedjacket with silk roses closing the front of it … and she looked great. Bolan was reminded once again that Italian women are among the world’s most beautiful.

  She switched off the television with a jerk and turned to the unbidden visitor with a sigh. “Did you come in here just to stare holes through me?” she asked him.

  He replied, “No. I came in to relax a moment with the pretty lady who plays a hell of a mean piano.”

  She looked flustered, then smiled and told him, “You look tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “Want a drink?”

  He shook his head. “That would lay me out for sure. Okay if I call you Phil?”

  She said, “Hear, hear. The man is asking, not telling.”

  “I played one of your records without asking, too. Sounded great. I’ll bet you could make a living out of that.”

  She said, “There’s another word to put in on Papa.”

  He told her, “No need to. Phil, you need to leave this house.”

  “I needed to leave this house ten years ago,” she replied in a flat voice. “Make that twenty.”

  “Shut up, I’m serious.”

  She blinked oversized eyes at him several times, then told him, “We really are in trouble, then.”

  “You know it.”

  “What’s going on? Who are you? Where is—?”

  He cut in with, “Hell is going on. Who I am isn’t important. What I want is. I want you out of here. Tonight.”

  Her eyes inspected the blank television screen for a moment before she replied, “It’s not much, but it’s home. The only home I have. I’m not leaving it.”

  “Grow up,” he said tiredly. “And get out.”

  They were his parting words. He left her with perplexity and silent curiosity surging across that pretty face. He went out of there.

  The house captain nodded to him from the little alcove which led to the Don’s bedroom. Bolan went down there and asked the guy, “What time is it?”

  “It’s eight, uh, seventeen.”

  “At ten seventeen you make sure I’m on my feet and wide awake,” Bolan commanded.

  “Yessir. Where will you be?”

  “Where will an empty bed be?”

  The captain smiled and pointed to a door halfway along the hall. “There’s one in there.”

  “Then, that’s where I’ll be,” Bolan told him, and went there.

  The spare bedroom smelled musty and long unused. A small bath adjoined. The furnishings were simple but adequate—clean. Bolan opened the lone window and brought fresh air inside, then leaned out to orient himself. It was a back room, but angled to the regular lines of the house. The carport was directly below at ninty degrees. He could see the north and west walls from the window, now and then a moving shadow as yardmen patrolled.

  What, he wondered, the hell was he doing here?

  He was, he answered himself with a tired sigh, preparing to take a shower and lie down for a nap in the enemy’s camp.

  Standing in, he darkly reflected, for a lump of clay that was slowly turning to dust in the trunk of that car down there.

  And standing out, like a clay pigeon, for the first thing that came in off the numbers.

  And for what?

  It was all looking so damn hopeless. Not the battle, but the war.

  The interrogation of Frank the Kid was responsible for Bolan’s dark mood. If it hadn’t been wild ravings, not merely booze talk, then the American underworld was setting up a massive transfusion of “new blood” for itself.

  According to Frank, a guy called Don Cafu—in the Sicilian province of Agrigento—was conscripting armies and offering them as a package deal on an open market, with a going rate of one thousand American dollars per day per gradigghia.

  On an annual basis, that could tote up to quite a sum. Considering the fantastic profits from organized crime, however, a 365 thou’ annual investment for “security” would be peanuts to most bosses.

  And just look at all the peace of mind those peanuts could buy!

  Dammit! He had to stop that.

  But how?

  The answer seemed to lie at his finger tips, all about him. He had to stop, first, the Angeletti experiment in imported armies. If he lived beyond that, then … well, Bolan had learned to take it one fight at a time, day by day, heartbeat by heartbeat.

  The war he had to win and keep winning was the war of right here and now.

  But … right here and now he was running quickly out of gas and he was preparing to lie down in the valley of the shadow of death, in the presence of his enemies.

  Chapter 18/ The New Deck

  He was nude from the waist up, a sheet pulled up over his trousers and riding the hips, the Browning auto in his right fist and nuzzling the thigh beneath the sheet.

  The eyes were half-closed and he appeared to be asleep, the respiration slow and even, body relaxed; actually he was in that light stage of consciousness which he referred to as “combat sleep”—hovering in complete physic
al and mental relaxation, the intellect submerged, but some animal edge of mind alert and aware of the world about him.

  He knew when the door opened and he sensed the presence beside the bed.

  The eyes flicked full open and the Browning’s saftey clicked free at the same instant; otherwise he had not moved.

  Philippa reacted as though he had sat bolt upright and yelled at her, however. She rebounded a couple of backward steps and gasped something silly. “I—I thought you were awake,” she said, as though she’d come in and found him sound asleep and oblivious to her presence.

  Her eyes fled to the lighted lamp at the other side of the bed as she amended the statement. “I mean, when I first came in.”

  She was dressed for going, in a clingy knit pants suit with hugely flared legs. A floppy hat was perched atop her head and she was holding a cosmetic travel case.

  Bolan had still not moved; he did so now, stowing the Browning in the leather which hung on the bedpost at his right shoulder and glancing at his watch. The time was nine-five. He remained on the bed and told her, “You’re leaving—good.”

  Philippa the Woman was staring at the blue blotches across his torso and upper arms. She perched tensely on the edge of the bed and asked him, “How many cattle were in the stampede?”

  He growled, “What stampede?”

  “The one that stomped all over that lovely body.”

  She would have never believed the truth even if he’d been inclined to give it to her. He grinned sourly and told her, “Little accident. Looks worse than it feels.”

  “The captain told me who you are. Guess I should have known.” She sighed. “Funny. I ran across two truly impressive men today. One I shot at. The other I threw a vase at.” She smiled and wrinkled her nose. “Story of my life.”

  “Maybe things are looking up,” he murmured. “Right outside these walls I’ll bet you’ll find piles of impressive men.”

  “Well … I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For trying to conk you.”

  He said, “Apology noted and accepted.”

  She moved a hand onto the bare chest and lightly explored the universe’s bruises with careful finger tips. The exploration paused here and there at some little red lumps which seemed to stand apart from the other discolorations. An indefinable emotion momentarily clouded those bright eyes and she told him, “Frank got mad at me once when I was a little girl—oh, lots of times—but once he grabbed up his air rifle and let me have it, three times right across my tummy. The B-B’s made marks on me just like these.” She encircled one of the red lumps on Bolan’s chest. “Has someone been shooting at you with an air rifle?”

  Bolan knew what was bothering her—and he knew, suddenly, that she was the one who’d unloaded the shotgun at him from that upstairs window at the Emperor’s.

  He told her, “Shotgun pellets make the same mark if they don’t penetrate. I know. I was a kid once, too.” He forced a laugh and managed to make it sound real. “I’ve had a lot of buckshot picked out of my tail.”

  “Yes, that’s what it looks like,” she said, frowning.

  He asked her, hoping to change the subject, “Did you come in to say good-bye, or what?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him, the wounds apparently forgotten, and replied, “Or what. Captain tells me you’ll have to okay my release. At the gate. No one comes or goes without your approval. My, how important you are!”

  He said, “Oh,” and slid out the back side of the bed to perch in the open window. He called down, “Sammy!”

  He heard the word being passed across the grounds. Presently the yard boss was standing beneath the window, gazing up at him. He told the guy, “Miss Angeletti is going out. It’s okay.”

  “Okay. Hey, I was just coming in to tell you. Three cars of boys are out there. Say they were sent. Do I let them in?”

  Bolan replied, “Not yet.” He turned to the woman and told her, “You’d better truck. That hell I mentioned just showed up.”

  Then he instructed the yard boss, “Get it on up here. Quick!”

  Philippa was at the doorway and moving when he pulled his head back inside. He called after her, “Stay gone awhile!”

  Her voice, half-angered, floated back from the hallway, “I’m never coming back.”

  Bolan snatched up his shirt, muttered, “Good for you,” and hurriedly dressed. The brief rest had helped. The danger of the unknown which awaited at that gate helped much more, and the Executioner was now all systems go.

  He was snugging into the gun-leather when Sammy, the yard boss, huffed into the room. Bolan pushed him back into the hall, telling him, “Come on.”

  The house captain was helping Philippa with some luggage. Bolan ordered him to “See her clear to the gate and the hell out of here!” Then he and Sammy barged into the Don’s bedroom.

  It looked like a hospital room and smelled like one. The bedside table was littered with medicines and illuminated by a reddish nightlight. The old man was propped up in a bed which could be elevated at either end. He was sleeping with shuddering snores.

  The eyes flipped open at Bolan’s touch, however, and the voice sounded alert and knowing as the Don asked, “What’s up?”

  “Those delegations are standing at the gate,” Bolan reported. “Three carloads.”

  “So I thought you were handling it.”

  “We weren’t expecting them here tonight. Not here. I don’t know for sure just who is out there and I don’t know for sure if they’ll listen to me. How do you feel about fifty-fifty risks?”

  “Fifty-fifty is sucker’s odds,” the old man said.

  “Right.”

  “But … Johnny, I don’t want no gunfights around here if we can help it.”

  “My feelings exactly,” Bolan truthfully replied. “The cops would love to pounce in here and haul us all off to jail. We have to handle it without a fight. You want to risk that?”

  “I’m getting too old to risk anything, Johnny. What do you suggest?”

  “Well … I always believed in facing one crisis at a time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look … Steven … we both know why those boys are here. I don’t think they’ll listen to me. I don’t think they’ll even know me. But what I have to suggest is … well, it’s really beyond my authority.”

  “You’re backing off!” the old man sneered.

  “The hell I am. I’m just telling you where I stand. Sammy here is your boy, not mine. I can’t tell him to let those cars in one at a time and to take those crews down to the basement one at a time. I can’t tell him to—”

  Angeletti stopped the “suggestion” with a wave of the hand. “We know how to handle it,” he snapped. “Sammy!”

  “Yessir, I’m right here.”

  “You’re in charge of this. You remember how we handled the German boys.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Okay. You put a couple of boys down there in the pits, with choppers. Unscrew the light bulbs back there so it’s dark when you turn the other lights on.”

  Bolan/Cavaretta suggested, “You’ll want to use a Judas goat.”

  “Right,” the old man agreed. “Use one of your smallest boys, a boy who can fall into that trench on the side.”

  Bolan said, “You also need to make them think you’re still dumb. But you’re taking no chances. You know? Crazy things have been happening around here and you want them inside—one car at a time. Now, they won’t surrender their hardware, we all know that. But we don’t want any gun play that’s going to be heard. You’re getting ’em back to the carports, then you’re taking them inside for a drink. Only you take them downstairs; that’s where the meeting is. You know?”

  Sammy the yard boss knew. He went out, grim-lipped and ready to do-or-die for his Capo.

  Bolan told Sammy’s Capo: “That’s a hell of a boy you’ve got there.”

  “The very best,” Angeletti agreed. “He’s done this before.
He knows how. You know what this means though, Johnny. It’s a war.”

  That was, Bolan darkly reflected, precisely what it was.

  With the enemy engaging itself.

  Chapter 19/ The Count

  Bolan waited upstairs until the house captain returned from his errand with the departing bambina; then he grabbed the guy and ordered him to awaken Frank.

  “Keep him up here out of the way, though,” Bolan added. “And sober him up. I don’t care what you have to do. Dunk him in the bathtub, beat the shit out of him, I don’t care. But get him sober.”

  The look in the captain’s eyes indicated that he would relish that assignment. He went happily into the Kid’s room and Bolan returned to the bedroom he’d used, picked up the tinted-lens glasses he’d worn earlier that evening, and went down the stairs in his shirtsleeves—the shoulder/chest rig with the Browning on open display.

  He went to the library to rummage for cigarettes, found an open pack of Marlboro’s on the bar, lit one and went on to the kitchen.

  There he found hard bread and cheese and the remnants of the milk he’d sampled earlier. As he fed biological demands of his body, his mind dwelt on different food.

  It was very clear in his mind … that scene below. The visiting gun crews would be led down the stairs, through the ready room down there, and into the pistol range.

  The “Judas goat” would be chattering at them as he brought them in for slaughter, joking or wisecracking about the super-security of this crazy night in Philadelphia. He would flip on the lights and make a dive for cover as the heavy door banged shut behind them.

  At that instant, before the victims could even have a clear idea of where they were, two or three submachine guns would open up from the target pits back there in the darkness. That soundproofed room would be filled with a withering hail of death on the wing, and another group of strutters from the hall of horrors would find the curtain ringing down on their final performance before the footlights of the House of Mafia—and they would die as they had lived, angrily, profanely, stupidly.

  Then the Judas goat would brush himself off, help conceal the bloodied carcasses of his former amici, and strut up to bring in another troupe.