Chapter Eighteen

The interrogation

Philip Marasco awakened Julian DiGeorge at shortly past dawn on the morning of October 22nd and said, "Five of the boys are missing, and I think they've gone out to join up with Pena."

"Who are they?" DiGeorge growled sleepily.

Marasco thrust a coffee-royal into his Capo's hands and inserted a lighted cigarette between his lips. "What's left of his old crew," the chief bodyguard reported. "Willie Walker and that bunch. I bet they've known where he was all this time."

"You better get the word to Franky Lucky," DiGeorge said.

"I already tried. Too late. He's gone. I'd guess he's up there right now for the hit. You want me to send 'im a crew?"

DiGeorge's eyes focused on the clock. He sipped at the laced coffee, took a drag on the cigarette, then looked again at the clock. "Naw," he said finally. "Too late for that now. I guess we get to see, Phil, just how good this Frank Lucky is, eh?"

"It's not even likely odds, Deej," Marasco worriedly pointed out.

DiGeorge sighed. "I wouldn't be so sure. Let's wait'n see before we start mourning our dead, eh? You better get a couple of cars ready, just in case though."

Marasco moved abruptly toward the door. He whirled about to say something, changed his mind, and went out the door muttering to himself, "I guess that's about all we can do now."

Lou Pena stirred, then sat bolt upright on the bed. A quiet voice announced, "It's okay, Lou, it's me, Willie."

The bedside lamp came on. Willie Walker, smiling grimly, leaned over the bed and fitted a key into the handcuffs with which Pena was manacled to the metal bedpost. "When did they start the bracelets routine?" he asked.

"Just last night," Pena whispered. "Christ, it's about time you was showing up. I had the signal out since yesterday afternoon." He drew his hand free and massaged the wrist, then reached hurriedly for his clothing. "This guy blew it, and the L.A. cops ate after Lou Baby's ass."

"No need to be quiet," Walker informed him. "We got the cop."

Pena grunted. "How about the old lady?"

"Her, too. You better hurry it, though. This Franky Lucky might be making it here most any time.

Pena staggered into his trousers and said, "Who the hell is Franky Lucky?"

"Oh hell, there's a lot been going on you don't know about," Walker told him. "This Franky Lucky is a rodman from the East. He's got a contract on you, Lou."

Pena's eyes flipped wide with alarm. "Awww," he said unbelievingly. "Deej wouldn't go that far."

"The hell he wouldn't." Walker had knelt and was slipping socks on Pena's feet as the grizzled Mafia veteran was struggling into his shirt. "He thinks you made a singin' deal with the cops. The boys have been lighting candles all night. They're even making plans for a secret wake."

Pena's fingers fumbled with the buttonholes at the shirtfront. He seemed stunned. "We gotta get to 'im," he mumbled. "He's gotta call it off. I just about got this thing sewed up now. You get on a phone, Willie, and tell 'im. I'm right in Bolan's tracks now. Tell Deej that Bolan got a face job, right here in th' Village. Tell 'im I been all this time finding that out. Tell Deej I also know the guy that give 'im the face job, and I'm right now finding out what this Bolan looks like now. You tell 'im that, Willie, and get 'im to call off this hit."

Walker nodded his head in somber agreement. "I'll try, Lou, but you know how these things go. Whattaya got in mind? I mean . . ."

"I'm going after this plastics man. You know the place, this rest home on the east side."

Walker appeared dazed. "Well hell, I guess we should'a known," he said. "Listen. Four boys are watching outside. Don't worry, they're with you. You take 'em on over there. I'll try to call Deej from here, then I'll join you over there later. But we better make it quick. Somebody comes in here and finds the cop and his old lady and some hell is gonna cut loose in this town."

Pena slipped into his coat. "You know how much I 'preciate this, Willie."

"Sure, sure," Walker said. He handed Pena a gun and dropped some loose bullets into his coat pocket. "You better beat it."

Bolan's Mercedes rolled quietly through the early-morning stir of the village, past the blackened hulk of Lodetown, and halted at an outside phone booth two blocks beyond the square. He consulted the directory, found Robert Conn's home address, then drove three blocks further on and parked the Mercedes on a side street several doors down from the Conn residence. He opened a gun case, withdrew a long-barreled .38, checked the load and spun the cylinder, affixed a silencer, and jammed the weapon into the waistband of his trousers, then walked up the alley behind the row of houses.

He found Genghis and Dolly Conn in their bloodsoaked bed, their throats slashed, the bodies cold in death. Bolan muttered his regrets and quickly searched the rest of the house. Finding nothing of value, he immediately withdrew and returned to his vehicle. He put the car in motion and slowly circled the block once, pondering the unexpected development. Then a chilling thought struck him. He wheeled the Mercedes about and proceeded directly to New Horizons. He parked at the rear beside a dark Plymouth, noted a radio microphone clipped to the dashboard of that vehicle, and cautiously entered the clinic. He paused just inside the door and elevated his head, as though sniffing the air, then drew the .38, checked the snub .32 reposing in the sideleather, and advanced quietly to Jim Brantzen's private quarters.

Big Tim Braddock lay just inside the door to Brantzen's apartment, curled on his side, blood soaking into the carpet under him. A pistol lay several feet away. Bolan knelt quickly and felt Braddock's forehead. It was clammy. Bolan grunted and stepped cautiously into the kitchen.

He found Jim Brantzen, clad only in pajama bottoms, stretched out on the dining table, his head dangling over the edge. Bloodied pliers and wirecutters lay beside him on the table. Bolan winced and a guttural snarl tore up through the constrictions of his throat as he inspected his friend's mutilated body. Of all the atrocities Bolan had witnessed in the hamlets of Vietnam, he had never seen anything to equal the ferocity of this obvious interrogation. They had twisted the nipples out of his chest, probably with the pliers. The entire torso was a raw pulp of mutilated meat. The ribs gleamed through bare spots where the flesh had been stripped away. The surgical fingers of the right hand had been whittled to the bone. Both earlobes were missing, his nostrils were slit up both sides, laying bare the bridge of his nose, and deep grooves had been carved beneath each eye. Worst of all, to Bolan's way of thinking, the hideously tortured surgeon was still alive . . . and aware.

His breath was coming in ragged gurgles, blood bubbles forming about the mutilated nostrils, and all in the overtones of a ceaseless moaning. A bloodsmeared bottle of whiskey stood on a nearby stand, a stained towel lay in a pan of cold water; evidence, to Bolan, that the valiant surgeon had been repeatedly forced to maintain consciousness.

Bolan's hands moved carefully beneath his friend's head and he tenderly lifted it. "Who did it, Jim?" he asked with a shaking voice. "Who did this?"

Brantzen's eyes flared, dulled, then flared again. The lips moved, dribbling a red foam in the painful whisper: "They . . . called him . . . Lou."

Bolan nodded. "I know him. I'll get him, Jim."

"He . . . knows . . . sketch . . . has sketch."

"I'm going to get him, Jim."

"He . . . He . . . knows . . ." The right hand jerked up; glazed eyes stared at the skeletonized fingers; then the eyes closed, and Jim Brantzen died.

Tears squeezed past Bolan's tightening eyelids. He groaned, "Oh, God!" . . . then he gently let Brantzen's head down and walked jerkily into the other room. Braddock's eyes were open and he had rolled onto his back. Bolan knelt over him, opened the coat, and found the wound. The big cop had caught it in the gut. "You okay?" Bolan asked him.

"No," Braddock wheezed.

"How long ago, Braddock?"

"Five minutes . . . maybe ten."

"Hang on, I'll get an ambulance," Bolan told him. He went quickly out the door, through the lobby, and into Brantzen's surgical chamber. There he found compresses and hurried back with them to the fallen policeman. Bolan peeled away the clothing and applied the compresses to the wound.

"I'll bet you make it," he told Braddock.

The Captain merely stared at him, obviously in too much pain for conversation.

"I hope you do," Bolan added. He returned to the lobby, phoned for an ambulance, and made a hasty exit. Moments later, the powerful Mercedes was screaming around the curves of the high road to Palm Springs. Bolan thought he knew where he could intercept a torture-murderer. He was, in fact betting his very life on it.

Chapter Nineteen

The hit

The six men were squeezed into the speeding car, Willie Walker in the front seat with a veteran triggerman named Bonelli and a younger wheelman who was called Tommy Edsel because of his one-time membership in a club of Edsel automobile enthusiasts. Screwy Lou Pena, all expansive smiles and high humor, took up nearly half of the rear seat, Wedged in with him were one Mario Capistrano, who had been recently released from the Federal Reformatory at Lompoc, and Harold the Greaser Schiaperelli, a 59-year-old Italian-born contract specialist who had been deported three times but had never spent a night behind bars.

Willie Walker freed an arm and leaned over the backrest, saying, "Lemme take a look at that picture, huh Lou?"

"Nothing doing," Pena objected, happily patting his jacket pocket. "Deej gets first look at this little jewel." He smiled archly and added, "After all, it's my passport back to the livin', Willie. Let's not be throwing it around the car, huh?"

"You're not forgetting," Walker pouted, "that us guys put our necks right up there with yours."

"I'm not forgetting," Pena assured him. "Don't you ever get to thinking that way, Willie. And Deej won't hold nothing against you when I explain this was all in the plan. He might be a little sore but he'll get over that quick enough. When he sees this picture, eh? Hell. Didn't he tell me not to come back without Bolan's head? Well, I got it," He tapped the pocket again. "I got Bolan's head."

"Hell it ain't even a picture," Tommy Edsel remarked. "It's just a drawin', ain't it?"

"Yeah but what a drawin'," Pena said. "A drawin' for a face job ain't just no drawin', you know. Hell, it's a blueprint."

"That back there made me sick at my stomach," Capistrano complained. "I never saw a guy turned into a turkey like that before."

"Yeah but don't you forget, Mario, a singing turkey," Pena said. "Hell, I don't enjoy that kind of stuff any more than anyone else. His own damn fault, you gotta say that."

"You did that to his fingers after," Capistrano grumbled.

"That was for the lesson," Pena patiently explained. "Those guys gotta know they can't get away with it. Don't worry me with no blues now, Mario. Today's my day and I'm gonna enjoy it. You wanta walk back to the Springs, just say it."

"I wonder what about Franky Lucky," Bonelli fretted, perhaps only to change the subject.

"What is this Franky Lucky?" Pena snorted. "Some kinda goddam greaser golden boy?"

"Watch it," Willie Walker suggested in a low voice, his eyes shifting meaningfully to Harold the Greaser.

Pena laughed. "Aw hell, Willie, Harold ain't sensitive about being foreign born. Are you, Harold?"

Harold muttered something unintelligible and laughed. Pena laughed with him, although obviously he did not understand the comment. "Everybody's happy today," Pena observed.

"Except maybe Franky Lucky," Walker said. "Now Lou . . . this guy is as cold as a fish. And you were about right, he's a golden boy, at least as far as Deej is concerned. And he's got his contract. And Deej says we'll just have to avoid him the best we can until he calls in or comes in. And the way Deej talked, this boy ain't going to be listening to anything we might have to say. He's going to shoot first and save the polite conversation for after."

"Didn't you say he's handling the hit personally. Pena asked thoughtfully.

"This guy's a loner, Lou," Bonelli piped up. "They tell me he never takes no one along."

"Well hell, there's six of us, ain't there?" Pena said. "Anyway, he's not gonna be gunning for us between here'n home. Is he? What the hell are you worried about?"

The wheelman glanced over his shoulder and said, "Don't Franky Lucky wheel a blue sleek Mercedes?"

"Yeah, Some kind of hot wheels," Walker replied. "Why?"

Tommy Edsel's head was now wagging to and fro as his eyes moved rapidly from his own route to a winding road descending from the hills to their right. "I bet that's him," he said ominously.

All eyes turned to the mountain road, about a quarter-mile distant. "You sure got better eyes than me, Tommy, Pena said, squinting with his forehead pressed against the window.

"Just keep looking," Tommy Edsel replied, his head still wagging rhythmically. "He's in and out. Look for a flash of blue. There! Did you see? Shit, man, that's him, that's Franky Lucky! And is he wheeling!"

As alarmed sounds rose up around him, Pena braked, "Awright awright, settle down. If it's him, and it probably ain't, just remember there's one of him and six of us. He ain't likely to try nothing. He'll trail along and wait for a chance. He ain't gonna highway duel us, that's for damn sure."

"With Franky Lucky," Walker said worriedly, "nothing's for damn sure."

"Where do these roads come together?" Pena asked. He wet his lips nervously, affected by his companions' alarm.

"Just around this next curve," Tommy Edsel reported, "where the highway turns back toward the hills."

"Well dammit, you gotta beat him there!" Pena exclaimed.

"Dammit don't think I'm not trying," the wheelman replied, grunting with exitement. "But this boltpile sure as hell ain't no Mercedes!"

Pena and Walker were lowering their windows and the others were squirming about in the tight space trying to get their weapons ready.

"Just watch where you're shooting!" Pena yelled. "You guys onna other side be careful!"

Bolan had recognized the big Mafia vehicle at almost the same instant he had been spotted by Tommy Edsel. His visibility from the mountainside was unrestricted and gave him a panoramic sweep of the flatlands from the south horizon to the north. No other vehicles were in view; indeed there was nothing but desolation for as far as the eye could see. He ran a quick mental triangulation on the speeding vehicles and smiled grimly at the incredibly perfect timing of his gamble. He would beat them to the junction by perhaps ten seconds; it would be ten seconds enough. The precision driving required to traverse the winding mountain road at such speeds had taken the full use of all his faculties, both mental and physical. There had been little left of Mack Bolan to mull over the unspeakable atrocity he had left behind at Palm Village . . . and just as well. Beneath his peaking consciousness lurked a consuming rage such as this normally unemotional man had never experienced. His executions of the past had always been performed with a cool detachment, his combat-trained instincts dominating and guiding the actions of the mission. Never before had Bolan stepped forward with rage governing his performance, not even while avenging the deaths of his own father, mother, and sister. But that rage was there now, just below the surface. It was about to eruptm . . . and, with it, the full potency and ferocity of the Executioner.

Chapter Twenty

Between horizons

The Mercedes slid to a halt at the intersection with screaming rubber. Bolan was outside and standing alongside almost before the forward motion was halted. He tossed his pistols to the shoulder of the road and quickly leaned back into the vehicle, depressing the clutch with one hand and shifting into low gear with the other. Then he ripped the rubber accelerator peddle away and forced the rod to full depression, wedging it into the hold of the floorboard. The big engine was screaming in full idle, reminding Bolan of a jet engine run-up. He dropped to his knees on the roadway, shifted his right hand over to the clutch pedal, and held the door with his left. He knew that he had to depend entirely upon visibility; he would not be able to hear the approach of the other vehicle through the whine of his own engine. His visibility extended for about three carlengths beyond the intersection; both reflexes and timing would have to be perfect.

Then came the flash of motion at the edge of vision, and he was lunging clear of the Mercedes, allowing his own bodily motion to jerk his hand free of the clutch pedal. The powerful vehicle leapt forward like an arrow from a bow, the slamming door missing Bolan's shoulder by a hair, and Bolan completed his roll with both pistols in his fists.

"We've beat him!" Pena yelled triumphantly.

"We better had?' Tommy Edsel cried. "At a hunnert'n ten I ain't stoppin' nowhere soon!"

And then they were flashing into the intersection and catching first glimpse of the blue sports car nestled just outside the junction on the intersecting road. For a startled instant Pena wondered what the guy was doing on his knees beside the car; another microsecond and his finger was tightening on the trigger of his gun even as wheelman Tommy Edsel's reflexes began deciding to brake and turn.

The blue lightning bolt proved faster than Tommy Edsel's reflexes, however, and his foot was still heavy on the accelerator when the other car leapt into the intersection with a powering screech.

Willie Walker screamed, "Look out . . . !" just the Mercedes crunched against the right front fender in a grinding impact of protesting metal and showering glass. The velocity of the heavier car swung the Mercedes into a centrifugal tailspin, almost welding it to the side of the Mafia vehicle in another shattering impact. Willie Walker was thrown over Bonelli's head and rag-dolled into the windshield almost directly in front of Tommy Edsel. Harold the Greaser screamed something in Italian as Capistrano and Pena descended on him.

Expert wheelman Tommy Edsel fought the crazily spinning motion of the paired vehicles for another microsecond, and then the Mercedes was falling away, leaving the larger car to plunge on alone. The rear wheels moved out in front, jumped the shoulder, and then they were shuddering into soft sand and the big car was heeling over and going into its first roll.

Bolan had only a momentary glimpse of contorted faces and two protruding gun arms and then the two cars were together and moving away from him in a spinning plunge along the main road. He ran along in pursuit but was far behind even before the Mercedes dropped away and spun off into the scrubby desert. It seemed to be happening in slow motion, with the big vehicle coming around in a gentle swing and leaving the highway several hundred feet beyond. Its rear wheels slid gracefully onto the sand, dug in, and the heavy car began rolling sideways in a wide arc back toward the intersection, disgorging curiously flopping bodies along the way. Bolan counted six rolls before the journey ended in a wheels-up settling of mangled metal.

Tommy Edsel was still clutching the collapsed steering wheel when Bolan reached the wreckage. Blood was oozing from both corners of his mouth as he hung there in the seat belt. The entire front seat had moved forward; Tommy's chest had apparently been crushed by the steering wheel, but he turned his head and gave Bolan a glazed, upside down stare. Bolan shot him once between the eyes and moved around to the other side of the inverted automobile.