Ivory Wave Read online

  “You think it’s cool to scare our clientele?”

  “I’m not much interested in what’s cool,” Bolan said. He showed the man Angela’s photo. “Did you sell her any Ivory Wave?”

  “I’m a businessman. What I sell to whom is no one’s business. You got a warrant, let’s see it.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “You might wish I was, if you don’t answer my question.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Bolan had run out of patience. His right hand shot forward, grabbed the tuft of beard under Jovan’s chin and yanked down. At the last instant he moved his right hand away and put his left on top of Jovan’s head, pushing down into the mass of curls. Jovan bent forward at the waist—as much as he was able—and his chin smashed into the glass cabinet. The glass gave a loud cracking sound and fissures appeared the length and width of the pane.

  When Bolan released him, Jovan straightened, touching his chin with one hand. His fingers came away bloody. “You cut me!” he said.

  “You busted our glass case,” his coworker added.

  “I’m just getting warmed up,” Bolan said. “The girl?”

  “Dude,” Jovan said to the goateed guy. “Call 911.”

  “Right.” The skinny guy reached for a cordless phone standing in its station on the back counter. When he had it in his hand, Bolan reached over, grabbed a fistful of tie-dye and tugged the guy close, then took the phone from him. He threw it into a display of grow lights, where it landed with a satisfying crash.

  “You ask me before you make any phone calls,” Bolan said. “Understood?”

  “Listen, man,” Jovan said. He held his hands out, as if trying to appear compliant. “I don’t know what’s got you so worked up, but I’m sure there’s a way we can settle this without anybody getting hurt.”

  “There is,” Bolan agreed. “You answer my questions.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “The girl,” Bolan reminded him. Her picture was still resting on the cracked glass. This time Jovan looked at it closely. His hands were trembling, and a drop of blood dripped from his chin onto the glass.

  “I don’t think so,” Jovan said.

  “Be sure,” Bolan told him.

  While Jovan looked, the skinny guy eyed Bolan and then crouched behind the counter for a moment. He was picking up something that had fallen when Jovan’s head met the glass case, Bolan thought.

  But when he rose again, there was a shotgun in his hands. He pumped it once and pointed it at Bolan. His finger was on the trigger, and twitching.

  “You know that’s a mistake, right?”

  “We have a right to protect our business,” Jovan said.

  As far as Bolan was concerned, they had forfeited those rights when they opened a business designed to profit from the drug trade. Pointing a gun at him only made it worse.

  He sidestepped left as the goateed guy’s finger squeezed the trigger. It might have been an accident, his nerves spasming his hand, but it didn’t matter. The effect was the same. The weapon discharged, filling the narrow space with noise and smoke. The blast hit the painted brick wall across from him, tearing through merchandise.

  Bolan caught the shotgun’s barrel and snatched it from the guy’s hands, meeting no resistance. Probably the first time he had ever fired a gun, the soldier thought. He kept the weapon moving in a tight arc and reversed direction, swinging the stock back into the guy’s face, breaking the guy’s nose with a gush of blood. Bolan ejected the remaining shells, then tossed the weapon onto the floor behind him.

  By the time he was finished with that, Jovan had found a steel baseball bat and was charging around the counter. Bolan ducked the first swing, which whistled above his head. Jovan was strong, and the soldier knew he could do some damage if he connected. He dodged the second swing, then stepped inside the third and lashed out with a front kick that caught the big man just above his huge, swaying gut.

  The air rushed out of Jovan and he started to double forward. Bolan met his chin with a powerful uppercut that snapped the man’s head back. He followed with a left to his jaw and Jovan collapsed, gasping for breath.

  Bolan knelt beside the big man on the floor. His face was turning purple, and his right leg was rattling against the floor. The left punch had dislocated his jaw, blocking his airway.

  “This is going to hurt,” Bolan said. Jovan’s eyes glimmered with panic. He understood.

  The soldier grasped Jovan’s jaw with both thumbs and shifted it a little. The guy’s eyes went wide and he gave a mewling sound, but his chest expanded and he sucked in a huge breath. Keeping his hands on his adversary’s jaw, he made eye contact again. “Move from there and I’ll dislocate it again,” he said. “And leave it that way.”

  Jovan couldn’t nod, but his eyelids fluttered. Good enough.

  The guy with the bloody goatee was still on the floor behind the counter. He was unconscious, but breathing. Probably for the best—once he woke up, he would be hurting. Bolan left them where they were and passed through the beaded curtain into the back room, which had shelves full of merchandise, a neatly organized desk and a four-drawer filing cabinet. Bolan started there.

  Jovan had said he was a businessman, and despite first impressions, he was apparently a careful one. At least, he maintained good records. It took a couple of minutes to find the invoice and packing slip for the most recent shipment that included Ivory Wave, but they were in the files. He pocketed them. Dry cleaning equipment could be noisy, but that shotgun blast would have alerted neighbors, and the police would be showing up soon, he knew.

  He stepped back into the shop. The men were where he had left them. Bolan picked up Jovan’s bat and spent a minute or so reliving his high school baseball days. He had been a power hitter, even then. When he was done, the shop looked as if a tornado had struck. Nothing made of glass was intact, and “bath salts,” in their powder form, were spread all over the floor, mixed with shards of glass and plastic and dented, twisted metal. The only remaining intact bottle Bolan tucked into his pocket.

  The last thing he did was pick up the photograph of Angela, which he slipped into his jacket pocket with the paperwork he had found. He dropped the bat into Jovan’s lap. The big man hadn’t budged. Blood ran from his nose and mouth in a steady stream and he breathed with a wheezing sound.

  “I was never here,” Bolan said. “And thanks for attacking me. You did me a favor.” Again Jovan’s eyes signaled comprehension.

  Bolan was driving away when the first squad car skidded around the corner, lights going and siren wailing. He lifted two fingers in salute and kept going.

  * * *

  “HELLO, STRIKER,” BROGNOLA said.

  “Hal, I just wanted to let you know. That thing I said I was doing is going to take a little longer than I thought.”

  He had called Stony Man Farm the evening before, after meeting with Eddie Fulton. Hal Brognola understood that Mack Bolan set his own agenda, and their agreement allowed for that.

  “No problem,” Brognola said. “And listen, I talked to the President about that matter.”

  “About Ivory Wave?”

  “That’s right. He’s aware of it, in general terms. But he didn’t know how bad it had gotten out there. He said there are complications—his word—legislatively. The FDA would have to get the stuff classified as a drug before they could do anything. Congress can’t seem to act. I don’t know if the stuff has lobbyists, or what, but they haven’t even managed to get a bill out of committee. For now, the President’s hands are tied.”

  “Which is where I come in.”

  “More or less.”

  “I’m going to send you a sample of the local wares. I want to know how legal this stuff really is. I’ve heard of drugs doing some strang
e things before, but slitting your own throat is really hard core.”

  “That’s easy enough. I’ll get people on it right away to see what they can find out. These people are your friends, Striker. You do what you have to do. We can’t get involved in any official way. But if you caused some trouble for the people making this crap and selling it, that would not be unpopular inside the White House.”

  “I’ve just started making trouble,” Bolan said. “And I have a feeling I’ll make a lot more before I’m done.”

  4

  They met in the basement of Chiarello’s house.

  Nuncio had offered him an office in his downtown building, with sleek modern furniture and plush carpeting, even a lake view, but damned if Chiarello wanted to spend five minutes there. He hadn’t spent twenty-five years in the can in order to come out and be a damn business drone, he thought. If that was the life he’d wanted, he could have gotten a straight job right off the bat, all those years ago.

  Annamaria had complained, of course, when he’d told her the guys were coming over. “I was hoping we would have some time together,” she had said. “You know, just us. To get reacquainted, before you jump right back into work.”

  She had gone completely gray while he was away, which was no surprise. She was still trim, but she had developed wrinkles and sags. Chiarello loved her, and he always would. She had never been the center of his life, though, and she wasn’t now. “There’ll be plenty of time,” he told her. “The rest of our lives.”

  She had smiled at that. But she knew, as every made man’s wife did, that there were never any guarantees. The rest of a guy’s life could be decades, or it could be minutes. The key was to make sure you squeezed as much life as you could into whatever time you had.

  That was why six men gathered in Chiarello’s basement rec room, three days after he got back into town.

  There was Chiarello. There was Artie D’Amato, who had been his lieutenant pretty much forever, and who had kept giving Chiarello his rightful share even during the prison years. Nico had been one of the guys at Ohio State who had watched Chiarello’s back, until he was paroled three years ago and Chiarello had set him up with Artie. Dario and Ric were two of Artie’s most trusted guys. And then, the biggest risk: Massimo.

  But Chiarello had a feeling about Nuncio’s eldest son. The kid had tried to act proud when he had taken Chiarello to the NDC offices, but Chiarello had sensed embarrassment behind the act. It wasn’t surprising. Everybody knew who Chiarello was and what he had done, and it didn’t take a genius to know he wasn’t likely to be happy in some sort of corporate-type bureaucracy. Chiarello thought it was more than that, though. He got the impression that Massimo was an old-fashioned kid, with the right ideas about his place in the world. After all, when he was just a kid, his father had been in the Family business, too. It wasn’t until after Chiarello had been gone for a while that Nuncio changed. Lost his nerve, his brother thought.

  So he had invited Massimo to the meet, stressing that it was something Nuncio couldn’t know about. It was taking a chance, but Massimo had agreed immediately.

  Now they sat around Chiarello’s poker table. The room was big and airy, with a wet bar, a giant plasma TV and a pool table. The walls were wood-paneled and the floor real Italian tile, put in by Annamaria’s brother, who had trained in Milan. Massimo and Artie were smoking, and they all had bottled beer. Later on, Annamaria would bring in pasta and bread, if the meeting ran that long.

  “You probably have an idea why we’re here,” Chiarello began. “You all know I did a long jolt. I never named names, never said a word to anyone about any of our affairs.”

  “You always been stand-up, Dom,” Artie said. “Nobody can take that away from you.”

  “Thanks. On the inside, Nico was my guy, my number one. He knows what it was like in there. Then when I hit the bricks, Massimo here was good enough to pick me up, bring me home. But first he takes me to this place, this fucking joke of an office building downtown. NDC Industries? What kind of shit is that? It’s like Nuncio thinks he’s fucking Donald Trump or whatever. A businessman. ‘We’re into all kinds of legit operations,’ he tells me. ‘The law can’t touch us.’

  “Yeah, well maybe they can’t. But me, that’s not what I signed up for. As a young man, I had a choice—we all did. We all know guys who took the straight road. You see them now and they look like they’re already dead. Nuncio’s earning, doing well, that’s fine. But it’s not just about the scratch, not to me. It’s about the life. It’s about the action. None of this bullshit about making drugs with bath salts—I mean, what the hell is that kind of crap.” He turned to Massimo. “You’re his son. I can tell you that it’s not my intent to cause any injury to Nuncio—he’s my kid brother, after all. But I do mean to shake things up. I’m going to push this Family back the way we were meant to be—the way we always were. If you don’t want to be part of that, you better leave now. And if you breathe a word of it to your old man...” He left the threat unstated.

  “I’m cool,” Massimo said, meeting his gaze.

  “Anybody else got a problem?” Chiarello asked.

  Ric put his hands flat on the table. He had rings on every finger, and his black hair was long, combed back off his forehead, thick with grease. “Sorry, Dom,” he said, “Nuncio’s always been good to me. I can’t go along with makin’ any trouble for him.”

  Chiarello looked at Artie. “This how you run things?”

  Artie shrugged, spreading his hands. In the organizational structure, he had come under Nuncio, while Dominic was away. He hadn’t given up his other interests, the way Nuncio had, but there was an uneasy link between them, and apparently some of his guys remained loyal to Nunce. “He’s his own man.”

  “Okay, Ric,” Chiarello said. “You should probably go, then. No hard feelings.”

  Ric scraped his chair back and stood. “Yeah, okay. Nico, I’ll wait in the car.”

  “Cool,” Nico said.

  “And you don’t got to worry about me sayin’ anything,” Ric added.

  “I know,” Chiarello said.

  When Ric started for the door, Chiarello caught Massimo’s eye and jerked his head toward Ric. Massimo nodded. He rose and crossed the room fast, reaching the door right behind Ric. “Hey, bro,” he said.

  Ric started to turn. “Yeah?”

  Massimo brought a knife out from somewhere. He moved fast, reaching one hand behind Ric’s head, catching his long hair and jerking down to tilt his chin up. He slashed across Ric’s exposed throat, then jumped back in time to dodge the first jet of blood from his carotid artery. It splattered wetly on the floor. Ric crumpled and went down, and the blood continued to flow until his heart stopped beating.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Massimo said. He crouched beside the now-still body and wiped the blade clean on Ric’s clothes, then returned it to his ankle sheath. He returned to the table and took his seat.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Chiarello said. “This tile cleans up easy.” He went to Massimo’s chair, took his nephew’s head in his hands and kissed him on the forehead. “And that’s good work,” he added. “You’re in.”

  * * *

  MASSIMO HAD KILLED only once before.

  That had been a different sort of thing, years before. He had been out with friends, drinking and generally carrying on. They had all been packing, of course, because everybody did then. Massimo had carried a cheap Davis P-32, a classic Saturday Night Special. After closing down a bar, they wandered down to the lakefront. One of them said something insulting to another similarly intoxicated group of young men. All these years later, Massimo couldn’t even remember what had been said, or by whom. All he really remembered about that night was that he got mad enough to pull the little gun. He aimed it at one of the other guys and pulled the trigger three times. The reports seemed impossibly loud a
t the time, and it jerked around more than he had expected. Still, two of the rounds found their target and dropped the guy. They all scattered; Massimo didn’t know until the next day’s morning news that he had killed someone.

  His father wouldn’t have approved. He didn’t like violence, he said, and he discouraged it in his Family and his “business associates.” Massimo loved him, and he believed there was nothing more important than the bonds of family. His father, Nuncio, was only four years younger than his uncle Dominic, but Nuncio considered himself part of a new generation. Like his peers, he was moving into legit businesses, frowned on violence and generally tried to put the old ways behind him.

  Uncle Dom, though, he was old school. He was a hard man, afraid of nothing that Massimo could see, willing to do whatever it took.

  Massimo loved his father, but he respected his uncle. So when it came time to choose between them—not as a parent but as a leader—he had to choose his uncle.

  Besides, he thought in the car, heading home to Carla after dumping Ric’s body, this time he had liked it.

  He had been carrying the Ka-Bar knife for more than a year, keeping it from his father the whole time. Some mornings, strapping the sheath around his ankle, he wondered why. “Just in case” got old, when that case never happened. The sheath sometimes chafed his leg, and he was sure there wasn’t as much hair on that ankle as on the other anymore.

  But he had seen an opportunity, this day, to impress his uncle. Besides, the old man had given him the high sign. Ric couldn’t be allowed to leave. He would have gone straight to Nuncio and ratted them all out. Somebody had to take care of him, and his uncle had picked him. Crossing the room behind Ric, Massimo had felt a strange mix of anxiety, pride and arousal that bordered on sexual. The knife felt comfortable in his hand, natural. Then the attack itself, blindingly fast. The keen blade had parted flesh like hot steel through butter. It seemed to catch for an instant on the cartilage of the larynx, but then it sliced through.