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  Bolan smiled at him. “It’s an advance.”

  “Against what?”

  “Don’t you know when you’re being recruited, guy?”

  “Recruited for what?”

  Bolan produced a note pad, scribbled an address, tore out the sheet and gave it to Nola. “Recognize the address?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “That’s the headshed. You know what. Ever been there?”

  “Me? I’m not even made. Three lousy bills a week.”

  Bolan quietly reminded him, “Now you’ve got ten. I am called Omega. You’ll find me in the penthouse, or you can leave word.”

  The little man was definitely hooked now. “For what?”

  “For whatever,” Bolan replied, winking.

  Nola was smiling that hideous smile, staring at the sheet of note paper. “You really are for real, then, aren’t you?”

  For reply, Bolan told him, “I make you Lou the Sport.”

  Which was a highly significant statement. In effect, Lou the Sport was now a “made” man.

  He tried very hard to look solemn as he replied to that. “I guess I know what you want. I can tell you this much, already. She’s been here the past three days. Marco brought her in late Wednesday night. Got me out of bed to come down here and tuck her away. Didn’t trust the night people. Wrong blood. Anyway, that was the night he got back from New Mexico. He was in a hell of a sweat.”

  “She been like that the whole time?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Started puking yesterday. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I could hardly stand to go in there. I only did about twice the whole time. Hell, it wasn’t my responsibility. Didn’t want her here. Who needs all that? For three bills a week? Who knows what the rap could be? Marco told me nothing, just to keep my damn mouth shut. This other guy came in three or four times a day, this Jew guy, used to be a doctor, I guess—he came in with his little bag three or four times a day, I guess. They’re keeping her salted with something, I dunno what and I dunno why. None of my business, see. But I know that Marco was madder’n hell that you snatched her. Just who is that kid, anyway?”

  “That’s what I want you to find out for me, Sport.”

  Nola shrugged and replied, “Okay, I’ll try. I don’t know how the hell—”

  “Do you have a quiet number for Marco?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait about twenty minutes. Then call the quiet number. Tell him you suddenly remember something. Last time the doc came to see the kid, he left here in a red sports car. Someone picked him up, see, someone driving this red sports car. You know?”

  Nola displayed the awful smile as he replied, “Yeah. I know exactly. You’re something of a bastard, aren’t you?”

  Bolan smiled back and said, “I try to be, with scum like Marco trying to take over. After you make the call, you might try checking around, see what you can find out about the kid. Maybe something will come to mind, you’ll remember something to tie her to. If you do, look for me at the penthouse. Otherwise, lay low and keep quiet. Uh, here’s a guy can take messages for me.” He whipped out the notepad, printed Leo Turrin, gave it to Nola. “Nobody else, just this guy.”

  “Okay.”

  The little man was looking troubled. Bolan asked him, “What’s on your mind?”

  Nola shrugged and replied, “I was just wondering how dangerous all this is.”

  Bolan told him, “Dangerous as hell, Sport.”

  “I thought so.”

  “You’re a lot safer than Marco is, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Did you hear the rumpus over inside the park, few minutes ago?”

  “Yeah. What was that?”

  Bolan got to his feet. “Watch the noon news,” he suggested casually. “Maybe you’ll find out.”

  He went away from there then, without a backward glance, walking south with eyes alert for a taxicab.

  Maybe that had been for nothing, back there. Then again, maybe not. A worm can always turn. Bolan was offering that one at least an opportunity to do so.

  And he was onto something, for damn sure, he knew that. His combat shivers told him that it was so. He had found it highly interesting that Minotti’s first known association with the kid came in the wake of his miserable disaster at White Sands.

  But it was time, now, to try the penthouse—home of the Aces.

  He would decide, later, just how valuable had been the two-minute bottle of time he’d purchased from Lou the Sport.

  CHAPTER 9

  ACES HIGH

  It was a 28-floor modern building in the heart of the high rent district, once among the proudest possessions of the Marinello group. During his heydey, Augie had signed over the top three floors to be used as the “corporate offices” for La Cosa Nostra, via a longterm, dollar-a-year lease.

  It was not so magnanimous a gift as one would be led to believe. Augie had muscled his way into the legitimate company which was bankrolling construction of the building, bankrupted it via control over the labor that was building it and the city departments who certified the work, and emerged as sole owner after paying off twelve cents on the dollar to the bankruptcy receiver who himself belonged to the Marinello group. And although La Cosa Nostra, “This Thing of Ours,” was billed as a sort of United Nations for international crime, Augie had always had the Thing in his pocket, as well.

  The net effect of all that was that the Boss of Bosses had stolen a multi-million dollar building, then took statesman honors (plus a nice tax write-off) by deeding three floors to a tax-exempt corporation which he, in effect, also owned.

  In the long look, though, Augie had indeed done the brothers a favor. The building itself had been seized by the IRS when Augie’s star began to fall, as were all the other legitimate holdings which could be legally tied to the Marinello estate, at his death. That estate would be cast in concrete for years to come, so involved were its many convolutions through the business community. But the longterm lease to the “Foundation for American Unity” was legally binding and untouchable—at least so long as that “foundation” continued to exist.

  Bolan was here to see that it ceased to exist, as of today.

  He had already driven in the toppling wedge, on his earlier visit to this complicated old city. La Commissione, or the Council of Bosses, had once been an effective and effcient administrative group which saw to the management of the worldwide networks of organized crime. It was, after all, a business; crime does not “organize” without an organizational technique; in its heydey, La Commissione could have taught the legitimate conglomerates and cartels a thing or two about high finance and manipulative management. It appears, in fact, that they did so.

  But La Commissione existed both in the particular and in the abstract. The particular body consisted of a small army of hoodlums, wheeler-dealers, and legal eagles who actually saw to the day-to-day details of corporate management. The abstract body were the bosses themselves, a motley assortment of jungle lords who had risen through blood and plunder to absolute rule over the various crime territories comprising the North American continent. The abstract body did not sit in daily congress at the top of Augie’s building. Those guys rarely saw one another, largely did not even like one another, certainly did not trust one another.

  The origin of the “aces” is clouded in myth and legend, but the need for such a group could be inferred from the most elemental understanding of La Commissione and its two bodies, the particular and the abstract.

  It seems likely that, in the beginning, an “Ace” was a physical stand-in for a family ruler at the Council of Bosses—part overseer, part diplomat, part businessman, part enforcer. It must have been an interesting job, in such a congress of thieves. But it probably worked out rather well, in the beginning. Too well, perhaps. As the crime families grew fat and their territories fatter, complications arose. Each Ace began to see the need for administrative assistants, those assistants soon began to need assistants—and a bureaucra
cy arose.

  At the height of American Mafia influence, more than two hundred “administrators” toiled daily for the “foundation.” By that time, the role of the aces themselves had undergone a dramatic transformation. They now constituted an elite gestapo force, atop a world of their own making—exclusively occupying the 28th floor or “penthouse,” their staffs flowing from wall to wall across the 26th and 27th floors of the building.

  The aces controlled the whole glorious “Thing.” And there were pyramids of power in that penthouse, beginning at the top with the Aces of Spades, then the clubs, followed by the lower echelon “red aces”—hearts and diamonds—but aces all, virtually autonomous and serving now no particular boss or family but the “Thing” itself, La Cosa Nostra.

  This, then, was for all practical purposes La Commissione. It is said—and now generally believed to be true—that Marinello himself, with his silent partner, Barney Matilda, was the mastermind and secret guiding force behind the modern council. It is certainly true that it was Marinello’s inspiration which installed the aces as a veritable gestapo with the power of life and death within the organization.

  Bolan had changed all that.

  Marinello was now dead. Barney Matilda was dead. All the old bosses were dead. All the territories were wobbly, disorganized, out of hand—and new ethnic groups were moving into the vacuum, setting up their own. Political clout routes were now unreliable, shifting, disappearing. Organized labor was beginning to police itself. Legitimate covers were shredded, exposed, toppling. The assets of hundreds of corporate structures around the country were now under IRS seal, the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating scores more, and the vast wealth of an invisible empire was quickly grinding down to nought.

  In effect, La Commissione itself was dead.

  La Cosa Nostra was becoming a thing of the past, a clouded historical footnote to America’s 20th century.

  And, in the same fell swoop which brought it all about, Bolan had made it appear that the aces themselves were largely responsible for the fall.

  It was not now an easy time for those guys, those that were left to view the disaster.

  Some of them had departed the country. Others, with less to fear from outraged survivors, had gone into quiet and anonymous retirement in various regions of the sunbelt. Those with the courage or prestige to remain did not venture far from the atmospheres of New York City and even then walked very softly.

  There was, of course, a vestige of empire to be maintained. But the 26th and 27th floors were much quieter, these days. A skeleton force took care of routine diplomatic chores and tried to maintain communications between remnants of the empire.

  Leo Turrin had emerged as the power beneath the penthouse.

  According to Turrin, the penthouse itself was virtually a deserted sanctum, manned routinely by a couple of red aces and visited occasionally by an Ace of Clubs called Sigmund.

  As reported also by Turrin, an Ace of Spades identified as Frankie was the only one thought to be still operating across the various territories. And, of course, like Omega, Frankie was Mack Bolan.

  So Frankie/Omega was coming home.

  He was coming to reclaim his own.

  Let the legless bosses beware.

  CHAPTER 10

  TARGET CENTRAL

  The express elevator served the top three floors only, from either the garage level or the main lobby. Bolan boarded in the lobby and went directly to the penthouse. The elevator opened onto a small foyer, beyond which and behind closed glass doors lay an expansive, open room with glass at three sides and a wraparound, open-air terrace. The fourth side of that top floor, the elevator side, was given over to private offices, one of which Bolan had taken to himself during his command strike, some time earlier. That had been a time of utter confusion for the mob, though; a successful penetration might not be so easy, this time.

  He took a key from his wallet, tried it in the lock at the heavy glass doors, turned it, and stepped inside. So okay. They had not even changed the damned locks.

  Just inside stood a massive, horseshoe-shaped desk which had served, in better times, as a reception desk for visiting VIPs. Nothing was stirring in that big room, now. It was immaculately clean, though, smelled faintly of Lysol spray, and sounded good via faint background music issuing from concealed speakers.

  Well, after all, it was a Saturday morning. How many “corporate offices” in this city would be bursting with activity at such a time?

  Bolan went on past the reception area and headed straight toward Omega’s office, the larger and central of three luxurious enclosures at the back wall. Beyond there would be a labyrinth of small offices, conference rooms, two kitchens and a wine “cellar.”

  His hand was on the door and he was about to step inside the office when a handsome young man appeared in the doorway to his left. Bolan had never seen this guy before, but he knew what he was.

  “Sir? Can I help you?” the minor ace inquired politely.

  “Not right now,” Bolan replied brusquely. “I will let you know.”

  “Shouldn’t we observe the formalities? May I have your marker?”

  Bolan frowned, dug out his ID wallet, handed it to the guy.

  The ace smiled and stepped back into his office.

  Bolan went on into his “own” office, removed his hat and coat, took off the M-79 rig and hung it beneath the coat, went to his desk.

  He had hardly settled into the chair when a connecting door opened and the younger man joined him. These guys were nobody’s damned fools, minor or not. All of them had been college educated, were impeccable in both dress and manners, had minds like springtraps. They were the underworld equivalent of the CIA—and, no, there was not a fool among them.

  The guy returned the ID wallet and said, “Welcome home, sir. We’ve missed you.”

  Which was a baldfaced lie.

  Bolan growled, “What is this place? Death warmed over? Where is everyone?”

  The guy spread his hands and calmly replied, “Well, it’s Saturday.”

  “Tell it to Marco,” Bolan snapped. He held out his hand. “But first let’s see yours.”

  It took the guy aback, a bit. But he smiled, produced the marker, and took a seat beside the desk.

  Bolan placed the card on the desk and turned the face up. Uh huh, the guy was a Diamond. The counterfeit Spade removed a small key from a magnetic hook on the underside of the desk, opened the center drawer where he found another key which opened the “safe” lower-right drawer. In there was the metal box which was supposed to be there, and in the metal box was a small leatherbound notebook which contained all the “keys” to this kingdom.

  Bolan had one precisely like it in the Warwagon.

  But he was playing for effect, now, and he wanted it to look good. He found the guy’s number on the tenth page. The reds did not have enough rank to deserve code names. This one was listed as Donald Rutiglio.

  Bolan closed the book, returned it to the box, put the box away, slid the card across to the guy, put a foot on the edge of the desk, clasped his hands behind his head, and said, “We’ve never met.”

  “No, sir. I’ve been at home office only since, uh …”

  Bolan said the unsayable. “Since things went to hell. It’s okay to say it. But it’s not okay for it to stay that way. I’m going to ask you again. Where is everyone? Where the hell, especially, is Sigmund?”

  Rutiglio shifted about in his chair for a moment, as though seeking some diplomatic angle, then replied, “We don’t see much of Sigmund. To be perfectly candid, sir, you hit it right on the head. This place is, in fact, death warmed over.”

  Bolan put his foot down, lit a cigarette, blew smoke at the guy as he told him: “Not for long. Vacation’s over, Donald. Call Leo the Pussy up here. I want him here in two minutes flat. And he’d better be here, Saturday or not.”

  Rutiglio smiled and got to his feet as he replied, “They don’t call him that now, sir. Mr. Turrin pract
ically runs the place now. I’m sure he’s around but he’s very seldom at his desk. Good man. I’ll run down and find him.”

  “Do that,” Bolan growled.

  The guy smiled and went out.

  Cool. Minor or not, the guy was cool as death. These were the Mafiosi, Bolan knew, who had inspired novelists and filmmakers for decades to produce those portraits of invincible Mafia hitmen who were all cold purpose and unswerving dedication. They were, thank God, a decided minority within Mafia ranks. Most of the “boys,” while vicious as hell, certainly, were not all that efficient, were ruled by vanity and greed, were given to destructive emotions, were unreliable, untrustworthy, and largely unworthy.

  These guys were something else; and, yes, Bolan was damned glad that most of them were gone. So long as even one remained near the thrones of power, savages like Marco Minotti could make it big again, and spread their savage greed to the four corners of the world again.

  Dammit, it would not happen. It would not.

  He pulled up the left leg of his trousers and removed an oblong box which was held there by rubber bands. It was roughly the size and shape of a ten-pack carton of regular cigarettes. It was not a carton of cigarettes but a radio transceiver engineered to the highest state of the art. He extended the small, telescoping antenna and carried it out through the lounge area to the terrace.

  Twenty seconds later, he’d found the optimum location for it, peeled away protective paper from the “death grip” adhesive on the backside, emplaced it, and activated it.

  A relay in the Warwagon’s intelligence banks would now be open to receive transmissions from that radio source. But it was also a receiver of transmissions—in fact, a multi-receiver operating simultaneously on six different pickup frequencies—and it was a recorder, as well, with impulse-actuated relays and six recording channels.

  Those six channels would be fed by micro-miniature “bugs” which were small enough to be concealed within a telephone transmitter. All that was left, now, was to get the bugs emplaced.

  He placed one in his own telephone, one in each of the other offices, one at the horseshoe desk, and saved two for Turrin.