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  Cosa di tutti Cost—the Thing of All the Things—the Cosa Nostra master plan for world domination—was taking firm root in Texas soil.

  And there were no options whatever for executioner Bolan.

  7: SIGNALS

  A couple of sheriff’s deputies were still nosing around the motel. Bolan noted that the war wagon had drawn no more than passing interest, but he was not about to push his luck in that direction.

  He climbed into his hot wheels, the Porsche, and eased out of there.

  The roadblock across the interstate exit was still in place but having minimal effect on the flow of traffic. The troopers were spot-checking only, waving most cars on without even a full stop. The half-hearted effort told Bolan something about the state of alert in this particular area. The on-ramp was not being monitored at all.

  It was a huge state, after all, and severely under-policed.

  That could be both good and bad, depending upon the point of view. For Bolan, at this particular moment, it was good.

  He smiled grimly at his own reflection in the car mirror and pulled in beside a phone booth at a service station just off the interstate. The long-distance operator connected into a Massachusetts area code and rang the number which Bolan supplied.

  A familiar voice responded to the third ring. The operator announced, “Collect call from Mr. Al La Mancha. Will you accept charges?”

  “You got the wrong number,” came the expected reply. “I don’t know any La Mancha.”

  The operator verified the number, apologized, disconnected, and asked Bolan, “Would you like to check that number, sir?”

  He replied, “Sure. I’ll call you back.”

  He wandered into the office of the service station, bought coffee from a coin-operated dispenser, small-talked the attendant, got a pocketful of change, and stepped back into the phone booth precisely five minutes after he’d left it.

  This time he direct-dialed, fed in his coins, and waited for the ring at another booth two thousand miles away.

  The same familiar voice was there, a bit breathless this time. “Yeah, damn it, hello.”

  “La Mancha here.”

  “I wasn’t exactly expecting Alice in Wonderland,” Leo Turrin told the Executioner.

  Turrin was a Massachusetts family underboss—also an undercover federal cop and Mack Bolan’s truest friend in the world.

  Bolan was chuckling. He said, “Leo, you’re getting soft. Or else that two-block walk gets a little longer every time.”

  “Yeah, you’ve hit it,” Turrin replied sourly. “On both counts. I hope to God you’re not calling from deep in the heart of Texas.”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Good Christ. It’s true, then. Sarge, get the hell out of there!”

  “No way, Leo. This is happy hunting grounds. These guys are—”

  “I know, damn it, I know. Listen, Texas is so hot that I only started hearing the whispers a few weeks ago, myself. How the hell do you get onto that stuff? Brognola just turned his strike force into the problem ten days ago. All they’re getting so far is odors.”

  Harold Brognola was an on-again, off-again Bolan ally—also a rather highly placed official in the U.S. Department of Justice. His special project was organized crime, and this circumstance had placed him on collision courses with Bolan’s pathways during several of the campaigns.

  Bolan said to Leo Turrin, “And all you’re getting is whispers, eh?”

  “Yeh. That’s about par. Except right now all of a sudden I’m hearing some loud screams. The Bolan Bunch has been activated, and I hear—”

  “Hold, hold. That’s a new one. The Bolan Bunch?”

  “The new headhunters. In your case, successors to the Taliferi. You should’ve been checking in with me. It’s a new counterforce headed up by a guy named Lileo. They—”

  “Never heard of that one,” Bolan interrupted.

  “One of the young Turks out of New Orleans,” Turrin explained. “A real headman, I hear. Anyway, it’s a nationwide outfit. Crews in all major cities. This Lileo calls the shots from his new headquarters in St. Louis. It’s a network operation, Sarge—like a spider web. These crews are poised to converge on any point you touch. It’s their only reason for living. And right now, buddy, they are converging on Texas.”

  “It figures,” Bolan commented. The humor had left his voice. It was grim, now—thoughtful. “Well, that’s just one more factor. I’m not playing defense this time, Leo.”

  “You might have to.”

  Bolan was remembering his little speech to Judith Klingman about “a two-minute drill.” He told his friend Turrin, “Just gives me less time for a score. I was playing on a couple more days’ worth of numbers.”

  “No. No way, Sarge. If you must hit, then damn it hit and git. And I mean quick. Don’t give these boys a chance to set up for you.”

  “I’ll need some quick intelligence,” Bolan said, and both men understood that it was an urgent request.

  The troubled sigh from Massachusetts told it like it was. “You’re in a top security area, Mack.”

  Bolan sighed and said, “Don’t I know it. Leo—it’s the Big Thing again, in spades. They’re going for a Texas takeover.”

  “Takeover of what?”

  “I just said it. Texas. The proverbial heart of it, at the least.”

  The undercover fed sent a nervous, coughing chuckle across the two thousand miles of telephone line. “Hell. That’s quite an order, isn’t it? The whole damned state of Texas?”

  Bolan replied, “Just about. The politics, the economy, the whole bag.”

  “Then they must have gotten a lot smarter than anything I’ve seen yet. Since Lansky, anyway.”

  “This looks bigger than anything Lansky ever tried,” Bolan told him. “It’s a coalition—a gathering of brains, money, and muscle.”

  “Cannibal operation?”

  “Yeah, but much more than that. International interests, even.”

  “Sounds very romantic,” Turrin growled.

  “Yeah, well, I lucked onto a small piece of it. I believe they’re working several angles all at once. The piece I caught is oil.”

  “Is what?”

  “Oil, the stuff that makes the world go ’round.”

  “What the hell!” Turrin snorted. “They can’t hope to take over anything that big! Why that’s—that’s …”

  “Yeah, ridiculous. That’s exactly why it might work. I thought the same thing, at first. But you’re liable to wake up some morning to find that you’ve got to play ball with the mob before you can gas your car or heat your home. Or open your factory or roll your trucks or whatever the hell you can think of that makes the world hum.”

  “Aw hell, Sarge.”

  “I know, Leo. It’s hard to believe. But they are well into it. Already they’ve gobbled up at least one small independent, the Klingman outfit, and—”

  “Hey! I’ve heard that one! Is that—what is that?”

  “Just the beginning. I hope. I need you to tell me just how far the cancer has spread. Now listen and get it the first time around. I’ve got to get off center and start my sweep. Three months ago the small corporation known as Klingman Petro was rolling high in profits and you couldn’t have bought a share of the stock with your own blood. At this moment the company is in collapse. You can’t give the stock away except to people in the know, and then that’s about what you have to do—give it away. Klingman has been gobbled up whole body by a so-called conglomerate that’s chartered in Delaware under the name International Bankers Holding Corporation. I believe it’s a mob front operation. But it’s more than that, too. A well-known shiek or sultan or whatever from the Mideast is an officer in IBH—one of the invisible ones. I think the—”

  “Hold it, Sarge. This is beginning to sound like something out of Arabian Nights. Do you know what the hell you’re—?”

  “I said to get it the first time around, Leo. My numbers are getting short. Believe it or don’t, but damn
it listen and take off from there when I’ve finished.”

  “Okay, okay,” Turrin muttered.

  “My informant couldn’t recall this Arab’s name, but I’m assured it’s well known to the state department. He’s some sort of a maverick over there—never has played ball with the Arab unity idea, and apparently he has ideas of his own. But he’s picked himself some damn tough partners. He’ll probably find himself in the cannibal’s pot before it’s over. The Italian mob and the French mob have a piece of the action, too, if the names of the IBH directors mean anything. There might also be some action coming in from the Bahamas, so you might check that direction of interest.”

  “Mack, this is just too goddamned—okay, okay. Go on.”

  “That’s about it. Except for one final item. My contact tells me that the wells of Klingman Petro are pumping at maximum flow, despite official reports to the contrary. I’d sure like to know where that crude is going, whether it’s being stored or refined—and, if it is being refined, where. Klingman’s refineries are all but shut down.”

  “Sarge, I don’t know how the hell I can—”

  “And I’d like to know what gives with their pipeline operation. Something damn peculiar is going on in that area. They’re changing out pumping stations, rerouting feeders and trunk lines, all sorts of weird moves.”

  The Pittsfield underboss howled, “Shit, I don’t know anything about that stuff!”

  “Then it’s time to broaden your mind. See what you can dig up for me, Leo.”

  “Oh, sure, that’s easy. I’ll just waltz down to New York and crash in on Augie Marinello. I’m sure he’ll spill the whole thing to me. In a pig’s ass!”

  Bolan chuckled solemnly. “How is Augie? Last I saw or heard, he was being rushed away to the medics.”

  “He’s alive, just. They took his legs off.”

  Bolan said, “I get no cheer from that. An old man should be able to die in one piece, even an old man like that one.”

  “There’s, uh, quite a mystery about that, Sarge. They say you gave ’em a white flag to carry the old man off.”

  “No mystery,” Bolan clipped back. “It just seemed the thing to do. I did it.”

  “Yeah. Well …”

  “Take care, Leo. Don’t expose yourself.”

  “You’re a hell of a guy to be handing out advice like that,” Turrin replied. “Watch out for Lileo and the Bolan Bunch. It’s a hard team.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah. How’re things in Pittsfield?”

  “Quiet as ever, since you left. Uh. Sarge. There’s another guy in Texas you should know about.”

  “Quaso?”

  “Okay, so you know already. He’s out of the same mold as Lileo. And the old men love him. He’ll be working hard to preserve that love.”

  Bolan said, “Yeah. Go to work, Leo.”

  He hung up, signalled the operator and settled the overtime charges, then direct-dialed a number in Dallas.

  Barring any unforeseen problems, Jack Grimaldi should have had time to make it back to the Dallas base.

  And it was time to sweep.

  Right down Beloved Joe Quaso’s throat!

  8: NOT FOR LUNCH

  The room was darkened. The only light was coming from the bed-mounted projector, a beam which splashed out in full color onto the smooth surface of the opposite wall upon which the two-dimensional likenesses of a man and a woman, both nude, moaned and gasped with the attentions each was receiving from the other.

  A small, skinny man sat slumped in a chair near the circular bed, gazing with rapt interest at the activities unfolding upon the wall screen. Now and then he would snicker and shift restlessly in the chair.

  A door opened and another man entered the room. He called, “Hey, Boots. Larry Awful wants you.”

  “Wait a minute,” was the lazy response. “C’mere and watch this. This is terrible. I don’t believe it.”

  The newcomer closed the door and spun a chair into position beside the other one. “Which one is this?” he grunted as he dropped into the chair.

  “It’s about this guy that comes home for lunch. He’s hungry, see. But his old lady has got different ideas. She’s hungry too, see, but not for lunch. She starts working him over right there in the kitchen. First thing you know she’s pouring food all over him and licking it off, all kinds of food, see—even minestrone soup. Hey, lookit that! Ain’t that terrible?

  “All these guys in these movies are fags, Boots. Hell, he ain’t getting a damned thing out of that.”

  “George, all you gotta do, just lay there. And enjoy it. Whattaya mean, queer? I’d do it.”

  “You’d let them take pictures of you doing it?”

  “With a babe like that? You kidding? Just show me the place, man.”

  George scooted to the edge of his chair and said, “Come on. Larry wants you.”

  “It’s just about another minute. Hey, he assigned me to the damn flick room, didn’t he? Wait just a minute. It’s the punch line you gotta see. See, this guy has been turned every way but loose by this broad, see. God, he’s even turning green in the gills, I guess, and maybe he’s going to throw up or something any minute. Finally he shoves her away and comes up on his elbow, see. And he says, ‘Look, honey, I married you for better or for worse. But …’

  “She says, ‘Yeah, okay, but what?’

  “And he says—get this, this is the punch—he says, ‘But not for lunch.’ Ain’t that rich?”

  George rose half out of his chair then quickly dropped back.

  He growled something in a half-strangled voice and a leg shot up as though responding to a knee-hammer reflex then returned to the floor with a thump. There were energetic hand movements, also, as though he was pounding the arms of the chair in a convulsive fit of hilarity.

  Boots was cackling over the ribald humor and being fed further by the supposed appreciation of his partner. He leaned across the darkness to share the moment eye to eye—then froze, an explosive cackle wrenching off at about chest level.

  George’s eyes were bugging almost out of his head and his tongue was hanging out, the body beginning to sag.

  And then Boots saw the clenched fists poised above that lolling head, sensed the dark presence standing there behind that chair, knew that silent judgment had found him in a darkened bedroom in Texas.

  He croaked, “Holy!” and tried to get some feet beneath him, to thaw frozen limbs, to send survival commands through numbed nervepaths.

  But there was not that much time left in the universe for Boots Faringhetti.

  Those clenched fists moved swiftly in a circular pattern above his own head, something soft as nylon and strong as steel became imbedded in the soft flesh of his throat, and the final sight on earth recorded by those bulging eyes was a male figure upon a darkened bedroom wall delivering the favored punch line: “But not for lunch.”

  The light on the wall flickered, the images vanished. The movie projector whirred into automatic rewind. A black shadow moved across the room, as silent as a sigh.

  A door opened, bringing in a shaft of daylight and the head and shoulders of a youngish man in shirtsleeves and sideleather. He called into the darkness, “Will you guys for Christ’s sake get it off! Boss’ll be here any minute. Put that stuff away and don’t leave no mess!”

  The impressively long barrel of a pistol with an ominous bulb at its muzzle end moved away from the wall and grafted itself to the man’s forehead.

  A quiet, no-nonsense voice warned, “Don’t breathe. Step inside. Shut the door.”

  Yes. Judgment had come to Texas.

  But not for lunch.

  9: THE AWFUL TRUTH

  Quaso stepped from the elevator and into the foyer of the penthouse, his two tagmen close on his heels. The front men of the palace guard scrambled to their feet, one of them reaching hastily to squelch the Nashville sound blaring from the transistor radio.

  The Chief Enforcer growled, “What’s with you boys? Don’t you know there’s a war on? D
amn it, you keep alert!”

  “Yessir. We were alert. We just—”

  “Shut up! Keep alert!”

  “Yessir.”

  Quaso swept on inside and immediately yelled, “Larry! Get in here!”

  The tagmen exchanged nervous glances and drifted toward the kitchen.

  A lanky middle-aged man with a hawkish face slouched into the room, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from stained lips. “Yeah, boss,” he said casually. “How’d the meeting go?”

  Quaso yelled, “Larry, goddamn it, you look awful! You clean yourself up!”

  It was a customary greeting. The rangy hardman just grinned and replied, “Sure, boss. I got an appointment for a manicure, first thing next week.”

  Quaso laughed, then sobered abruptly and told his crew boss: “The awful thing, Larry, is those two boys out front. They’re on their ass out there. They’re going to be on their knees if I ever catch them like that again. You get out there and straighten them out.”

  There was a “thing” between these two men, a closeness which was masked by the startling contrast of appearances as well as the gruff—sometimes yelling—character of their personal exchanges.

  Quaso was gruff with everyone. It was his nature and—with regard to his own boys—his right. But the open insults to Larry Stigni were above and beyond anything suffered by others in the Quaso cadre. And yet there was genuine affection there, on both sides. Stigni—dubbed “Larry Awful” as a result of the abuse—took the whole thing with good nature. But he could say things to Jaunty Joe Quaso that no others in the group dared say.

  Rumor had it that Stigni was a blood relative. People in the mob love to gossip, however, especially about one another, and of course there were many other explanations whispered around concerning the “thing” between Quaso and his crew boss—most of it highly implausible, with no basis whatever.

  Stigni himself was tough as nails, as cold a killer as had ever come along the Mafia trails. As for Quaso—sure, he was tough too. But he did have this problem with women. Sometimes he beat hell out of his women and kicked them out in the middle of the night. Beautiful women, the cream of the Texas prairies with whom most of the boys would gladly share a cordial bed for an entire night.