War Against the Mafia

4 - Prelude

Bolan left the car at the rear entrance to the apartment building and went up the service elevator to the fifth floor, padded softly down the hall to a door marked "511" and leaned on the doorbell. Forty seconds or so later he heard sounds within the apartment and a male voice called, "Okay, okay, just a minute."

He let up on the button and braced his good shoulder against the door. As soon as it cracked he shoved on in, nearly upsetting the man on the other side. "Wha- what...?" the man stuttered.

"You know me," Bolan snapped. "Get dressed. We're going out."

The man turned and ran toward the rear of the apartment, but Bolan was right with him. He grabbed an arm and swung the fleeing man around, driving a balled fist into his midsection. The man's breath left him in a loud grunt and he sank limply onto a small table. Bolan steadied him there until he was breathing normally again, then shoved him roughly toward the bedroom.

Several minutes later they left the apartment together, went down the back way, and got into Bolan's car. Not a word had passed between them since the original confrontation at the door to the apartment. Now the man gawked at the canvas-covered bulk in the back seat of the car and said: "What's that back there?"

"It could be dead bodies," Bolan replied quietly. "You could end up back there if you get stupid."

The man jerked around and faced stonily forward. A short drive later they were at the offices of Escorts Unlimited. The man opened the door with no outward sign of reluctance, and Bolan followed him inside.

"What are we doing here?" the man asked.

"Not we- you," Bolan replied. "You're going to give me a print-out on the entire prostitution operation. I want it all-call girls, house girls, streetwalkers, the whole thing. And I want it damn quick."

"Yes, sir," the programmer quickly agreed.

"Punch the wrong button and it'll be your death program. Make sure you understand that. If I get what I want, that's all I want. But if you screw me up, I'll screw you up. Understand?"

"Yes, sir, I understand."

Twenty minutes later they were going back out the door. Bolan was carrying a large manila envelope. "This is to be just between you and me," Bolan told him. "If I find out you've been talking about it, I'll figure you decided to try to screw me up. Understand?"

"Yes, sir, I understand," the programmer replied meekly.

Bolan left him on the sidewalk, got into his car, and drove off. He really did not give a damn if the programmer talked or not. But after he was finished with the lists, he'd mail them to Lieutenant Weatherbee. Perhaps they could be of some police value if the secret was maintained until that time. He glanced at his watch. It was just past one o'clock. The night had hardly begun. His face twisted into a wry smile. It was going to be a hellish night.

Bolan walked down a darkened hallway, paused in front of a door and held his ear to it for a moment, then leaned back against the opposite wall and opened the door abruptly with a swift kick. The scene that greeted him through the open doorway could have been a pornographic snapshot. An attractive young woman was holding a nude hands-and-knees stance atop a disarrayed bed, positioned crosswise with her feet and the calves of her legs protruding out over the side. A nude man stood between the protruding calves, thrusting vigorously from the waist, his hands tightly gripping the girl's hips. Both man and woman were staring at Bolan with dumbfounded amazement, though the man's physical activities seemed hardly disturbed by the intrusion. There was a strangely unreal quality to the scene, grotesquely silent and dreamlike. Bolan stepped into the room and delivered a smashing backhand blow to the man's face; he released the girl's hips and stumbled back across the room. Bolan felt bad about that, but he reminded himself that there was no morality in a holy war. The same hand that had disconnected the man swung back in a vicious open-hand slap to the girl's poised buttocks. She yowled and fell forward across the bed, then flipped to her side and lay there screaming obscenities. Her erstwhile companion scooped up a ball of clothes and scampered out of the room. A door was flung open down the hall and a youth of about 25 ran into the room shortly thereafter, a wicked-looking knife in one hand. Bolan took the knife away from him and tossed him across the room and into the wall. The girl stopped screaming and stared stupidly at the crumpled figure of the youth. Bolan turned to her and showed her his teeth. "Any more girls at work here?" he snarled.

She shook her head emphatically. "D-downstairs, in the bar," she gasped.

"We'll see," Bolan said. He strode from the room and began opening other doors along the hallway. There were six in all, and he scored again on the last one. Two naked women were on the bed, rolled together in a tight knot of arms and legs. Bolan could not see the head of either. "Didn't anybody hear the ruckus?" he asked loudly, then thrust a hand into the tangle and pulled them onto the floor. The ecstatic expression on the face of a woman of about 45 had quickly converted to one of baffled torment. "What is-get out of here!" she cried.

"Which of you is the working girl?" Bolan asked, grinning.

A well- proportioned younger woman slowly rose to her feet, giving Bolan a frightened once-over. "Where's your whip?" she asked sullenly.

"Right here," Bolan replied calmly. He thwacked her across the bottom with an open hand and shoved her back onto the bed, snared the older woman's clothing from a nearby chair and pushed her out the door, draping the clothing about her neck. "You'd better leave damn quick," he said, curling his lips menacingly. "I'm about to shoot up the joint."

The woman had started crying. She hurried down the hall and shot out the door, still naked. Bolan grinned and stepped back inside the invaded room. The girl was cringing on the bed, twisted bedcovers hastily pulled across her middle. "Tell Leo I don't like his Main Street joints," Bolan said. He tossed a marksman's medal onto the bed. Tell 'im!"

He left then and went silently down the back stairs to the alley, got into his car, and departed. Ten minutes later he pulled up at the back of a townhouse complex, consulted one of the lists from the manila envelope, smiled, and went to the back door. He returned to the car a moment later, took a crowbar from the back floor, and went back to the rear door of the building. A well-placed lever-action and a dull snap later the door was open, and The Executioner was inside. He was in a small service hall; he could see the kitchen through a glass porthole in a door to his right, another door was set into the far wall. Things were swinging on the other side of that door; a hi-fi going full blast and other sounds of merriment told the story quite vividly. He went in through the kitchen door, unholstered the.45, and immediately bumped into a nude girl who was leaning drunkenly across a tiled drainboard, vainly attempting to free ice cubes from a frosted tray.

"You're going to freeze a tit," he warned her, and brushed on past.

"Fat chance," she mumbled, hardly noticing him otherwise.

It was a large living room, richly appointed with oriental rugs and tapestries and further decorated with wall-to-wall living flesh. The lights were low and nobody seemed to be moving about; but the conversation from the floor level was animated and unrestrained. Nobody seemed to be aware of Bolan's presence. He went back through the kitchen, paused long enough to flip the ice cubes onto the drainboard for the nude girl, allowed her to kiss him in reward, then stepped onto the service porch and inspected the plumbing fittings of the laundry trays. He'd noticed the garden hose outside, on his way in; he went outside and brought it back in with him, screwed one end onto the fitting at the laundry plumbing, looped the other end over in a closing pinch, and turned on the cold water full force, then went back through the kitchen and to the living room, patting the ice-seeker's derriere on the way through, dragging the hose with him. He found the wall with the light switch and brought the overhead lights into the action. A murmuring arose and someone said loudly, "What's with the lights?" Bolan guessed that perhaps thirty people were present, all nude, and all bound together somehow in a confusing tangle of limbs and torsos. A girl in the center was beginning to shriek in a calmly controlled fashion; Bolan's roving eye found her and noted that she was the recipient of multiple attentions, any one of which would have no doubt proved sufficient to produce the muffled little shrieks.

Another person shouted an obscenity concerning the bright lights. Bolan shook his head regretfully, and bawled: "Look alive, everybody. The Executioner's here!" Even then the reaction was limited to two or three startled raisings of heads. He thumbed off the safety of the.45 and crashed a single shot into the hi-fi set. It stopped its noise instantly, even before the thundering roar of the heavy gun had ceased reverberating through the tightly packed room. Everybody was staring at him now in shocked attention. He released the kink at the end of the garden hose and sprayed the cold water liberally over all, hating himself for the bastard he was all the while.

There was a new tenor to the shrieks and mouthings now. Men were cursing and floundering about while women screeched hysterically. Bolan flung the hose into the room, stepped back into the kitchen, grabbed the nude girl and kissed her again, balanced a marksman's medal on the slope of a high breast, and departed.

There was to be one more prelude stop. He selected it carefully and headed the car toward the suburbs. It was just past two-thirty in the morning when he parked in the shrubbery a hundred yards or so down from the secluded pleasure palace on the eastern rim of the city. He rummaged in the back seat of the car and came up with three canisters about the size of a large can of beans. He stuffed them into a pouch at his waist and set off at a cross-country angle toward the house. Lights shone from every window, though dim and muffled by concealing draperies. Judging from the number of automobiles in the parking area, they were having a good night. As he drew closer he could hear music, and every now and then a feminine laugh. He walked upright across the grounds, pausing every ten or twelve yards to stand still and listen. During one of those stops he heard male voices nearby; one man was laughing restrainedly. He moved toward the voices and located the source quickly. Two men stood with their backs to him, about fifty feet from the side of the large house; each of them held a sawed-off shotgun cradled loosely in the crook of an elbow; each seemed entirely relaxed. One was large and beefy, the other of medium height and weight, and the smaller one was speaking.

Those guys are out of their minds," he said. "I wouldn't give no two hundred and fifty bucks for no party."

"Augh, two-fifty to these types is no more than two bits to guys like us," the other man replied. "I'd give two bits any time for an orgy like that."

"I thought Leo was comin' by," the other said, shifting the shotgun about and digging into a pocket. He produced a cigarette and struck a kitchen match on the stock of the gun. "I ain't seen 'im, have you?"

The large man chuckled. "Naw, he won't be around tonight. Bet on that. Blacksuit's got 'em all walking around on eggs."

"I'd like to shove this fuckin' shotgun up Leo's ass. You know these things get heavy after a while."

"Lay it down then," said a soft voice behind them. "But do it carefully and very, very quietly. Your first sound will be your last."

The men exchanged glances. The smaller one thrust his shotgun straight out in front of him, at arm's length, then slowly bent to the ground with it and carefully set it down. The large man wanted to discuss the issue. "Says who?" he wanted to know, but staring rigidly forward.

"You were just discussing me," Bolan told him. "I wear a black skinsuit."

"How do I-"

His words were abruptly halted by the shock of a heavy.45 automatic moving forcefully against his temple. He crumpled and a black-clad arm reached out of the shadows and caught the shotgun, broke it at the breech, and tossed it to the ground. The sharp tip of a pointed blade touched lightly upon the smaller man's throat. "I have no bitch with you, buddy," the soft voice announced. "You just give me some useful information and you might live a while."

The man's lips moved soundlessly. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Anything you say," he croaked.

"How many guards?"

"Two more, just two more."

"Shotguns?"

"Yes. We weren't supposed to bunch up like this." He obviously wanted to keep talking. "I'm supposed to be at the front, Charlie had this side. Charlie's the guy you just conked. Mart's around at the back. Andy's got the other side. There's two guys inside, one upstairs in the hall, the other down at the front door. No shotguns, just shoulder holsters."

"Seems like a rather heavy guard for a whore house," the voice purred.

"Just since you started raisin' hell," the man replied, his voice taking on an ingratiating quality. "You got 'em shook up good, they even raised our pay."

"And a bonus to the one who gets me?"

"You ain't shittin', a bonus. A hundred grand worth of bonus."

"Don't you want to try for the bonus?"

"Me?" The tight throat was cleared again. "Who, me? Hell, no. I got nothin' against you, Blacksuit. Say, uh, the knife's about to bust through. It feels like it's gonna go through just any second now."

"Then be very still. Now, tell me..."

"Harry."

"Eh?"

"My name's Harry."

"Tell me, Harry, what's on the other side of that big window down here on the side?"

"Oh, that's uh, a sort of bar, you know. They can push back the walls in the middle there and it makes into a big clubroom. They got the walls back now and they're having a shindig in there right now. Yeah, right now."

"What sort of a shindig, Harry?"

"You know, a sex party. An orgy."

"What's upstairs?"

"Bedrooms, just bedrooms. Oh, and a long hall and a sittin' room. The upstairs guard station is just outside the sittin' room, in th' hall."

"What's on the other side of this party room, downstairs here?"

"Oh, well, I told you, they push the walls back, and it's all just one big room, clear across."

"How many people would you say are in there right now, Harry?"

"Oh, well, I can tell you exactly. I got the front detail, see. I checked thirty-two guys through. There's thirty-two in there, exactly."

"No girls?"

"Oh, well, yeah, there's girls. There's the twenty-five regulars and about, uh, oh I'd say about, uh. fifteen or so specials."

"Specials for what?"

"Well, for the party. They move 'em around for these parties, see. Specialists."

"Specialists in what?"

"Different lands of stunts, you know. Sex stunts."

"I see. Thank you, Harry. You've been very helpful. If I find out you've misled me, I'll come back and skin you."

"I ain't misled you."

"We will see," said The Executioner. He removed the pointed blade and immediately applied the.45 just behind the ear. The talkative informant fell over sideways without a sound. Bolan picked up his shotgun, checked it over for load and readiness, and carried it with him to the large window at the unguarded side of the house. He removed one of the canisters from his waist pouch and dropped it to the ground, then swung the shotgun against the window, dancing back to avoid flying fragments. The huge window went with a roaring crash; Bolan waited but a split second to clear any falling slivers, then thrust the muzzle of the shotgun against the exposed drapery, angling high toward the ceiling, and pulled both triggers. The double roar must have sounded like doomsday to those inside. A watermelon-sized hole appeared in the heavy drapery material. Bolan picked up the canister, flipped a lever at its top, and tossed it through the hole in the drapery. Heavy black smoke drifted back through the hole and billowed up between the drapery and the window frame. There were sounds of pandemonium within as Bolan hurried back to the fallen guards. He grabbed up the remaining shotgun and restored it to firing condition just as a man ran around the corner from the back side of the house. Bolan pushed the shotgun in the general direction of the running figure and pulled the trigger. The man was flung into the air like a rag doll, catching the full charge in the chest. Bolan swung to the sounds of thudding feet in the opposite direction and let go the other barrel. The target screamed and fell writhing to the ground, hands clutching at where his stomach had been. Bolan dropped the now-useless shotgun and got a grip on his.45 just as an upstairs window swung open and a man leaned out with a gun in his hand, foolishly exposing himself in full light.

The Executioner's.45 arced upwards and exploded once. The man's head snapped back and he disappeared from view. Bolan moved swiftly toward the front door, rounding the corner just as another man, gun at the ready, hurtled off the porch, firing wildly as he ran. Bolan dropped to one knee and his finger moved of its own accord, squeezing off two calculated shots at the running figure. The man stopped firing, stopped running, and began flopping about the ground. Bolan returned to the side of the house and tossed another smoke cannister into the open upstairs window, then dropped the last one on the ground and retreated behind the fast-forming cloud.

He regained his car, turned it around, and headed for South Hills. The prelude skirmishes were at an end. The stage, he reflected grimly, should now be set for the big kill. He just hoped he hadn't overplayed the prelude music.