Tennessee Smash

by Don Pendleton

  “Not really,” said the pilot.

  “Goes back quite a few years. Roberto Leonetti was a New York underboss whose ambitions exceeded his reach. A bit like Gordy, I’d guess. And he came to grief—had to go into hiding. His wife and kid were hustled away by one of his loyal soldiers who was caught and snuffed a few days later. The wife and kid were never seen again. Leonetti lived the rest of his days in hiding but he kept sending people out searching for the wife and kid until the day he died.”

  “They got to him, though?”

  “They got to him, right. But not through the wife and kid. Like I said, they’ve never been seen since.”

  “So how does Leonetti figure—?”

  “The kid came back.”

  “Oh. Uh-huh. So the kid has been seen.…”

  “It seems that Dandy Jack Clemenza ran into him in Singapore while playing the heroin market. As the story goes, young Leonetti was heavily into the Golden Triangle loop. Guess it was in the blood—like father, like son. Clemenza took the kid on as his man in Asia.”

  “This kid is now grown up.”

  “Right.”

  “Great plot for a movie.”

  “It’s no movie, Jack. A guy calling himself Carl Leonetti showed up here in Nashville last week. It seems that he’s decided to go into competition against his own sponsor and—”

  “That would be Clemenza.”

  “Right. It looks like Leonetti brought in a shipment that Clemenza knew nothing about. He was looking for a connection. He connected with Crazy Gordy.”

  “An unfortunate coincidence?”

  “Depends on the point of view. It’s a strongly layered outfit, Jack. Clemenza ran his own thing. Copa runs his own thing. Somewhere, several layers up, I’d guess, somebody runs both of them.”

  Grimaldi sighed. “And Mazzarelli just runs for Copa. Okay. Standard procedure.”

  “Sure. Standard split, too. The investment money comes down from the top and runs along the roots. As it’s sucked back up, every wiseguy along the way skims off his share and sends the rest along.”

  “I understand that, yeah.”

  “Okay, understand this. The Syndicate got only half of what it paid for. That half fell the hard way last night in Memphis with Clemenza. The other half came into Nashville last week with Carl Leonetti.”

  “Oh ho,” said the Mafia pilot in a falsely cheery voice. “I read that scene in big bold print.”

  “Read it this way, though. Leonetti hits Nashville with a shipment worth millions. He’s trying to reach Copa. Instead, he reaches Mazzarelli. He’s never seen again.”

  “Not even by Copa.”

  “Right. Especially not by Copa. So … I let it out. Now Copa is wondering about the name of the game.”

  Grimaldi chuckled. “So would I. But I still don’t know what the hell—”

  “I want Leonetti, Jack. I want him alive and well. The guy is wired.”

  “Oh. Oh. Yeah. Okay. That’s why the feds.”

  “That’s why, yeah.”

  “I couldn’t figure it. It’s not like you, Sarge.”

  “Maybe not, but that’s the way it is. For now.”

  “So why are we going back?”

  “You ever hear of Molly Franklin?”

  “The Molly Franklin? Sure.”

  “She is Mrs. Copa.”

  “Awww—really? I never heard—”

  “Neither did I. But he’s introducing her that way. I take it that it hasn’t been for long. She wants out, Jack. I’m going to take her out.”

  “Aw—well now—you mean we’re …?”

  “Yeah. Mazzarelli is out chasing a Black Ace. Copa is out chasing Mazzarelli. I figure there couldn’t be more than a handful of guys left at that joint. That’s why I want you to slip me in there. There’s a small stand of timber on the back forty. Did you notice it?”

  Grimaldi sighed. “Yeah. I noticed it.”

  “If you pick your angle carefully, I believe you can come in behind that timber without attracting attention. A low profile approach. You know.”

  Grimaldi knew, sure. And he did not like it. “This just isn’t like you, Sarge. If there’s just a few guys there, why don’t you just blast her out. I’ve seen you—”

  “Not this time, Jack.”

  “That’s where your odds are. Those trees are several hundred yards behind the house. It’s open country from that point on. There’s not even a bush between there and the house.”

  “I’ll have to chance it,” Bolan insisted.

  “Let me fly over once more and—”

  “No way. This is a soft mission, Jack. That lady has to simply disappear. I mean like into thin air.”

  “Well, I can get you closer than those trees.”

  Bolan had figured that all along. But it had to be the pilot’s own choice.

  “Without being seen?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  Bolan had confidence in the guy. With damn good reason. He took a long breath and said, “Okay. Do your stuff, flyman.”

  “You just watch my stuff,” said Grimaldi.

  Brave words, yeah. But the eyes were scared. Those knowing eyes were scared.

  And, Bolan knew, with damn good reason.

  CHAPTER 14

  PROTOCOL

  “They’re going to hear us,” Grimaldi warned Bolan. “There’s no way to avoid that. So you’d better pray you’ve got your numbers right.”

  They were powering along just off the deck on a downwind approach, following the base of the ridge. Stunted trees growing along the 50-foot slope flashed past in dizzying procession just a few breathless centimeters removed from the reach of the windmilling blades.

  And, yeah, Bolan knew that they would be heard. But he was counting on a greatly thinned human line in the defenses of that joint and he was especially counting on the fragility of human perceptions. Hearing was one thing; knowing, another.

  The stone wall loomed up in the forward vision. The little bubbletop jumped it and powered on, hugging the ground again into the home stretch. Grimaldi had earned his combat stripes at ’Nam, and Bolan had confidence in the guy. He’d seen many such windmill jockeys perform amazing derring-do stunts in the combat zones. Grimaldi was as good as any in Bolan’s experience. But he would never cease to marvel at the fantastic, precision control these guys could coax from the complicated flying machines.

  They had scurried on for just a few seconds after hopping the wall when the pilot grunted, “Hang onto your socks!”

  With no noticeable slowing of the forward speed, the little chopper suddenly wrenched upward. Bolan felt the G-forces where he sat and where he digested his food; the little craft shot skyward, rising abruptly like an elevator—straight up. Bolan caught a glimpse of the house at the top of the bounce, at about the same moment that he became aware that Grimaldi had killed the power. For a flashing instant it seemed that they were going to topple backwards, but then the little chopper righted itself and settled to the ground with hardly more impact than an ordinary landing. This one had been fast and quick—damned quick!

  Grimaldi released his inner tensions with a happy whoop, then told his passenger, “Ground zero, buddy. Hit it.”

  But Bolan was already hitting it. The numbers were tight and there were none to be squandered on premature congratulations. The target was about 30 seconds away, up a 50-foot timbered slope and in through the aquatic gardens. Thanks to his daring jockey, Bolan figured he had a good chance. Yeah. Call it 50-50, anyway.

  The whole place had been ominously quiet for more than ten minutes. And Molly Franklin knew that something very unusual was going on. Not that the place normally rang with joy, or anything like that. It had been so depressing an atmosphere around there for so long.₀

  But now it was just plain dead. Like a funeral parlor. The place had been buzzing, earlier. Really buzzing. When the bigshot from New York came in. All of the housemen were agog over his visit. Even old deadpan Lenny had begun nervously fussing
over his “territory,” lecturing the housemen in monosyllables about “protocol.” That was really funny. Apes like those worrying about protocol. He was different, though. She’d sensed that difference even before he spoke. So maybe they were like that, at the upper level. But Nick would be at that level, some day. Maybe even Gordy. Somehow she could not imagine either of them there. They were nothing like …

  She had stood at the window and watched as they strolled across the grounds. Watched and wondered. Was he telling Nick about her dumb plea for help? God, she felt like such a …

  But he did seem …

  Well maybe he was just being diplomatic. What did protocol mean? Family spat. Hal Family spat!

  The dirty bastard had taken her over. Some spat.

  Had he really meant to make her think that he was going to intervene? And, if he had, was it diplomacy—protocol—or was it just …?

  Whatever, the place had become a funeral parlor very quickly. First, he left. Then Gordy and his funky legion. Then Nick and practically everybody on the place.

  So what was going on?

  Did it involve her?

  She’d gone to her room and crammed the largest purse she could find with cosmetics and other dire necessities, then straight back to the garden. He was different. He was going to help. All this was some kind of protocol being worked on her behalf.

  “You’ve got to pick your time and place,” he’d said. “I always do that.”

  So do it, beautiful. This is the time and this is the place. Everybody’s gone. So where the hell are you?

  But she was just being dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Nobody was going to help her! What the hell could anyone do, if Nick didn’t want it done? Nothing! No, nothing!

  She sat down beside the pool and drew her knees up to her chin, feeling desolate and alone.

  Lenny came out and looked at her, started to say something but changed his mind, then sat down at a table and started toying with a dirty glass. Watching her. Someone was forever watching her!

  She called to him, “What’s going on, Lenny?”

  “Just taking a breather, ma’am,” he replied boredly. “Can I get you something?”

  “You can get me the hell out of here!” she yelled.

  The house boss just chuckled at that. He’d heard it often enough. She’d even tried seducing him, once. Hell, she’d do anything to get out. Anything. She’d kill. Damn right. She’d kill.

  “You need a drink,” he said to her.

  “Go to hell!” she yelled at him.

  He chuckled again.

  Then she heard it. Lenny heard it, too. The helicopter was coming back. She lay on her back to get a better angle at the sky. Lenny got to his feet and took a couple of nervous steps toward the house.

  He asked her, “Do you hear a chopper?”

  She said, “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “You’d better get inside.”

  “Go to hell, Lenny. I’ll go inside when I want to go inside. Who’re you expecting? The inspector-general?”

  He ignored that and said, “Yeah, it’s a chopper, all right.”

  She yelled, “Cheese it, Lenny, it’s the cops! You’d better get your gun and hurry out there! They left you holding the bag, dummy! What’re you gonna do now?”

  He growled, “Please settle down, ma’am. This ain’t no joke.”

  A man with a submachine gun jogged around the corner of the glass-enclosed gardens. Lenny yelled at him. “Cover the pad, Jimmy!”

  The man yelled back, “S’where I’m headed.”

  “You stay put!” Lenny snarled at her as he hurried into the house.

  “You go straight to hell,” she said, under her breath.

  She stood up and hung the purse from her shoulder.

  She was ready to go. Dumb, maybe, but she was ready for anything. Or so she thought. But she was not quite prepared for that which immediately happened. It startled her—scared hell out of her is what it did. She did not know where he came from or how he got there. But suddenly there he was, at her side, a hand on hers and that soft voice telling her, “Let’s go. Quietly.”

  You bet.

  Damn right.

  And, scarey or not, she just loved his protocol.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE DEAL

  As was so often the case, getting out was a bit more difficult than getting in. Time had a way of working for the other side in such situations. You can fool all the people anytime, sure—but not for very long at a time.

  So Bolan was not all that surprised to find an obstacle in the path of withdrawal.

  They were halfway down the slope and moving swiftly through the timber when Bolan abruptly came eyeball to eyeball with that obstacle. The guy was packing a grease gun close to the chest, and those eyes were both electrified and confused in the sudden confrontation.

  Bolan’s reaction was quicker and more positive. He doubled the guy over with a knee to the gut and snapped his neck in the spontaneous follow-through. The only sounds of the encounter were a grunting whoof from the midriff slam and the unmistakable pop of separating vertebrae.

  The woman gasped with horror and fell to her knees in the underbrush.

  Bolan set the safety on the grease gun and wordlessly handed it to the woman, then draped the dead man over his shoulder and continued the descent.

  He heard her scrambling along close behind, breathing hard and beginning to come unglued. The grimness of her little adventure was settling in. He paused and turned back to tell her, “Come on. We’re almost clear.”

  Those haunted eyes were now saucer-wide and inching toward hysteria—but she was fighting it. “I’m okay,” she puffed. “Keep going.”

  Grimaldi was pacing the turf beside the helicopter with a revolver in hand. He wasted no time with greetings, but hopped aboard at first sight of them and fired the engine.

  Bolan stowed his dead cargo behind the seat then lifted the lady aboard and moved quickly in behind her. The little craft leapt off immediately and resumed the ground-hugging flight along the base of the ridge. Seconds later they were around the bend, and lifting toward a more comfortable altitude.

  Molly Franklin Copa, wedged small and shrinking between the two men, an automatic weapon on her lap, sat quietly with both hands covering her face.

  Bolan donned his headset and told the pilot, “That was some kind of flying, Jack. Thanks.”

  “Say it again when I quit shaking,” Grimaldi requested. “What’s the cargo?”

  “A Bad Luck Charlie,” Bolan explained. “I couldn’t leave it behind. Dead men do tell tales.”

  The pilot grunted an unintelligible response to that and turned a disturbed look toward the woman. “So do live women,” he said with some discomfort.

  “I think we’ll enjoy her tales, Jack,” Bolan replied. “Protect yourself, though.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Grimaldi slipped on a pair of smoked glasses and donned a baseball-style cap. He grinned. “Think she’ll give me an autograph?”

  Bolan said, “I’m expecting much more than that.” He plugged in another headset and placed it on Mrs. Copa’s pretty head.

  Yeah. A hell of a lot more than that.

  So often, success is harder to live with than failure. Especially when success seems to come so easily. It had come to young Molly Franklin like a hand from heaven. She had “paid no dues,” as the showbiz folk liked to put it. But it seemed that she’d been a good kid with warm ideals and a strong sense of gratitude—and that was the chief source of all her problems. She’d been a pushover for every sob story in town, an easy mark for sponging friends and relatives, and a sitting duck for all the vultures of the business who saw nothing but dollar signs when they looked at her.

  So she’d had failure in success, agony with her joys, frustration with triumphs. Ten years of that had set her up perfectly for Nick Copa. He caught her on the rebound from a second miserable marriage—at a time when her career was being threatened by a growing drinking problem and an incom
petent business manager.

  They were quietly married in Vegas following a whirlwind, sixty-hour courtship. And Copa immediately set about putting the Molly Franklin Company in order. Apparently he’d made a few offers which certain people could not refuse, because he cut through a stultifying legal process which could have taken years to accomplish. Almost overnight he fired her manager, switched her to a different booking outfit, killed an exclusive recording contract, and took over the whole works himself. Several days later he ran off all the loungers and spongers from Franklin Place, the ridge-top estate which had been Molly’s home for several years, replacing them very quickly with his own cadre.

  All of which had seemed highly commendable to Molly, in the beginning. She’d admired Nick’s strength and hardnosed business attitude—and although she’d known from the beginning that he was mixed up somehow in the rackets, she’d loved and trusted him and welcomed his strong hand in her affairs.

  She’d thought it a marvelous idea when he converted her barn into a recording studio, then began producing her records from there. She did not know until months later that the studio was also being used as a pirate factory for the theft of other people’s recordings.

  Ditto the television studio in the barn’s loft. Except that they never got around to producing any Molly Franklin packages from there. It seemed that there was never any production time available between the endless one-reelers of hardcore porn being filmed and processed there.

  “You saw a couple of the stars in the pool today,” she told Bolan. “They live in. Like me. But they have a hell of a lot more freedom than I have.”

  Bolan said, “I saw some unopened crates in the barn. What’s in them?”

  “Must be the video cassette stuff,” she replied.

  “What’s it for?”

  “Oh that’s the big, coming thing—casette players for television. It will probably make Nick a billionnaire. He wants to record TV shows and movies and sell them abroad—on the black market, of course.”

  Of course.

  She went on: “But the thing I hated most …”

  “Yeah?” Bolan prompted her.

  “He’s blackmailing people. And he’s using me in that.”