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  “That rotten shit of a prosecutor again!” Carlotti fumed.

  “I don’t think so. This sounded different. Zeno’s calling all the bosses. It’s a summit.”

  “Aw, aw, aw,” Carlotti commented, shaking his head with disgust. “What the hell is it this time, I wonder!”

  He dropped the cigarette into an ashtray and moved hastily toward his dressing room, pausing in mid-stride to turn a troubled gaze toward the bed—as though remembering some unfinished business there. He snapped his fingers at Favia and instructed, “Get that outta here. Give her some breakfast money.”

  Favia went dutifully to the bed, hauled the girl out, scooped up her clothing from a chair, and carried the works out, tucked loosely beneath a massive arm—the girl wide-eyed but silent.

  Carlotti called from the dressing room doorway, “Be a good kid and I’ll phone you some time.”

  He shrugged out of the karate wrap and threw it at a wooden peg on the wall as he strode past. It held for a moment then slid free and dropped to the carpeted floor as its owner moved on toward the darkened bathroom. He halted, returned, bent down to retrieve the robe—then froze, bent over like that, something hard and ominous pressing against the crown of his head.

  A chilling voice quietly commanded, “Stay there, Carlotti, and kiss your ass goodbye.”

  At such a moment, something strange happens within the human psyche—even to a bruised and calloused one such as that of Thomas Carlotti, the Boss of Sin. A cacophony of conflicting emotions bristled into that moment of doom—anger, betrayal, hate, even repentance—but the greatest of all was sadness, an overriding and consuming sadness that contemplated the fall of domain, the final failure, life and all its grand plans for the future ending here and now.

  It was all there in that ragged voice, as he asked the question that had already been answered. “What the hell is this? Whattaya want?”

  “Just you, Carlotti,” was the icy response.

  Hope dies hard, especially in the doomed breast. Still contemplating his own knobby knees, Carlotti gasped, “If it’s a contract, I’ll buy it out. Double your money. Triple it. Hell, you say.”

  “This contract was written in the stars, guy.” Strong fingers curled into the hair of his head, straightened him, spun him, slammed him face-to against the wall—all the while the steady pressure at the crown of the head reminding him to be still, stay cool, keep hoping.

  “If this is a gag, hey, you’re just in time for Mardi Gras.”

  “No gag, Carlotti.”

  “This is crazy, guy. I got a dozen boys under this roof.”

  “Five.”

  “Huh?”

  “You had five, Carlotti.”

  “And they’re light sleepers—uh—had?”

  “Uh huh. They’re heavy sleepers now. All but Favia. He’ll keep.”

  The underboss was coming totally unstuck. This wasn’t fair—for God’s sake, it just wasn’t fair. All those years on the street—all that work and sweat and tears—and just now when everything was coming together so beautifully …“Not fair!” he groaned.

  “I’m not your judge, guy.”

  “Who is then?”

  “You are. I’m just the judgment.”

  Carlotti laughed, at the edge of hysteria. “I don’t get that. Who sent you?”

  “You sent me. And I don’t expect you to understand it.” The pistol muzzle slid slowly along the back of Carlotti’s head, boring up just above the vertebrae. “Ten seconds to tell it all goodbye, Tommy.”

  “Wait, dammit, wait! We can work this out!”

  “I don’t think so.” The guy spun him around, the pistol tracking on with the movement to punch in just beneath the chin.

  All Carlotti could see during that first dizzying instant was the big blaster, black, tipped with an ominous bulb at the muzzle end—a silencer—and the black hand that held it. But it was not a Negro hand—it was artificially blackened, and extending away from it was more blackness, then glittering eyes—a big guy, black from head to toe—a fuckin’ commando, no less, belts and guns and grenades and all kinds of shit strung all over him. And, no, it wasn’t Mardi Gras.

  All hope departed, like the final flaring of a shooting star, and the Boss of Sin felt his knees buckling, his whole frame sagging. The guy jerked him back upright and pressed something into his hand—sure, the clincher, the medal of death.

  It was not hope that spoke but desperation, as Carlotti pleaded, “God, don’t do this, Bolan. Don’t do it.”

  “Give me an alternative,” the iceman replied.

  “What?”

  “What do you love more than life, Carlotti?”

  “Nothing!” He was scrabbling now, hanging on like a drowning man to a lifeline. “Listen, I revere life. I revere it. I never burned a guy in my life, not ever! I don’t deserve this, Bolan—I really don’t.”

  “What do you deserve then?”

  “God, I—a guy don’t get the chair for purse snatching, Christ’s sake.”

  The big guy was just standing there, watching him with those goddam eyes—didn’t even seem to be breathing—no expression on the face, like carved in ice, head cocked a bit to one side.

  Then Carlotti knew: the guy’s mind hadn’t been on him at all. The legends were true, the stories were straight—the guy was some kind of superhuman. He’d heard or felt big Favia moving through the house downstairs and starting up the stairway. The creaking step near the top was Carlotti’s first awareness of the approach—but this impassive bastard had already sprung another gun from his hip, a big silver autoloader with a ventilated barrel, easily a foot long, that went smoothly and quickly inside Carlotti’s mouth, pinning his head to the wall from the inside.

  Scooter hit the bedroom door on the run and with a lot of noise, but all Carlotti could see at the moment was the silent black blaster extended at arm’s length, angling into that confrontation.

  Favia had started yelling from the other side of the door: “Boss! Sam and all his boys got sliced in their beds, throats cut! We better …”

  By this time, Scooter Favia was through the doorway and hastily applying brakes, eyes bugging at that scene just inside the dressing room, his snub-nosed .38 waving in the air and instinctively falling into a firing lineup.

  The black blaster gave out a little pa-tooey and bucked slightly in the tall guy’s big fist. Carlotti swore he saw that bullet hurtle out of there and thwack into big Favia’s forehead squarely between the eyes.

  The old comrade and faithful gun toter went down without a sound, pitching over backwards through the doorway and out of sight.

  Carlotti’s knees again gave way. He broke a tooth on the silver pistol before he could recover himself—then like magic it was gone and back in the guy’s holster at the hip—the silent blaster, a bit warm now, back in position at Carlotti’s throat—and that cold voice, as calm as ever, was saying, “Okay, I’ll take a note, Carlotti. A mortgage on this revered life of yours. I’ll take it written on the torn shreds of your oath of Omerta. You’ve got about two heartbeats to decide.”

  What decide? Carlotti thought. “You want me to stool for you?” he whispered, at the ragged edge of human endurance.

  “That, or die for me. One heartbeat left, beautiful.”

  Hell, sure, what decide! Die now for sure or die later, probably when the organization discovers that Thomas Carlotti, heir apparent to the invisible golden throne of New Orleans, had shitted out on the sacred oath of silence.

  Perspiration appeared suddenly in a film across his forehead and dripped from his upper lip. Moisture returned to the mouth and unstuck the throat. He felt like laughing and crying all at once. So this was how it felt to get a reprieve just as you were being buckled into the chair. The naked mafioso looked into those glittering eyes and squeezed the little iron cross until it cut into the flesh of his palm, then his gaze dropped, he took a shuddering breath and told the big cold bastard, “I’m not ready to kiss it goodbye, Bolan. You’ve got yoursel
f a note.”

  What Bolan had, at that moment, was his angle of penetration for the assault on New Orleans. It was, indeed, precisely what he had come for.

  Buy New Orleans Knockout Now!

  About the Author

  Don Pendleton (1927–1995) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. He served in the US Navy during World War II and the Korean War. His first short story was published in 1957, but it was not until 1967, at the age of forty, that he left his career as an aerospace engineer and turned to writing full time. After producing a number of science fiction and mystery novels, in 1969 Pendleton launched his first book in the Executioner saga: War Against the Mafia. The series, starring Vietnam veteran Mack Bolan, was so successful that it inspired a new American literary genre, and Pendleton became known as the father of action-adventure.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author᾿s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1974 by Pinnacle Books, Inc.

  Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-8571-0

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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