Battle Mask Page 4

  “Are the hounds at your heels, Mack?” the surgeon asked softly.

  Bolan grimaced. “Pretty close,” he said. “And I can’t hang around here for more than a few hours. I’ll have to recuperate on my feet.”

  “There’s going to be pain.”

  “I’ve lived with pain before.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you have. Well… I could hurry Marge along, I guess, but I’d rather not arouse her suspicions. Come to think of it, this face of yours has been pretty much in the public eye. I guess I’d better have you prepped and ready by the time she checks in. She could never recognize you then.”

  “We can’t just go without her?” Bolan asked quietly.

  “Well…” The surgeon wavered. “It’s a …”

  “I’ve seen you go it alone with the Cong howling all around us.”

  “Those were emergency conditions,” Brantzen said fretfully.

  “This isn’t?” Bolan asked, grinning.

  The surgeon stared at Bolan for a thoughtful moment. He smiled suddenly and said, “Okay, Sergeant, let’s get the patient prepped for surgery. Come on, man, move, move, move.”

  Bolan got to his feet and thrust the sketch at Brantzen. “The patient is ready and waiting, Doctor,” he said.

  Chapter Six

  THE BALANCE

  Once a jumping-off spot for hopeful prospectors heading into the Death Valley area, Palm Village had until recently evolved uneventfully into a typical desert-edge trade center serving a sparse agricultural area. Removed from major highway routes and largely untouched by 20th-century progress during the first half of the century, the quiet village had found new life in the desert-land boom of the fifties and sixties. An invasion by promoters and developers had threatened to convert the tranquil community into a second Palm Springs until conservative city fathers invoked legislative powers to cool the pace of progress. As a result, Palm Village was moving calmly along the path of controlled development, retaining much of its original charm while swelling gently into a quiet residential community of retired folk and health-seekers.

  The original village square, referred to as “Lodetown,” had stoutly resisted all civilizing inroads of the 20th century. It was composed mainly of oldtime saloons and beerhalls which were frequented by farmhands and cowboys from the surrounding area, and was the chief source of Palm Village’s crime statistics, most of the trouble developing on Saturday nights and limited to “drunk and disorderlies” and an occasional fistfight. Lodetown boasted a quite stable population of prostitutes, each of them well known by local authorities. All were arrested each Sunday morning, fined $21.20, and released. This was an effective arrangement, considered entirely fair by the girls involved, satisfactory to the demands of law and order, and consistent with the city fathers’ concept of “logic and reason.” Besides, the weekly fines easily covered the entire expense of policing Lodetown.

  Robert (Genghis) Conn was still lean and hard at the age of 52. A tall man with a deeply lined, weathered face, he looked like a Gary Cooper version of the Western marshal. Actually, Conn was chief of the city’s small police force and had been a law-enforcement officer since the end of World War II. He had attended the police academy at Los Angeles and had served briefly with the L.A. police, then as an Orange County deputy until recalled to military duty for the Korean conflict. He returned from Korea directly into the chief’s job at Palm Village, replacing the one-man agency of Town Marshal in one of the initial acts of civic progress.

  It had not been a progressive move for Conn himself, however, and none was more aware of this than Conn. The Palm Village job represented a retreat of the once-ambitious lawman, the desert town offering him the peace and tranquility which had suddenly become so important to him. Conn had seen enough blood and violence to last him a lifetime; he wanted no more of it. For almost twenty years now, he had managed to avoid the violent life. He and his wife Dolly had a modest home with no mortgages in the older section of town, and here they planned to live forever. In peace and tranquility.

  On that hot desert morning of October 5th, however, “Genghis” Conn realized that his sabbatical had ended. The pace of progress had caught up to Palm Village; violent death had found its way to his peaceful city. Three dead hoods lay in the coroner’s vault at the local funeral home, a hapless old farmhand was barely hanging onto life at Memorial Hospital, and now this big-deal L.A. cop was telling him that his quiet little town was harboring, for God’s sake, the Executioner.

  “Is it always this hot here?” Captain Tim Braddock complained. He passed a hand across his forehead and squinted into the cloudless sky. “How the hell do you stand it?”

  “It’s only a hundred and two,” Conn replied, lying a little. “This is the cool o’ the morning. Wait ’til this afternoon.” He pushed open the door to the small building which served as a combination city hall, jail, and police station, and waved his two visitors inside.

  Braddock nudged Carl Lyons in ahead; the three lawmen stepped into air-conditdoned comfort and moved along a narrow hallway past a door marked CITY CLERK and through a swinging door at the rear. The air conditioning ended here, in Conn’s office. Desert coolers filled the window openings. A door of opaque glass and imbedded wire mesh, just beyond an I-formation of desks, opened onto the cell block.

  “This the jail?” Lyons asked.

  “That’s it,” Conn replied, jerking a thumb toward the dreary hole beyond the door. “Rarely has any guests … ’cept on Saturday nights, and then, God, you can’t stand the smell of the place. I pour a gallon of pine oil on that floor every Monday morning and just let it set all day.”

  His visitors had seated themselves; Lyons on a tattered leather couch at the wall, Braddock perching on the edge of a desk. Conn eased into a chair at the center desk, pushed his hat back off his forehead, and said, “What makes you think I got the Executioner in my town, Captain?”

  Braddock replied, “Call it a hunch. How many officers on your force, Chief?”

  “Twelve,” Conn said, his voice a bored monotone. “Besides myself. Run three rotating watch sections, with a light nightwatch.” He smiled tiredly. “Everybody works on Saturday night, all night long. We only have two cars, only one of them is fit to be on the highway. Every once in a while, we double up the watches and give ourselves a decent stretch at home.” He grunted and reached for a cigar. “You interested in knowing how much I pay my patrolmen?” Receiving no response other than an embarrassed drop of eyes, he went on: “Myself, I put in a 20-hour day, every day, ’cept once in a while I run Dolly and me into L.A. for a night to ourselves. We get gigglin’ drunk, see all the floorshows, and have ourselves a ball, with the swingers.” The Chief stared at his cigar during a thoughtful pause, then added, “So you think Mack Bolan’s responsible for the carrion over at the coroner’s.”

  Braddock shifted his weight uncomfortably and said, “We put out a full poop sheet on Bolan more than a week ago. We were hoping to get the full cooperation from the outlying communities. If you’d just sounded a Hardcase alert last night when the shooting occurred, Genghis, we’d be some valuable hours closer to Bolan right now.”

  Conn ignored the lightly scolding tone of Braddock’s message. “Last night happened to be one of my nights in L.A.,” he explained. “As for this Hardcase alert, my night watch just didn’t see the thing that way.” He bit the end off the cigar, then laid it down and chewed on the plug in his mouth. “Besides we don’t have clear jurisdiction. Happened outside of town, you know. ’Bout two miles outside.”

  Braddock tossed a hopeless glance at his young sergeant, sighed, and said, “Let me bring a squad in here, Genghis.”

  Following a short silence, Conn replied, “Okay. On provisions.”

  “What provisions?”

  “You don’t bust my town. Meaning, you don’t disturb the balance we got here. Law enforcement in this town is strictly my business. You want Bolan … okay, you come in and get him, if you can. But you don’t bust my town in the pr
ocess, and you don’t bother any of our citizens.”

  “Of course,” the Captain grunted. “That goes without saying.”

  “And you march every one of your men in here and let my people get a good look at ’em.”

  Braddock nodded assent.

  “No marked cars, and no uniforms, and you work it quiet … damn quiet.”

  Braddock sighed and glanced at Lyons. “I just hope we can,” he said.

  Conn spat the plug of cigar into his hand and raised inquiring eyes to the Los Angeles cop. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that wherever we find Bolan, we’re likely to find a covey of Mafia triggermen right close by.”

  “I want no shooting in my streets, Braddock,” Conn said coldly.

  “Neither do we,” Braddock replied. He arose with a sigh and moved toward the telephone. “Can I use this phone?”

  “Reverse ’em.”

  “Huh?”

  “The charges. L.A. is a 45-cent call.”

  Sgt. Lyons grinned and reached for a cigarette, watching the color flow into his Captain’s face. He winked at Chief Conn and lit the cigarette as Braddock’s index finger was stabbing into the telephone dial.

  “You don’t say much, do you?” Conn observed.

  The Sergeant exhaled the cigarette smoke, smiled, and said, “No sir.” He drew a finger across his throat, rolled his eyes toward the Captain, and sent Conn another wink.

  The Chief soberly returned the wink and bit another plug from his cigar. He liked the youngster okay, but that Braddock … well now, there was something else. Conn did not give a damn about the 45-cent toll call. The youngster realized that, and apparently Big Tim knew it also, judging by the color of his face. But Big Tim also knew that he wasn’t going to just walk in and take over Genghis Conn’s town. That was the important thing.

  Another important thing was occupying Genghis Conn’s mind also. If the Executioner was in town, there was only one reason why he would be here … and only one place he was likely to be interested in. This was something the big shot L.A. cop did not know. But Genghis Conn knew. And Genghis rather liked the peaceful balance which had been achieved in his town. He had already decided to keep it that way.

  Chapter Seven

  LOU’S CREW

  The Cosa Nostra was the only “family” Lou (Screwy Looey) Pena had ever known. Born in the forbidding slums of East Harlem in the early twenties to a tubercular and dying mother and an imprisoned father, he had been left to more or less shift for himself at a tender age and had grown up as an unofficial ward of the neighborhood. As his mother lingered and his father languished, young Looey ate wherever he could find a place at a table and slept in any crowded bed which would admit him, the tenacious youngster learning early to “live off the streets” and to accept graciously any crumbs tossed his way. It had been a mixed neighborhood of Italians, Jews, and Irish, in which ethnic feuds and rivalries erupted with monotonous frequency. For his first eight years of life, little Looey did not recognize ethnic differences; his hungry belly was receptive to bagels and raviolis alike; a bowl of Irish stew had been his idea of a feast. Pena’s life took a dramatic new direction in his eighth year, however, when his dead mama’s niece arrived from the old country and took the youngster under her wing. From Cugina Maria, then but 22 years of age herself, Pena found an identification of ancestry and learned to be proud of his Neapolitan roots; he also began attending school, at first reluctantly and then feverishly as his young consciousness responded to the challenges of knowledge. During his sixth year of schooling, Maria “moved in with” a member of a neighborhood gang known as “The 108th Street Raiders.” She took Looey with her into the new environment; unknown to Maria, Pena immediately quit school (he was then 14) and became a part-time member of the Raiders, working under the tutelage of Johnny “Third Leg” Saccitone, Maria’s lover. It was at about this time that the infamous gang wars and underworld intrigues were reaching the climax which would see the firm establishment of the Cosa Nostra families.

  Pena served six months in a reformatory at the age of 14, another four months at the age of 15. During this latter stretch, he killed a fellow inmate in a knife fight on the athletic field. He beat this rap by successfully feigning insanity and was transferred to the State Hospital, from where he was discharged at the age of 16. Now wise to the ways of his world, he successfully evaded the reach of the law thereafter and was formally initiated into a Cosa Nostra family somewhere around his 21st year. He was never again arrested or hospitalized throughout a long career as a Mafia “soldier,” serving mostly as an “enforcer” and bodyguard to various Capos, or family bosses. He had participated in more than a score of murder contracts and had come west with DiGeorge when the latter ascended to the rank of Caporegime, or lieutenant, in the early days of the Los Angeles Family. The nickname “Screwy Looey” had stuck with him through the years, but was rarely used to his face. Pena had long been a power in the Western Family, though without official rank until Mack Bolan’s execution of DiGeorge’s chief enforcer in the Beverly Hills fracas.

  Married only to his job and faultlessly loyal to his Capo, Pena had received the nod from DiGeorge to fill the sudden vacancy. Even Pena, however, realized that this promotion had been largely based on a scarcity of qualified candidates. It was generally acknowledged that whatever Pena lacked in brains was more than made up for by his brute strength, stubborn tenacity, and unflagging loyalty to his Capo. No one doubted that Screwy Looey would succeed in his new post. More than he himself wanted to succeed, however, he wanted to please Julian DiGeorge. This desire overrode all other considerations. He had vowed to serve up Mack Bolan’s head “on a platter” for his Capo’s extreme pleasure.

  Pena arrived in Palm Village on the morning of October 5th in the lead vehicle of a five-car caravan which proceeded directly to the public parking lot at the edge of Lodetown. There they were met by Willie Walker (nee Joseph Gianami), an advance man who had already obtained city permits for “door-to-door selling,” and who, moments earlier, had rented an empty store building on the Lodetown square, ostensibly for use as a book crew headquarters.

  Willie Walker led the caravan to the alleyway rear entrance to the store and chatted with a uniformed policeman as Pena’s soldiers unloaded heavy cartons of “books” from the trunks of the vehicles.

  Moments later, with Pena’s 25-man crew sprawled about in the comparative coolness of the rented store, Walker reported his conversation with the policeman. “He said it was okay to park in the alley, but we can’t block it.”

  Pena nodded and said, “I’d rather just stay in the cars. At least they’re air conditioned. It’s hot enough in here to cook us alive.”

  “The building went with the permits,” Walker replied, grinning. “Not much, is it? They got a law here that you gotta be an established firm in this town to do business here. It cost me five a head for the permits, fifty for a week’s rent on the store, minimum, and fifty for what they call an associate membership in the Merchant’s Association.” The grin widened. “And they call us racketeers.”

  “Everybody has to make a living, Willie,” Pena growled, dismissing the implied graft. “Well … hand out those permits and get the kids busy unpacking those boxes. There’s hardware and extra ammo under the books.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get the books stacked around, make it look good. Put a couple of empty boxes up by the window and let the label show, in case anybody wants to look in and see what we got here.” Pena wiped a trickle of perspiration from each temple and added: “Make it quick and get the kids back into those cars. Christ, we’ll dehydrate in this dump.” He held out a hand. “Gimme some of those business cards, I’m gonna pass some around to our next-door neighbors. Community relations, you know, and it’ll give me a chance to look around.” He winked, pocketed the cards, and walked toward the front of the building, dragging Walker with him. “Listen, I want one of those big choppers on the floor in each car. And put some books in the back
windows, and I want every man with a book in his hand. This has gotta look good. And listen … I don’t want those cars parked in a alley when we’re all mobbed up in here. One car in the alley, in case we need it quick … the others you spot around close. Just make sure they’re where we can get to them, and that we’re not gonna get blocked off or locked in.”

  Walker nodded his understanding of the instructions, closed the door behind Pena’s departure, and immediately began carrying out the orders. Upon Pena’s return some minutes later, the store looked precisely as it was meant to look—like a hurriedly set up center of operations for a crew of itinerant book salesmen. A city map which Walker had purchased for $1.25 from the City Clerk’s office was tacked to a wall, on which was being marked the assignment for each squad.

  “How long’s it gonna take us to cover this hick burg?” Pena inquired.

  Willie Walker stared reflectively at the large map. “I’d say we can tap every house in about three to four hours, if we move fast. Five or six if you want it real careful.”

  “I want it fast,” Pena replied. “I just spotted something real interesting over in that parking lot.”

  “Yeah?” Walker said, his eyes shifting quickly from the map to his boss’ face.

  “Yeah.” Pena was frowning in thoughtful concentration. “Julio’s car. Bolan must have dumped it there. I walked past quick and casual. Keys are in it. Blood spots on the seat.”

  “What’s on your mind, Lou?”

  “I’m just wondering if the bulls have that car staked out. I saw something else interesting, Willie. Two L.A. cops just walked into the police station.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You sure you sold the hicks on our cover?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “You gotta do better than pretty sure, Willie.”

  “Okay, I’m sure. They’re sold, Lou. All the guy was worried about was getting his fifty for this shack.”