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  “But for God’s sakes,” Lyons argued, “a sailing boat always has the right of way over a powered launch. The D.A. should have brought charges, if nobody else. Pena simply sliced through that little sailboat, hung around long enough to make sure the job was thorough, pleaded an unfortunate accident, and walked away with everybody happy. Now that’s not justice, no matter how you slice it. We can even prove motive. You take a …”

  “In aftersight,” Brognola said, trying to calm the angry policeman. “There was no access to these records two years ago. Not even now, for ordinary circumstances. If I hadn’t had a bell ring over that name D’Agosta, you still wouldn’t have any lead on the motive.”

  “Well, I have to get hold of Bolan,” Lyons said. “I have a boney feeling about this. Bolan is out there in a den of vipers, and he needs all the ammo we can feed him. Do you realize that we’ve never been able to get an informer inside the Mafia?”

  “Do I realize?” Brognola replied, laughing.

  “So okay,” Lyons snapped. “Let’s not mince around, with our man’s neck on the block. Bolan gave us the number. I say we use it.”

  Brognola put on a pained expression. “That will have to be your decision,” he said. “Call him there if you think you must. But don’t ask me to second the motion.”

  Lyons unfolded a scrap of paper and stared at a telephone number written there. It had been included in the last package of information which had been passed to them by the man they had then known as Pointer.

  The words “For Red Alert Only” were above the number, then the name “Lambretta,” followed by a Palm Springs telephone number.

  “I wonder where this telephone is located,” Lyons muttered.

  “I guess you’ll never know until you call it,” Brognola said.

  “I could give it to the phone company. They’d run it down for me.”

  “By that time, perhaps the time for action will have passed,” Brognola sighed.

  “Yeah,” Lyons said. He stared hesitantly at the telephone. Then he pulled the instrument toward him, acquired an outside line, began dialing, then abruptly re-cradled the transmitter. “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. “I wasn’t cut out for this cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

  Bolan and Marasco strolled into the Capo’s inner sanctum in controlled good humor. Marasco remained near the door. Bolan proceeded on, flipped a high-sign to DiGeorge, and dropped into a leather chair.

  “A rest is a rest, Franky,” DiGeorge groused, “but I didn’t tell you to take all day,”

  Two other men were present. One of them was familiar to Bolan; he assumed that this was Victor Poppy. He recognized the other from Andrea’s crisp description. Bolan looked the man over thoroughly during a hushed silence, playing the moment for its most, then said, “Hi-ya, Tony. When did you decide to retire from institutional life?”

  DiGeorge began breathing again. Victor Poppy smiled nervously and flicked a glance at his boss. The little man in the hot seat was staring at Bolan with a frightened gaze. “Hi, Fr …” His voice cracked. He choked, coughed, cleared his throat, and dabbed at eyes suddenly brimming with tears. He pounded weakly on his chest, smiled self-consciously, and settled back into the chair.

  “You boys know each other?” DiGeorge asked in feigned surprise.

  “People change a lot,” Bolan said quietly. “Tony there used to be a real terror. Had half the guys in the neighborhood scared to death of him. Yeah … people change.”

  “I guess you ain’t changed a lot, Franky,” Marasco said. “You’re still lookin’ like a young frisky colt.”

  Bolan did not miss the reproachful glance tossed at Marasco by Julian DiGeorge. He grinned. “Naw … I’m changing, too,” he said. “Take the present situation, now. Look at me, all tired and beat. Over a simple little everyday hit. Five years ago I could’ve rubbed six boys like that and stopped off for a few pieces o’ tail on the way home. Now all I’m doing is dragging my tail.”

  Marasco laughed loudly. DiGeorge turned to him with a frown and Marasco promptly shut it off.

  Victor Poppy said, “I heard about that, Franky. Everybody in the place is talking it up. I’d like to go out there and see that.”

  “Shuddup!” DiGeorge growled.

  The effect of Bolan’s braggadocio was already evident on the face of DiGeorge’s “gift turkey,” however. The small man was staring at Bolan with haunted eyes, nervously twisting his hands together. “It’s good to see ya again, Frank,” he chirped.

  “Waitaminnit waitaminnit,” DiGeorge yelled. He pointed an accusing finger at Tony Avina. “You was telling me not ten minutes ago that this Frank Lambretta went off to war and got hisself killed! Now what, huh?”

  “Jeez, I dunno, Mr. DiGeorge,” Avina quavered.

  “Lay off ’im, huh Deej?” Bolan said softly. “Can’t you see he’s sick?”

  “Where do you get off telling me to lay off?” DiGeorge shouted. “Just who the hell do you think you are, Mr. Franky Lucky Phoney!”

  “Who do you think I am, Deej?” Bolan asked quietly.

  DiGeorge stared at him in speechless rage. Every movement, every word, every gesture of Franky Lucky since he entered that door had served to increase DiGeorge’s irritability. Now this! Talking back, acting like a Capo, just like that first damn day with Andrea, just like … A cold knot began to form in DiGeorge’s belly, clamping off the line of thought. The rage dissolved instantly. “Okay,” he said, now in perfect control, “you asked the question, Big Shot. Now you answer it.”

  Bolan’s gaze shifted to Tony Avina. “Answer it, Tony,” he said. “Tell Mr. Julian DiGeorge who I am. Tell him the damn truth.”

  “Jeez, I don’t know who you are, Franky,” Avina shot back.

  Bolan became convulsed with laughter. Phil Marasco joined in, and then Victor Poppy. DiGeorge’s chin trembled, then he began laughing also. Bolan got up and pounded on the wall with one hand, clutching at his stomach with the other, in a very convincing demonstration of rampant humor.

  “Jeez, I don’t know who I am either!” Bolan yelled and fell back into the chair gasping for breath and holding himself with both hands.

  “Get this goddam turkey outta here!” DiGeorge roared between snorting guffaws. “First thing comes up, I won’t even know who I am!”

  “Just a minute,” Marasco said, sobering suddenly. “I guess I have to tell you, Deej. After all these years together, I got to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?” DiGeorge asked.

  “Okay, Franky?” Marasco asked of Bolan.

  Bolan, still chuckling, gave him the- nod.

  “About Franky Lucky. He’s in the family.”

  “What family?” DiGeorge said, sobering and craning about to glare at Marasco.

  “Vittorini,” Bolan said quietly.

  All chuckling and sniggering ceased as total quiet descended. DiGeorge slowly turned about to inspect “his boy” Franky Lucky whom he wanted to sponsor into his family and turn over the reins to some day. “I don’t get you,” he said thickly.

  “I belong to the Vittorini Family,” Bolan explained.

  “He belongs to Pat and Mike,” Marasco explained further.

  DiGeorge opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. He looked from Bolan to Marasco and back to Bolan again. “What is this?” he asked quietly. “Tell me what this is, Philip Honey.”

  “You know what this is, Deej,” Bolan said.

  “No I guess I don’t.” DeGeorge had heaved to his feet and was walking warily toward his desk.

  “You know what I want, Phil,” Bolan stated softly.

  Marasco beat DiGeorge to the desk and leaned against it. His hand went inside his jacket and stayed there.

  “Hey what the hell is this?” DiGeorge asked, his voice shaking.

  “You want me to take Deej out for some air, Franky?” Marasco said.

  “He looks like he needs some,” Bolan replied. He relaxed further into his chair. “Yeah. He needs some air, Phil.”

  �
��You can’t pull this shit!” DiGeorge yelled.

  “I’m not pulling nothing, Deej,” Bolan said. He smiled at Victor Poppy. “Hey, Victor, take your friend and go on back to Florida. Stay awhile. Get some sun. Tony looks like he could use some. And you …”

  “Where d’you get off telling my boys when to go and where to go?” DiGeorge screamed.

  “Is that guy still here?” Bolan asked, still looking at Victor Poppy. “I thought Phil was taking him out for an airing. Huh? Is he still here?”

  Victor Poppy was moving for the door, pushing Avina ahead of him. “What guy?” Victor Poppy asked nervously. “I don’t see nobody but you and me and Tony, Franky.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Bolan said contentedly.

  “You can’t pull this shit!” DiGeorge screamed.

  “The hell I can’t,” said Franky Lucky Bolan.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  BLOOD SPRINGS

  Victor Poppy and Tony Avina almost ran over someone in the corridor. Bolan could hear them apologizing. The .32 was in his hand and muzzling for the door when Andrea D’Agosta stepped through. In her hand was the little nickel-plated .22 Bolan had taken from her some days earlier.

  She sized up the situation in a quick circular glance, then stared soberly at Bolan’s weapon. Her nose quivering, she said, “I want my Poppa.”

  “Someone else already has him,” Bolan told her.

  “I take everything back,” she said. “I want him.”

  “Andrea, get outta here,” DiGeorge growled.

  “I’ve been listening,” she said. “I know what’s going on here.” Her eyes flared pure hatred at Mack Bolan. “You’re worse than any of them,” she spat. “I didn’t want to believe the stories I’ve been hearing today but they’re true. You’re a kill-crazy hood and now you think you’re going to kill my Poppa.”

  “Aw hey, bambina,” DiGeorge pleaded. “Go on outta here and let us men handle our business. You got it all wrong.”

  “She has it all right, Deej,” Bolan said.

  “Well, for God’s sakes ain’t you got no sense of…”

  DiGeorge’s protest was cut short by the capgun plaap of the tiny revolver. A vase shattered behind Bolan. He grinned and said, “She’s got the drop on us, Phil.”

  “I’ll drop you, too,” Andrea angrily told him. “Don’t think I can’t handle a gun.”

  “I don’t think that,” Bolan replied, still grinning.

  “Come on, Poppa,” Andrea said.

  “For God’s sake, Andrea, this guy is playing with you. He can shoot both your eyes out before you know he’s moving. Get on outta here.”

  “I said…”

  “Go on, Deej,” Bolan said, cutting Andrea off. “I’m not gunfighting your kid.”

  DiGeorge said, “That means you get off easy. You get me to running and all you have to do is sit back and laugh and send out your boys to shoot Deej in the back. On some streetcorner. In a car somewheres. I ain’t going. We settle this here.”

  “Don’t argue with him, Deej,” Marasco pleaded.

  Andrea elevated her pistol to shoulder level at full arm-extension, sighting on Bolan. “We leave right now, together, or I start shooting,” she warned.

  Bolan’s .32 was still in his hand. He casually angled it toward DiGeorge. “When I go, Poppa goes,” he said simply.

  “Deej, get outta here,” Marasco urged him.

  “I ain’t forgetting you, Mr. Philip Honey full of stingers. I ain’t forgetting.”

  “Just go,” Bolan said.

  DiGeorge went. Andrea went out behind him, the little gun still trained on Bolan. She closed the door and Marasco said, “Well.”

  “There’s still the contract,” Bolan philosophized.

  “Deej ain’t no clown,” Marasco said, wetting his lips nervously. “He won’t go no further than the first bunch of boys, then he’ll be coming back here with ’em.”

  “I’m not letting him go,” Bolan said. He stepped over to the French doors and tugged at the latch. “I didn’t want the kid in the middle of this.”

  “I sure hope there ain’t no mistakes about this, Franky,” Marasco worried aloud. “I mean, hitting a Capo just don’t happen every day. Maybe we should check it first. Just to make sure.”

  “You crazy?” Bolan said. “Who you think you’re gonna check with?” He pushed the doors open and stepped onto the lawn. Marasco leapt after him.

  “Well, who issues th’contract, Franky?”

  “You crazy? Who the hell you think can order a hit on a Capo? You gonna ask ’em if maybe they haven’t changed their minds? You, Philip Honey?”

  “Not me, Franky,” Marasco replied quickly.

  Bolan fired three rapid shots into the air. Several men whirled and raced toward him. “What’s up?” one of them shouted.

  “You know Benny Peaceful?” Bolan yelled.

  “Hell, yes we know ’im! Is his fingers moving?”

  “They damn better get to! I want the gates sealed! Nothin’ gets out!”

  “Nothin’ it is!” the man shouted back. He ran toward the front, two others following. A fourth man stood flat-footed, gawking at Bolan. Bolan raised his .32 and shot him dead where he stood.

  “Hey!” Marasco cried. “What’s that for?”

  Bolan whirled on him with a savage snarl. “Only two kinds are here now. Those that live and those that die. And Benny Peaceful is the line that divides.”

  “That punk?” Marasco yelled unbelievingly.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of poetic, isn’t it?” Bolan said, suddenly dropping the mask from his Lambretta voice. “Of all the senseless, idiotic killings you lunatics are in for, what could be more senseless and idiotic than letting a Benny Peaceful separate the sheep from the goats?”

  “Huh? What?” Marasco was confused and mentally reeling. “I don’t get … what the hell is… for God’s sake! You’re Bolan!” He was falling away in shock, clawing for his gun.

  “That’s right,” Bolan said, and put a bullet through the base of his nose. Marasco went over backwards, alarm and betrayal and outrage and fear all evaporating in that final mask of death. “Sorry about that, Philip Honey,” Bolan said, actually meaning it, and then he began reloading the .32 and went in search of more game.

  Bolan’s gun was pre-empted by his own strategy, however. Everyone, by this time, was shooting at everyone. A squad of guards with Thompsons were mowing down everything that moved in the vicinity of the gate. Two vehicles in the parking area were burning. Bodies were strewn about the grounds in various poses of death and near-death. Bolan gave up looking for targets and concentrated on finding Andrea. He did not find the girl outside but he did stumble upon the man who had eluded him on the cliffs of Balboa. Julian DiGeorge lay like a split sandbag with his guts oozing out upon the soil of his kingdom, victim of his own trained assassins and their ever-willing Thompson subs. The big .45 calibre bullets had torn him open, but the Capo was still trying to show his dominance of the forces about him, trying to stuff his own entrails back inside with manicured fingers that had not yet received the summons of death. Staring down at him, Bolan was thinking of Doc Brantzen and Genghis Conn and a sweet-faced little lady he had met only in death. He saw the face of pain and surprise on Big Tim Braddock, and he saw the embalmed faces of his own father, mother, and kid sister. He saw the seven grotesque remains of his death squad, and the scores of Mafia dead and dying who had met the Executioner’s guns … and then he saw only Julian DiGeorge, squirming in the dirt of a kingdom that had not been worth it, and Bolan wondered if anything was worth it. War and violence and death had walked the mountains and valleys of his life for as long as he could remember, and Bolan suddenly could not find any meaningful reasons for any of it. His nose twitched with the smell of death, his ears roared with the screams and moans of the dying, and his eyes smarted with the sight of suffering and torn bodies and blood blood blood everywhere.

  Julian DiGeorge looked up at him and said, “Shoot me,” in
a voice that could not be much longer for this world.

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Bolan muttered. He stepped away from the dying and went back the way he’d come, across the lawn of death, through the French doors, and into the Capo’s study.

  Andrea D’Agosta was there also, struggling in the grip of one Benny Peaceful, No. 2 Man of Franky Lucky Bolan’s new crime empire. Tears were streaming across her cheeks and she screamed out her hate and rage for the man who had brought them there.

  Bolan listened to her until her breath ran out, then he said to Benny Peaceful, “You run a sweet hit. Now get on back out there and clean up the garbage. If cops show, and I doubt it, tell ’em Bolan was trying to hit on th’ place.”

  “Sure, Franky,” Benny replied. He went to the door, then turned back with an afterthought. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “do I move into the villa?”

  “Sure,” Bolan said wearily. “You take Philip Honey’s suite.”

  Benny Peaceful went out beaming. Bolan stared at the sobbing girl for a moment, then reached for the phone and dialed Carl Lyons.

  “I’m glad you called,” Lyons said tightly. “I was thinking of trying to contact you. You asked me to check the death of Charles D’Agosta. There’s more than a dozen letters from him on file with a congressional committee on organized crime, all of them relating to the financial empire and underworld involvements of Julian DiGeorge. Now Lou Pena was the guy who …”

  “Hold it,” Bolan said tiredly. “Give it to someone who needs it.”

  He carried the telephone over to Andrea and held the receiver to her ear. “Tell the man to start over,” he instructed her.

  “Start over,” she whispered mechanically. Seconds later she began holding the instrument for herself. Bolan lit a cigarette and smoked while she listened to the policeman’s recital. Then she returned the phone to Bolan, said, “Thank you,” smoothed her clothing, pushed at her hair, and walked out.