Ciglia could not see those eyes behind the smoked lenses but he could feel the guy's gaze raking him up and down.
"Who is this?" the hotshot asked, in that same amiable tone.
Ciglia stepped closer to hand him the card. "You sent this in to me, I believe," he said, playing it cold and unsmiling. "If you're wondering about the cane, I turned my ankle this morning and that's why it took me so long to get out here and greet you personally."
"Keep it," the black ace said grandly, waving the card back. "Press it in your book of memories."
What was this shit!
Nobody talked to—!
Ciglia opened his mouth in a snarl to punch something back to the guy—black ace or no—and that was precisely when it happened.
No one, it was said, had ever moved so quickly. Nothing had ever changed so fast. Never had a moment of relaxed camaraderie plummeted so suddenly into a moment of such deep and ghastly desperation.
Those men present who would later be called upon by their peers to recall and relate the experience over and over again would remain steadfastly unanimous concerning the details of that shattering moment.
One instant the great man—the all-right guy—had been sitting there pleasantly jawing with the troops and entertaining them tremendously, pausing for a bantering moment with the boss. One lightning move later, the boss himself was turned around and bent backwards halfway into that little car. The snout of an ugly black pistol was jammed into his mouth—Billy Kingdom's other hand full of the boss's hair. And the thing simply froze everybody.
And "Billy Kingdom"—with a whole new voice, now—was coldly instructing everybody on how they should go about keeping their boss alive.
"Easy, boys, easy. This trigger has a two-pound pull. All I do is breathe too hard or twitch with an itch, and your boss says goodbye to his head. I'm here to parley, and that's all I'm here for. So everybody go back inside. Lock the gate, Jake, when they're all in. Then everybody should disappear for a few minutes while Jerry and I have our talk. When that's done, Jerry goes in and I roll away. Simple as that, that's the way it can be. Of course, it could go different. Depends on you boys."
That cold speech was followed by a moment of building suspense until Palmieri assumed the responsibilities of command. The big bodyguard stood stiffly at the gate, arms spread, fingers splayed. "Everybody be cool, like the man says. Who are you really, mister?"
"The name is Bolan."
The moment became even more electric.
Jake Rio's sober tones joined the command structure. "He keeps what he says, Nate. If he says it's a parley, then it's a parley."
Palmieri could hardly bear the situation, though. There was hot anxiety in those eyes as his gaze lingered on the tortured position of his boss.
"Okay," he said, finally. "You boys get it in here. Do exactly like he says. Jerry—there's no other way. We're doing the only thing we can do."
The boys went inside.
Jake Rio locked the gate.
Everybody disappeared, but not the supercharged atmosphere.
Ciglia was bleeding from the corner of his mouth. Bolan eased the Beretta out but left the muzzle resting on the chairman's chin. He let off a little on the backbend, allowing the guy some breathing space, and icily told him, "Looks like it's just you and me, Jerry."
Those eyes of the chairman were cold in their terror, speculative in their desire to go on living. But Jerry Ciglia was a pretty tough guy, all things considered. "What do you want?" he mumbled.
"We can make this quick and clean. Just give me one word."
There was no posturing, no silly bravado. The chairman of the board could be a very reasonable man—with a blaster at his chin.
"Which word?"
"The name of the boat."
"What boat?"
"I said quick and clean, guy—not twenty questions." "I don't know what the hell you want."
"I want Toni."
"Oh? Well. Didn't know you knew her. I mean, I figured she left with you, this morning, but I couldn't figure why."
"Private eye."
"Toni?"
"Yeah."
"Don't shit me, guy."
"Go to hell. I just want the name of Pattriccia's boat."
The chairman was probably a lousy poker man. He could not keep his mind out of his eyes. "Oh," he said. "Which one?"
"That old stem-wheeler everyone was laughing about."
"The Mississippi Queen."
"That's it?"
"You said stern-wheeler. That's the one."
"Where does he keep it?"
The chairman was not terribly inventive, either. "Out on the river somewhere."
"I didn't think maybe he kept it out on the desert somewhere, guy. It's a big river."
"I don't know where he keeps it."
"Come on, now. You've never even seen it?"
Those eyes were flickering, the mind tumbling. "No. No. I just heard the guys laughing about it once. I haven't been here long, you know."
"Mississippi Queen. You're sure."
"Oh yeah. I'm sure about that."
"I take a parley seriously, guy. I get upset with bum words. I usually come back from those. I come back feeling bad. I can get to you, Ciglia. Anywhere."
"I believe you. I'm not shitting you. It's the Mississippi Queen. Stern-wheeler. That's the one."
Bolan disarmed the guy, shoved him clear, and powered out of there in reverse, onto the street and clear to the corner—then ripped out with a squeal and a roar.
Neither shot nor vehicle followed, and Bolan had not really expected any.
He'd given the new "chairman of the board" something very intriguing to ponder, something to override and perhaps even compensate for that hateful and degrading experience in the driveway.
And Bolan grinned. The Mississippi Queen, indeed! Ciglia had obviously never heard of Jules' folly.
But he'd sure gone down quick for the Cong High lure.
21: PATTERNS
There were those times when Mack Bolan had the eerie feeling that things were in the saddle and riding mankind—as Emerson had once observed—and this was one of those times.
The thing had all gone so perfectly on the numbers, and it was pulling together with such symmetry and harmony, it almost seemed as though the event possessed an existence of its own and that it reached out to command time and life to give birth to itself, to become—and that the thing itself, the event was stronger and more important—and even more real—than any or all of the people involved.
There she sat, an old river derelict, squatting in a watery grave and brooding over her past with all the presence of any gaudy lady who had outlived all her loves, and all her beauty, and even all her excuses for living. The laughter "up east" had probably been justified: the Jubilee was clearly beyond redemption. The telltale sags and bulges in her wooden structure spoke not of cosmetic needs but of basic organic rot, of advanced old age which could not be reversed, of a terminal illness which sought only final peace.
But the Jubilee had been quite a gaudy lady in her day. She had shared a time and a people which and who had become immortalized with the river itself in song and sonnet. The "old man river" himself went rolling along, sure, eternally—but the water itself, made anew daily, was not the river and it was not eternal. Beds and banks and clustered molecules did not a river make. Things made rivers and boats and people—and history itself. Things were eternal. And, yes, dammit—things rode mankind.
Which was okay with Bolan. Somehow the idea provided a pattern to the mysteries of life and even a reason for all the pains as well as the satisfactions.
Patterns there were, for sure.
Toni was the first one down. She ran into his arms with a whoop and a wriggle, and he swung her clear around in the jubilant embrace. She was wearing sharp red slacks and a crushed velvet top, she looked great and none the worse for the wear of the day, and Bolan could only send a thanks to that "somewhere" in the universe where patterns
were made.
"Where've you been while all the work was going down?" he asked her, in mock reproval.
"Frolicking," she replied, cocking her head and showing him the full-charm smile. "Boating, my deah, along the levee Riviera—at the hulk club, y'know—the most charming view of the scrap yards and all the chic salvage places."
A beaming older brother straightened the report out in his own version of plain English: "What a lucky strike, Sarge. Right down the pike all the way. Artie's boys brought her here, okay—and, say, wait 'til you see inside. You said a scrap heap—it's worse than that. Six sick termites could finish the thing off."
Toni soberly reported, "Mr. Giamba was very nice to me, very gentlemanly. I had the free run of the boat, long as I didn't try to chew through my leash."
Bolan told her, "You're here. That's all that counts." "Sorry about the flub, commander."
There was nothing needing an apology, but she seemed bound to do it, so he let her run.
"He's an old faker. I thought he was unconscious. I took a bath—a very quick bath. But it was long enough for the old faker to find the telephone and send for help."
"It's okay," Bolan said. "Worked out fine."
"Sure did. Gave me a lot of free time for sober reflection. And in the quietness of my sobriety, I ratified our little discussion of the morning—yours and mine, I mean. Scared sick, bound hand and foot, monstrous rats running around in plain and audacious view—with all that, Mack, my decision remained unshaken. I'm where I choose to be."
Good for her. Not everybody Bolan knew could make that statement. "Then you're lucky," he told her. "What's this all about?" Pol asked.
"Heaven and hell," Toni brightly told him
The big brother bucked his head and raised his eyebrows in a soft dismissal of all that. "Oh. Able Group."
The others were straggling out, moving slowly along the rickety gangway to the levee. A motley group, almost pathetic when you considered the force they'd decided to stand against. Twenty men at the most, and only two or three of these less than fifty years of age. "Businessmen," these—not professional guns. Not, of course, that they were not dangerous men. These guys had survived some savage competitions in their day.
Artie and Jules came along the gangway together. The old don seemed not nearly so frail in his working clothes, but he was moving with care.
The two paused on the levee beside Bolan and looked him up and down. Then Giamba said, "Don't know why you're doin' this. Don't really care why. I just think it's one for the books. You got my thanks whether you got 'em coming or not."
Bolan told him, "Save your thanks, Artie. I could be coming back for you some day."
"You better hurry, wiseguy. Unless you're better than the angels."
"I've never challenged heaven, Artie."
"Just hell, eh?"
"That's right."
The old man gave him a final brush with the eyes and went on.
Vino Jules nodded his head and passed silently. Tony Dalton was close behind.
"You didn't get very far south," Bolan commented, remembering the guy from the junkyard.
"You can't make it stick," the guy said, the eyes worried. "There'll be another Ciglia next week."
This one was young enough, but he was no wolf. Bolan told him, "I can only start it, Dalton. You'll have to make it stick."
"Me?"
"You can't leave it to them," Bolan said, his gaze flicking after the exhausted old men. "Challenge hell, guy."
Dalton looked him up and down—growled, "Thanks, maybe I will"—and went on.
Bolan watched the entire procession by, nodding impassively here and there at a familiar face, then he told Blancanales, "The numbers are probably plenty tight. I expect Ciglia will be here at first dark—but I can't really depend on that. I can't spare you here, Pol, but we do need a forward scout. I guess you're elected for that."
The Pol had to agree with that. "I guess this will work okay," he added, critically surveying the site.
"I'd like to set the old hulk adrift," Bolan mused. "Make the boarding parties have to work for it. But we can't let it get out into the shipping channel, and I doubt there's any way to control it."
Blancanales shook his head at that. "Might even come apart before we want it to. She's got anchors, but the chain looks bad. I wouldn't risk it."
Bolan sighed. "So we risk the other. I see Ciglia as an organization man. He'll come from every side—by land and by sea. It has to come just right. I want them all here together. I want an absolute Cong High."
"What is that Cong High?" Toni asked brightly.
Blancanales absently told her, "Little thing we picked up in 'Nam—the hard way."
"It's a type of ambush, Toni," Bolan explained. "Most of the action at the center, a folding operation on the sides."
"Like scooping up a bunch of fish in a net," Pol added.
She wrinkled her nose. "I wouldn't be much help with that, I guess. I'll be your scout."
Bolan's gaze ran from the girl to Pol and back to the girl again. "Okay. Take the blue Chevy. It's wired and gassed, keys are in it." A vision of her flashed through his mind, a single-frame still of a cornered but spitting young lady on a big lake near New Orleans, and he grinned with that memory. "Weapons, too, but you'd better not get into that. Ride them low and break off as soon as you have their intentions. Keep in radio contact but keep it brief and guarded. You're Blue Star, we're North Star."
"I know that game," she said. She hung a light kiss on each of them and walked away to the Chevy.
"There is a gal," Blancanales declared fondly.
"And a half," Bolan added to that measure. "Okay," he said, quickly jerking his mind back into the grim business at hand. "We'd better get it moving. Is Gadgets working his wonders?"
"Oh yeah. You know Gadgets. Every damn hair has to be in 'place. He does set a sweet stage, though, doesn't he? You think we have until first dark, eh?"
The Bolan gaze went reflexively to the skies. The pattern, yeah. Light, dark, shades of gray. This one would go down in darkness.
"First dark, Pol," he replied grimly.
It always came, finally, to the darkness.
22: CONG HIGH
"What the hell are you doing here?" the skipper yelled at his battered intelligence chief.
"They needed the bed," Postum explained with a feeble smile "Or hadn't you noticed the blood on our streets lately?"
"You look terrible! Get out of here!"
"Just stopped by on the way home, Skipper. Few things to pick up. Uh, I thought—is it okay with you if I run the vacation in right behind the sick leave? I've been promising Janice and the kids that trip to the Caribbean for three years now."
The skipper was giving him that "come, now!" look. Postum had been collecting pay in lieu of vacation since he'd joined the force. He'd never had a vacation.
"Seriously," the intelligence chief insisted. "What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing." The skipper waved his hand in dismissal.
"Sure, it's okay. Get out of here. Go home and go to bed."
Which was precisely what Postum had in mind. But then the hot line beeped and the watch commander's announcement changed that. "Code contacts, Skipper. Same bunch, with a new wrinkle. They've added a female."
"ADF report!" the skipper snarled.
"Negative. ADF overwhelmed. Widely scattered sources, transmissions too brief to fix."
The skipper stormed out of there.
Postum grinned understandingly and followed at a more leisurely pace, the new rate of movement not entirely dictated by the trussed-up leg.
He reached the bull room just as a monitor crackled with one of those "briefs." A new, female wrinkle, yeah—crisp and businesslike.
"Ten out and still rolling them."
The voice, responding: "Firm the count. Watch for splits."
On a different monitor, then, the soft voice: "What is the make?"
The Chicano:
"Cong low."
Bolan: "Cong low and running east. Count ten and building."
Back to the other channel, the female: "There is a split. There is a split."
"Count!"
"Five east, ten north. That is a tally and wrap it!" "Break off north! Track east!"
"What the hell are they saying?" the skipper fumed. "Damned if I know," Postum murmured, though guessing silently.
"Can't you get me a sector isolation?" the skipper yelled at the communications technician.
"Negative. Signals are diffused, widespread."
Postum pulled up a chair, sighed, and sat down. The skipper strode to the window and stared into the quickening nightfall.
From the monitors, then, the soft voice: "I have no make."
"Cong low," the taut voice of Bolan advised him. "Cong low,"' the Chicano echoed.
The skipper kicked the wall.
Postum grinned, reached into his pocket for a cigarette—the first in years—lit up, sat back, and enjoyed.
It sounded like a fun game. Tom Postum knew that it was not.
The digital clock on the communications console rolled on. The skipper paced and the commtech stared at his monitor dials. Tom Postum smoked.
Then, the female again, the signal stronger now, peaking into the red on that monitor dial: "Levee Riviera with a better view. This is a final."
Bolan: "Great work! Break off! Rejoin North Star!" North Star, huh? Postum mused. Nice name for an RV. Very symbolic, too.
He could picture the benign face of "Gadgets," poised intently above that Flash Gordon command console as the soft tones drifted through the monitor: "Cong high east. I have acquisition."
"Cong low north," reported "Pol."
"Watch the folds," Bolan urged. "Get them all high. We want no lows."
"I'm getting a fix," the commtech reported. "Preliminary indication is Sector Four."
"Back there again?" the skipper asked unbelievingly. "It is a preliminary Stand by. We will fix the next transmission."
It came a moment later, from the Chicano: "Cong north."
"Watch for a north split to low!" Bolan cautioned. "Affirmative, I have a split. Call it all congs low north, scratch and repeat."
"Realign, realign! North Star is east! Ground Star is south! Red Star is west! Report congs!"
Executioner 023 - St Louis Showdown Page 13
