California Hit

by Don Pendleton

  And the Wang Dang kid from Able Team knew a terrible and penetrating sadness. Somewhere out there in that city the greatest human being he’d ever known was going to be run-to-ground, and impaled upon the horns of quote justice unquote, or else shot down in the streets like some sort of runaway beast.

  It was a hell of a way to run a world, but that was the way the world ran… the only way.

  Guys like Mack Bolan didn’t stand a chance.

  But… and this was the most terrible part… what chance did the world itself stand?—without guys like Mack Bolan.

  Bill Phillips was a cop, sure.

  He was a tough San Francisco Brushfire cop.

  But there were times when he wished to God he wasn’t.

  He was going to kill Mack Bolan. It was his right, his obligation, and he owed it. He owed it to Mack Bolan.

  Able Team would do the job better.

  From one of Union Square’s more expensive hotel suites, another kind of army was being ordered into the field. The suite “at the top of the joint” represented the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition for “Crazy Franco” Laurentis, the torpedo’s torpedo and boss of the silk suit brigade.

  “Style,” Laurentis enjoyed telling anyone who would listen, “is the only thing makes life worthwhile. A man should live in style. He should eat, dress and screw in style, he even ought to die in style. I’d live in this joint if it took every cent I made just to keep me here.”

  It took quite a bit. The five room penthouse apartment provided one of the most breathtaking views in a city made famous by its views. From the garden terrace, from the glass-walled living room, or from just about any window in that joint, this silk-suited graduate of such institutions as Sing Sing, Leavenworth and Folsom could gaze out over the toughest town in the west and experience the giddy feeling of domain and lordship. One day he would be commanding that town, he would be holding it in his hands just as surely as he now held it in his vision—and he’d do it all from right here, from the top of the joint—because Franco Laurentis was the tops.

  Let Vanity Vince and Tom the Broker have their pipedreams—it was all they would have. With or without old man DeMarco, Franco Laurentis was by God going to have San Francisco.

  A death, a simple death, that’s all it took. A seventy-two year old man was not going to go on living forever. Death was cheap, of course. It was the cheapest thing going. Franco could buy any life in that town for less than it cost him to live at the top of the joint for a week.

  A hit on a Capo, of course, could be a messy business. There would be the eastern coalition of commissioners to explain things to, and they sometimes got their asses high in the air over a hit on a Capo. Even an old, already dying, Capo like Roman DeMarco. Even though Roman had never been too popular in life, his death would bring on a lot of tears and sympathy from the eastern mob.

  Franco didn’t need any of that.

  It was easier to do the thing in style, to just let the old man die his own way, and meanwhile Franco could go on quietly pulling the loose ends together so it would be an easy slide from the wake to the throne.

  Sometimes, of course, style took a lot of patience. The old man acted like he wanted to go on living forever. Some guys just never knew when to throw in the towel. So Franco had been very patiently unravelling the goddam towel and throwing it in for him, a thread at a time, and of course he was throwing those threads right into his own pocket.

  Franco was not even in the official line of succession. Tom Vericci was first man out, by right of business power and seniority if nothing else. Vince Ciprio was running a close second. Franco wasn’t even in the running. If Tom moved up to fill the old man’s dead shoes, he’d move some one of his lieutenants right up to fill his vacated shoes. Ciprio would stand still. Franco would stand still. And, worst of all, he’d have to work under the thumb of Tom the Broker. Bullshit, buddy!

  Vince, of course, would like to be at the head of the line. But Vince just didn’t have the style to be a Capo. Tom, now—Tom the Broker was a hell of a classy guy. Deep down in his bowels, Crazy Franco was a little afraid of Tom Vericci. But not so damned afraid that he wouldn’t contract the guy, if it got to that.

  Franco Laurentis had the torpedo concession in this town.

  Nobody, by God, had better not ever forget that.

  Especially Vanity Vince and Tom the Broker.

  He could take them both out with a nod of his head, if it got to that. That would make a war, of course. And the eastern coalition got nervous over open wars. It hurt the whole outfit, really. Franco understood that. That’s why he continued to work with style.

  It would be so much better to just have this understanding, before things ever got to open war.

  And Franco was about to weld that understanding into the minds of all who wanted to operate in this town.

  Mack the Bastard had come to town… and hell, it had come like a gift from the angels or something.

  Some very stylish use could be made of Mack the Bastard. The guy liked to go for the Capos—that was why the organization was so nervous all over the country. They wouldn’t be that nervous if the guy was just knocking over a few soldiers here and there. Soldiers were cheap, and soldiers didn’t have a hell of a lot to say about how nervous the organization got. It got nervous as hell, though, when the big boys were in trouble. Franco could appreciate that point of view. He was a big boy himself, now. And he was going to get bigger.

  Bolan was going to knock over Don DeMarco. That was a pre-ordained fact of life, and Franco knew it. He knew it because he didn’t intend to do a damned little thing to stop the guy. For God’s sake, why should he?

  The time for doing something would come later. Later, after the old man was totally out of the picture. And in the meantime Franco would be in undisputed charge of the town. He was already… practically… in every way that counted. He had the whole town, right in his hands. The dumb bastards Ciprio and Vericci had just handed it over to him. Take it, take it. So he took it, damn right.

  Those guys were in for one hell of a shock if they thought he was just going to hand it all back after Bolan was out of the way.

  After all, the guy that took out Mack the Bastard deserved some recognition, didn’t he? Franco would be the hero of the outfit, all over the world. And Franco’s stock would be that much higher when things finally came to the showdown with Ciprio and Vericci. No one would yell too much or too loud at the guy who finally got Bolan—not even the coalition back east. Especially if that guy was already Franco Laurentis.

  Thus had been the reasoning of the stylish torpedo from the top of the joint—until approximately eight thirty on that morning of the California Hit. It was at about that time when Don DeMarco himself telephoned Franco to rake him over the coals in a most humiliating and unstylish way.

  “You son of a bitch you!” the old man screamed at him. “I give you a special job and what do you do with it? You take it to bed and sleep with it? In that rich cunt-castle of yours up in the sky? Huh?”

  That wasn’t no way to be talking to the Lord Enforcer of San Francisco, even if the speaker was the Capo, and the tone of voice—more than the words themselves—sent a cold tremor through Franco’s belly.

  “Wh-what’s the matter?” he stammered. “Wh-what’re you talking about?”

  “I’m-a talk about-a this-a Bolan-a bastard,” the old man screamed, lapsing into a heavy accent in his rage. “He come in here and knocked my place over! He hit Tony’s kid and twenty or thirty other boys! He shot up my place and missed hitting me by an eyelash! Whatta you think I’m-a talk about, you dumb Dago torpedo, what the hell you think I talk about? Why you not onna street, why you not out there chasin’ this boy’s a-head all over town, huh?”

  Franco Laurentis was not no dumb Dago torpedo. But it hardly seemed the appropriate time to be arguing the point.

  Faintly, he said, “God, that’s awful, Don DeMarco. He got away clean? He didn’t even leave any blood?”

 
“He left a God damn-a medal, that’s-a what! You get your ass onna streets, Franco! Get down outta that ivory cunt tower and start doin’ something right for a change!”

  “I got everything moving, sir,” Laurentis tried to assure the boss. “I guarantee you, we’re gonna have that boy before the sun sets again.”

  “You sure about that, huh?”

  “Yes sir, I am sure, I am positive sure about that.”

  “You better be. I’m-a tell-a you why you better be. I named you in my will, Franco.”

  “I don’t, uh, I guess I don’t get you,” Laurentis told Capo.

  “You gonna die with me, Franco!”

  “What—I don’t—you mean…?”

  “You know what I mean! I got your name on five pieces of paper. Five pieces, Franco. If I die by Bolan, you die by the paper! You better keep that in mind!”

  The old bastard! He’d contracted Franco Laurentis!

  He said, “I don’t think that’s… I mean, I think I got a right to discuss this with you.”

  “You got no rights! I give you a job! You do the job! You damn sure better do the job, Franco!”

  And that was it. The nutty old bastard hung up on him.

  And a whole new style of thinking and acting had suddenly entered Franco’s life. If he had just known which five were holding those pieces of paper. Hell, it could be anybody. They could be from back East, they could be from anywhere in the damn world! But he didn’t know, and there wasn’t time enough left to track them down. They would be tracking Franco down the minute the old man bit Bolan’s dust. God! An estate contract!

  Ten minutes after the conclusion of that telephone conversation, Franco Laurentis, the torpedo’s torpedo, was conducting a full scale council of war at the top of the joint. He had all his boys in there, and there wouldn’t be any shitting around with style now.

  The sly old fox was not dead yet, and he’d sure put it over on Franco. That was something that just had to be faced. It was a new game.

  There was only one thing for Franco to do now.

  He had to stop Mack Bolan before Mack Bolan stopped the old man.

  There was nothing else he could do.

  He would have to turn in Bolan’s head, or else die without no damn style at all.

  The torpedo’s torpedo was not going to die without no damn style at all.

  13: THE ALLIANCE

  The gunleather was strapped to the side-railing of the bed and Bolan’s hand was resting loosely on the grip of the Beretta Belle.

  Another hand, a softly delicate one, was trying to come between Bolan and his Belle.

  He opened an eye halfway and quietly commanded, “Don’t.”

  She was lying partly across him, the velvety tenderness of her presenting the sweetest of burdens, one arm coiled down around his gun arm.

  She whispered, “I thought you were asleep.”

  He told her, “I was.”

  “Well, that’s some alarm system you’ve got there.”

  She moved away from him. The bedsprings creaked as she came to a kneeling position behind him.

  Bolan voluntarily released the Beretta, as he rolled over to fix her in the binocular vision of both appreciative eyes.

  “Do you always sleep with a hand on your gun?” she asked him.

  “Until I get tired of living, sure.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. I just didn’t want you going into a bad dream or something and shooting up the joint.”

  He said, “Okay.”

  “You really don’t trust me, do you.”

  He said, “No.”

  “Even after…”

  “Especially after,” he told her.

  Her eyes crossed in perplexity. “Boy, you sure live in a grim world, don’t you.”

  “Like you said, I’m weird.”

  She wrinkled her nose and replied, “Sort of nice weird, though. Mack… are you wide awake?”

  He assured her that he was.

  She said, “I want to bare my chest.”

  Bolan grinned. “I like it just the way it is,” he told her.

  “You know what I mean. I want to get straight with you. No more mistrust. Okay?”

  He said, “Suit yourself.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to trust me?”

  He tipped his head back and said, “Sure I would.”

  “Well listen to me. Wo Fan and Franco Laurentis are hooked together somehow.”

  Bolan’s eyes flickered and he said, “Do tell.”

  “You already knew it, huh.”

  “I’ve been wondering.”

  “Well you can stop wondering. They definitely are. It’s one of those marriages of convenience, I believe, but they definitely—”

  “And the old cop?”

  “Barney Gibson?”

  He said, “Uh huh.”

  “Do I have to get that bare?”

  He said, “No.”

  The girl sighed. “Well, I will. I have been in the employ of Barney Gibson.”

  “Who else have you been in the employ of?”

  Her gaze fell. “Anyone who has the price, I guess,” she admitted.

  “And what is the price?”

  She said, “Depends on the job.”

  “What is the nature of the work?”

  “Intelligence.”

  Both eyes narrowed as Bolan asked her, “You telling me you’re a private eye?”

  She threw her head back and laughed, as though grateful for the break. “Not really. I’m not licensed.” The eyes flashed wickedly and she added, “But I have a law degree and I once worked for Mr. Hoover.”

  Bolan groaned.

  She asked him, “You have something against Mr. Hoover?”

  He replied, “Just his womenfolk. I think women’s lib must have pulled a secret coup on the federal level. Do you know how many federal dolls I’ve—”

  Quickly she said, “I don’t want to know, don’t tell me. Anyway, I said I once worked for him. I’ve been freelancing for two years.”

  “Without license.”

  “Right, without license. I’m not public. A license would hamper me. I’m not a detective, Mack. I’m a spy.”

  He said, “Okay. What’s the tie-in with Barney Gibson then? He paying you out of his own pocket?”

  “Possibly. I wouldn’t know if the city has a payroll code for paid informers.”

  He said, “I see.”

  “I’ve also been on Wo Fan’s payroll, watching the operation at China Gardens.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know for what. I just watch and listen. Every night I file a written report of everything I’ve seen and heard.”

  “That business about the counterfeit art pieces…?”

  She wrinkled her face and admitted, “I made that up.”

  The girl leaned forward suddenly and kissed him, lightly. It turned into a heavy one, and she pulled away gasping.

  “Don’t get me started again,” she warned.

  Bolan chuckled. He lightly caressed a silken arm and told her, “I don’t have to trust you, Mary. I like you, and that’s enough for now.”

  “Not for me,” she said soberly. “What about instincts? Don’t they count for anything? Can’t you just know that I’m on your side now?”

  He arched an eyebrow and said, “Now?”

  She shrugged delicately. “I’m straighting it, I’ll straight it all the way. I suspected that Wo Fan had an unholy interest in the Mafia even before I ran into you. Franco Laurentis tried to grab me by the rear one night. When I told him to get lost, he got real cute about our ‘common interests’ and he actually dropped Wo Fan’s name on me. I mentioned the incident to Wo Fan the next day. He became very upset and started throwing out excited instructions, in Chinese, to his bully boys. I didn’t know what he was saying, but—”

  “You don’t kapish Chinese?”

  She smiled tolerantly. “Do you kapish Polish?”

  He grinned back. “No. How’d yo
u know about my Polack background?”

  She told him, “I know a lot of things about you, Mack Bolan. Or I thought I did, until this morning. Anyway… the next time I ran into Franco Laurentis—it was a couple of nights later—he came over and made it a point to apologize to me for his behavior. Which, if you know anything about that dude, you’ll know is way out of character. But he was using the apology as a cover up. His real purpose was to make me think he’d been kidding about Wo Fan. About ‘common interests,’ I mean.”

  Bolan said, “Okay, I see it.”

  “So… anyway… when I ran into you at the Gardens last night, I.… Well, I’m a working girl, you know.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Have to pay the damn bills, you know. I guess I… had you in about the same running class as Laurentis and the rest. I mean.…”

  “I know what you mean,” Bolan assured her, sighing.

  “I knew that you’d been billed as the all-American folk hero, but I figured… well, you know what I figured. I know what these public relations people can do with an image, and the press is no different. I had you figured as a glory guy. You know. Soldier-of-fortune type, making a big name and a big game for yourself by running around making big noises at the mob.”

  “I know what you mean,” he assured her.

  “Will you please let me bare myself in my own way?”

  He chuckled. “Right on.”

  “Well then I came into this… this place.” She shivered. “I saw how you… how you had to make it. I mean, the super security, the constant grinding race to just keep that one step ahead of the world. Oh hell, Mack Bolan, I felt so miserable for you, I could have just cried!”

  Bolan told her, “Hey, it’s not all that bad.”

  She said, “The hell it’s not. I know better. I know it now. And I almost… I almost set you up for them. Did you know that? I came within an inch of setting you up for Franco’s assassins.”

  “What makes you think they weren’t after you?”

  “Well I.…”

  He said, “They wouldn’t have come after me that way, Mary. I never have thought that they expected to find me there. That was supposed to be an easy hit, girl. Why do you think I insisted on dragging you out of there?”

  She shivered again and said, “Well—damn, damn. Sure, Laurentis started worrying about his slip to me. I’ll bet you’re right.”