Chicago Wipeout

by Don Pendleton

  The Stein intelligence bothered Bolan. Oh, the mob was well represented in those notes, okay—they were just as busy in Chicago as anywhere, manipulating and looting and raping their human environment with all the gusto characteristic of Mafia entrenchment everywhere.

  But … Bolan could not shake the growing conviction that the mob’s position at Chicago was a unique one. This was a “made” city, yes, but the Cosa Nostra had not made it. They were simply a part of the fix and, Bolan suspected, a relatively small part. Actually, it seemed, the city had “made” the mob, not vice versa. The iron grip of power that held this town in virtual slavery did not appear as a typical exercise in Mafia domination. Mafiosi were not astute politicians, they did not have the finesse nor even the interest required for the delicate maneuverings that kept a political machine functioning and self-perpetuating.

  When the mob really got their hooks into a town, they simply raped it, sucked it dry, and left it writhing in ruin. Like Reading, Pennsylvania, when the Philadelphia mob descended upon it. They bought practically the entire city administration, from the mayor on down, and cowed those they couldn’t buy. Before the local citizens could realize what was happening, this quiet heartland of the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside was transformed into the sin mecca of the Atlantic Seaboard, featuring the largest red-light district and the grandest gambling establishment in the East. The most active illegal still since the repeal of Prohibition was operated directly off the city water supply, municipal improvements slowed to a halt, industries began moving out, and the downtown area fell into ruin. The helpless and bewildered citizenry were not even aware of the leeches at their throats until it was too late to save the situation, and Reading was sucked dry before the feds could step in and put an end to the rape.

  So why hadn’t Chicago been sucked dry, if the mob had truly been in charge here for so many decades? The answer, in Bolan’s troubled mind, was that the mob was simply operating a franchise in this town. So okay. Who issued the franchise? Who was the actual “Mr. Big” of this fantastic empire of corruption and clout, an empire which—according to the Stein intelligence—was powerful enough already to dominate both political parties in some areas of the state, send handpicked men to Congress and to the legislature and city councils, install federal judges, and even strongly influence the national political organizations and conventions.

  Cosa di tutti Cosi, eh? Bolan smiled wryly to himself. It was a mere imitation, a second-generation blueprint. Chicago, it seemed, already had its own version of The Big Thing—and Chicago did not belong to the Cosa Nostra.

  The Executioner sighed regretfully and shook venal Chicago out of his thoughts. Somewhere he had read that “a people have the government they deserve.” Bolan would let the people of Chicago worry about Chicago—and maybe, he decided, people all over the country should start worrying about Chicago. His job was impossible enough as already laid out—and his war was with the Mafia, not with an entire American city and a political way of life.

  This shaking-out process helped. A little. It defined the battle-ground and put the enemy in better focus. Bolan did not now “want” The Big Four—he merely wanted the syndicate member of that cartel, “Don Gio” Giovanni. And he had very suddenly lost interest in many of the “nine names” he had requested of Leopold Stein. His guns would be tracking on the hierarchy of the syndicate itself. Let the wage-earning “pigeons” put down their own rotten labor bosses. Let the purchasing-power pigeons put down the gouging businessmen. And let the ballot-marking pigeons handle their own smelly garbage at the polls. All of that was something the people could do for themselves. It was a job for civilians. Bolan had a hot war to fight.

  The supper club known as Giovanni’s occupied a piece of ground which rightfully belonged to the people of Cook County. Some years earlier the county had acquired, at considerable expense, several sections of unimproved land in this sparsely settled neighborhood for development into a public park and golf course. A particularly choice piece in the northeast corner of this development provided access to the Des Plaines River, and the original park planning called for the construction of a water-recreation facility in that spot.

  Through some mysterious reasoning, it was later decided that the water-recreation plan was “unfeasible”—and, by an equally mysterious set of circumstances, the plot of parkland which fronted the river was “acquired” from the county by a recently incorporated firm identified as Club’s Management, Inc. for the ostensible purpose of constructing and operating a public entertainment facility at that location.

  The “public entertainment facility” which emerged was, of course, Giovanni’s. No one could complain that the new club was not available to the general public. It was open to anyone who could wangle a table reservation and shell out an average of fifty dollars per head for an evening’s entertainment. Patrons were required to observe a strict “dress code” and the joint was “first class” all the way—from the tie-and-tail waiters and headline entertainers in the dining room to the black-tie dealers and table men in the private back room casino.

  Just south of Gio’s stolen grounds lay the promised but only half-completed (nine holes) public golf course; directly west and across a specially constructed road lay the park proper, covering eight hundred and sixty acres of mostly unusable and therefore unused scrubland. With the river at his back, Don Gio had a rather secluded setting for his night time playground. Only to the north did he have neighbors, a straggling line of upper middle class “estate-ettes” which Don Giovanni contemptuously referred to as “the wealthy man’s ghetto”—and which were suitably screened from Giovanni’s place by a thick stand of timber.

  The club itself was an imposing structure of American colonial architecture which, under standard construction procedures, would have cost perhaps a million dollars to build and outfit. It had not cost Arturo Giovanni nearly so much. Manipulation of building-trades unions and outright ownership of building materials and decorating firms could work economic miracles, and Don Gio was not a man to overlook such important details of smart business procedures. He would pay fifty dollars for a cigar without batting an eyelash, but “give a crummy plumber ten dollars an hour—never!”

  Yes, it was an imposing joint—and Mack Bolan was also a man to not overlook important details. The road frontage covered about fifteen hundred feet, bounded by an iron fence and flashily broken at dead-center by an arched gateway and stone gateposts bearing huge coats-of-arms. The county plot-plan showed a triangular-like ground layout, with about three hundred feet of river frontage on the backside of the property. The plot was roughly one thousand feet deep. Bolan estimated the placement of the building at about a five hundred-foot recess into the grounds, reached by an oval-shaped drive from the main road. The joint was ablaze with lights when Bolan arrived on the scene, as were the grounds in certain areas—probably parking lots—flanking to either side.

  He would have liked to had a daylight recon of the joint. He knew how deceptive could be the facades of the night, and especially on a night such as this one. The precipitation of the storm front had now degenerated to a light freezing drizzle. Visibility was fair but the ground was a mess of treacherous snow drifts overlain with ice; the roadway itself had incurred very little traffic and evidently no attention whatever from county road crews—not within the past few hours, anyway.

  Huddled in a bumper-to-bumper lineup just below the arched entranceway stood a procession of limousines—“crew wagons”—with a Chicago Police Department cruiser in the tail position. Clouds of vapor were rising from twenty or so idling engines and all but the lead vehicle were displaying parking lights; the car in front had headlamps at full blaze. The police cruiser’s roof beacon was flashing brilliantly in the falling mist.

  Bolan’s war-wagon sported a roof flasher, also—the yellow-light type specified for unofficial emergency vehicles. He pulled alongside the cruiser and slid across the seat for a window-consultation with the law.

  The d
oor glass of the cruiser descended halfway and Bolan boomed over, “What—is the road out up there?”

  “Naw it’s all right,” was the reply. “Go on by.”

  “Kinda late at night for a funeral procession, isn’t it?”

  “Aw, it’s just a VIP party for Giovanni’s. You know the routine.”

  Bolan laughed. “Yeah, I know. How ’bout getting an escort for the Edison Company? What a hell of a night, eh?”

  “Yeh. I guess the ice is playing hell with the lines, eh?”

  The cop was trying to get a better look at the van, which could not have been better disguised by deliberate intent, covered as it was with frozen-on splatterings of dirtied snow from the Chicago streets.

  Bolan was replying, “Yeah, and I had to draw no-man’s-land out here to patrol. What’s up on the other side of this joint here?”

  “Damn if I know,” the officer told the executioner. “This isn’t exactly my beat either.”

  Bolan chuckled, then said, “Well, I guess I’ll find out the hard way,” returned to his place behind the wheel, and sent the van into a cautious advance along the line of cars.

  The windows of the crew wagons were frosted over on the inside, and only here and there had anyone bothered to wipe away the condensed moisture. But Bolan was head-counting on the basis of normal complements per car—two men in front, two in the jump seats, three in the rear—total seven men including the wheelman times twenty cars—and, yes, it was an impressive force.

  The lead car was a crew wagon, not a police cruiser. Bolan speculated that someone, probably one of Vecci’s lieutenants, had accompanied Captain Hamilton inside the joint to smooth the way for the grand entry of Vecci’s party. And Bolan was thinking that Joliet Jake was behaving much more optimistically than Bolan himself would under similiar circumstances. If there was anything a ranking Mafioso feared more than prison or death, it was ambitious competition within his own family group. The mob was forever being rocked from within by unscrupulous maneuverings and greedy intrigue, contrary to all the romantic ideals of solidarity and “brotherhood” espoused by the organization. Any “boss” had earned the name and arrived at that high station by virtue of his own expertise in treachery and double-dealing; he therefore lived in continual suspicion of those around him who had not yet arrived at that level of leadership, and particularly feared those in higher positions who might be inclined to “bring up” someone in direct competition with himself.

  So, yes, anyone from the Loop who was crashing that conclave at Giovanni’s was on a delicate mission indeed—and Bolan himself was not out here upon any idle business. Not at all. The Executioner had come to join the party … and to see that negotiations proceeded favorably.

  Favorably, that is, for the Chicago wipe-out.

  13: WAR PARTY

  Bolan crept on past the Mafia hardsite, stopping twice during the transit to leave the van and let the enemy see him eyeballing the power lines running past the property. During the last such “inspection,” a voice called over to him from the darkness beyond the iron fencing: “Hey Mac—watcha doing?”

  “Checking the cables,” Bolan called back casually. “They’re getting pretty heavy with ice.”

  “Oh, yeah, good idea.”

  Bolan stood in the middle of the road and lit a cigarette.

  “Well, how do they look?”

  Bolan told the chatty hardman, “I’ve seen better. But I guess they’ll make it okay if the wind’ll just stay down.”

  “Oh yeah, that could play hell, couldn’t it.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah.”

  The guy was half-frozen, if the shivers in his voice were any indication. Bolan wondered how many more were patrolling those grounds, and how long they were required to stay out in that frigid weather. It could make a difference in the alertness and efficiency of the defending force; half-frozen warriors weren’t worth a hell of a lot.

  Casually, Bolan told the guy, “I got some hot coffee in th’ truck. You sound like you need some.”

  “Christ, I’d give ten bucks for some. Make it twenty.”

  Bolan chuckled and said, “Just a minute,” and went into the van. He emerged with a tall thermos and carried it to the fence. The man who stepped out of the night to join him there wore a long black topcoat, a snap-brim hat pulled low, and a wool muffler wrapped about his face. The muffler was frozen stiff and the guy’s eyes looked like two burnt holes in a blanket.

  Bolan poured the coffee and thrust the little plastic cup through the bars of the fence. The hands which gratefully accepted it were ungloved and stiff with cold.

  Sympathetically, Bolan said, “Tough damn night to be out, eh. Are you guarding this joint or something?”

  The hardman replied, “Yeah.” He sipped the heated stimulant and added, “Christ, you’re a life saver. I wasn’t kidding. I’ll give you twenty bucks for this.”

  “Forget it,” Bolan replied. “Do they make you stand out here all damn night?”

  “It’s startin’ to look that way,” the guy chattered. “Uh, you got a heater in that truck, huh?”

  “You bet. And I’m wearin’ three layers of thermal clothes too.”

  “What’s that thermal?”

  “Like insulation. Keeps the body heat in, the cold out. I’m not cold at all, not much, just my face. My face feels like it’s dead.”

  “Well I’m going to tell these boys about that thermal, that sounds like the cat’s nuts on a night like this.”

  “You got other guys standin’ around in there freezin’ their asses?”

  “Yeah. You say your face is dead, listen my ass and everything that goes with it is dead. I bet I’m shriveled up to a half a inch. I bet if I pissed right now it would spray all inside my stomach.”

  Bolan laughed and the hardman laughed and a voice from the darkness called out, “Milly, what th’ hell’re you doing?”

  The guy swiveled about and called back, “Just checkin’ things out over here.”

  “Well it’s just the power guy. Get on back over here.”

  The shivering hardman quickly finished the coffee and passed the cup back through the fence. “Thanks,” he said. “You’ll never know how much I needed that.” Then he thrashed off through the snow and disappeared.

  Bolan returned to the war-wagon and pondered his new intelligence. They had sentries, and obviously a corporal of the guard who periodically checked them. Those sentires had been out there quite awhile, and were suffering—or at least some of them were. Also, the word had passed quickly along the front about the presence of “the power guy.”

  Okay, it was enough for starters. Bolan eased the van along until he found the power pole he sought, then he stepped into his munitions lab and began molding a strip of plastic explosive. This he wrapped about his neck and carefully selected two detonators and shoved them into a pocket of the jumpsuit.

  Pretty soon everyone in that joint would be made aware of the presence of “the power guy.” Yeah, pretty damn soon now.

  Captain Hamilton stood silently in the background and kept himself clear of the conversation between Pops Spanno, Charles Drago, and Benny Rocco. It was not a discussion to commit one’s self to needlessly.

  Spanno was saying, “Now look, Charlie, you’re the one calling around and inviting everybody out. Okay, so we come out. Now you’re saying …”

  “It’s not Charlie doing the saying,” Rocco explained patiently. “Don Gio says it don’t look good, havin’ all these boys mobbed up out here this way. Charlie meant well when he put out that invite, but hell we already got a couple hundred boys out here, Pops.”

  “You got that many? I didn’t see that many boys out here, Benny.”

  “You don’t have to see them,” Drago said. “The point is, Jake knows he’s always welcome here, he don’t even need an invitation. If he wants to come in, all he has to do is come in. But he’s not bringing any hundred boys in here with him, and that’s all there is to that.”

  “Well I dun
no,” Spanno replied quietly. “I don’t think Jake will take it right, being treated like a poor cousin or something. You call around and invite everybody out. So Jake, bein’ a good loyal brother, rounds up all the boys and makes sure they accept the invitation. Then when he gets out here, you’re saying send all those boys back home. I don’t think that’s right, and I don’t think Jake will take it right.”

  “I guess he’ll have to take it or leave it, Pops,” Rocco declared.

  “Just who th’ hell do you think you’re talkin’ about, punk?” Spanno said angrily. “That’s Jake Vecci sittin’ out there inna cold, waitin’ to hear that he’s welcome to come in with his party. He was a big man in this town when you was nothin’ but a gleam in your poppa’s eyes.”

  Larry Turk came in from the outside at just that moment, stamping the snow from his shoes. He growled, “Listen, Spanno. You go tell Jake that if he’s scared to come in here by hisself, then he must sure know something that we don’t. He can come in any time he likes, but he comes with no more than four cars. That’s all. And that’s all we’re going to say about it.”

  Turk walked on through the foyer and disappeared around a corner.

  “That sounds like the Christ hisself has spoke,” Spanno observed drily.

  “That’s about it, Pops,” Drago assured him.

  “Okay, I’ll go tell Jake. But I can’t guarantee how he’ll take it.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to run that risk,” Drago replied solemnly.

  Spanno wheeled angrily about, caught Hamilton’s eye, jerked his head toward the door, and went out.

  The Captain stepped quietly toward the others and said, “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but let’s understand something. I’m not part of it.”