Vegas Vendetta

by Don Pendleton

  Something flickered there in the big guy’s eyes, an interest maybe. Apostinni plunged on hopefully. “Yeah, that’s the big one coming up. The Caribbean carousel, I’ll bet you’ve heard a rumble or two on that.”

  “Back up and try it again,” Bolan said, the blaster still centered between Vito’s eyes.

  “Try what?”

  “What kind of carousel?”

  “You know, a merry-go-round, that kind of carousel.”

  The big guy’s eyes got speculative, and he said, “Something like the California carousel, eh?”

  “Nah, that’s just the L.A. end, that’s nothing. The Caribbean is where it’s all at now, Bolan, that’s the next big one.”

  “Okay. Keep trying.”

  “Hell, that’s all I know right now. They don’t let small fish like me in on details like that. But I’ve personally dispatched sixteen mil down there in the past year.”

  “Sixteen million dollars?”

  “That’s it. And that boodle you heisted out there tonight was headed for the same place.”

  “The Caribbean, eh.”

  The guy was interested. Apostinni’s heart got a bit stronger and he said, “Yeh. San Juan first. There it’s cut and sent around the carousel to the other islands.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know for what. I’m leveling with you, Bolan.”

  “Suppose I give you a reprieve, Vito. For twenty-four hours. Think you could come up with something a bit more worthwhile?”

  “Sure, I know I could.”

  “You’re small fish, remember?”

  “To live, Bolan, I can get big damn quick.”

  “Okay, you’ve bought yourself a day, Vito. Honor the deal and I’ll make it a full pardon.”

  Apostinni could hardly believe it. The guy couldn’t be that stupid! “God, you can trust me, Bolan. I never welched a deal in my life.”

  “Okay.”

  The guy just stood there, staring at him from behind the blaster. Apostinni coughed nervously and said, “Well … okay. I’ll uh, escort you out. Meet me back here tomorrow, same time. Or would you rather I meet you some place?”

  “Right here will be fine.”

  The guy just stood there. The boss of the Gold Duster got to his feet and crossed carefully to the door. Was the hick dumb-rube bastard going to let him actually walk out of there?

  Vito carefully placed his hand on the door mechanism and, with every nerve of his body screaming for control, told Bolan, “You want me to go on ahead and, uh, clear a path for you?”

  “Okay,” said the jerk-probably hophead, unbelievably stupid dummy.

  Apostinni opened the door, slid out, banged it shut, hit the panic switch and froze that door so a ton of TNT wouldn’t open it and started alarms ringing all over the joint, and all in the same instant he screeched, “Max! That nut’s in there! What the goddamn hell’re you—”

  The tagman was out of his chair and lunging toward the boss, the rod in his hand, trying to surround his personal god with his own lone body.

  “Wait, waitaminnit!” Vito cried, shoving the bodyguard away from him. “He’s locked in there, dammit!”

  The casino boss punched the intercom button and yelled, “Okay, dummy, that’s all for you. That’s a regular vault you’re in there, you dumb shit!”

  A wave of humanity was surging up the stairway, pistols waving all over the place, and towards the rear of the wave Joe the Monster was pushing people this way and that and fighting his way to the front.

  “What the hell is it, Vito?” Stanno yelled.

  “That nut, that Bolan dummy, I got ’im locked up inside my joint!” Apostinni cried exultantly.

  “Well shut off the fuckin’ alarms, huh?”

  A full sixty seconds were required to still the pandemonium outside “Vito’s joint” and to line up a wavy wedge of gun soldiers, and then another twenty seconds to override the electronic lock. Then the door was flung open and six of Joe the Monster’s best dived through the opening, guns blazing in every direction.

  It took less than three seconds to completely shoot up Vito’s joint.

  And when the firing ended, Joe the Monster stepped warily into the room, gazed stupidly around at his boys, and then called out, “Mr. Apostinni. Who’d you say was locked up in here?”

  “Didn’t you get him?” Vito asked in a hushed voice.

  Another voice sang out from inside. “Nobody in the bathroom, Joe.”

  Apostinni entered the “vault” on trembling legs. “He couldn’t have got out,” he insisted in a dazed voice.

  “Who shot Bruce Serena, Mr. Apostinni?” Stanno swiveled about to glare at his guncrew. “Did one of your boys drill Bruce Baby?”

  “They didn’t do it!” Apostinni cried. “That Bolan bastard did it, and he was going to do it to me too! I outsmarted him and made a break! Look, dammit, he’s in here somewhere!”

  “Should we look under the rug, Mr. Apostinni? We looked every place else.”

  “I’m telling you he’s in here!” the casino boss ranted. “There ain’t no way out! He’s in here!”

  “Mr. Apostinni,” Joe the Monster said quietly, “you been working just a little too hard. You better get to bed now. Get some sleep. I’ll handle the explanations downstairs.”

  “I’m telling you he’s in here! I ain’t sleepin’ in here until you find him!”

  “Somebody pull Bruce Baby down from there,” Stanno commanded, sighing. “Where’s the gun, Mr. Apostinni? You better let me get rid of it.” Stanno signaled to Max Keno, the surviving bodyguard. “Come on now, Mr. Apostinni, we got to take care of ourselves, right?”

  “Look, Joe, I’m not off my marbles,” Vito declared, his voice now cold and controlled. “I didn’t drill Bruce, I’m telling you—”

  “Hey boss!” cried an excited voice from the security platform. Two hardmen had gone up to bring Bruce Baby down. Now one of them was leaning forward with something in his hand. “This was in his lap.”

  Stanno and Apostinni hurried over to the tower and the hardman dropped his find into the enforcer’s outstretched hand. It was a sheet of note paper, with something heavier folded inside. A marksman’s medal slid out of the fold.

  Stanno cleared his throat, which had suddenly become very tight, and read aloud the message that was printed neatly on the paper. The message was, simply, “Twenty-four hours, Vito.”

  “See, I told you,” Apostinni murmured in a voice with everything suddenly gone out of it.

  With cold frustration, Stanno growled, “Well, how the hell did he …?”

  The men on the tower were intensely occupied with another find. “What’s this up here on the wall?” one cried. “Boss! This thing is loose! It’s …”

  “What is it?” Stanno yelled.

  Apostinni died a little further and mumbled, “The accessory shaft.”

  “The what?”

  “You know,” Goldhearted Vito whispered. “Air conditioning, power cables, TV lead-in, all that.”

  “Well where does it go to?” Joe the Monster fumed.

  “Out back I guess, Joe.”

  “You guess?” Stanno clapped his hands together and dispatched a gun party to check it out. The hardmen bolted away and Stanno yelled at the men on the tower: “Well go on, go on through!”

  But it was too late, Apostinni knew in his heart, for a hot pursuit now. The casino boss had been high-rolled by a real pro, and he was experiencing a new and terrifying insight into the mathematics of chance.

  The guy had just casually dropped in, allowed Vito to hand over his black book, and then just dropped the hell back out again.

  Some men made their chances, others merely rode with them.

  And Heart of Gold Vito would never again be absolutely certain as to which category he himself fit into.

  8: COMBAT BRIEF

  A Negro beauty in a nurse’s uniform opened the door to Bolan’s third buzz. Her eyes recoiled somewhat as the black-clad figure stepped ins
ide the private clinic, then she giggled and told him, “I didn’t know you in your soul underwear.”

  “How’s the patient?” Bolan asked her.

  “Doing fine,” the nurse reported, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Doctor looked in on him at four o’clock. He’s going to be all right.”

  “Is he sedated?”

  She shook her head. “No, he’s resting easily.”

  “It’s very important that I talk to him, Mrs. Thomas.”

  The woman pursed her lips as she studied Bolan’s face, then she smiled and told him, “Just a sec. I’ll ask Doctor.”

  Bolan watched her disappear through a doorway off the lobby, and again he reflected upon Lyons’ determination to remain in his role. The clinic was situated in the city’s Westside, in the Negro district. There was a personal relationship of some sort between Lyons and the doctor, and the cop had insisted upon being brought here. The setup seemed ideal to Bolan, and apparently Lyons was in the best of hands. Still … Bolan had an uneasiness about the thing.

  A tired looking black man appeared in the doorway, wearing pajamas and a cotton robe. He looked Bolan up and down, then wryly commented, “I see you’re dressed for destruction. Why do you want to talk to Carl?”

  “It’s urgent,” Bolan assured him.

  “He’s resting good. Can’t it wait at least until daylight?”

  “It can. But maybe I can’t.”

  The doctor understood. He stared at the visitor through a brief silence, then he jerked his head and said, “Okay. Don’t take too long.”

  Bolan said, “Sure,” and went on along the corridor and into Lyons’ room. The doctor’s wife had gotten there ahead of him and she was quietly rousing the ailing cop.

  “You have a visitor, Carl,” he heard her say.

  A dim lamp on a side table had the room in soft shadows. The cop was flat on his back, no pillows. His left arm was tied to the bed and he was getting an intraveinous drip-injection from a bottle of clear fluid in a bedside stand.

  Bolan moved in on the other side. Lyons looked him over and said, “You’re blitzing.”

  “Softly,” Bolan replied.

  The nurse cautioned, “Don’t get him too excited,” and she made a quiet exit.

  “What’s up?” the cop asked.

  “Maybe a hell of a lot. First, though, I brought you a gift.”

  Bolan produced Vito Apostinni’s black book and placed it in Lyons’ free hand. “Don’t try to look at it now. It’s the black money ledger on the Gold Duster operation.”

  “How the hell did you get that?” Lyons asked with a grin.

  “I traded Vito his life for it.”

  The cop’s grin faded. “Some trade.”

  “Yeah. Uh, your funny man is okay. For now. He told me about ASA and the show biz muscle.”

  Lyons smiled and commented, “It’s hard to keep a secret in this town.”

  “But that’s not the all of it, is it? It goes a lot bigger than Anders, doesn’t it?”

  Lyons gave him an odd look and replied, “I can’t talk about that, Mack. New subject, please.”

  Bolan said, “New subject, hell. My game is survival, remember? I need everything I can possibly use.”

  “There’s a place where friendship ends,” the cop muttered stubbornly.

  A smile formed at Bolan’s lips and stayed there, unable to influence the eyes. A cop’s ethics could be a curious thing, he was thinking. A cop like Lyons would bust his own mother for pandering, then promise her immunity from prosecution if she’d turn state’s evidence against her pimp. It was a game called “law enforcement”—a very close cousin to the game of survival—and Bolan could understand games like these.

  “I didn’t come begging,” he said. “I came trading. I gave you Vito’s book. Now what the hell am I getting in return?”

  The cop sighed. The grin returned. “Not much,” he promised.

  “California carousel,” Bolan said, getting right to the heart. “I figured it was an operational code. It’s not. So what is it?”

  “It’s a mob circuit. One big wheel, turning endlessly.”

  “Turning what?”

  “Everything. Talent, sex, narcotics, contraband, black money, extortion, corpses. You name it, the carousel’s turning it.”

  “How does L.A. get into the action? I mean, what’s your interest?”

  “We have a seaport, remember? Also the major international airport in the west. And we have a border with a foreign country. Do I have to lay it all out?”

  “So what’s new?” Bolan asked. “That’s been going on since year one.”

  The cop sighed. “What’s new is the combination.”

  After a moment of silence, Bolan said, “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “You can quit listening. This is where you go to hell, buddy.”

  Bolan whistled softly. “That big, eh? Top Secret and all that?”

  “Something like that,” Lyons growled.

  “Okay, just clue me. Then I’ll drop something on you that’s maybe bigger.”

  The cop’s eyes were speculative, wary. Quietly, he said, “Get out of here, Mack.”

  “I actually do have something.”

  Lyons let his breath all the way out and sighed, “Okay. Vegas is where the brass ring is at. That help you any?”

  “Sure. But I still want to know about that combination.”

  “You tell me something interesting first,” Lyons suggested.

  “The eye of the brass ring in Vegas is the Gold Duster,” Bolan said quietly.

  “Do tell. Why d’you think I broke my body there?”

  “But it’s like the eyepiece of a telescope. Another ring is at the other end, much larger, a hell of a lot more important.”

  Lyons was interested. “And what is that?” he asked.

  Bolan smiled. “What’s that new combination?”

  The cop smiled back and muttered, “Bastard.”

  “Are we playing or not?”

  “Red China,” Lyons said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. How’s that for a mob combination? And the trade, we hear, is lively.”

  “In what?”

  “In everything. It’s developing into the largest invisible market in the world.”

  Bolan said, “Well it figures.”

  “What figures?”

  “That other brass ring. It’s within shouting distance of Havana.”

  The cop’s eyes flashed. “Miami?”

  Bolan shook his head. “Not the way I hear it, but Miami is probably somewhere in the loop. My information says that San Juan is the eye of the needle. They’re calling it the Caribbean carousel.”

  Lyons chewed the news for a moment, then asked, “How good is your information?”

  “Practically a dying confession,” Bolan told him. “Straight from the scared-out-of-his-skull lips of Vito Apostinni.”

  “A guy will say anything at a time like that, Mack.”

  “Not that guy. He thought I was a dead man, too, and it was quite a poker game. No … I think he was leveling.”

  “It makes sense,” the cop admitted. He sighed and said, “Bye bye, Bolan. The fuzz is getting fuzzyheaded.”

  “One more thing. It’s a long route from Peking to Tommy Anders. What’s the angle there?”

  The cop’s voice was weary in the reply. “That was our best route of entry, and I drew the short straw. Anders is in big trouble—and I’ve been worried about him. I mean, he’s an okay guy—lots of guts—and I’d hate to see him a casualty of this mess. I mean …”

  “You mean you’ve been using him,” Bolan said. “And now it’s hurting.”

  Lyons shrugged with his eyebrows. “Name of the game,” he replied. “That isn’t the whole thing, Mack. It’s a rotten picture all the way, and the show business angle is as scary as any. The mob is clawing their way into Hollywood even. If the movie industry think they’re in trouble now, just wait until the mob starts gangbanging ’em.”<
br />
  “How does that fit into the carousel thing?”

  Lyons frowned and said, “Hell, how doesn’t it figure? Movies are big business. Distributing and exhibiting the finished product is even bigger. Once the mob has control in that arena they’ve got the most beautiful damn carousel you ever saw—for any damn kind of game they choose to play. Anything from popcorn concessions to theatre equipment, box office skim, and commercial dates with the starlets.”

  “What kind of claws are they using?” Bolan wondered aloud.

  “The best kind there is. Money. When money is tight, black money is king. The guy that controls the purs© also runs the show. In any business.”

  “But it all fits together somewhere, doesn’t it? On the merry-go-round, I mean.”

  “Sure,” Lyons said. “You know how the mob operates. They carve all the action into private concessions. One family has the entertainment concession. Another specializes in the narcotics angle. Still another gets the contraband. And on and on endlessly—a carousel, yeah. Now you’re saying Havana, eh? Hell, that could mean anything. From atomic secrets to small revolutions to a whorehouse in Guantanamo Bay.”

  “Or …” Bolan suggested quietly, “a new Vegas.”

  “Yeah, that’s possible. There’s a lot of action in the Caribbean already.”

  “And the heat in this town is getting pretty fierce, isn’t it? For the mob, I mean. How many dealers and shills and coin-girls do you figure are on the FBI payroll?”

  Lyons snickered. “You noticed.”

  “Sure I noticed. And don’t think the boys haven’t noticed. When the heat gets too high, Lyons, the mob moves on. If they can’t fight it or buy it, they leave it. Vito let it drop that he sent sixteen million to San Juan in one year. And that’s just from one casino.”

  Musingly, the cop said, “Even our esteemed local billionaire has shaken the dust of Vegas from his feet … and moved on to.…”

  Bolan’s eyebrows formed a peak. “I’ve never heard anything tying him to—”

  “No I wasn’t saying that,” Lyons replied. “But you don’t make a billion by playing the losers. Maybe he knows something the rest of us don’t.”

  “Like, maybe Vegas is dying.”

  “Like maybe something like that,” Lyons said, sighing. “Bug off, will you? I can’t keep my eyes open another minute. You heard the nurse, don’t excite me.”