He stared down at his suit, frowning at the blood stains, then went belowdecks. He found a suit in Pallonatti's cabin and changed into it. It was much too big, but at least it wouldn't get him arrested. Quickly he rifled the cabin, pocketing several thousand in cash. After satisfying himself that there was nothing left worth taking, he went back up on deck and lit another cigarette.
The kid came charging up the ladder minutes later, stumbling onto the deck, his pants wet to the knees. "Oh man!" he yelled. "I pried some boards loose and the whole damned ocean started to pour in. Let's get the hell out!"
Vic tossed his butt over the side to sizzle in the dark waters, then climbed into the dinghy. Tony hurried in, too, rocking the little boat and nearly capsizing it.
The motor started easily. As they putted off toward the Miami shore a couple of miles in the distance, the yacht was already riding low in the water. They passed the redhead clinging desperately to her life preserver, their wake nearly taking her under.
Vic turned back once to look at the yacht. It was submerged except for the upper deck and part of the prow, tilted crazily at a forty-five-degree angle. Jughead's big, white-shirted belly stood out like a medicine ball under the bright quarter moon. In another few minutes everything had sunk.
True to his fears, Tony's upset stomach finally got the better of him. As Tony heaved over the side, Vic looked with disdain at Pallonatti's ugly, baggy suit. "That reminds me," he said. "As soon as we call the old man, you're replacing the suit you ruined."
* * *
Benito Villani sat at the table in his small kitchen, a cigarette stuck between his fingers, the phone to his ear. It was the news he'd been afraid he'd hear. "Yeah, Vic... yeah. I understand. There wasn't anything you could do."
A bottle of Chianti stood on the table, halfful tumblers set before Villani and the man who sat across from him. The room smelled of garlic and baking bread. In a small alcove in the wall was a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a picture of Pope Pius XII blessing a much younger Villani hung in a cracked frame.
"No...I don't want you hangin' around down there," Villani said, taking a small sip of wine, drawing it out, savoring the one glass a day he was allowed. "You get a plane back in the morning. I got more work for you. Yeah, Vic. You done just fine. Ciao."
He hung up the phone slowly and looked at the man across from him. "You was right. Jughead, he didn't know nothin'."
"I can guarantee you the bodies of the other four," the man said.
Villani stared at him thoughtfully for a minute. "Even Old Sam?"
"Especially Old Sam. Do we have a deal?"
"You offer me salvation," Villani said. "My Rocco's in Joliet for a hundred and fifty years. Ricci's dead. Tomas... dead. I've outlived everybody and I got nobody to take care of the family business."
"You've got me."
"You fill my vendetta. You take care of these traitors to the blood and what's mine is yours." Villani finished his wine. "The other families will pay, too. They stand to lose just as much as me. I'm old and tired, but I still got some power. It's yours just as soon as I see that Old Sam is livin' with the fishes."
The man grabbed Ben Villani's brown withered hand and brought it to his lips, kissed it. "I swear to you on my life that your vendetta will be carried out."
The old man's lower lip began to quiver. Tears came to his eyes, but did not fall. "My boy," he said. "My boy."
1
Mack Bolan sat watching Rocco Villani's muscled back rising and falling as the man counted out pushups on the concrete floor of his cell.
"Ninety-three... ninety-four... ninety-five..."
Rocco was soaked with sweat, his biceps bunching up in small spasms with the effort. Bolan thought that if he had to live through this daily ritual many more times, he'd go insane.
"Ninety-six... ninety-seven..."
It was always the same, a hundred push-ups, then the posturing, then the boasting. Prison seemed to agree with the hood. He was around people he knew and understood, and his routine wasn't much different than it was on the outside — screw who you could, when you could, for whatever reason you could think of. It was Rocco Villani's idea of what life was supposed to be.
"Ninety-eight... ninety-nine... a hundred!"
The man jumped to his feet and hurried to the full-length mirror he'd installed at the back of the cell. He wanted to pose while his muscles were still tensed up.
"Yeah/1 he said with self-satisfaction, sliding from one imagined weight lifter's pose to the next. "Hard as a rock...that's the kid. Look, Belasko. Better than yesterday, right?"
"They broke the mold when they made you," Bolan replied, answering to his alias, Mike Belasko.
"You bet they did." Villani put his hands behind his head to make the muscles ripple. "I'll bet you I'm the toughest son of a bitch they got in this place. This damned hole's all mine and everybody knows it, too. Don't they?"
"They know it," Bolan said mechanically.
"Damn right they do," Villani said, walking back to his bunk to pick up a towel. He draped it over his shoulders and sat down, facing Bolan. "Yeah, the kid's still got it, the body of a twenty-year-old. You want to get a feel of one of these muscles?"
He offered an arm, but Bolan declined. "I'll take your word for it, Rocco."
The man made a face. "You're an odd one, Belasko, you know that?" he asked, not expecting an answer. "But I saw you taking care of yourself out in the yard and I know you've got guts. Old Rocco doesn't miss anything. I'm as sharp as a tack. You know how to keep your trap shut, too."
"Good way of staying out of trouble," Bolan replied.
Villani used the towel on his hair, fluffing it into a tangled mess that hung all over his face. "You know, I can use a man that knows how to keep his mouth shut and can take care of himself."
"Well, I hope you find one." Bolan stretched out on the bunk. He stared through the bars, watching other men in cages across the expanse of open courtyard of C Block. He was all tensed up inside, and he couldn't handle this much longer. How had he let himself get talked into this mess?
"You're a funny man," Villani said, snorting. "You know, I'm not going to be in here forever. When I get out, I'll be taking over the family business, if you know what I mean?"
"The only way you'll ever get out of here is with a can opener," Bolan answered. "Besides, I'm just here to get screwed in court with some more charges. Soon as that's over, I'm back at Folsom."
Villani got off his bunk to stare with dark eyes down at Bolan. "You don't get it, tough guy. My family'll never let me rot in here. We're connected. Hell, my pop lives about fifteen miles from here. He's not going to let me rot."
"From what I hear, your family's all busted up now, thanks to Old Sara."
Rocco spit loudly on the floor. "My pop's already taken care of Old Sam's capo," he said proudly. "And he'll get the rest of 'em, too. Then he'll spring me out of here..."
"How'd he manage that?" Bolan asked, sitting up and sliding his legs off the bed. "I heard all those guys were on witness protection."
"My pop's the best, Belasko," Villani said. Catching his reflection in the mirror, he began posturing again. "He came up with Luciano back in the old days. He can do anything."
Bolan stood and walked to the bars, grabbing the uncompromising metal. The time between supper and lights out was always the worst — cage time, he called it. He felt like an animal locked up with other animals. He watched a guard climbing the metal steps on the other side of the courtyard, then moving along the catwalk in their general direction. This was as good an opportunity as any. "Your pop's a liar. He can't crack witness protection," he told Villani. "Nobody can."
With angry strides Rocco crossed the cell to pull Bolan off the bars, but the big man slipped away from him. "Damn you!" Villani spit. "Don't say nothing bad about my pop. If I say he can crack witness protection, then he can do it."
"All right," Bolan said. "How?"
"I don't need to tell you nothing!"
>
"Because you know nothing," Bolan needled him. "You're just another cheap hood with a big mouth."
Rocco lunged at him, his oxlike face twisted in rage. Bolan sidestepped him, grabbing him by the hair and slamming him hard into his mirror. It smashed, the glass falling out in huge shards. Hurrying to the bars, Bolan turned and crouched, waiting.
Villani shook his head dumbly, blood flowing from a cut on the crown. He picked up a large sliver of glass and moved slowly forward.
"Hey!" Bolan called. "Hey! This clown's gone nuts inhere!"
Rocco charged, swinging out with the glass. Bolan ducked, then came up hard with a fist in the man's gut. To no avail — the push-ups had been doing their job.
"That's it!" came a voice from outside the bars, the guard, whom Bolan had seen earlier. "Move to opposite sides of the cell, right now!"
The man had removed his billy club and was reaching for his pass key.
"Screw you!" Rocco yelled, swinging out again.
This time Bolan grabbed the hand holding the glass and slammed it against the iron bar. Rocco used his other hand to pull savagely on Bolan's hair.
The guard was blowing his whistle, the other prisoners yelling and applauding, as Bolan came around hard with both fists. He clipped Rocco viciously on the side of the head, driving him back.
Before Villani could charge again, the door of the cell swung open. Several guards in uniform charged in, surrounding Bolan and knocked him to the floor. They cuffed his hands behind his back.
"You son of a bitch!" Rocco screamed. The two of them were dragged to their feet and out into the courtyard.
The captain of the guard, a gaunt man with a pale death's-head face, stood outside the cell, his hands behind his back and his jaw muscles working overtime. "Take them both to solitary," he ordered as the other inmates cheered loudly.
But Bolan wasn't taken to solitary. Both he and Rocco were dragged downstairs, but Rocco continued down the long hallway to solitary by himself. The guard captain put out a hand to stop Bolan before he could enter the bars to that block. "Take him to the warden," he told the guards escorting Bolan.
They led him off the other way then, outside the cell block and across the yard to the executive offices, where he was deposited unceremoniously in front of a door marked: Justin Tremaine, Director. The warden.
One of the two guards who held him by the arms knocked lightly on the door. Tremaine himself came to answer it.
"This is the one you wanted," the guard said. "We had to break him out of a fight with one of the other prisoners to get him here."
"Thank you," Warden Tremaine said, opening his door wide. "You can leave him with me."
"Watch this one," the guard said. "He's a troublemaker deluxe."
"Take the cuffs off him." The guards protested but did as they were told.
Warden Tremaine ushered Bolan into his office. It was small, with everything neat and in its place. Strictly business, with no clutter, no warmth anywhere. Another man was standing with his back to the room, staring out the large window that faced onto the yard and the famous high cement walls that surrounded Joliet.
"Thanks," Bolan said as he tried to rub some feeling back into his wrists. "They cut off my circulation."
"A troublemaker deluxe," the man at the window said, chuckling. Then he turned around.
"Hal!" Bolan said. "I was beginning to think you decided to leave me here."
Hal Brognola crossed the room and embraced Bolan warmly, but the Executioner was slow to return the warmth. Brognola pulled back and looked at him through narrowed eyes. "You okay?"
"I'm not going back in there," Bolan said without preamble, "so don't ask."
"That rough?"
Bolan shook it off. "I can take care of myself, you know that. It was more... sickening than anything."
As if in response to his words, Warden Tremaine picked up a white paper bag from his desk and tossed it to Bolan.
"Put those on while you tell me about it," Brognola said.
The bag contained Bolan's clothes, the most welcome sight the big man had seen in quite some time. He quickly stripped off his blue cotton shirt and prison jeans and began getting into his own stuff. He'd have rather had a hot shower first, but he'd take what he could get.
"Anything from Rocco?" Brognola asked.
"Nothing he didn't fantasize," Bolan answered, pulling into a pair of slacks. "I came at it from fifty different angles, from friendship to confrontation, but I never got any farther than Rocco's insistence that his old man put the hit on Pallonatti. If Old Sam has cracked witness protection, Rocco doesn't know about it."
He picked the bright knit shirt out of his bag and slipped it over his head.
"Could he have just been playing it close to the vest?" Brognola asked.
"Absolutely not."
"You seem so positive."
Bolan nodded to the small washroom just off the office. "You mind?" he asked the warden, pointing to the taps.
"Be my guest."
Bolan turned on the taps and began washing his hands, talking to the big Fed through the open doorway. "Rocco's just a dumb ox, Hal," he said. "His idea of an intellectual pursuit is trying to figure out how to turn on the television in the rec room. I figure his father didn't get to be where he is without having a few smarts of his own, so I don't think he'd trust Rocco with any important information."
"Did you get anything else out of him?"
Bolan splashed his face, then dried off. "Yeah. For what it's worth, I do believe him, that Old Sam engineered the hit. But I think it might have been blind luck. You know, somebody accidentally spotted Jughead or something. He broke his own cover. Any leads on the body yet?"
"We're not sure," Brognola replied. "We traced him from his new home in Denver to Miami Beach, but there we lost the trail. Last week the bodies of a couple of prostitutes washed up on the beach in south Miami, and friends of theirs said they left one night about the same time Jughead disappeared, saying they were going boating with a 'sugar daddy.' We're still checking that out."
Bolan pulled a light jacket out of the bag of personal effects and slipped it on. Tremaine handed him another package containing his pocket change, wallet and wristwatch.
"Come on, Hal, let's get out of here. I want to get some real food." Bolan opened his wallet and checked its contents. "Your treat."
* * *
The waitress set a rib-eye steak in front of Bolan. It crowded the two cheeseburgers and the club sandwich that were already there. Then the woman went away, shaking her head.
Brognola scooted sideways in the diner booth and put a leg up on the upholstered bench. "She sure is looking at you funny."
Bolan nodded, cutting into the steak. "In addition to the obvious..." he pointed to the tableful of food "...she knows I'm eating like a convict, and is probably wondering whether I can pay for the food. This place is just a mile from the prison."
"Um." Brognola picked up his cup. He had ordered no food for himself, only coffee. While he sipped at it, his eyes drifted out the dirty plate-glass window of the restaurant to the busy stretch of state Highway 55 that rolled past them.
Bolan had noticed that something was on Brognola's mind while they were talking at the prison. He was tired of waiting for him to come around to it on his own. "You might as well get it out," he said, after swallowing a mouthful of steak. "You're going to give me indigestion if you keep me in suspense."
Brognola frowned and sat up straight, putting down his coffee. "I need to ask you a favor," he said, avoiding Bolan's eyes.
"Well, I hope it's a simple one." Bolan reached for his own coffee. "You pretty well filled your dance card by asking me to go to prison."
"No more prisons, I promise."
"Let me be more specific," Bolan said. "No more on this Pallonatti thing. I've had it up to..."
"You know how important this is," Brognola interrupted. "This investigation has gone on for years. We're probably just weeks away from handin
g down major indictments."
"Look, I went into the prison for you and lived side by side with that slimeball for two weeks. You know how I feel about these things."
"Striker, I..."
"Wait a minute." Bolan held up a hand, stopping him. "Let me finish. I've wanted to kill that swaggering bastard every minute of the past two weeks, but I held myself back. I understand that you want to prosecute and need the Giancarlos for your case, but don't ask me to have anything to do with it. Witness protection on this level goes against anything I believe in. Besides, I told you that it was a fluke that Jughead got hit, not a conspiracy."
"We can't afford to take that chance," Brognola replied.
Bolan looked down at his food, his appetite rapidly fading. "You might as well say everything that's on your mind."
The Fed took a breath, reaching out for a quarter of Bolan's club sandwich. "Do you mind?"
Bolan shook his head. "I'm not hungry anymore, anyway."
Brognola bit into the sandwich as if he hadn't eaten for a week. "Let me explain something to you," he said. "This investigation has been going on for more than four years, has run a $35 million tab up on the taxpayer and has tied up literally thousands of man-hours. Why? Because we can root them out this time. With the cooperation of the Giancarlos we can dig out the rest of them, wipe out the whole Chicago Mob."
"I have a way of wiping out the Mob, too," Bolan replied. "And it doesn't cost $35 million taxpayer dollars or tie up many manhours. And with my system, they don't come back to cause trouble anymore."
The waitress walked up with dessert, a hot fudge sundae in a tall glass. Bolan put a hand to his stomach and grimaced.
"Put it right here," Brognola said, pushing his coffee cup aside and smiling broadly as the woman set the sundae down. With his fingers he plucked the maraschino cherry from the top of the mound of whipped cream.
The Killing Urge Page 2
