The second man at Giancola's table was a heavyweight. He was drinking coffee, keeping sober and doing his job. An enormous, paunchy man, he, too, was interested in the performance on the stage and nodded and grinned as the «amateur» took off her bra.
"Hey? Haven't we met?"
Bolan turned to find himself being stared at quizzically by a balding man in a white golf shirt and khaki slacks. He shook his head. "I don't recall."
"Don't you play golf at Palm Aire sometimes?" the man asked.
"No. Afraid not."
"Ah. Well… Anyway, Bill Carrington," he said, extending his hand. "With West Publishing Company. You know, the law publisher? Are you a lawyer, by any chance?"
Bolan had to smile at this obviously lonely man seeking company. "I'm Mike Belasko," he said.
It was good luck to have been approached by this voluble man, who turned out to be a law-book salesman. They took a table together, and the company of the progressively drunker Carrington was a benefit to Bolan's cover. He could sit four or five tables away from Giancola and keep an eye on him while apparently in animated conversation with a buddy. Carrington also enjoyed the show and cheered and applauded as each performer stripped. When a redhead who said she was a legal secretary from Hartford, Connecticut, won the prize of one hundred dollars and an invitation to strip for money for a week, he stood up and whistled.
Giancola began to stir.
"Nice to have met you," Bolan said to Carrington. He pushed a fifty-dollar bill toward him. "That'll cover my half of the bar bill."
"Hey, more than, Mike! Too much. Let me…"
Bolan winked. "I'm on a good expense account," he said. "Gotta run, though. Big day tomorrow. See you around."
Leaving Carrington open-mouthed, Bolan strode for the exit, in a hurry to be out of the lounge ahead of Giancola and his hardman.
He reached the parking lot a minute ahead of the mobster, in time to station himself to one side and watch for the consiglière and his bodyguard to come out.
The men didn't have a driver, so they walked across the parking lot toward a maroon Mercedes carefully parked between the lines and apart from the spaces near the door where high-sprung pickup trucks and flamboyantly painted vans were parked in a negligent jumble. The Executioner followed.
The amateur show over, most of the crowd was leaving. Bolan wasn't conspicuous as he followed Giancola and the big hardman across the lot. When they reached their Mercedes, he simply walked around it as though he were going to the next car in the line. He edged around the hood of the Mercedes and walked up just as the bodyguard was unlocking the door for his boss.
Bolan let them see the Beretta.
Dominic Giancola shrugged and shook his head, as if being challenged with a pistol were only another disappointment in a life that had known too many disappointments. The hardman tensed but stared at the Beretta and showed his hands.
"It's silenced," Bolan said.
"Not a mugging, hmm?" Giancola asked.
"Not a hit, either. I just want a little talk with you."
Giancola shrugged again. "I can't argue with that biscuit," he replied, nodding at the Beretta.
"Good. Now I want your friend there to hunker down and let the air out of a tire. I want to see it go flat."
"Not a hit…"
"Not a hit. Let's not turn it into one."
Giancola nodded at the hardman, who then squatted by the side of the car and used the tip of a ballpoint pen to push down the valve and let the air rush out of the right front tire of the car.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" Giancola asked Bolan.
The warrior shook his head. "I don't think so."
The Mercedes slumped to the right as the tire flattened.
"Okay," Bolan said to the hardman. "There's only one way your boss is going to get hurt tonight. That's if you do something stupid. You just get in the car and sit down. He and I are going for a little ride in my car. As soon as we're gone, you can change your tire."
"He's got us by the short hairs," Giancola said to his bodyguard. "Don't try to be a hero."
Bolan led the consigliere across the parking lot to the Thunderbird. When they reached the car, Bolan took a pair of handcuffs from the glove box and locked Giancola's hands behind his back. He patted him down and found a.25-caliber Baby Browning in a holster strapped to his leg. Giancola wasn't just a survivor — he was also a wily old bird.
They had no need to go far. Bolan drove only to the Pompano Air Park. They could sit there, facing the runways, almost deserted at this time of night, without attracting attention. What was more, the parking lot, also almost deserted, afforded Bolan an open view for twenty yards in all directions.
"I need a cigarette," Giancola grunted.
"We're not going to be here long. You'll survive without a cigarette for five minutes."
"If I survive, how long will you?"
"Long enough."
Giancola tugged on his handcuffs and twisted his shoulders. He said nothing.
"I came to Florida to get some information," Bolan said. "If I get it, I'll let you out, and you can walk into that airport office and call a cab. If I don't…"
"Sure, sure. I get you."
The mafioso wasn't afraid. Somehow he kept his dignity. His ravaged face, discolored by the purplish glare of the mercury lamps that lighted the parking lot, was calm. For the most part he stared through the windshield, not looking at Bolan. It was the tactic of a man who had been in this kind of trouble before — not to stare at the face of the man who had you, not to appear to be memorizing his features. Dominic Giancola had the instincts of a survivor. That was why he was one.
"I'm from New York," Bolan told him.
"So's half the population," Giancola said sarcastically.
"Peter DiRenzo sent two hitters to New York. A guy called Toke and a friend. Why? Who borrowed the killers?"
"Hell, I don't know."
"Consiglière, Peter DiRenzo didn't send two hitters to New York without consulting you and his chief capo. Don DiRenzo isn't a stupid man. Why should he get involved in what's going down in New York?"
"Who sent you to ask?"
Bolan shook his head. "If you had me handcuffed in a car in a remote, deserted parking lot, you could ask me that question."
Giancola drew a deep breath, then released it. His lungs groaned in deep wheezes. "A man in New York called for payment of a debt."
"Who?"
"Many years ago," Giancola said, "the head of one of the New York Families saved Don DiRenzo from disaster. He weighed in on the side of Don DiRenzo, in a situation where a New York Family need not have weighed in. But they are related. Their families are from the same village in Sicily. They talked the same dialect. The man from New York was overpowering in those days. Peter DiRenzo was deeply indebted to him."
"Which family?"
Giancola sighed. "When this man was dying, he was captured by a punk, a son-in-law who wanted to take over his businesses. But the old man whispered advice in his son's ear — 'Call Don DiRenzo. The son called. Don DiRenzo sent Tokenese to New York. The old man had died. More than that, someone had hit the son-in-law. The son had already captured his father's regime, but he asked Tokenese to stay, to redeem Don DiRenzo's obligation by performing another service. Don DiRenzo agreed. Then the word came that Tokenese was dead. The other hitter was dead. So…"
"Which family?" Bolan demanded.
Giancola smiled. "Corone. Don Arturo Corone, in his glory days, made Peter DiRenzo what he is. His son Philip called for payment of the debt."
"But Toke was working for Barbosa," Bolan said.
"Maybe that was the other service Philip Corone asked for," Giancola replied. "I don't know, and Don DiRenzo doesn't know."
Chapter Nine
Salina Beaudreau was a competitor. She liked challenge, and she liked to win. To her, Mack Bolan represented a million-dollar challenge. She wouldn't have argued that meeting the man was worth as much to her as the money.
She was too realistic for that. But she did take enormous pride in herself, in her capacity for shrewd calculation and in her skills, and — apart from the money — she would take personal satisfaction in killing the man they called The Executioner.
She held no animus against him. Certainly she didn't hate him. To the contrary, she rather admired him. In her view, they were in the same business, in different ways.
He was a big man, motivated and effective. He was the only man who had ever eluded her. Joe Rossi had sent her to Los Angeles to kill Bolan months earlier, but she'd come up empty-handed. She had failed to execute her first million-dollar contract, and he had driven her into the sea off Block Island. She had barely escaped drowning.
The Bolan contract and its million-dollar payoff were her focus. Anything else was a distraction. She was unhappy that Rossi had asked her to do another fifty-thousand-dollar job before she hit Bolan.
"Where is he?" Rossi had asked. "We've got to smoke him out. You can't hit Bolan if you can't find him. I could suggest that you do another hit, to flush him, as part of the contract." He had shrugged. "I'll go along with an additional fee for…"
"Every hit is a risk," she had said. "You understand hits? I got just so many in me before I wind up dead for trying — or in the dungeons. You know where they put a chick like me? In Bedford Hills… for life. No escape through that barbed wire. Life. Or death. Hey, don't kid around, Joe. Hit Michael Grieco… No big deal. No great risk. Hit Bolan… I got a fifty-percent chance of getting whacked in the process. Like Toke. Like a hell of a lot of other guys who tried. I…"
"So take out the Mohawk girl for another fifty — no risk."
Now here she was. Earning her monthly living. Leaning on a young woman for no reason she understood, except that Joe Rossi would hand her fifty thou for the job.
Oh, more than that. This would grab Bolan's attention. He'd come out of the woodwork if somebody killed his friend Gina Claw.
* * *
Rossi knew things. For instance, he knew that Gina Claw and her fiancé would arrive at Kennedy Airport about three in the afternoon, on a Northwest Orient flight from San Francisco. That was all the information Rossi had given her, but it was enough. Salina met the flight.
She wore a wig of black hair that had been bleached to a dull, reddish brown, a style favored by a lot of black women in New York. She wore a pair of blue jeans, a yellow knit shirt and a blue denim jacket. She carried a small suitcase to make her look like a passenger. That was handy; it contained the tools of her trade.
It wasn't difficult to recognize Gina Bear Claw. Rossi had described her as a distinctive young woman, and she was: olive complexion, straight black hair halfway down her back, big solemn eyes that darted around, looking, searching for something or someone.
Her fiancé was an ordinary-looking fellow, compact and muscular. His blond hair was cut in a brush, and there was about him a sort of swagger, a suggestion of macho self-importance.
They carried some heavy luggage out onto the street. As luck would have it, they didn't look for a cab but carried their luggage to the bus stop. Salina followed, and when they got on the bus, she got on, too.
At the East Side Terminal, Gina Claw and her man did enter a cab.
Salina rushed to the next vehicle in the line. "Wake up, man. Ten bucks tip if you keep up with that cab so I can see where those people go."
The Hispanic driver said nothing, but he nodded and jerked his cab out into traffic.
The couple checked in at Loew's Summit Hotel on Lexington. By watching the elevator lights, she saw that their room was on the sixth floor.
The big question was, for fifty thousand bucks, how do you hit a young woman staying in a sixth-floor room in a prominent hotel on Lexington Avenue?
* * *
"You would have been wise to stay in California," Bolan said to Gina Claw.
She shook her head. "My father was murdered in this town. I'm staying here until something is done about it."
"Something is being done about it."
They sat at breakfast in the coffee shop of the Summit Hotel — Bolan, Gina and her fiancé, Eric Kruger.
"There's no point in trying to talk her out of something once she's decided to do it," Kruger said with a smile, half-proud. "I talked till I was blue in the face against coming back to New York, and here we are."
"Gina," Bolan said, "the man who killed your father is dead."
"Vince Grotti only pulled the trigger," she said bitterly. "What about Luca Barbosa?"
Sweat suddenly beaded on Gina's forehead. "I'm sorry, I… I have to go back to the room."
"She's going to have a baby," Kruger said with obvious pride.
Bolan stood. "Let's go," he said, offering Gina an arm.
Kruger stepped to the counter. "She's sick," he told the waitress. "I'll sign the chit. We'll probably be back later."
As Kruger signed the check for their unfinished breakfasts, Bolan led the unsteady Gina toward the door, brushing past Salina Beaudreau without noticing her.
Salina reached into her purse and closed her hand around a PPK, then thought better of it. He was moving. To get the right shot into him wouldn't be easy. She'd soon have a better chance.
* * *
"Take her home, Eric," Bolan ordered. He fixed a hard stare on Gina. "You have no right to risk the life of your child."
Gina smiled wanly. "I'll think about it."
"Okay."
His hand was on the doorknob, which he turned, then pushed the door open. "I'll call you tomorrow."
Gina screamed.
He jerked around to see what was wrong, and the shot buzzed past his shoulder and ear. He whipped around to see a gunman — gunwoman — kneeling on the hallway floor and holding a pistol in both hands. She was adjusting her aim for a second shot. The warrior threw himself toward her, and her second shot passed by him and hit Gina.
Gina grunted and dropped to her knees.
Bolan pulled his Beretta as Kruger screamed his anguish. The woman on the floor scrambled to her feet and ran. Bolan leveled for a shot, but didn't pull the trigger. This was a hotel corridor, and he couldn't be sure where the bullet might go.
The warrior turned to the stricken woman, who had been hit in the right armpit. The hitter had disappeared through the exit and was making good her escape.
* * *
"The bullet grazed a rib, passed just above her lung and stopped against her scapula," Bolan reported. He put down the telephone. Once he had assured himself that Gina would live, he had left the Loew's Summit. Kruger had just called from the hospital to tell him exactly what the wound was. "She was lucky."
"The tall black woman," Joe Coppolo said. "The hitter who took out Grieco."
"I didn't get a very good look at her," Bolan replied.
"Grieco did."
"Kruger told the NYPD detectives that someone knocked on their door, then shot Gina when she opened it. He didn't mention me. They know who she is, know that her father was murdered. They're putting a watch on her."
"She needs more than that," Coppolo said.
"Maybe. But /was the target. Not Gina."
"Not necessarily. Why would a hitter have been looking for you at the Summit?"
"All I know is, I've been fingered. Whoever that hitter was, she knows me."
"And you know her."
Bolan shook his head. "I didn't get much of a look at her. I can't flinch from every tall black woman in New York."
"And you can't go get her, because you don't know who she is."
"Right."
They were in Bolan's safehouse in Brooklyn, and Joe Coppolo strode painfully around the room, exercising his wounded leg. Joan sat on the couch, dividing her attention between the conversation and the New York Times.
She looked up. "Giancola," she said.
"What I want," Bolan told her, "is a rundown on Philip Corone."
"I got it from Saul. The old man, Arturo, Philip's father, was called The Giant. He was a bon
ecrusher. He made the Corone Family what it is. He had three sons. The other two got out of the business, out of New York. They're in legitimate enterprises in Texas and Oregon. Philip is just thirty-one, and he's the old man's illegitimate son, incidentally, born of a mistress the old man kept on the side. When his wife died, Arturo took the woman and her child in, and they lived with him after that. He gave the boy his name and treated him equally with his other two sons. Arturo also had two daughters. The elder daughter, named Angela, is serving a three-year term in the federal reformatory for women in West Virginia for filing false income tax returns. The younger daughter married Michael Grieco."
"But Philip…"
"Phil was released from the federal reformatory in Danbury only about six weeks ago. The tax problems that put Angela in jail put him in also. They took the fall for the old man, you understand. They were fronting for him when they filed the bad returns. Of course, their being out of circulation gave Grieco his chance. But Grieco was a swaggering idiot. Once Phil was out of Danbury, Grieco's days were numbered."
"You think the hitter works for Philip Corone?" Bolan asked.
"I doubt it," Coppolo replied. "I suspect Phil formed an alliance with somebody."
"Barbosa," Bolan guessed.
"It would appear so," Joan agreed. "Anyway, Philip Corone was a tough kid, the son of a tough old man who slapped him around — slapped everybody around — and the kid grew up in a brutal tradition. But he's shrewd. He kept his nose absolutely clean at Danbury, and he's out." She smiled. "Angela's played it Corone-tough in stir, and the parole board flopped her for another year. She spent two years in Bedford Hills, too — for felonious assault. The other sons are constantly watched. They're clean. Both of them have changed their names, and they don't want any identification with the Corone Family."
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