War Against the Mafia

by Don Pendleton

  “You’re the Mafia.”

  Seymour’s smile faded. Plasky coughed. Turrin’s fingers began drumming against the table. “We’re the what?” Seymour muttered.

  “Hell, it’s common knowledge,” Bolan said. “With the cops, I guess. They told me that Triangle is tied in with the Mafia.”

  “So what kind of game are you playing, soldier boy?” Plasky hissed.

  “Down, Nat, down,” Seymour hurried in. He turned appraising eyes onto Bolan. “Just suppose the cops were right about that connection. How would that change anything?”

  “It changes my price,” Bolan said, soberly returning Seymour’s gaze.

  Turrin chuckled and relaxed into his chair. Plasky snorted and said something unintelligible. Seymour reacted not at all. Finally he sighed and said, “Either you’re mighty smart or mighty damn dumb, Bolan. Just what is the game?”

  “The game,” Bolan replied slowly, “is that I can identify your killer for you. And suddenly I realize that’s the last thing you want. You don’t want any identification. Look—I have no argument with you. I know how these things go. I don’t know anything about the beef between you and Laurenti, but I do understand discipline. If Laurenti was trying to pull a fast one, then you only did what had to be done. I just want you to understand that I’m no blabbermouth. Not around cops. So—the price is changed. There is no price. There is no eyewitness story. I saw nothing and I say nothing.”

  Plasky’s jaw had dropped. He turned surprised eyes onto Seymour and grunted, “This guy thinks—”

  “I know what he thinks!” Seymour snapped. “It’s been obvious all along.” His gaze had not strayed from the faintly amused face of the soldier. “There was no beef,” he informed Bolan. “Regardless of what the newspapers said, Laurenti and his people were not killed by any criminal organization. So you’re wasting your time and ours with your little game. If you’ll just—”

  “How about playing the game with the cards face up,” Bolan suggested.

  “What are your cards, Sergeant?” Seymour asked, eyes twinkling at Plasky.

  “I’m job hunting. Five of your people stopped living yesterday. I figure you have a vacancy.”

  Turrin shifted uneasily. “What does a soldier need with a job?” Plasky asked faintly.

  “I’ve been twelve years in this uniform,” Bolan replied. “I’ve learned a trade, but it hasn’t made me any money. I don’t have a dime, and I’ll never have a dime, not from what this uniform will bring me.”

  Seymour was beginning to warm up. “What sort of a trade?” he inquired.

  “Guns are my business.”

  “Guns?” Seymour laughed softly. “You think guns are our business?”

  Bolan ignored the parry. “I can build them, I can modify them, I can repair them, I can make the ammo for them, and I can shoot them.”

  Seymour was still clucking. “Even supposing that we are what you think we are, you have your eras confused. This isn’t Chicago of the twenties and thirties. This is Pittsfield of the sixties.” He shook his head. “You’ve got us all wrong, Sergeant.”

  Bolan nodded his head toward a background man who was positioned in the shadow of a poolside cabana. “He’s wearing a gun,” he said, then stabbed his finger toward the diving platform, and added, “so’s that one. I counted five gun-bearers the instant I stepped onto this property. You’ve got a civilian army here. And you’ve got vacancies. And I need a job.”

  “You planning on deserting from the Army?” Turrin put in.

  The soldier soberly shook his head. “You know what an ROTC billet is, Turrin? It’s a cream-pie duty.”

  “Tell us about it,” Seymour said interestedly.

  “That’s my humanitarian reassignment. To the ROTC unit out here at Franklin High. The Army supplies instructors for these programs. It’s cream-pie duty for any soldier. We get a housing allowance, we work regular hours, just like any teacher, and we live like any civilian.”

  “These regular hours—how do you figure to work two jobs at once?”

  Bolan grinned. “I’m not the regular instructor. I’m just padded on to give me an official duty station. There’s already a guy out there. I’ll just be an odd hand. Maybe I’ll give a few lectures on gun handling, maybe I’ll help out a little on the rifle range. But I was given to understand that I’d be more or less free to come and go as I please.”

  “Don’t sound like the Army to me,” Turrin said, smiling.

  “Me either,” Bolan agreed. “But I’ll be up for re-enlistment at the end of the year. And there’s this responsibility for the kid brother, see. They’re giving me until the end of the year to make some provisions for him. I guess they figure by then I’ll either have to return to full duty or just get the hell out of the Army.”

  “I should think you’d be quite happy with the arrangement,” Seymour observed.

  “Well, I’ve got the kid now,” Bolan pointed out. “And like I said, not a dime in any bank. I figure I’ll take the discharge in December. And I can’t see any sense in wasting any time getting phased into civilian life.” He smiled broadly. “And then, you’ve got this vacancy.”

  “I think the sarge is a conniving opportunist,” Seymour said, to nobody in particular.

  “We need opportunists—that’s what we need, isn’t it?” Turrin said.

  Seymour sighed. “Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what we need. Well—get those girls over here, Leo. And roll that bar over here. It seems we have a new employee to welcome.” He smiled sourly at Bolan. “This is your day of golden opportunity, Sarge. Don’t let it turn to brass.”

  Bolan grinned and picked up his drink. It had become tepid and flat. Who cared? Hell, who cared? He gulped it down. He was in. And from the looks of things he was about to get into something else. Her name, somebody told him, was Mara; her function was entirely obvious. She settled into his lap without an invitation, handing him a fresh drink, and wriggled the bikini-clad—or almost-clad—bottom about in an apparent striving for comfort, at the expense of Bolan’s own. “I like soldiers,” she confided softly, running a hand inside his shirt. The bikini barely topped the swell of her lower abdomen, a thin stretch of elastic traversing the centerline of belled hips and plunging in back well below the pronounced cleft of swollen buttocks. The halter of the bikini was no more than an elasticized scrap of overlaid “now you see it, now you don’t” netting. Bolan’s free hand found a natural resting place on the silky torso at a point about midway between the upper and lower edges of the “swim” suit, fingers splayed down across the soft indentation of the navel. He flicked a glance around in a brief survey of his companions, noted that they were comparably burdened and preoccupied, then let his fingers travel on southward.

  The girl giggled and captured his hand, raised slightly off his lap to gaze beneath her, and murmured: “You haven’t been around women lately, have you?” She then resettled, again agitating herself into the closest possible conjunction and moving Bolan’s hand up and onto her breast. “Have you forgotten what those feel like?” she asked whimsically.

  Bolan nudged the net aside and assured her that he had, indeed, not forgotten. She giggled, took the drink out of his hand, set it on the nearby table and slid off his lap, then playfully tugged him out of the chair. “We need to get you into a pair of trunks,” she told him. She moved close alongside and beneath his arm, maintaining a tight, lock-step embrace, and steered him to a cabana. She entered with him, locked the door, and moved immediately into his arms, raising her mouth to his. He took it hungrily, suddenly aware of how long it had been since a vibrant American girl had been in his arms. Her breath was sweetly alcoholic, hot and wanting, altogether pleasant, an active tongue probing for effect. Spring-tension hips were thrust high and forward and moving rhythmically for an even more disturbing effect. His hands fell onto bunched buttocks, then he hooked his thumbs into the hips and flipped her away, breaking also the hot conjunction of mouths.

  She swayed back in for more. He
evaded her, the thinking part of his brain seemingly numbed and reacting instinctively. “Afraid you’ll mess up your pants?” she murmured. One of her hands moved between them, and she said, “Uh-huh. You’ve been too long without, Sarge.” She moved away from him then, swinging her attention to the far wall of the small hut. An assortment of male swimming trunks hung from pegs there. Her eyes returned to his midsection, sizing him, then she selected from the swimwear. “Put these on,” she suggested, tossing the trunks onto a low bench behind Bolan.

  Bolan was still feeling somewhat mechanical in his actions. His fingers were already at his shirtfront, working the buttons. She moved back to him and went to work on the tie. A moment later she carefully hung shirt and tie on a peg, pushed him onto the bench, and took off his shoes and socks.

  “I don’t give this service to just everybody,” she told him, smiling darkly. Her hands seized his belt. “You’re different.”

  He pushed her hands away and got to his feet. “Everybody’s different,” he grunted, his thinking faculties returning. He was fumbling with the waistband of his trousers. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he added, giving her a meaningful gaze.

  “You don’t really mean that,” the girl replied. A quick motion of her hands caused the bikini bra to fall away. Glistening cones sprang forward, jiggling tauntingly in the sudden release, the pale pink at the tips highlighting the projection. She cupped them in her hands, gently agitating the nipples with her thumbs, which were already protruding slightly; they grew noticeably under the attention, riveting Bolan’s eyes in fascinating inspection. “That net makes them itch,” she explained. “Wouldn’t you like to scratch them for me?”

  Without a word, Bolan reached forward and tugged down the bikini panties. She stepped out of them with a throaty giggle and reached for his trousers, expertly lowering shorts and all in one brief motion and falling against him, moving sensually for calculated effect. Bolan groaned and clasped her to him, luxuriating in the fusion of male and female flesh. Her arms went tightly about him, hands rubbing feverishly at his back, pile-driving hips once again in action. Bolan twisted out of the embrace, his breathing harsh and ragged.

  “It has been a while,” he admitted.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said, obviously enjoying the explosiveness of the encounter. There was no room to stretch out in the tiny dressing room; it was also obvious that she had dealt with similar situations before. She pulled the little bench around and pushed Bolan down onto it, seated on the end, then she climbed aboard, straddling man and bench, seizing and stuffing him in with an obviously practiced maneuver and settling onto him with a harsh bounce. Bolan experienced an immediate tremor, his arms going about her and squeezing her fiercely to him as his back sought the surface of the bench. She went down with him, murmuring, “Good, good.”

  It had happened so quickly as to seem totally unreal to Bolan. “I don’t suppose that did much for you, eh,” he muttered apologetically.

  She lay there, the magnificent breasts spreading across his chest, lips nibbling at his neck, entirely relaxed.

  “It can wait,” she told him. “You guys always come back full of TNT or something.” She struggled to her feet, smiling ruefully at his midsection, pulled a towel from a shelf and dropped it onto him.

  “Are you a prostitute?” he asked her, point-blank.

  She blinked at him, then smiled. “Sure,” she said, still smiling.

  “Then it really doesn’t matter to you, does it. I mean …”

  “I know what you mean.” She retrieved the male trunks from the floor and tossed them at him, then began pulling on her own trunks. Then she stared at him silently for a long moment, picked up the bra, seemed to be debating something in her mind, then hung the bra on a wall peg. “But you’re wrong,” she said suddenly. “It does matter. And I’ll show you. It will be better next time. Now that you’re de-charged. Well—come on. Let’s take a swim. And after that … Well, we’ll find a better place than this damn shack. Okay?”

  He grinned at her. “Okay,” he said. He got into the trunks, and they both went out and took a topless dive into the pool. Bolan was looking forward to the next time, and the next place. Obviously, Mara was also. It was the most exhilarating swim Mack Bolan had ever taken.

  5 — A Master’s Stroke

  Walter Seymour was disturbed. It had not been easy to build a place for himself in the organization. Not with a name like Walter Seymour, for Christ’s sake. Now if his name had been Giovanni Scalavini—or some such—the road would have been a lot smoother. Even Nat Plasky had an edge on him, purely because the name sounded better to the old guard—even though any idiot would know that Plasky was no wop. Seymour had outrun Laurenti quite simply because, right blood or not, Laurenti had never been and would never be anything more than a nickel-and-dime hood. He’d had a hood’s intellect and a hood’s heart—a perfect combination and an ideal mentality for the nickel-and-dime business of payday-loan collection. Seymour had never liked the Triangle operation. He was honest enough with himself to admit that what he’d disliked about it the most was Laurenti. The Triangle front provided a good repository for illegal dollars, and Seymour would have been content to see it run as a strictly legitimate loan company—it had been the mentality of Laurenti that made Triangle a brass-knucks operation. Laurenti simply had a loan-shark mentality—and, of course, Triangle was Laurenti’s baby. He was a wop, and the old wops liked him, and his ties with the organization had extended back through several generations and even into the old country.

  So—in a way—Seymour had been almost happy to see Laurenti dead. Not just from a personal viewpoint, he kept telling himself, but from the business angle as well. Laurenti, and Laurenti types, were bad for the organization. Seymour was glad he was dead. At the same time, Seymour was disturbed about those deaths. Who the hell had decided to gun down Laurenti and his people? Who the hell and why the hell?

  Seymour was a realist. He knew that the “man upstairs” at Pittsfield had never fully accepted him. He’d been on probation for ten damn years, and nobody knew it better than Walt Seymour himself. Now if this damn GI, this Bolan guy, could come up with ideas of an organization rub-out, and if the press could think that way, and if the cops could think the same way—then for damn sure the man upstairs and all the men upstairs around the country might be thinking that way, too. It was no closely guarded secret that there had been bad blood between Seymour and Laurenti.

  Yes, Walter Seymour was disturbed. He was disturbed about several things. The damn GI disturbed him. Even though he’d been thoroughly checked out and stamped genuine, there was something about the guy that just didn’t ring. Walt Seymour was not “buying” Mack Bolan—not lock, stock, and barrel. Not for the moment, at least Too many people, too damn many nosey people, were interested in the organization. Congressional committees, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the FBI—everybody had a big nose and an itching finger for the organization. And Walt Seymour was wondering about Mack Bolan’s nose and fingers. Every manner of infiltration had been tried on them. The local cops had tried, the feds had tried, even other organizations had tried—but nobody had ever succeeded, not in any way that mattered. Walt Seymour was disturbed about Mack Bolan.

  Something—something—just did not ring for Sergeant Mack Bolan. The best way to spot a phoney, in Seymour’s mind, was to make a close inspection. The best way to inspect Mack Bolan was to get him on the payroll. Give him a loose leash, keep eyes, ears, and instincts open, and let the phoney reveal himself. Anybody could have sent him. Even the man upstairs could have sent him. Of course, if he was not a phoney—well, a guy like Bolan could be an asset to the organization. He could be an asset even to Seymour. Leo Turrin was beginning to give Seymour trouble. Turrin was smart, likeable, ambitious—and he had the right sound to his name. Yes, Walt Seymour was disturbed about Leo Turrin. He’d put Bolan with Turrin. It would be a masterful stroke, he decided. If Bolan was a phoney, then the man most like
ly to get hurt by him would be the man next to him. Yes. Yes. He’d put Bolan with Turrin. It would be a masterful stroke.

  6 — A Matter of Viewpoint

  “The first thing you gotta remember,” Turrin told Bolan, “is that I’m the C.O. You can think of yourself as the First Sergeant if you want to—but just remember that I’m the C.O. Then the second thing you gotta remember is that we never use the word ‘Mafia’! Understand? It’s ‘The Organization.’ You work for the organization and the organization works for you. That’s the way it works. But you’re not a member. You could never be a member. Your blood ain’t right, see. Even Seymour ain’t no member.”

  “There’s a difference?” Bolan wanted to know.

  They were in Turrin’s automobile, a fancy canary-yellow convertible, and Turrin was giving his new protégé a lift home from Seymour’s suburban home. “Sure there’s a difference.” He punched in the cigarette lighter and fished in his pocket for something to light, finally accepting a Pall Mall from Bolan. “Look, the organization goes back for centuries. Got started in Sicily, the home of my ancestors. It was sort of like Robin Hood, only this ain’t no fairy tale, it’s for real. I’ll bet you didn’t know—the Mafia is a real pure idea—real democracy, you know, democracy for the little people. For the ones that was getting shit on. It was even better than Robin Hood because it was a mass movement.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Bolan admitted.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t know that ‘Mafia’ translates back to mean ‘Matthew.’ Matthew means ‘brave, bold.’ It had to be a secret society because it was going up against the establishment, see, the establishment of those olden times. There was tyranny, see, and all the money was divided up between the rich bastards, the noblemen, the aristocracy. All the laws were rigged to keep the poor people poor and the rich people rich. See? That’s how all laws got started. Everywhere, not just in Italy and Sicily. Laws were written to protect the rich bastards, see. So these bold, brave guys got together in a resistance movement. They set up the Mafia, and it’s been nip and tuck ever since.”