“We’re happy to hear that, Ham,” Drago told him.
“I’m out here simply because Jake demanded an escort through town. He was afraid the traffic would be a mess, on account of the storm.” Benny Rocco said, “Well that is a head party he’s got out there, isn’t it?”
“I guess you could call it that,” Hamilton replied. “But I don’t know what it’s all about. Tell Don Gio, eh?”
“We’ll tell ’im,” Rocco said.
“I’m going back to town,” Hamilton pointedly informed them.
“Good idea,” Drago declared softly.
“Yeah, uh, thanks. See you boys around.”
The Captain took his leave and the two “youngbloods” grinned at each other and went off to find Larry Turk. Turk would get one hell of a big kick out of this.
Bolan laid in his plastics in a tight coil around the big cable carrying power into Giovanni’s, then he emplaced the detonators and returned quickly to the ground. A minute later his war-wagon was plowing along the neglected and largely non-existent river access road which ran through the stand of timber to the north of Giovanni’s.
The place had probably been used in years gone by to launch fishing boats into the river. The road simply widened into a turnaround area at the river’s edge and plunged right in. Running without lights, Bolan nearly plunged right in with it. The river was frozen-over now and covered with an accumulation of snow.
He stepped out of the van and carefully tested the ice with his own weight, then he went back inside and put on the gray topcoat over his jumpsuit. The Homburg would never do—he passed it by and selected a dark snapbrim and pulled it on at a rakish angle. He checked the Beretta and added another stack of spare clips to the special belt at his waist, then shouldered a Thompson sub and quickly moved out. He sure as hell wanted to be there when the party started.
Quietly Bolan made his way along the frozen surface of the river, hugging close to the shrubbery along the bank. His fingers caressed the little square box at his waist, the miniature radio transmitter which would trigger the detonators on that power line.
Yes, he had to be there when the frolic started.
In fact, he knew, he would probably have to be there to start that party.
Bolan was ready.
Both sides seemed to be ready.
It was about time for the enemy to engage itself.
14: GENTLE BUSINESS
Jake Vecci angrily declared, “Awright, dammit, I’m going in! What’d he say, four cars? Okay then, you listen. I want ten boys in every damn car, that’ll give us forty. I want the best we got, the very best. That means first of all the crew chiefs, all of ’em. Mario, I want you and Pops right at my side. And, remember, the best forty boys we got. The rest waits out here.”
“How long do they wait, Jake?” Meninghetti tiredly wanted to know.
“They wait until we get word back to them. Soon as I’ve got things smoothed out, I’ll send the word out here and they can go on back to town. But if they don’t get no word in say, half an hour—they better come in theirselves and see what’s what. On second thought … Pops, maybe you better stay with these outside boys. I don’t want to take all the brains inside with me.”
“Okay,” Spanno agreed, not at all disappointed.
“If you hear anything suspicious going on in there, you come a’running.”
“I will, Jake.”
“Awright. Mario, you go separate the men from the boys.”
Meninghetti took his troubled face away from there and trudged back along the line of vehicles, rousting everyone out into the cold and re-forming the head party into two sections.
Captain Hamilton told Vecci, “Well, I’ll be getting back to town.”
“What’s your big hurry?” the Loop boss sneered. “You afraid of—?”
“That’s right, I’m afraid,” Hamilton interrupted the tirade. “I have no business out here, the cars from my precinct have no business out here—and in fact, Jake, no man in his right mind has got any business out here tonight. Bolan is probably back there right now just chopping your whole territory into spaghetti. That’s where you ought to be, not out here on a—”
“Look who’s turned into the expert, handing out advice and all, the big bad kinky cop from Central. You make me wanta puke, Captain Hamilton. Go on back t’town and count your envelopes. And after you got ’em all counted up, then you sit down and try to remember what you was and what you had before Jake Vecci took you under his wing. Go on, Captain, get your dead ass outta here.”
Hamilton stifled his rage and flung himself back toward the cruiser. He climbed inside and told the patrolman, “Blow, man blow. And don’t look back.”
The Captain was already remembering what he’d been before Vecci sprung the fifteen hundred dollars for his first promotion, to Sergeant. He’d been a good honest cop, a guy who slept well at night and could look his kids square in the eyes without flinching. How do you tell a kid that even an honest cop will eventually buy himself a promotion, when that’s the only way there is. Yeah, he already remembered. He had never for a moment forgotten.
And as his driver swung the cruiser onto the roadway, during that split second that his headlamps raked the area, Captain Hamilton caught a glint of something in the misty darkness far across the road, over in the park area. Cars—lots of cars, official cars with bubblegum machines on top, moving silently through the darkness with all lights extinguished.
Hamilton whispered to his driver, “Jesus Christ, it’s a set! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
They got, pausing only for a moment to pass hurried instructions to the cruiser at the end of the procession. But it was to be a short run for the Captain and his two cruisers—less than a half mile—to the State Police barricade which at that very moment was being emplaced across the route of retreat.
Everyone, it seems, had accepted the party invitations.
Bolan was inside the grounds and strolling casually along a beaten path in the snow, the Thompson cradled in his arms.
Someone coughed just ahead. Bolan halted and lit a cigarette, then went on.
A figure materialized in the gloom, a guy with a shotgun, slowly marking time and trying to kick some blood into his feet. Bolan growled, “Hi. Stay with it there, tough.”
The sentry coughed again and replied, “What’s going on, anyways?”
Bolan told him, “Just keep your eyes open. Joliet Jake and a hundred Loopers are right now standin’ just outside.”
The guy had obviously wanted to say something else, but Bolan had passed on by without pause. He skirted the brightly lighted portico of the building and went on toward the gate, staying close to the drive. Hardmen were all about the place, leaning against trees, squatting in the snow in groups of four and five and conversing in hushed voices.
Only once was Bolan challenged, by another guy with a chopper who was walking along the drive toward the building.
The hardman said, “Hey, what’re you doing up here?”
Bolan pulled the hat lower over his eyes and replied, “Charlie sent me up. He wants to tell you something.”
“Charlie Drago?”
“Who else?”
“Well where’s he at?”
It sounded very much like the voice that had yanked coffee-loving “Milly” away from Bolan at the fence. Bolan told him, “Just go up to the front door, open it, and look inside. I’ll bet that’s right where he’s at.”
The hardman muttered, “Wise guy,” and went on toward the building.
Bolan had gone about as far as he wished to go. He was roughly midway between the club and the gate when a pair of headlamps began sweeping in through the arched entranceway. He found a tree with no one lurking about it, got the Thompson ready, and ran his fingers along the radio-detonator box at his waist.
They came in bumper-to-bumper, moving slowly along the oval drive in a leisurely procession. Bolan allowed the lead vehicle to pass his position, then his thumb found the
button on the control box.
A hardly noticeable flash from the roadway uprange was accompanied by a muffled popping sound, and Giovanni’s was instantly plunged into darkness—club, grounds, everywhere but for that oval drive as illumined by the headlamps of the Vecci vehicles.
The lead car almost stood on its nose in a sudden braking, and the other three plowed into the confused stop at gentle speed but with a horrendous crashing of metal upon metal. Someone over there was cursing with an almost studied precision and all four pairs of headlamps were instantly extinguished.
Bolan cut loose then with the chopper—upon the clubhouse, not upon the procession of vehicles—the heavy weapon sending a withering pattern winging in along the line of cars.
An immediate return fire descended from virtually every direction—not upon Bolan, but upon that stalled lineup of crew wagons.
Car doors were banging and grunting men were flinging themselves this way and that into the snow. Above the roar of gunfire could be heard Jake Vecci’s strident screams denouncing the treacherous bastards and exhorting his boys to “kill ’em, goddammit, kill every one of ’em!”
Volleys of gunfire were coming in from the road area now, and men on foot were pounding through the arched gateway and making a run for the little island of marooned vehicles halfway along the clubhouse drive.
Mack Bolan, the life of the party, was quickly fading into the background of action. He had come merely to open the affair, not to conduct it. The Executioner had more important business at hand.
One of the crew chiefs, a man known as Gussie Tate, had been wheeling the Vecci car as they entered that fateful driveway. Mario Meninghetti sat next to the wheelman; Joliet Jake next to him, at the door; seven soldiers in the two seats to the rear.
Vecci had just repeated his instructions to the wheelman to “Take it slow’n easy now, Gussie. Don’t make it look like we’re roaring in, see. We’re coming gently, on gentle business. You gotta keep psychology in mind when you’re working this kind of stuff.”
Tate had just replied, “Yessir”—and Meninghetti’s worried voice was about to make some comment when suddenly all the lights in the clubhouse were extinguished.
Instead of the comment he was working at, Meninghetti cried, “I knew it! Stop the goddam car, stop it!”
The loyal lieutenant was already shoving his boss toward the floor when Gussie Tate’s heavy foot overreacted on the brake pedal. This action greatly aided Meninghetti’s protective reaction—to such an extent, in fact, that Jake Vecci was literally flattened against the floorboards of the limousine. And then the other cars came in like so many derailed boxcars, backlashing the crowded and already unsettled occupants of the lead vehicle.
Joliet Jake was just lifting groggily off the floorboards, his eyes dazed and flaring, when the gutteral chops of the Thompson laced the night.
On this note, Vecci needed no instruction. He was out the door and rolling in the snow and screaming bloody murder, and all of his boys were piling out after him. And then all hell started cutting loose. Gussie Tate fell out of the car with a scream of pain and somebody very close to the subcapo began threshing around and turning the snow red with his blood.
Boys were leaping out of cars all along the line and everybody was shooting up the night, and Jake had to wonder if anyone even knew what the hell they were shooting at—Jake sure didn’t, and his own snub .38 was in his fist and roaring. He was yelling, “Get in there and wipe out them double-dealing bastards, I mean it! Kill ’em, dammit, kill every one of ’em!”
Then there was a hell of a racket coming from the street, and Vecci knew that Pops Spanno and the Cream of the Loop had joined the battle. He crept away on hands and knees, moving instinctively away from those cars and toward the smell of blood at that darkened clubhouse up ahead.
Jake Vecci, let God be his witness, was going to end a lifelong association with a once dear friend, and he was going to end it damn quick. With God as his witness, Jake Vecci was going to get hisself a Capo.
15: WIPEOUT
Don Gio was still talking with Pete the Hauler and four other bosses of the Chicago Council when Larry Turk rapped lightly on the door to the private office and waited for the door-lock release from the inside. The old man’s voice came through the intercom instead, with a testy, “What is it now?”
“Larry Turk, Mr. Giovanni. We need a parley, and right now.”
The buzzer sounded and Turk let himself in.
Pete Lavallo was glowering from “the hot seat”—a chair placed beside the desk of the big man.
Giovanni told Turk, “We’ve been giving Pete the bad news and talking over old times, Turk. He agrees completely that a year or two of desert air might do wonders for his sinus. Right, Pete?”
Lavallo growled, “Yeah, that’s right”—his eyes not leaving Turk for a moment.
“What I come in to tell you, Mr. Giovanni—this Jake Vecci is outside with about twenty carloads of boys. I told Charlie—”
“I thought you didn’t want to smear me up with this dirt, Turk,” the old man said quietly.
“Well, no sir, but …”
“But you want me to second your motions, eh?” Giovanni chuckled and turned to Lavallo. “Is your sinus really all that bad, Pete? Do you really think you need this desert thing?”
Lavallo spluttered, “Well I—if you say—what I mean is …”
“What d’you think, Turk?” Giovanni asked, still chuckling. “Do you think Pete really deserves all that rest?”
“Like I told you, sir,” Turk replied, very softly, “I didn’t mean that Pete should get hit so hard.”
“Yes, so you said.” Giovanni was giving Lavallo the hard gaze. Picking his words very carefully, he told him, “I been thinking—and we got a bad thing on our hands here, Pete. If you’d like to help out—you know—give the young men here the benefit of your years of experience—maybe … well, maybe we couldn’t spare you for that lazy life on the desert. Huh?”
“Just say the word, Gio,” Lavallo replied hopefully. “Anything that suits you is going to suit me also.”
“Joliet Jake has lost his mind.”
“Is that a fact?” Lavallo had, of course, been aware of the excitement in camp. “That’s a bad thing, for a man especially in Jake’s position.”
“That’s exactly what we’ve been thinking, Pete. He needs to be helped out of it. The young men here haven’t had too much experience with insanity in the family, Pete. And I think—and I bet you’ll back me up on this—I think an old head like Jake would rather get his help from another old head. Like you. You know? Instead of the indignity of, uh, getting it from one of the youngbloods.”
“Yes, I back you up on that a hundred percent, Gio,” Lavallo said.
The old Capo’s eyes moved among the silent group at his desk, taking a wordless poll. Heads nodded and eyes twitched in response to the unspoken question being placed before the council of Jake Vecci’s peers. Then Don Gio sighed and told Lavallo, “Well, okay Pete. If you’d like to stay around and give Jake the help he needs … then okay … I guess we’d have to cancel that desert vacation of yours.”
“If that’s what you want, Don Gio,” Pete the Hauler said solemnly.
“That is what we want, Golden Peter,” the old man assured him.
That simply, that quietly, was a contract let and accepted. An invisible death certificate had been drawn upon the atmosphere of that quiet room, and Jake Vecci’s name was inscribed upon it with a gentle sigh.
“Well, uh …” Lavallo’s eyes found Larry Turk. “You say he’s outside now?”
“We told him he could bring four cars in,” Turk replied. “He might come in, and he might not. Like Mr. Giovanni said, he’s lost his marbles. I don’t know what he’s going to do. But if he tries busting in here with a hundred boys behind him—well, we just can’t allow that. There’s no telling what he might take it in mind to do.”
“No, we couldn’t allow that,” Lavallo murmured. He go
t to his feet and told Larry Turk, “I guess I lost my gun back there at that motel. I wonder where I could get one.”
Turk produced a small revolver from his pocket and handed it over. “I b’lieve this is yours, Mr. Lavallo,” he said.
It was not, but Pete the Hauler replied, “You’re right, it is. Thanks. I guess I better go out and look around. I might bump into Jake and maybe talk some sense into him.”
Turk moved to the door with the dazed underboss. He called back, “Sorry to bother you, Don Gio, gentlemen. You won’t be disturbed again tonight, I promise you that.”
“You see that we’re not,” Giovanni replied. “We’ve got important business to go over. What, uh, do you hear on this boy Bolan?”
“Not a thing, sir. He’s been quiet as a mouse. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s halfway out of the country by now.”
“Well I guess we’ll see, won’t we,” the Capo replied.
Lavallo and Turk went out, and the door had hardly closed behind them when Lavallo snarled, “Thanks, Turk. Thanks for nothing!”
The lord high enforcer was grinning delightedly. He said, “Hell, all’s well that ends well, right?”
“Who says it’s ended well?” Lavallo complained. “I ain’t done no contract work in fifteen years or more. And I’ve known Jake Vecci for one hell of a long time. I don’t call it ending well. It never had to start.”
Turk’s grin faded. He growled, “I’m sorry you feel that way, ’specially since Jake is out to get your boss.”
Turk had spun away, and Lavallo was replying, “Well now wait a—” When the lights went out.
Turk froze in his tracks, and grunted, “What th’ hell?”
“Lights went out,” Lavallo informed him.
“Shit, I know that, but I—”
At that instant the peace of the night was broken by the loud rattling of a submachine gun, and this immediately punctuated by the explosive booms of other weapons.
Turk instinctively whirled back to the door to Giovanni’s sanctum, then realized that the electric lock and intercom would also be inoperative. He yelled through the door, “Sit tight, Gio, I’ll check it out!”
Chicago Wipeout Page 13
