New Orleans Knockout Read online

  Her eyes fell. “I guess you did catch my little routine with Lanza.”

  “That was perfect for that time and place,” he told her. “But not in this next situation. Lanza’s a hood, but he’s a hood with a bit of class, himself. These boys down here on the streets are animals. Don’t give them the slightest reason to think that you’re in their class. They’d eat you alive.

  Bolan removed a delicate chain, with crucifix attached, from her neck.

  “Do they hate Catholics, too?” she murmured.

  He replied, “Most of them go to confession every week. Good Catholics, these boys, for ten minutes every week.” He was adding a bull’s-eye cross to the chain. “They fear God once in a while but they fear this all the time. Wear it where they can see it. Don’t over play it. They’ll notice it and they’ll get the message.”

  “More class,” she said with an impish smile.

  He put the chain around her neck, then left his hands at her shoulders as he hung a quick, light kiss on those sweet lips. “Stay hard,” he muttered.

  Both her hands went behind his head and she pulled him back aboard, holding him there in a warm mingling of life forces. He was aware of her heart thudding against him as the kiss lingered on.

  Yeah … a stolen moment of human intimacy in a sea of savagery.

  Bolan understood; he hoped that she did too. It was not a commitment of lovers—but a savoring of adventurers, adventuring. Life was precious, the kiss said. Life was good, sacred—not for throwing away on the trifles and minutiae of the scramble for survival.

  Life was for living largely—even sometimes on the shores of death.

  She released him when the moment had run its course. Eyes lowered, sighing, she told the man, “Okay … okay … I’m hard.”

  16: SCRAMBLED

  Bolan dropped Toni Blancanales a block away from where she’d left her car, sending her out among the wolves with a gentle pat on the shoulder. He felt uncomfortable about allowing her into the action—but she had a blood right, she was a professional, and his instincts trusted her ability to take care of herself.

  Women were, after all, a hell of a lot more competent in such matters than most men would admit. And this woman was exceptional.

  He’d known a few other exceptional women, of course—some of whom had not survived the game. But, then, he’d known some good men, also …

  He dismissed this train of thought, clamping it off severely and wrenching his mind back to the problems of the battle for New Orleans.

  Carlotti was hot; that much was certain. There had not been opportunity yet to check in on the Lanza episode—but Bolan knew without checking: favorite son or no, Tommy Carlotti was at least under suspicion and now in deep trouble at the homestand.

  A grin tugged at Bolan’s lips as he played the scenario in his mind’s eye. By now the word was probably out around town that the rackets cop, Jack Petro, had a bundle of hard evidence on Vannaducci’s touchy financial entanglements: Petro’s package, as of this time yesterday, had been Carlotti’s package—homework assigned by a dying old don who wished only to turn the family business over to a beloved heir. Some heir. He’d have a sweet time explaining how he lost possession of the family’s financial records. Especially on top of the surveillance intrigue with the financial boss, Lanza—who presented another interesting aspect to the race for power in New Orleans. Had Lanza known that the capo was schooling Carlotti in family business matters?

  Carlotti was an inept, small-time hood. Bolan had known that from the beginning. The other bosses under Vannaducci must have known it also. Yeah, and there must be deep resentments there.

  So, sure, Carlotti was on the hotspot.

  Much more so than he could realize. Bolan knew something that the Boss of Sin did not know. His treachery had bought him nothing. Bolan had studied the campaign plan at army headquarters. And there was but one reading from it. In typical Mafia procedure, the turncoat had been assigned the task of fingering the top man for execution. Carlotti was supposed to “set up” old man Vannaducci for the St. Louis guns. What Carlotti did not know, but should have, was the other side of standard procedure: he was going to get it right along with the old man.

  But now there was a development that was probably not yet known by the St. Louis guns. Their man Carlotti had become too hot to play the assassination game. And, unless Bolan’s professional instincts were leading him completely astray, it seemed very likely that Tommy Carlotti was now lying low somewhere, hoping to avoid further compromise of his position and probably trying to figure some way to cool himself.

  Bolan let his mind play with that situation as a familiarly icy sensation began spreading through his consciousness. Things were rapidly coming to a head in New Orleans, the boiling point very near. Typically, as that flash point approached, Bolan’s own interior apparatus began taking on ice.

  He did not enjoy these chess games with real men on the board of life and death.

  But they were necessary.

  And his mind was developing another scenario—a future one—as he again left the congested streets of the city behind him and sought a place with stretch. He found it in a shopping center in the northeast part of the city, where he parked the war-wagon in an open area and went in search of a phone booth.

  It was “dirty rat” time again. He did not consider it advisable to trust the moment to his mobile unit.

  Moments later he was talking to the switchboard girl at the beachfront hotel in Mississippi. “This is urgent,” he told her. “I have to talk to Mr. Stigni of the Midwestern Trade Group. I want you to drop everything and find him for me.”

  “Who’s calling, please?” the operator asked nervously.

  It wasn’t exactly standard procedure for a hotel switchboard operator to inquire into the source of calls for guests—not even “urgent” calls. And the girl was too flustered. Bolan was betting his marbles on a police patch on that switchboard. He had, in fact, anticipated such an event.

  “It’s not important to you who’s calling. It is to him. You tell him I’m on, and that I say he’d better get on. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir. One minute, sir.”

  The task required more than a minute; Bolan lit a Pall Mall and smoked it half away before the operator returned.

  Her speech was stuttering a bit with the immensity of the moment as she reported, “I have him, sir. Just a moment. I’m ringing the other suite.”

  Bolan thanked her in a kindlier tone and counted the rings. Stigni came in on the sixth, although obviously he’d already agreed to take the call.

  “Yeah, hullo, what the hell is this all about? Careful what you say, dammit, there’s nosy ears everywhere.”

  “Eyes, too, Stigni,” Bolan coldly assured him. “Ciglia there?”

  “Who the hell is this?—don’t say it right out!”

  “Come on, you know my voice better than that—after all our jollies in the campaign room at noon. Put Ciglia on.”

  “Go to hell, you …! You’re nuts! I don’t know no Ciglia! If you’re talking about the poor man you took a shot at—”

  Bolan’s sense of sanity was struck by the ridiculous charade, the ludicrous insistence on anonymity at a time when every cop in the country knew by now who’d been shooting and who’d been shot at.

  It was just another example of life in the Stone Age.

  Grave situation or not, Bolan could not restrain himself from laughing in the guy’s face. It was not a particularly joyful laughter, however, and the cold promise there shut Stigni down and left him spluttering.

  Still chuckling, Bolan said, “Okay, forget Ciglia and put the ‘poor man’ on. I promise the phone isn’t loaded, so I can’t hurt him.”

  A coldly furious voice asked, “What are you trying to pull, guy?”

  Sure, Ciglia’d been there all the while.

  Bolan gave him a word. “Parley.”

  “After what you tried out here today?”

  “Who was tryin
g? I didn’t have to go for the ball, you know. Just getting your attention.”

  “Okay, you got it. What do you want?”

  “Stigni and I were discussing your campaign plans earlier today.”

  “That’s a lie!” Stigni muttered from the background.

  “So what?” Ciglia rasped. “We can always change the signals.”

  “You’d better. You’ve lost your inside track.”

  “Why should I be listening to this?”

  “Because you know we have a mutual interest,” Bolan replied. “And because you know I’m not just killing time.”

  “So what are you telling me?”

  “Pack up and go home. Your strutting duck blew it. He’s taken his final dive, and right now he’s holed up somewhere just waiting for everybody to go away. The old man knows all, and he’s got the dogs out.”

  “Wait a minute now. Let me see if I—you’re saying our whole arrangement is shot. You’re talking about our inside straight.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Convince me.”

  “He won’t be ordering any more shoes from Rome, Ciglia.”

  “I never said this was Ciglia.”

  It was a stall with the mouth, to allow the mind to catch up; Bolan knew that. He replied, “Wear whatever name you prefer. But wear it home. There’s nothing left for you down here.”

  “Why’re you being so kind to us, uh—Frankie, wasn’t it? Why all the concern?”

  Bolan said heavily, “You know how far my concern stretches for guys like you. I’ll give it to you straight: I was hoping for you people to cancel each other out. But there’s no way now—so why waste it? The old man’s gone hard. His people are getting ready to disperse all around the Quarter. And he’s got fifty to sixty braves wardancing around the River Road homestand. Your timing would backfire on you, the way things are now. Mardi Gras will be your largest problem instead of the cover you’d expected. The streets of the Quarter are choked with people right now—and it’s getting worse, not better, all the way through tomorrow night. Pack up and go home, Ciglia. You’ll be just one of the millions jamming these streets, with nobody around to fight. The home guard will lay low in the crowds and come out on Ash Wednesday to cut you in your sleep—or the next Wednesday or the Wednesday after that.”

  The chief of the war party was thinking that over—Bolan’s logic had struck sensitive soil. Following an overlong silence, Ciglia replied, “How do you know so much?”

  “I stay alive by knowing. How do you manage?”

  “Don’t get cute,” the guy growled. “I still don’t get your angle. Why the big sell?”

  “It’s no sell. Do what you please. I do have an interest, sure. But not that much.”

  “What’s the interest?”

  The guy was trying to probe Bolan now.

  The Executioner’s voice took on another layer of ice as he replied to that. “The old man will make an ass of you. Hell go from ashes to hero, overnight. I don’t want that. I want him out.”

  “Well, so do we,” Ciglia said, a bit of oil entering the voice now. “Maybe we should talk about that. Mutual interests, like you say.”

  “The line’s still open and I’m still here,” Bolan told him.

  “Okay. Suppose for the moment that we do back off. What will you be doing?”

  “I won’t be backing off, Ciglia.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well, in that case … maybe you’re right,” Ciglia said sarcastically. “Maybe we should’ve just stayed home. Of course, we didn’t know at the time that such a hot shot was coming in to clear the territory for us.”

  “Doesn’t usually work that way, Ciglia. I’m a waster, not a builder. I don’t clear territories. I close them down.”

  “You really are a hot shot, aren’t you?” the guy snarled.

  “I try to be. Well. Never say the man didn’t warn you. You’re now wearing the mark of the beast, Ciglia. Next time you step into my crosshairs, I won’t be shooting at golf balls and bodyguards. Go home. Grow up. Live long. Goodbye.”

  Bolan hung up to a dead silence, a somber smile working at his lips but not quite reaching eye level.

  A guy like Ciglia could not take that kind of talk.

  He’d be roaring into New Orleans with all guns bared—maybe before the sun set again.

  So … Bolan owed equal time to the other side. He settled the overtime charges with the long-distance operator, moved to another phone at the far end of the shopping center, and sent a probe into old man Vannaducci’s sanctum sanctorum.

  17: FLUSHED

  A pleasantly modulated male voice responded to the first ring. “Mr. Van’s office, Zeno here. Who’s calling?”

  “It’s not Avon,” Bolan told Zeno.

  “Who is this? Where’d you get this number? Don’t you know you’re not supposed to—?”

  Bolan said, “Relax, Zeno. I got the number from Tommy.”

  The line went momentarily dead. Bolan heard another extension lifting off. Then Zeno’s cautious tones, “Is Tommy there? Put him on.”

  “He’s not here,” Bolan said. “I thought he was there.”

  “He’s not here,” Zeno shot back. “If he’s not there, where is he?”

  It was beginning to sound like an Abbot & Costello routine.

  Bolan said, “Hell, I thought he was there.”

  “Who is this?” Zeno hissed.

  “I’m tired of talking to you,” Bolan said chattily. “You don’t make sense. Is that you on the extension, Marco?”

  “What the hell is going on here?” an older voice rumbled through the connection.

  “Call it a demonstration. Shows how fouled up things can get when people play dumb games with who’s who. Take Tommy, now. This morning. When he came driving in there with a short fuse wired to his foot. If he’d just told you, then and there, that he’d surrendered those ledgers to me, then maybe you could have taken some action to get them back. But it’s too late for that now. You still there, Marco?”

  “I’m here.” The voice was suddenly tireder, heavier, much older. “This can be only one smart guy. Is that you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Why’re you calling me like this?”

  “Did you know about the ledgers?”

  “I been hearing words. Is it true?”

  “It’s true,” Bolan said. “And I have some more words for you to live by, Marco.”

  “Why?”

  “Call it a basic respect for senior citizens—or senior aliens, it makes no difference. I hear that Italy gets very sunny this time of year. Nice place to retire to, good place to die quietly.”

  “Smart guy!”

  “Smarter than you, Marco. I know your family better than you do.”

  For some reason the old man was hanging in there, holding his temper—and now he was shifting the subject of conversation. “Is it true about Mississippi? That it’s a St. Louis crew?”

  “It is. Leading the charge is one of the young Turks, guy named Ciglia. I hear he’s got visions of a throne of his own on the River Road estate. They’ll be here tonight.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was down there.”

  “Yeah, I heard something about that.”

  “Here’s something I bet you haven’t heard. They have an inside man here, deep in the pocket. He thinks he’s going to set you up for them. Tomorrow, during the grand festivities.”

  “Baloney! I don’t believe that! Why should I believe you?”

  “Don’t, then. But I could tell you who, when, where, and how.”

  “So tell,” Vannaducci growled.

  “You’re the guest of honor for a Mardi Gras party tomorrow. Right? Tommy Carlotti’s party. You’ll be on his balcony overlooking the parade route when King Krewe passes by. Fill me in, Marco—I’ve never been to Mardi Gras. What is it like? Hysteria in the streets? Thousands and thousands of gay celebrants standing shoulder to shoulder and be
lly to buttock—music and frolicking and chaos as far as the eye can see? You lucky ones who have a balcony above that insanity—it presents a spectacle for you to boggle the mind, doesn’t it? The parade—aw, the parade, that’s something else. Lots of floats? Bands, marchers, hoopla? Confetti and streamers filling the air? These guys on the floats throw stuff to the crowd, don’t they? Dubloons? You know something, Marco, one of those costumed clowns is going to reach right up onto Carlotti’s balcony with a bag of dubloons that are not dubloons. Then … bang! Goodbye, Marco. Or so Tommy thought. Instead it will be bang! bang!—goodbye Marco and Tommy!”

  The telephone line was silent for a long moment.

  Presently, then, Zeno’s smooth tones: “Mr. Van—regardless of who’s telling it, it sounds right. It fits the other—”

  “Shut up, Zeno!” the old man roared. “Don’t you know who this smart guy is?”

  “Save it, Marco,” Bolan said. “I know more about what’s happening here than both of you. I never enjoyed playing with an old man’s heart—even a rotten old man like you, Marco—but your little golden heir is tin-plated, a forty-carat phony. He’s been playing fast and loose with the keys to your kingdom for a long time now. He and Campenaro have been like streetcars between here and New York, setting this thing up.”

  “They couldn’t put something like that together,” the old man wheezed. “They ain’t got it in them. I know Tommy’s been doing something kinda off center, but I—”

  “Is that what you built an empire on, Marco—wishful thinking? You ready to stake your life on it? Okay. Forget all this. I’ll call Ciglia and tell him you refuse to believe a word of it. Then I’ll get out of town and leave you alone. I won’t be needed here after that. You go on to Tommy-boy’s party, and you sit on that balcony and watch the festivities. I’ll go to Italy and read your obituary under the Riviera sun.”

  “Wise guy,” Vannaducci said tiredly.