The chief opened his desk drawer and took out the Yellow Pages. After staring for a moment, he stepped to a small copy machine in the corner of his office and copied two pages. Then he took a red pen and made four or five check marks on the copies.
"There," he said. "The most likely places, if your guy is staying in Bedford Beach and wants to stay cheap. You want help?"
"We can handle him," Bolan said.
Chief Milano smiled faintly and nodded. "Yeah, I bet you can. Let me know if you find him. Otherwise, I'll have all my guys look at your mug shots."
The motels the chief had suggested were all on the highway, two blocks back from the beach, interspersed with little shopping centers, automobile agencies and fast-food restaurants. The summer sun beat down on acres of treeless pavement. Still, this was the back side of a beach resort, and families trudged to and from the beach, carrying their coolers and picnic baskets.
Coppolo drove past all the motels checked off by Chief Milano, then drove back to the first one and pulled into the parking lot. They went into the office, a small room paneled in dingy knotty pine and cooled by a straining window air conditioner.
"Yeah?" said the young woman behind the desk. Even though the air conditioner kept the room uncomfortably cool, she wore a pair of shorts and a halter. She didn't rise from her chair behind the desk but knocked the ash from her cigarette and put it in her mouth to suck heavy smoke into her lungs. "I got a couple of vacancies."
"We're federal officers," Coppolo stated. "United States Department of Justice."
She frowned and reluctantly stood up to take a look at the identification he offered.
"FBI?"
"Sensitive Operations Group," he replied. "I want you to look at a picture." He handed her a mug shot of Grotti. "Ever see him?"
She shook her head. "Can't say I ever have."
"He's not registered here? Single man. Or maybe he would have a girl with him. No kids, anyway."
She shook her head again.
"No time?"
She dragged again on her cigarette. "No time. Not since I been workin' here. Say, four months. I don't think I ever saw this guy."
They left. They tried two more motels and then struck paydirt at the Ashbury.
"Two-ought-four," the desk clerk replied to their query.
"Hmm?"
"That's the guy in 204. Uh…" he jerked open a little steel card-file box and flipped a dozen cards"…Angelo's the name. Fred Angelo. On the lam, is he?"
"Not anymore," Coppolo replied.
The desk clerk was a fat man, in a white shirt and a pair of khaki pants held up by black suspenders. "Let me call the cops to help you guys out. We got good cops here. Chief Milano…"
"We can handle it," Bolan said firmly.
The man frowned skeptically. "Far as I know, he's in his room. Goes to the beach mornings, kind of early, then sleeps in the air-conditioning in the heat of the day. Prowls at night. Brings women back."
As soon as Bolan and Coppolo were out the door, the desk man grabbed the telephone and called the Bedford Beach police. Then he locked the office and hurried across the highway to a Dunkin' Donuts. That was as close as he wanted to be to what he thought was going to happen at the motel.
Bolan and Coppolo kept close to the concrete-block walls as they made their way from the office to the steel-and-concrete stairs that led to the second story of the motel. Both of them were conscious that they looked like agents, would be seen as agents by a man looking out his window.
The first-floor rooms of the motel opened on the parking lot. The second-floor rooms opened on a narrow balcony that ran the length of the building. Reaching that balcony, Bolan nudged Coppolo and nodded at the desk clerk hurrying across the highway.
There were twelve or thirteen rooms along the balcony. The room could be reached by three stairways, one at each end of the building and one in the middle — the one Bolan and Coppolo had just climbed. Room 204 would be to their right as they faced the building at the top of the stairs. It was at the east end, the third room from the end.
The curtains were pulled across all the windows, against the midday sun that otherwise would have blazed through and defeated the air conditioners, which roared and dripped at every room. They were set through sleeves in the wall, above the windows, and beneath each one the concrete floor of the balcony was wet and stained with rust.
"I'll go ahead and get on the other side of the door," Bolan said.
"I'll knock and say I'm Whitey. That ought to scare the hell out of him."
Bolan nodded. He drew the Beretta and strode out ahead of the Justice agent.
When the Executioner heard the shot and heard Coppolo scream, he spun around. The agent was down. The man who had fired on them ducked out of sight just as Bolan raised the Beretta.
"Joe!"
"In the leg," Coppolo yelled. He had the Browning in his right hand, and he dragged himself closer to the wall and leveled it at the top of the stairway. "Down!" he shouted. "The son of a bitch is underneath us."
Bolan joined the agent and knelt beside him. A slug had torn through the flesh of his leg above the knee. He was bleeding, but it was a spreading stain, not a gush of blood. He was lucky. The artery appeared to be intact.
"Listen to me," Coppolo grunted. "He's down there. He's right underneath us. If you cover the east end of the building and I cover the west, then he can't go around the ends and get away. And he can't go out in the parking lot. So he's trapped."
"If he hasn't got away already."
"If," Coppolo agreed. He began to crawl toward the west end of the balcony, dragging the wounded leg, smearing blood on the concrete.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Coppolo replied. "Cover your end."
Bolan trotted to the east end of the balcony, past room 204. The door was open and he took a moment to look inside. Grotti wasn't in there, unless he was hiding under the bed or in the bathroom.
At the end, Bolan peered around the corner of the building. Coppolo was doing the same at the other end. It was as the agent had said — Grotti was very likely trapped under the balcony. Even if he broke into a room, he might still be trapped, because it looked as if the only windows in these motel rooms were on the front. Behind the bedrooms were bathrooms, with no windows.
On the other hand, this was a standoff, and Bolan didn't like standoffs. At any time, an innocent might wander into the situation and get hurt, or perhaps be taken hostage. Going down the stairs was out. The gunner would be looking for that, pistol raised.
But, if Bolan jumped from the balcony and landed on his feet, firing… Or if he jumped and landed between two parked cars…
He signaled to Coppolo who shook his head emphatically. But when he saw that Bolan meant to make the jump, whether he agreed or not, he signaled that he would distract the man below by firing a shot or two down the stairs. Bolan nodded.
Coppolo crawled to the west stairway. It was only a few feet for him, but he moved painfully. Lying on his belly on the concrete, he lowered his head and risked a look below. Then he thrust the muzzle of the Browning downward and fired two shots. As the slugs whined off the pavement below, Bolan made his leap from the balcony.
It was the kind of jump he'd made many times. He knew how to cushion the impact to his ankles and knees and how to roll away from the landing point to avoid the fire of a startled defender. He landed between two vehicles and came out of the roll with the Beretta up and ready, seeking target acquisition.
During the bare second he was plunging to the parking-lot pavement, he'd caught sight of the man beneath the balcony. The guy had been crouched, pistol aimed with two hands at the stairway from which Coppolo had fired.
Another shot rang out, but not from Coppolo's Browning. Bolan lifted his head above the hood of the station wagon and saw the crouching man topple forward. Then a slug punched through the sheet steel of the hood and passed within a few inches of his throat.
The warrior threw himself
back and scrambled for the rear of the car. A bullet ricocheted off the pavement and caught the underside of the Ford. Someone was trying to catch him in the leg by spanging a slug off the parking-lot pavement — a remote chance but maybe one worth somebody's taking.
"Office, Mack!" Coppolo yelled.
Bolan stood up. A man in a white shirt and black pants had made a dash to the door of the motel office. He'd reached it, and now he frantically twisted the handle of the locked door. He turned, spotted Bolan and raised his automatic. Bolan loosed a 3-shot burst that caught the gunner squarely in the chest and slammed him back against the office door.
It was over. One man lay sprawled on the pavement in front of the door to the motel office, the other doubled over and dying, but not yet dead, on the concrete in front of room 118. Joe Coppolo sat on the balcony and clutched his leg. Bolan holstered his Beretta and stood, calmly watching the screaming approach of a Bedford Beach police car.
* * *
The doctors at Bedford Beach General Hospital insisted that Joe Coppolo should have a blood transfusion and rest for most of the afternoon. Chief Milano was with Bolan when the Justice agent was released.
The fingerprints of the two dead men had been faxed to Washington, and identifications had come back already. The man who had been shot in front of room 118, who had died before he could be put in an ambulance, was Vincenza Grotti. The man who had fallen in front of the door to the motel office was George Aristotle, reputedly a professional gambler in Atlantic City, whose fingerprints were in the FBI central files only because he had been arrested and released for want of evidence on a charge of statutory rape — eighteen years ago. An unlikely man to have been where he was, doing what he was doing.
"Somebody had to have called Grotti and told him two Feds were looking for him," the chief said. "But that's not the half of it. Somebody tipped Aristotle that Grotti had been fingered — or probably had been — and sent him to whack Grotti before you two could arrest him. I mean, that was a hit, gentlemen.
"Let me tell you what interests me about that," the chief continued. "That son of a bitch had a lot of cool. He arrives to hit Grotti. What's he see? Grotti is in trouble already, with a couple of Feds on the balcony and Grotti stuck downstairs. Most guys would have backed off, gone back to whoever sent them and said, hey, you sent me over there too late. But no. Aristotle walks into the middle of a firefight and kills his man. Then he turns on you, Mr. Belasko."
"Any of the desk clerks could have called Grotti. But it's unlikely that George Aristotle was so close by that he came without a little notice," Bolan replied.
"He didn't drive up here from Atlantic City in an hour," Coppolo said.
"No?" the chief queried. "We keep a log. There was an hour and twenty minutes from the time you left my office until we got the call that there was a shooting at the Ashbury."
"That's about how long we took to check out all the motels on the list and get back to the Ashbury," Coppolo told him.
"If a cop in my headquarters had called Atlantic City while you were there, George Aristotle, using the Garden State Parkway, could have been here in time."
"Or somebody, say a reporter…" Bolan began to say.
Chief Milano interrupted. "Hey, thanks. But no. If a call went out from my headquarters, it was one of my men."
"Are you plagued by the Barbosas?" Coppolo asked.
"The Barbosa Family… Their influence extends to Atlantic City," the chief replied.
"Atlantic City belongs to the Five Families," Coppolo explained. "The Barbosa Family is a little more crude, a little more traditional, a little more ready to kill than others, but why should we be surprised to find a Barbosa hitter in New Jersey? It's where he's needed, that's all."
"I have my problem," the chief told them. "I'll take care of it. How would you guys take care of it for me?"
Bolan shook his head. "I don't think our methods would work too well for you."
"No. I agree. But I wish they would."
Chapter Seven
As Bolan drove the Garden State Parkway north to New York, he took no particular notice of the humming Italian sports car coming up behind him. Suddenly the Ferrari drew abreast, and a hardguy in the passenger seat fired a burst point-blank, only six or eight feet from him. Except for the unevenness of the pavement, which caused both cars to pitch and lunge, the vicious assault of 9 mm slugs from the Uzi would have taken his head off. On this road, at this speed, the shot hadn't been as easy as it looked. The slugs roared through the glass of the side window, just above Bolan's head and a little behind, and ricocheted off the roof, buzzing like insane bees and snapping out through the glass on the right side.
Bolan whipped the wheel to the left and slammed the weight of the Buick into the side of the Ferrari, using the mass of the big American car to bulldoze the lighter vehicle off the highway. He kept the fender and door of the Buick pressed hard against the other vehicle until it left the pavement, fishtailed wildly in the median and smashed against the divider guardrail.
Joe Coppolo awakened in the passenger seat and hauled out his Browning.
The Executioner pulled the Buick to the side of the road as soon as he could stop, two hundred yards beyond where the sports car had skidded into the guardrail. In an instant, Coppolo was out of the vehicle, crouched behind the open door and leveling his pistol against whoever else might be in pursuit.
On the other side, Bolan grabbed the torn metal of the Buick's left front fender and, bracing his foot against the wheel, pulled hard. The steel came away from the tire, which allowed the warrior to steer the vehicle.
"Get in!" he yelled to Coppolo.
As soon as the Justice agent complied, Bolan pulled onto the highway and accelerated. In the rearview mirror he could see cars stopping and a crowd forming around the wrecked Ferrari.
"Hey! Aren't you going back? Those guys…"
"Too many people are going to want an explanation," Bolan replied.
"Well, we're on a limited-access highway. We're apt to be stopped at the exit if somebody has a car telephone or a CB radio."
"We'll worry about that when we come to an exit."
"Two miles," Coppolo said, pointing at a sign. "Listen, I've got a solution."
He opened the glove box under the dashboard and pulled out a red emergency light. He plugged it into the cigarette-lighter socket and thrust it out the window, where strong magnets in the light's base locked it to the roof of the Buick.
"Now accelerate a little more," he directed. "Charge up to that toll booth like we're in a hell of a hurry."
Two minutes later the Buick screeched to a stop at the booth. Coppolo leaned across Bolan and flashed his identification at the startled collector. "Federal officers! You've got a red Ferrari wrecked about five miles back. Tell the police to approach it with extreme caution. The guys in it have got an Uzi, possibly other automatic weapons. And tell the police to contact Chief Milano in Bedford Beach. Got that? Tell the state police to call Chief Milano in Bedford Beach!"
* * *
"It's war!" Joe Coppolo growled. "The Barbosas have declared war."
The doctors at Bedford Beach General Hospital had told him to stay off his leg, to use crutches when he had to move, but he had tossed the crutches aside as soon as he could pick up a pair of heavy oak canes, and now he hobbled around Saul Stein's office, angered by the pain in his leg.
"When they fired on us yesterday afternoon, they knew they were firing on two federal agents…"
"One federal agent," Bolan corrected him dryly.
"Well, they thought they were firing on two. It comes to the same thing. I don't propose to stand for it."
"Did New Jersey come up with the makes on the guys in the Ferrari?" Bolan asked.
"Not yet, but I have something else to tell you," Saul told him. "They killed Sara Wald Monday night. She was beaten first."
"Suspects?" Bolan asked.
Stein shrugged. "I have a suspect in mind — Whitey Albanese. Bui who
knows?"
"They beat her to find out where Grotti was. Monday night… So they were just a skip ahead of us when we got to Bedford Beach."
"Just a skip," Coppolo echoed. "That did give them time to get George Aristotle up from Atlantic City. But Grotti was out on the beach in the morning, so they didn't find him until just before we arrived."
"And while you were at the hospital," Bolan said, "they brought up the heavy artillery in the Ferrari."
"A rented car, incidentally," Stein informed them. "Rented in Jersey City."
"The hitters rented something fun to drive," Coppolo said. "And if that Ferrari hadn't been jerking up and down on rough pavement, that burst would have…"
"I don't want to think about it." Joan shuddered.
"I do," Bolan told her. "As Joe said — the Barbosas have declared war."
* * *
Joe Rossi and Carlo Lentini confronted Luca Barbosa in a barber shop in Brooklyn. When the two men came in, the barbers and other customers respectfully slipped out for coffee so the three dons could confer in private. Rossi eased into the next barber chair, with the thought that he would let the barber trim his hair when the conference was finished. Lentini sat in one of the steel-and-vinyl waiting chairs.
"Grotti…" Lentini began. "And a Fed. Both got hit. What's goin' on, Luca?"
Barbosa was nearly hidden beneath the voluminous cloth the barber had draped over him, his hair half-cut. "Grotti knew too much," he muttered. "And he didn't have the courage to keep his mouth shut. We couldn't let him be arrested."
"You told us you didn't know where he was," Rossi said.
"I didn't. But if the Feds could find him, I could find him."
"Someone beat the information out of his girlfriend," Rossi said quietly, "then killed her."
"Yeah? Well, it was her who told the Feds where to find him."
"Who did this job for you, Luca?" Lentini asked. "Whitey Albanese?"
"I don't see how that's any business of yours," Barbosa retorted.
Knockdown Page 8
