St. Louis Showdown Read online

  “Well, sure, but that’s temporary.”

  “John—do you realize—do you truly understand what Val is doing? I mean, what she’s—”

  “She means well,” the kid said.

  “Means well? You’re telling me she has a chance to live a normal life with a good man?—that she won’t go unless you’re in the package?—and she just means well?”

  “Mack—I—we’d both be deserting you. I can’t do that.”

  Turrin returned to his chair and dropped into it with a sigh. Storm signals were flying in the Bolan gaze—in both Bolan gazes.

  “Let’s understand something, John. You and I can always be together in spirit, and I sure hope we will. But that’s the only way.”

  “That’s a lot of bull, Mack! I could be a second gun for you. I could be—”

  There it went down.

  Turrin kept waiting for the other shoe to fall, but there was only a suffocating silence.

  You blew it, kid. You said the one thing you could never say. And the kid knew it. He ran out of gas in the shadow of that towering horror spilling from that big grim man at the window—and the battle was over, right there.

  “Time for plain talk, John.”

  “Okay,” the kid replied, very quietly, very subdued.

  “You can’t come with me because I can’t afford you. You’d be a noose around my neck. You’d be my death, John. I wouldn’t live long enough for you to get the feel of a gun.”

  “I—I can’t do the other.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t desert you. Not while you’re …”

  “Not while I’m living—right? What are you doing, John, laying the death watch on me?”

  “I—I can’t desert you.”

  “Why not? I deserted you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Wish me well, John. And tell me goodbye. Then go wish Val well. And tell her thanks.”

  The kid was crying, and they were painful tears—tears of defeat, of helpless rage, of shame at the tears themselves.

  Leo returned to the bathroom and flushed the toilet, then decided to wash his face.

  When he returned to the room, things were pretty much as when he’d left—the sarge at the window, scowling—the kid sitting there with acid tears streaming down his face and blinding him, gnawing holes in his bottom lip.

  “It’s a bum rap, John,” Bolan was saying quietly. “We just have to make the best of it, and go on. Tell you what. This is no way to say goodbye. You hang in here at the motel for a while. Give me another day with this town. If I haven’t returned by this time tomorrow, it’s because I won’t be returning. You go back with Leo. But if I can make it back—if I do—we’ll return to Pittsfield together. We’ll take it slow, and enjoy it. You can drive the bus and take all the galley duty you can stomach. We’ll make a week of it—a week to remember. And when we get there, John, you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine—without goodbye. Okay?”

  “Okay,” the kid said, smiling through those tears.

  “I have some business to talk with Leo.”

  Bolan went over and embraced the kid, shot Turrin a tortured look, and hurried from the room.

  “Back in a minute, Brother John,” Turrin promised the younger Bolan as he followed the older one outside.

  Some tragedies just went on and on. The one at Pittsfield had never ended. What was it the big guy had said to the kid?

  Hell makes no sense if there are no people in heaven?

  Turrin had to agree with that logic.

  But, then, what the hell—the logic worked just as well the other way around.

  And Leo Turrin, the knife-edge expert, thought he knew why some men chose hell.

  19: TO MAKE A KING

  They stood stiffly in the hallway, side by side, backs to the wall, neither looking directly at the other, conversing in monotones.

  “I’m trying to play kingmaker, Leo, and I can’t find a handle. Give me one.”

  “Who do you want to crown?”

  “Little Artie.”

  “Poor choice. I hear he’s dead.”

  “When do you hear this?”

  “This morning, coming through LaGuardia. Bit of a layover there. Spent a few dimes to pump the well. Something else, too. About a dozen head crews are under hot dispatch to this town.”

  “So what’s new?”

  “The priority. You happen to be an incidental this time. They’re coming to sweep this town of the dead-wood.”

  “That’s Cosa Nostra for you, Leo. That’s real brotherhood.”

  “When you’re hot you’re hot, Sarge. And when you’re not …”

  “Artie’s not dead. He’s alive and spitting.”

  “You have that for a fact?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good for him. The last of a line, Sarge. A true don, a real Godfather image.”

  “Bull.”

  Turrin chuckled. “With all that means, of course.”

  “Where should I look for him?”

  “Ciglia’s the one to be looking for. He’s the one with the crown, now.”

  “It makes no difference that Artie is still around?”

  “Not in the end, no. I told you, the cleansing wind is blowing.”

  “What if Artie could turn that wind around? What if he could spit clear to New York on that turnaround?”

  “Like I said, when you’re hot you’re hot. Sure. The wiseguys would have to rethink their position.”

  “That’s my game, Leo.”

  “Oh. Well. I don’t know, Sarge. Kingmaker, eh? Okay, maybe. It would take a lot of finesse.”

  “Give me a handle, Leo.”

  “They’re saying in New York that you whacked Little Artie.”

  “No. Ciglia had him locked up. I sprung him. But I couldn’t hang on. He’s on the loose, with all of Ciglia’s professional guns hunting him down. Also, the old man took off with something I treasure greatly, something fragile. Where do I start looking?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Leo?”

  “I’m thinking about it. Is old man Pattriccia still around?”

  “As of a couple hours ago, yes.”

  “He’s an old river rat, you know. Peddled booze along the Mississippi all during prohibition. Some years back, he—aw no, that’s too far back. I heard nothing more about it.”

  “What is it? A straw, Leo—any straw.”

  “I think … if Artie is in trouble, he’d try to hole up with Vino Jules. They go way back together.”

  “What about that straw?”

  “It’s not a straw, it’s a boat. A genuine, authentic, museum piece of a boat. Old stern-wheeler. It was headed for the graveyard and Jules picked it up as a sentimental—I don’t know, Sarge, it was just a ghost thought. I’ve heard nothing about that boat for years. The old man was going to restore it and keep it as a plaything, I guess. Relive his youth, retire to the river, something like that. He never did it, Sarge. But I remember there was a write-up in some national magazine—a sort of nostalgia thing—when Jules rescued the old hulk. Pictures and everything. It was, uh, yeah—the Jubilee—the SS Jubilee. Big, three-decker—I don’t know, probably carry several hundred people. Cruise boat, you know. These rivers used to be full of them.”

  “I know the kind,” Bolan said. “There are still a few around. Couple tied up at the foot of town right now.”

  “Right. That would be, uh, probably—what’s the name of that showboat?—the Golden—the Goldenrod. Sits here all the time. Then there’s that streamliner—the, uh, President or the Admiral or something. Both of those outclass the Jubilee by a couple of light-years, though. Like I said, the thing was falling apart. The magazine story gave Jules a lot of embarrassment. Got to be a big joke up east. Jules got the old scow for scrapper’s prices but it was going to take—I don’t know—a ridiculous lot of bucks to restore it. Everybody was laughing about it, and I think the old guy just dropped the whole project.”

  “You
don’t believe he restored it?”

  “Damned if I know, Sarge. I just don’t know. But it was a thought.”

  “Is that the only damn thing you have for me, Leo?”

  “Sorry, Sarge. This place has been the end of the earth, mob-wise, for a long time. I just don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Uh … this guy Jack Gray. Okay guy?”

  “Damned okay guy. He’s leaving the service, setting up a law office out west—Wyoming, I believe. Val and Johnny could not be better off. And it’s the most perfect cover I could imagine. Jack will take care of them, Sarge.”

  “You know the guy personally?”

  “Sure. I hand-picked him for the security job. I’ll have a life-history file in your hands within a few days. Check ’im out, satisfy yourself all the way. Then send me the signal. I’ll handle it.”

  “Leo, I don’t know how to say—”

  “Don’t try, then. Beat it, fugitive. I gotta go see a kid that just became a man. Stay hard, guy.”

  They shook hands warmly and Bolan went out of there.

  His head was aching with the things tumbling through it and his heart was heavy from that unsettling session with Johnny. Where Val had been was simply a numbness, now, and he did not wish to disturb that novocaine job. A hellstorm day lay ahead of him; it was here that his energies and his emotions had to go.

  So …

  The Jubilee, eh?

  Wouldn’t it be a kick if that old stern-wheeler was still around somewhere quiet?

  And wouldn’t it be an even bigger kick if that was where the Giamba family had been holing up lately!

  If so, then maybe after all Vino Jules would have the last laugh on the wiseguys up east.

  Schwarz was the one to pick up on the mobile phone. Bolan sent him rolling to a pay station for the sensitive conversation which was to follow, and when the secure connection was made, Bolan asked him, “What’s your situation?”

  “Lousy,” was the glum reply. “It’s as quiet as a transistor’s hiss in this town, Sarge. Feels to me like the calm before a storm.”

  “Not a whisper of Toni?”

  “Not a one.”

  “I have a possible angle, Gadgets. Worth checking out, anyway. Is Jules still in our bag?”

  “He’s there. Cussing and ranting into my babysitter monitor.”

  “We need a showdown talk with that old man. You guys go over there and lay it out for him. Make him believe you. If we don’t find Artie and what’s left of his cadre within the next few hours, then there’ll be no tomorrow for the Giamba Family. Make him understand that. Once you get his full attention, ask him about the Jubilee.”

  “What is that, Sarge?”

  “It’s an old river stern-wheeler he picked off the scrap heap some years back. The story at the time was that he meant to fix it up and save it for his retirement. If that boat is still around, Gadgets, stashed somewhere, it would make a beautiful hideout in times of heat. Like now.”

  “Yeah. That sounds better than anything I’ve heard. We just lay it on him, huh?”

  “Finesse it a bit, Gadge. You know how. Don’t rely on his good heart and cooperative spirit. Just sort of drop the name on him, like you’d picked it off a Ciglia contact or something equally disturbing. If the boat is our paydirt, you should get a reaction. Lay it on heavy, then. Scare hell out of him. And if you locate the boat—well, hell, I hate to even suggest this next, Gadgets.”

  “May as well. I’m probably ahead of you. You want us to go in there and snatch Toni—right?”

  Bolan sighed. “I think you should try the soft way. It seems we already have a halfway receptive ear in the Giamba camp. If it was me, I’d walk right in there. I’d lay it out. It’s life or death for them, Gadgets. There’s a couple hundred hot guns converging on this town, and they’re coming for Giamba blood. Now—if we found Artie, they will, too—eventually. He has to be made to understand that. If you can get the old man’s ear, then you tell him exactly what I have in mind. I believe the idea just might appeal to him. I think he’d go for it. But he has to turn over Toni, first.”

  “Uh, just what do you have in mind, Sarge?”

  “An Able special—Cong High.”

  “Aha. Okay. How are you going to, uh, set it up?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll work something. Meanwhile, you work the old man.”

  “Uh, how’d your personal thing work out?”

  “It’s okay, Gadgets.”

  “Glad to hear that. Okay. If we can’t get past old Jules, we’ll try another route. Where the hell could you hide a boat like that? I guess it’s fairly large, huh? Sort of like the Goldenrod?”

  “So I understand, yeah. Uh, that scrapyard we hit up there today. What was on the other side of that joint?”

  “The river. Well—a lot of junk first. And an old boatyard that got left high and dry when they put the levee in. Some barge docks. Mostly, though, just your general run-of-the-mill riverside, Sarge.”

  “There might be a tie-in somewhere there. You could check it out. Junk cars, junk boats, a salvage business. That’s where I’d start looking.”

  “So would I. Keep yourself wired in, Sarge. I’m getting the feeling.”

  Bolan chuckled grimly. “Something feeding into your pre-amps, eh?”

  Schwarz laughed delightedly. “Yeah, you got it.”

  “You got it, compadre,” Bolan told him. “The dirty side, I’m afraid. Tell Pol I said—”

  “I’ll tell him you said quit goofing off and get his damn pre-amps tuned.”

  Bolan laughed and hung up.

  There really was not much to laugh about … but, hell, it beat crying. And the Man from Grim had an almost tearful task to contemplate.

  He had to get Jerry Ciglia’s ear.

  In a most commanding manner.

  Bolan had to get the St. Louis Hots lined into a Cong High kill.

  And he did not know, at that very moment, just how the hell he was going to accomplish that.

  20: THE CONG HIGH LURE

  Ciglia was huddled with several of the newly arrived crew bosses, in the library of the Giamba mansion, when Tony Bird, the yard chief, brought him the Ace of Spades business card with the name Billy Kingdom engraved in silver on the back.

  It produced an impressed silence at the conference table.

  “Who’s this guy?” Ciglia asked, frowning at the card.

  “I got him holding at the gate, boss. He says I should shake my ass, he ain’t sitting out there all day.”

  “You boys heard of Billy Kingdom?” the Lord of St. Louis asked his visitors.

  “Those guys got a thousand names,” one growled.

  “And a thousand faces,” said another.

  “I know another guy with a thousand names and faces, though,” Ciglia worriedly told them.

  The gunner from Cincinnati snickered. “Don’t think he would be checking in here, do you, Jerry?”

  Ciglia was chewing his lip. “You never know.”

  A respectful silence ruled that assembly as the visitors exchanged knowing looks. Hot-Ass Ciglia, those looks said, had the rattles. It was understandable, of course, considering all that had gone down in this town the past few hours.

  The yard boss fidgeted in the background for a moment, then said, “What do I tell ’im, boss? I can’t leave a Black Ace sitting there at the damn gate like a—”

  “Shut up, dammit!”

  “Yessir.”

  “I want a vote from you, Tony, I’ll ask you for it!”

  “Sure, boss. I just thought—”

  “What’s this guy look like?”

  The yardman shrugged. “What do they all look like?”

  “What kind of answer is that!” Ciglia snarled.

  “It’s the only one I got, boss. He looks like all of them look.”

  “Well what did he say he wants?”

  “He just says I should bring the card to my chairman of the board.”

  A light flared in those worri
ed eyes. “He said that?”

  “That’s exactly it.”

  The “chairman of the board” of the new St. Louis corporation carefully pushed his chair back and reached for his cane. All things considered, it was fitting and appropriate that he check this guy through, himself. One did not leave an official commissione troubleshooter chafing in the street—not even in troubled times—especially not in troubled times. On the other hand, that Bolan bastard had been known to pull wild stunts at crazy times. He had even impersonated one of these commissione “black aces” in Ciglia’s Gulf Coast field headquarters during the New Orleans rumble. Once burnt, dammit, was twice shy of the fire. It did not seem too likely that the guy would push his luck with another try at the same gambit with the same pigeon, though. The guy was just too intelligent to try that. Just the same … call it super-cautious or whatever the hell you liked, Ciglia was not leaving a judgment like this to any dumb-ass yardbirds.

  His bodyguards, Jake Rio and Nate Palmieri, leapt to assist him to his feet. Rio handed him the cane and tried to manhandle him out of the chair. Putting on a show, no doubt, for the visiting ginks. Ciglia pushed the tagmen out of the way and hobbled out of there with a soft apology to the ginks for the interruption.

  “Get comfortable for a minute,” he told them. “I better look at this black ace for myself.”

  The tagmen followed him out and fell into step close behind. It was slow going, dammit. The ankle was swollen to twice the normal size and the lightest weight he put on there hurt like hell. A damned sprained ankle didn’t make for a stretcher case, though. Little thing like that didn’t keep a man from doing for himself. He grinned inwardly. Certainly not a chairman of the board, for chrissakes.

  Nobody had ever called him that before.

  It sounded good. What the hell, Jerry Ciglia was no jerk. So, okay, maybe he was showing off a little bit, too. Any guy with a bit of self-respect liked to do that sometimes. It was a matter of class, sometimes—having it or not having it—and Ciglia had always respected a show of true class in a guy.

  What the hell, it wouldn’t hurt for the old men up east to be told that the new chairman of the board of the new St. Louis subsidiary had personally come out to the gate—during a troubled and dangerous time—to greet their emissary, even with his ankle swollen up like a football.