Chicago Wipe-Out

15 Wipeout

Don Gio was still talking with Pete the Hauler and four other bosses of the Chicago Council when Larry Turki rapped lightly on the door to the private office and waited for the door-lock release from the inside. The old man's voice came through the intercom instead, with a testy, "What is it now?"

"Larry Turk, Mr. Giovanni. We need a parley, and right now."

The buzzer sounded and Turk let himself in.

Pete Lavallo was glowering from "the hot seat" — a chair placed beside the desk of the big man.

Giovanni told Turk, "We've been giving Pete the bad news and talking over old times, Turk. He agrees completely that a year or two of desert air might do wonders for his sinus. Right, Pete?"

Lavallo growled, "Yeah, that's right" — his eyes not leaving Turk for a moment.

"What I come in to tell you, Mr. Giovanni — this Jake Vecci is outside with about twenty carloads of boys. I told Charlie..."

"I thought you didn't want to smear me up with this dirt, Turk," the old man said quietly.

"Well, no sir, but..."

"But you want me to second your motions, eh?"

Giovanni chuckled and turned to Lavallo. "Is your sinus really all that bad, Pete? Do you really think you need this desert thing?"

Lavallo spluttered, "Well I — if you say — what I mean is..."

"What d'you think, Turk?" Giovanni asked, still chuckling. "Do you think Pete really deserves all that rest?"

"Like I told you, sir," Turk replied, very softly, "I didn't mean that Pete should get hit so hard."

"Yes, so you said." Giovanni was giving Lavallo the hard gaze. Picking his words very carefully, he told him, "I been thinking — and we got a bad thing on our hands here, Pete. If you'd like to help out — you know — give the young men here the benefit of your years of experience — maybe... well, maybe we couldn't spare you for that lazy life on the desert. Huh?"

"Just say the word, Gio," Lavallo replied hopefully. "Anything that suits you is going to suit me also."

"Joliet Jake has lost his mind."

"Is that a fact?" Lavallo had, of course, been aware of the excitement in camp. "That's a bad thing, for a man especially in Jake's position."

"That's exactly what we've been thinking, Pete. He needs to be helped out of it. The young men here haven't had too much experience with insanity in the family, Pete. And I think — and I bet you'll back me up on this — I think an old head like Jake would rather get his help from another old head. Like you. You know? Instead of the indignity of, uh, getting it from one of the youngbloods."

"Yes, I back you up on that a hundred percent, Gio," Lavallo said.

The old Capo'seyes moved among the silent group at his desk, taking a wordless poll. Heads nodded and eyes twitched in response to the unspoken question being placed before the council of Jake Vecci's peers. Then Don Gio sighed and told Lavallo, "Well, okay Pete. If you'd like to stay around and give Jake the help he needs... them okay... I guess we'd have to cancel that desert vacation of yours."

"If that's what you want, Don Gio," Pete the Hauler said solemnly.

"That is what we want, Golden Peter," the old man assured him.

That simply, that quietly, was a contract let and accepted. An invisible death certificate had been drawn upon the atmosphere of that quiet room, and Jake Vecci's name was inscribed upon it with a gentle sigh.

"Well, uh..." Lavallo's eyes found Larry Turk. "You say he's outside now?"

"We told him he could bring four cars in," Turk replied. "He might come in, and he might not. Like Mr. Giovanni said, he's lost his marbles. I don't know what he's going to do. But if he tries busting in here with a hundred boys behind him — well, we just can't allow that. There's no telling what he might take it in mind to do."

"No, we couldn't allow that," Lavallo murmured. He got to his feet and told Larry Turk, "I guess I lost my gun back there at that motel. I wonder where I could get one."

Turk produced a small revolver from his pocket and handed it over. "I b'lieve this is yours, Mr. Lavallo," he said.

It was not, but Pete the Hauler replied, "You're right, it is. Thanks. I guess I better go out and look around. I might bump into Jake and maybe talk some sense into him."

Turk moved to the door with the dazed underboss. He called back, "Sorry to bother you, Don Gio, gentlemen. You won't be disturbed again tonight, I promise you that."

"You see that we're not," Giovanni replied. "We've got important business to go over. What, uh, do you hear on this boy Bolan?"

"Not a thing, sir. He's been quiet as a mouse. I wouldn't be surprised if he's halfway out of the country by now."

"Well I guess we'll see, won't we," the Caporeplied.

Lavallo and Turk went out, and the door had hardly closed behind them when Lavallo snarled, "Thanks, Turk. Thanks for nothing!"

The lord high enforcer was grinning delightedly. He said, "Hell, all's well that ends well, right?"

"Who says it's ended well?" Lavallo complained. "I ain't done no contract work in fifteen years or more. And I've known Jake Vecci for one hell of a long time. I don't call it ending well. It never had to start."

Turk's grin faded. He growled, "I'm sorry you feel that way, 'specially since Jake is out to get your boss."

Turk had spun away, and Lavallo was replying, "Well now wait a..." When the lights went out.

Turk froze in his tracks, and grunted, "What th' hell?"

"Lights went out," Lavallo informed him.

"Shit, I know that, but I..."

At that instant the peace of the night was broken by the loud rattling of a submachine gun, and this immediately punctuated by the explosive booms of other weapons.

Turk instinctively whirled back to the door to Giovanni's sanctum, then realized that the electric lock and intercom would also be inoperative. He yelled through the door, "Sit tight, Gio, I'll check it out!"

Pete the Hauler was crashing about in the darkness and swearing and vainly clicking a cigarette lighter which was apparently in need of a refueling. "It's that Bolan!" he was yelling. "I knew it, I knew the bastard would show up here! Half out of the country — bullshit!"

But Larry Turk thought he knew better. It wasn't Bolan. It was Joliet Jake the Madman and his hundred boys. Somehow they'd cut the power lines and Turk guessed that the war was really on now. And it was just as well. Things had been getting unbearably stagnant in this family. It was time for some new blood at — or near — the top. And Turk had plenty of blood.

As Lavallo threshed about in the darkness, trying to find his way outside, Larry Turk quietly felt his way along the wall and toward the rear. He knew, if he was bent on killing himself a Capo, just where he'd be getting set to make his play. And Turk was bent on just the opposite chore. He was going to savea Capoand thereby assure himself a place in the royal court. Yes, Turk thought he knew exactly where the play would be made.

The human storm had finally arrived, and the thunder and lightning which descended upon the Mafia hardsite was entirely manmade. Rattling volleys, the big booms of shotguns, and the impressive staccatos of big automatic weapons were woven together in a concert of wholesale death that was all too familiar to Bolan's experienced ear.

And this concertmaster was wholly aware of each movement and countermovement, the sounds of command and countercommand, the cries of victory and defeat — and, yes, a very hot war was raging across the holy ground of that blessed thing of theirs. The enemy had engaged itself, and Bolan could think of no better troops to fight this war of liberation; he wished a total victory and a total defeat to each side.

Bolan himself was hardly more than a shadow moving across the field of white, an instinctive creature of the night now, homing on the target of targets for the grand-slam clincher of this mob wipe-out. He gained the rear corner of the building — so carefully noted during his earner pass — and abandoned the snapbrim hat and overcoat in a snowdrift.

The Thompson went across his shoulders and he began the difficult and dangerous hand-over-hand ascent to the roof, using windowsills and cornices and whatever precarious handhold presenting itself.

The weakened shoulder protested and once threatened to quit altogether, but he issued stern inner commands and pressed on — and then the railing of the private sundeck was his and he was up and over and moving swiftly across the wind-drifted snow of that upper porch. The French doors gave quickly and with only a light snapping sound to the sudden pressure of Bolan's boot, and he was moving silently across a small room that smelled of liniments and leather and maybe a trace of human sweat lost without labor.

Suddenly the sounds of murmuring voices were rising to meet him, unreal and ghostly against the louder background of the hell let loose outside, and Bolan realized that he was standing at the head of a short circular stairway. Across a metal railing and just below could be seen the silhouettes of several figures standing carefully at a wall and peering obliquely through a window upon the landscape of swirling action outisde.

Bolan swung the Thompson into ready-mode and tossed a small personnel flare toward the center of that room down there. It sizzled into brilliantly flickering patterns of light — and the Executioner knew at once that he had reached the home stand.

The figures at the window — four of them with that prosperous-cheap look of the street hood become boss of all that moved and breathed — whirled about in that awakening which most men find but once in a lifetime. A personal awareness of death-arrived. A weapon flared down there and a chunk of metal tore through the air close enough for Bolan to feel the passage. Already, though, the deadly Thompson was bucking in his grip and he was sweeping that group with a tightly-locked figure-8 burst that flung the entire bunch into the wall and oozing toward the floor.

Another weapon was unloading on him from across the room, and furious chunks of bi-impact stompers were dislodging plaster from the ceiling just above his head. Bolan was working the Thompson in a quick sweep toward that challenge when something hard and heavy crashed into his bad shoulder. The arm fell and the big gun with it, then another blow glanced off the base of his neck and he went tumbling headfirst along the short stairway.

Bolan reached the bottom in a sliding sprawl, fighting to get a hand inside the jumpsuit — but too late. A big guy was slowly descending behind him, pinning Bolan in the spot of a powerful flashlight, and a big nasty Colt .45 was peering at him in a way Bolan knew to be entirely professional.

A breathless voice from across the room, brittle with age and breathless with the excitement of the moment, cried, "Save 'im, Turk, save 'im for me!"

"I'm saving him, Don Gio," Larry Turk panted. The .45 was waggling in a silent command that needed no words to back it up. Bolan came groggily to his feet and stood there swaying in the flickering light from the flare, blinded by the powerful spot in his eyes.

"Hands onna head!" the big guy commanded.

Bolan complied, willing his head to be still and his mind to find its place. The war was not over yet, he kept telling himself — he was still alive and functioning.

"Turn around, hands against the wall, feet wide apart!"

Bolan knew the routine. But he also knew that he was not going to give up the Beretta without a murmur. "Go to hell," he snapped.

The old man cackled with delight. "You didn't knock all the fight out of him yet, Turk. Who is that, is that?.."

"Yessir, it's Bolan," Turk said, the voice edged with gloating triumph. "Big bad Bolan. We don't want to knock all the fight out of him at once, do we Gio? A minute at a time, an hour at a time, we'll just drain it out of him slow'n easy." To Bolan, he yelled, "Turn to th' wall, dammit, or do I turn you with a foot in the nuts!"

A new sound of warfare, a somehow different quality of sound, was rising up in the air out beyond that window. An amplified voice was carrying across the grounds and, although Bolan could not make out the words, that official tone of authority was clear and unmistakable. He told Turk, "You'd better make your move, turkeymaker. The cops have joined the party."

The old man stepped to the window, taking care to keep his distance from the prisoner, and declared, "He's right, Turk." He stepped back, distastefully eyeing the bloodied dead at his feet, and added, "Look at that, Turk. Look what this rotten bastard did to our friends."

Turk's eyes were beginning to waver and flicker rapidly from side to side. With only the merest telltale trace of nervousness to his voice, he said, "Those cops, Gio. How do we?.."

"Maybe we better turn this boy over to them," Giovanni replied, thinking the words carefully. "For the time being, anyway. It would save a lot of explaining."

"Yeah I..."

A loud commotion was taking place outside the door on the far side of the room. Someone was pounding on the door and an excited voice was yelling, "Open up, lemme in, I got the finky shit!"

Giovanni sighed and declared, "That's Pete the Hauler." His eyes took on a new craftiness and played briefly on Larry Turk. The old man's .45 swung to bear on Bolan and he told his field general, "Go let him in, Turk. I'm getting an idea."

Turk said, "Watch it, I ain't shook him down yet," and reluctantly turned his prisoner over to the Capowhile he crossed quickly to the door. He fumbled with the override mechanism for the electronic lock and swung the door open.

Pete Lavallo stumbled through, dragging with him a dishevelled and bleeding Joliet Jake, overlord of swinging downtown. At that same moment the lighting in the sanctum flickered and came to life with a dull, yellowish glow.

Turk muttered, "Don't tell me they finally got that generator't'going."

Lavallo, wild-eyed and panting, gasped. "There's cops lining up all up and down that road out there. They must be hundreds of 'em." He slapped his wounded prisoner with the back of his hand and growled, "Walk, dammit, and stand up like a man. You're in the presence of your Capo."

Joliet Jake did not seem to know where he was nor why. The old fellow was groaning with a shattered arm and bent almost double, clutching the arm to his belly and making whimpering little sounds of deepest remorse.

Lavallo said to Larry Turk, "Gimme a hand with this..."

Then he saw Bolan, standing tall and stiff against the far wall, and Pete the Hauler promptly lost all interest in his own prisoner. He half ran across the office, drew up beside Giovanni, and gasped, "It's him! It's that rotten shit of a Bolan!"

"It's him all right," the Don replied smugly.

Larry Turk was steering the grievously wounded underboss of the Loop to a lounge chair. Lavallo was eyeing the focal point of all his fears and hatreds, and he must have been thinking that his guy, this rotten bastard, was responsible for all the unspeakable indignities which had befallen Pete the Hauler this day. Don Giovanni was looking like the cat which was just about to dine upon a canary.

And then Pete the Hauler "lost his mind" and forgot where he was and why. He gave an enraged bellow of frustrations released, and "the magnificient fuckup" threw himself upon the object of his pinpointed hatreds, chopping at Bolan with the little revolver and apparently intent on smashing his head in.

And it was all Bolan had needed. He smoothly went inside the attack, turned Lavallo effortlessly around and held him there as a shield. Meanwhile the Belle of the Ball was whisking clear of her sideleather.

Don Gio was throwing lead pointblank into the stiffening and suddenly wracked human shield, and trying to scamper to one side for a better firing angle. Bolan accorded the old man one split second of his attention and a single blast from the Beretta, then he was flinging himself clear of his dying burden and swinging to meet the attack that counted.

Larry Turk was running toward him and blazing away with the .45, and Bolan was aware that at least two of those zinging chunks had carried away parts of his own flesh in their passage.

Bolan caressed the Belle's trigger four times, twice in mid-fling and twice from rolling-prone, and Larry Turk's charge faltered and died. He stood there for a moment giving Bolan the dazed, I-don't-believe-it stare then the Belle spoke once more and an I-beheve-it third eye opened at the bridge of Larry Turk's nose and he pitched over backwards, dead in the air.

Bolan rolled across the floor for an inspection of Don Giovanni. The old warrior had a Parabellum in his Nassau-softened belly, and Bolan could see the life draining away from those weary old eyes. The Capocoughed and a trickle of blood flowed across the corner of his mouth. He groaned, "Put me in my chair. Let me die with dignity."

Bolan told him, "You'll die as you lived, Gio, in blood and crap up to your neck." Then he got to his feet and went to the lounge where Joliet Jake was shuddering with pain, oblivious to the death scene about him.

Bolan bent over him, and something flickered in those pained eyes, and Vecci gasped, "It's you, th' telephone guy!"

Bolan said, "Yeh, I've been a lot of guys tonight, Jake. Busy busy busy."

"Well what a hell of a night this turns out to be," the subcapo groaned.

Bolan told him, "Count your blessings, Jake," and he stepped away, disengaged and ready to shake that joint.

But then another man ran into the office, the tails of his topcoat flying out behind him, and he halted abruptly at sight of the big guy in the white jumpsuit. The man said, "Oh God."

Bolan thought, yeah, oh God. It was a face familiar to millions of Americans around the country, an almost intimate face to anyone who'd ever watched a televised news program or any other national hi-jinks from Chicago. That face had appeared on the covers of Timeand in countless other magazines and newspapers. Pretty big stuff, this guy.

Bolan felt a bit queasy at his stomach as he glowered at the man and told him, "You got here late, Jim. Or do we call you CityJim in this hallowed place?"

The guy was staring at the black blaster in Bolan's clenched fist. In a voice of total resignation he declared, "Okay, let's get it over with."

"Not a chance," Bolan told him. "You'll have to meet your fate in its own time and place, bub."

And then Bolan went away from there, back across the sumptuous office built of terror and savage greed, up the winding iron stairway, and back along the route of entry.

He dropped lightly into the snow at the rear of the building and made for the river, mentally counting and assessing his own wounds, and listening appreciatively to the waning sounds of combat out front. The cops were taking over, and Bolan wished them well, both here and in the inevitable clouted courtrooms just beyond.

He reached his war-wagon and borrowed enough time from flight to tape compresses over the three flesh wounds he'd picked up from Larry the Late Turkeymaker, and then he drove confidently onto the ice and headed upriver.

As the scene for a wipe-out, the big windy city beside the lake had been a real charmer. Bolan quetly and humbly thanked Chicago... and he thanked the universe for all kind favors received.

Sure, it mattered who won. And the universe cared.