Knockdown Read online

  Annotation

  The Mob is muscling in on New York's building trade, their web of corruption extending from union racketeering to controlling supplies. The law seems powerless to stop it, and the ruthless Five Families are playing rougher by the minute. But when three union members are murdered… Mack Bolan is left no choice.

  Bolan starts attacking the organization from the ground up. The capos fight back, and their bloody retribution sends the city into chaos. They have put a million-dollar bounty on Bolan's head.

  To the Feds it's a no-rules war, and they'll pay any price to end it. Even if it means sacrificing the Executioner.

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Mack Bolan

  Knockdown

  THE ONLY WAY

  It's a tough, cruel world. The savages are winning because too many good people don't want a piece of the action. There comes a time when you simply have to survive, and the effort may ultimately involve violence. I have set myself up as judge, jury and executioner, and while I believe that is wrong, I also believe its the only way.

  Mack Bolan

  If you prick us, do we not bleed?

  …if you poison us, do we not die?

  and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

  William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

  It takes a strong man to speak out against an injustice, to go against the tide to right a wrong. If another man raises a hand to still that voice, he'll have to answer to me.

  Mack Bolan

  To the men and women of the Organized Crime Bureau

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Carl Furst for his contribution to this work.

  Chapter One

  Occasionally a man laughed when he first met John Bear Claw. John was small. His body was square, as were his head and face, and altogether he was a squat, bowlegged little man. His complexion was swarthy, his hair black and coarse and his eyes glowered from under heavy brows. When men laughed, John pretended not to notice.

  No man who laughed at him ever laughed again after he saw John work, saw him walk confidently out onto a narrow beam four hundred feet above the street with his mask and gloves, squat, pull down his mask and weld two great steel girders together.

  John Claw was a Native American, a Mohawk Indian, and like so many of his tribe, he and his brother worked on the high steel. They were the fourth generation of Claws who had worked above the streets of Manhattan, riveters and welders on the huge black skeletons that eventually became skyscrapers. John's family was well-known, as were the Mohawks, for their lack of fear of heights. Maybe they needed none. No man of the Claw family had ever fallen.

  This morning John Claw arrived at the Seventh Avenue construction site a little early. He usually did. He liked to stand and stare up at the steel for a few minutes before he went to the engineer's trailer to get his assignment. It was a hot, steamy morning, but like every welder, John wore a long-sleeved shirt with the collar tightly buttoned at his throat. He wore heavy shoes and high socks that covered his calves inside his pants. This was his protection, not just against the hot sparks that would fly from his welding, but more importantly against the intense ultraviolet radiation off an arc welder, radiation that would blister a man's skin like a severe sunburn.

  He was proud of the building they were erecting. He'd been proud of most of them. This one would rise fifty-four stories and would provide offices for a score of big companies. Thousands of people would work there rushing in every morning like so many busy ants and rushing out again at the end of the day. John Claw was glad his job was to build their office building, not to work in it.

  He was in a happy frame of mind. His elder daughter, Gina, had spent the weekend at home and had prolonged the visit by staying through Monday. It had been pleasant to see her, to hear the news that she was content with her life in California and was engaged to a helicopter pilot. She would live in the northern part of the state, where her young man flew for a lumber company. On his way into town that morning, John had dropped her at Kennedy International Airport.

  He shook off his reverie and without reluctance walked through the gate in the wooden fence and to the trailer.

  What happened next wasn't unusual. The engineer asked him to check some welds that had been done the day before by another welder — and maybe to repair them.

  "The old problem, John. You know what I mean."

  John only nodded. Yes, he did know what the engineer meant. Too many of the welders had just one qualification: they were members of the union. Some of them welded badly. Some of them didn't weld at all; they drew their pay and did nothing, sometimes failing even to report to the site. This was part of the cost of doing business in New York City.

  As far as John was concerned, the ones who didn't show up at all were better than the ones who showed up and did their work badly. He'd said so. He'd said so at a union meeting. If no-show workers are part of the vigorish, he said, so be it. But worthless workers put weak joints in buildings and endangered every man on the job — not to mention the people who'd work in the offices later. He'd been shouted down.

  Most of the time, he did his job and minded his own business. Sometimes the whole sorry mess made him mad, and he talked. Maybe his wife was right when she said he talked too much, that it was better for a man to earn his wages and bring them home and let what she called «higher-ups» worry about the way things were. The trouble was that he had begun to notice a falling-off in his calls. He wasn't getting as much work as he had a year ago, and he knew why. They were punishing him for opening his mouth.

  John Claw didn't work for a contractor, per se. Each day he put in on his current site, he worked for the contractor, but next week or next month, he'd be working for a different contractor. The contractor notified the union how many men he needed and for what, and the union handed out the assignments. Technically assignments were allocated on the basis of seniority, but it was a complicated formula and a union member would be hard put to sustain his complaint that he wasn't being given all the assignments his membership and seniority entitled him to. Complaints by John Claw were in the works — in the pipeline, as they said. He had spoken to a representative of the National Labor Relations Board about it, and that, too, was in the pipeline.

  On the way up in the crew elevator, John Claw watched the city retreat beneath him. Other men in the cage ignored him, which wasn't unusual. Some didn't want to speak to him. Others did, but thought it better not to be seen in friendly conversation with the squat, muscular little Mohawk who was developing a reputation as a troublemaker.

  Four hundred feet above the street he picked up a heavy sledgehammer and walked out onto a girder, ten inches wide, to its junction with a vertical girder. There he planted his feet firmly and swung the hammer. He wasn't surprised when his powerful blow cracked the weld. The engineer wouldn't be surprised, either.

  John Claw turned and walked back along the beam. He didn't see the foot-long hunk of scrap I-beam that hit him on the head. It glanced off his hard hat, then crunched into his shoulder. John staggered where there was no room to stagger, and his right foot came down where there was nothing but air.
/>   He didn't scream, only grunted "Uh-oh, this is it" as he fell to his death.

  * * *

  As Vince Grotti came back across the beam ten feet above, making his way to the safety of the floored part of the structure, he spotted Burt Whittle standing where he couldn't have helped seeing Vince drop the hunk of I-beam. He stood there, staring, his mouth hanging open.

  "Hey, Burt. What's up? What ya lookin' at?"

  "I, uh…" The older man paused and ran his tongue over his lips. "I been watchin' those gulls, Vince. Not usual for gulls to be up this high, is it?"

  Vince saw no gulls. He was a compact, dark man in his late twenties. He moved with a peculiar grace that was at the same time both beautiful and sinister.

  "Yeah," Burt continued. "Been starin' at those gulls. Kinda fascinate me, ya know? I been starin' at 'em the last five minutes. Really starin'."

  "Gotcha, Burt," Vince said. "Starin' at birds. Good man."

  * * *

  Vince stood just inside the door of Luciano's for a full minute before his eyes made the adjustment from the bright sunshine on the street to the cool darkness of the long room. He finally spotted the man he was looking for and went over to the bar to join him.

  Whitey Albanese sat on one of the three stools at the end of the bar, where they would be apart from other customers and could speak to each other in quiet confidence. He always sat there, and no one ever went near him except by invitation.

  "Beer?"

  Vince nodded.

  "Beer," Whitey said to the bartender.

  Vince lifted himself onto a stool, then he glanced around to see whether he knew anyone else in the bar. Luciano's was a favorite in its neighborhood, where the wise guys went to have a few beers and relax. The walls were paneled in dark oak, on which hung fading old photographs of boxers. The floors were laid with little octagonal tiles in a black-and-white pattern. The grime of decades filled the gaps between the tiles and the cracks in broken ones.

  The bartender put a mug of cold, foaming beer in front of Vince. He stepped away quickly, knowing Whitey would tell him to scram if he didn't.

  "Understand you had an accident on the job this morning," Whitey said conversationally.

  "The mouth of the Mohawks did."

  "What I heard. Too bad. One hell of a welder, they say."

  Vince nodded.

  "Any problems?"

  "Well, maybe. It was a damned public place for a job like that, so a guy saw. He's scared half to death, but he saw. I thought about giving him a heave over the edge, but…"

  "That would have been a mistake," Whitey said crisply.

  "That's what I figured."

  "So, who's the guy?"

  "Burt Whittle. He's a riveter. He told me he didn't see nothin', claimed he was watchin' some sea gulls real careful, which of course meant he did see."

  "We'll take care of him," Whitey replied.

  Vince shrugged. He knew better than to ask what Whitey meant. Whitey Albanese wasn't a man to mess around with. No way. He was a Sicilian — a real Sicilian, from Palermo. Tough. They said he'd carried one of those Italian shotguns in the Sicilian hills and had blasted the guts out of half a dozen men — and maybe a woman, too. And the guy was smart. He'd been in New York six years and spoke the language like he was born here. But one important thing to remember was that he was treacherous. Everyone who ever trusted him had suffered from it.

  Whitey was a chain smoker and looked as if it was killing him. He was thin, and his complexion was rough and pale. His lips were oddly red — too red, Vince thought. He looked as if he'd been sucking on a cherry Popsicle. He'd brought with him from Sicily one habit he hadn't abandoned in order to make himself a New Yorker: he always wore a black suit with a white shirt buttoned up to his throat — and no necktie. It gave him a European-peasant look, and in the end that was what he was.

  Vince felt Whitey's hand on his leg, just under the bar. He reached down and touched the envelope the mobster was pressing against his knee. He grasped the envelope, and Whitey withdrew his hand. Vince slid the envelope up his leg and slipped it in his pocket. He wouldn't ask how much was in it. It would be enough.

  "Anything else I can do for you, Whitey?"

  "Yeah. Take what's in that envelope and blow. Take a vacation. See you, say, in a couple of months. Just go. Don't stay around to make arrangements. We'll take care of that woman of yours, so don't be sending her any letters. Don't call her. Just go."

  Vince raised his mug and nodded gravely.

  * * *

  "It's pathetic, Salvatore. Just pathetic. If I can't trust you and Vincenza Grotti to do a job right, who can I trust? Who can I trust, Salvatore?"

  Whitey was nervous. It made him nervous to face Luca Barbosa in the best of circumstances, but to have to face him and confess there was a witness to a hit was scary. What was more, Barbosa allowed no man to smoke in his presence, and Whitey needed a cigarette.

  The old man shook his head. "Vincenza let this man Whittle see him, then he let Whittle live. Then you let Vincenza leave town — we don't know where." He stood and glared down at Whitey. "Hav eyou lost your mind?"

  "Mr. Barbosa, I can almost for sure catch Vince before he gets out of town. A quick…"

  "No! I don't want any quick hit. Understand me? No quick hits. That's how you get in trouble. A good hit is planned, Salvatore. Planned. That's how we work. We think, we make a good plan, then we get the best men we can, and we do what we planned. It's too late to run after Vince. Let him go. He won't talk. As for this man Whittle… Well, I'll have to think about it."

  Whitey nodded. It was best to nod sagely and remain silent, especially when Barbosa was in a touchy mood.

  "Now, Salvatore. I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself. Look at this."

  He handed Whitey a newspaper, folded to a story about the death of John Claw. The headline screamed out at him:

  MY SON DID NOT FALL!

  Robert Bear Claw, father of deceased steel-worker John Bear Claw, insisted to reporters today, as he has insisted to police, that his son could not have fallen from the high steel.

  "All our lives, our men have worked on the high steel, and not one of us ever has fallen. We Mohawks have no fear of high places. I never fell in thirty-five years on the high steel. My father never fell, my grandfather never fell. We do not lose our balance. None of us. Ever."

  Robert Claw pledged to pursue the investigation into the death of his son, however long it might take.

  "This Indian," Barbosa complained. "He talks too much. What can we do about this, Salvatore?"

  Whitey smiled. "I can arrange a little accident for him, Mr. Barbosa."

  "Yes. But you plan this accident, Salvatore. Who will do this work?"

  "I would like to do it myself, Mr. Barbosa, for no fee. You paid me for a job I didn't do to your satisfaction. Let me do this one in compensation."

  * * *

  "No, Luca. If you murder that old Mohawk, you'll create a cause célèbre."

  Luca Barbosa glared at Giuseppe «Joe» Rossi. "I don't understand your fancy Latin," he grumbled. "Sometimes you talk like a priest."

  "You understand what newspapers are, and television and radio stations. You understand that, don't you, Luca?"

  "That's the point," Barbosa said stubbornly. "That old Indian…"

  "Is quoted in the paper," Rossi interrupted. "One story. Maybe another two or three, the words of the grieving father. How many stories will appear if the grieving father dies? Hmm?"

  The others around the table stared curiously at this tense confrontation between the sixty-seven-year-old Luca Barbosa and the forty-three-year-old Joe Rossi. Time was, some of them must have been reflecting, when a man twenty-four years junior wouldn't have dared contradict his senior, particularly if the senior was a man like Barbosa. Now… Well, things had changed.

  Luca Barbosa was a slight, wizened man, gray and hunched. His huge salt-and-pepper eyebrows were wildly curly and all but interfered with his vision. He w
as wearing a light-gray suit in a style that wasn't just out of fashion; it was in a style that never had been in fashion. His necktie and collar were loose. He was shaved by a barber and hadn't visited his barber yet that day, so the light from behind him was caught in the bristles on his cheeks.

  Joe Rossi wore a well-tailored dark blue suit with a faint gray pinstripe. He was a lawyer and looked it — in the image of the Wall Street firms.

  "I want to ask a question, Joe," Barbosa said. "When did you get the authority to tell me how to run my business?"

  "I have no authority to tell you how to run your business, Luca," Rossi replied smoothly.

  "That's why you called a meeting," Barbosa complained. "To get the council to…"

  "To persuade you, Don Barbosa," Rossi interjected. "To persuade you."

  "These people," Barbosa continued. "You have to keep them in line. Am I supposed to let them all shoot off their mouths? Do I have to let them raise hell about the arrangements? How am I to do business if every member of every local can have his say? I mean loud, in public. How?"

  "You've made your point, Luca," Alfredo Segesta said. "You made your point when the Indian had his accident. Nobody wants to tell you how to run your business, but you should hear our advice."

  "We're going to sit here, then, and spend our time arguing about one hit?" Barbosa asked testily.

  "There is no argument," Rossi told him. "We're giving you our advice, that's all. You will do as you see fit."

  Barbosa reached for the silver carafe that sat on a tray in the middle of the table and refilled his coffee cup. "I have a little problem," he said. "The Mohawk was knocked off the high steel by Vincenza Grotti. He let a man see him. There was a witness. He's a terrified witness but, still, a witness…"