"Continental Contract" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pendleton Don)

6 Dimensions of Death

Bolan pushed the door full open and planted his burden in the doorway. quot;We need a bed, and quick,quot; he told the startled girl.

She fell back into the room with a stifled yelp and allowed Bolan to maneuver the injured man to the bed.

The girl wore a terry cloth mini-sarong which didn't quite make it over jutting breasts and bottomed-out just below the hips. A small bath towel was wrapped about her head in a neat turban. She looked pink and shiny-scrubbed and a hell of a lot prettier than the airline uniform had made her. She fussed about with the pillow and guided Martin's head to it, then she turned to Bolan with a sick look and said, quot;Don't tell me he got that way hurrying here to keep a date you neglected to confirm.quot;

Bolan muttered, quot;You still have it all wrong.quot;

Her mood was visibly shifting from startled concern to one of marked hostility. quot;Oh no,quot; she told him, quot;I have it all right. You're Johnny Charming sans face wig, and this poor slob has taken one too many dives for you. How does it work, Mr. Martin? You take the women and he takes on the infuriated boyfriends?quot;

Bolan read it that she had been smarting under her own overplay on the plane, and was now letting him know that the game had changed. He pressed Martin's passport into her hand and said, quot;I tried to tell you that you had it wrong.quot; He turned back to the bed and left her staring at the passport photo. He asked Martin, quot;How is it?quot;

quot;I'll live.quot;

Bolan wished to make sure. He carefully opened the shirt and peeled up the undershirt with gentle hands. The guy's chest was one big blue-blotchy mess, with angry red bloodblisters spaced about. quot;They did this with their feet?quot; Bolan inquired. He was tenderly probing the ribs with sensitive fingers.

Martin grimaced and replied, quot;Yeah. The belly, too.quot;

quot;Must've had steel caps on the shoes.quot; Bolan opened the waist of the trousers and bared the lower torso, took one quick look, then shook his head and stood up. quot;You'll have to have a doctor,quot; he told the actor.

quot;I'm for that. My hands... God, my hands.quot;

Nancy Walker bustled in with a wet towel and began carefully dabbing at his face. She told Bolan, quot;Don't worry about him. I'll get the doctor.quot;

He replied, quot;Okay,quot; and paced nervously about the room for a moment, then he went back to the bed and told Martin, quot;I'll be leaving you now. Uh... guess I don't have to say it... but... well, I'm sorry for those lumps.quot;

The actor winked his one good eye. quot;Lumps I can take. You just watch it, eh?quot;

Bolan said, quot;Yeah,quot; and chewed his lip for a moment. He hated to leave the guy this way. Mafiosi could be persistent hunters. Sanity dictated, however, that he get out and let the guy have some medical attention. He dropped Martin's wallet on the bed and told him, quot;You'll be needing this. The girl has your passport.quot; He spun about, stepped past Nancy Walker, and went toward the door.

quot;Bolan!quot;

He halted and turned back. quot;Yeah?quot;

quot;Maybe you better take that passport. You know?quot;

quot;No, I...quot;

quot;You could fake it out, you know that by now. And the French cops already have egg on their face over me. You be Gil Martin for a while and I'll take a rest. I needed it even before this.quot;

Bolan hesitated, thinking about it. Martin was thinking in terms of cops. Bolan's mind was occupied with Mafia.

The girl was staring from one to the other of them, a quizzical half-smile prettying her face. She told Bolan, quot;I heard what he called you, and the message now is loud and clear. His offer makes sense.quot; She tossed him the passport folder. quot;Trade. Give me yours.quot;

quot;Take all the identification,quot; Martin urged. quot;Money too, if you need it. Or use the credit cards. Just don't go wild, I'm not that wealthy.quot;

A warmness was spreading through Bolan's gut. He had almost forgotten the feeling. It was damn nice, if for only a fleeting moment, to feel the touch of genuine friendship. On that note of warmth he traded wallets and passports with the actor, thanked the girl with his eyes, and got out of there. He figured the trade at about fifty-fifty, in terms of personal danger. Some of the mob had egg on their face over the Gil Martin mix-up also; others of them might still be sniffing along that false trail, and it was this consideration that tipped the decision for Bolan. If the mob came looking for anyone, he wanted them to find him, not some poor defenseless Hollywood type who couldn't even spell kill.

The more he thought of the set-up the better he liked it. Let Martin stay down and out of the line of fire, at least until the action had swirled away into another part of the world. When the time was right Martin could present himself to the police, explain what had happened, reclaim his place in the world, and relate a true-life adventure which would fill columns of free publicity for a long time to come.

As for the girl, she had a battered but very much alive movie star in her keep for a few days... and who could say how that relationship would ultimately work itself out?

Bolan returned to the metro and found his way to the glitter-side of Paris. As Gil Martin he checked into a large hotel on the Champs-Elysees, left stern orders as to his right to privacy, and turned over the key to the airport locker so that his bags could be picked up. Then he ordered a rental car, to be kept at his disposal in the hotel garage, and went up to his suite for breakfast, a lingering shower, and a tired tumble between the sheets.

As his eyes closed on Chapter One in Paris, the time was barely nine o'clock on the autumn morning of Bolan's first day in France. Already it had seemed a lifetime. The days ahead were to seem as epochs in that strange life-as-death eternity which had come to characterize the bloody pathways of Mack Bolan, the peoples' gladiator and high executioner — and now, in certain Parisian neighborhoods, L'Americaine Formidable.

Silent rage vibrated across the telephone connection as Quick Tony Lavagni awaited the verbal reaction from the man at Castle Farms. His fingers were going numb on the instrument and he had moved the other hand up to help support the growing weight of it when the cutting voice finally found words of expression.

quot;I thought I told you,quot; came the hot-ice response, quot;that I just wanted him spotted and tailed. When did I tell you, Tony, that I wanted Bolan snatched and hustled off somewheres?quot;

quot;That was their idea, Mr. Castiglione,quot; Lavagni explained in humble misery. quot;I told those jerks how to handle it, but they had to get ambitious. I tried to tell 'em this Bolan wasn't no ordinary number, but they just had to find it out for theirselves. I told 'em...quot;

quot;Fuck what you told 'em!quot; Arnie Farmer yelled. quot;Now you listen to me, Tony, and you make sure you get it right this time. You take that black judas of yours, and you take a crew — a full crew, you hear? — and you get your ass over there. You shake that goddam place apart and you shake that bastard loose, you hear me? And you bring 'im back here in one piece. Now is there anything hard to understand about that, Tony?quot;

quot;No, Mr. Castiglione. I got it.quot;

quot;Great. I hope so for your sake, Tony. How many frogs you say bit the dust over there?quot;

quot;I get it about six or seven, plus one of Monzoor's personal crew — a boy name of Shippy Catano.quot;

quot;Uh huh. And so how many are you taking with you, Tony?quot;

quot;I guess I better take at least a dozen.quot;

quot;You shithead! Whattaya mean, a dozen! Now, Tony, listen to me! You ain't thinking! Don't talk to me any dozen! Listen, you get out here, you hear me? Bring Fat Angelo and Sammy Shiv, and I guess you better bring that nigger. A dozen! Listen, brains, I want that boy! You hear?quot;

quot;I hear, Mr. Castiglione.quot;

quot;So get it out here, and I mean right now. We're going to plan this thing to the last step, and we're gonna do it all ourselves. No more Frenchmen, you hear? Those guys fight with their feet and fuck with their face, and I guess they must think with their balls. I don't want nothing more to do with 'em. You hear?quot;

quot;Yessir, Mr. Castiglione, I hear.quot;

quot;You better be here in one hour.quot;

Lavagni assured his Capo that he would, and grimly rung off. He turned to Wilson Brown with an angry scowl and told him, quot;Arnie Farmer thinks he wants Bolan. Listen, Wils, I'm up to here with that guy. It's come down to this, Wils — it's him or me. You hear me? It's him or me.quot;

quot;I hear you, man,quot; the big Negro replied, grinning. quot;But I guess you better tell it to Bolan.quot;

quot;I'll tell 'im, Wils. You think I can't tell him? You think I been that long off the street?quot;

The grin left the black man's face as he followed Quick Tony out of the room. He was feeling a bit sorry for his boss. Lavagni would tell it to the devil himself rather than face Castiglione with another failure. Yeah. That Bolan cat sure better look out. Desperation could make a mean enemy. Wils Brown knew it. Wils Brown was an expert on desperation, man.

In Paris, a dream was in the process of crumbling, an empire which never had been was now in danger of never being, and Thomas quot;Monzoorquot; Rudolfi was an unhappy and shaken man. America's silent ambassador to France, serving the subsurface society, Rudolfi was a forty-five-year-old lawyer and American citizen. He had lived in Paris since the early sixties and was officially regarded by the French government as a broker and advisor to American business interests in France.

Rudolfi moved in the best circles of Parisian society, maintained a chateau near the city which was frequently the scene of lavish weekend parties, and he kept a townhouse within sight of the Arc de Triomphe. He was close to many highly-placed government officials and politicians, was on a first-name basis with various French industrialists and financiers, and was frequently seen at social functions involving the higher echelons of France's cultural mediums. A bachelor, his name at various times had been linked with certain female notables of the theatre, films, and the fashion world. Thomas Rudolfi, a blood nephew of one of the founding fathers of La Cosa Nostra in America, had found the good life in France.

His had been a career of frustration, however, all the foregoing notwithstanding. Monzoor was a man of little personal wealth or power in the family hierarchy, though he in fact orchestrated a wide variety of the syndicate's interests in this area of the world. The Mafia, in its worldwide operations, resembled a feudalistic monarchy with strong imperialistic leanings, with each feudal chief, or Capo, an autonomous imperialist in his own right. Foreign quot;territoriesquot; had been staked out, cultivated, and jealously guarded by individual American families — then welded together for mutual strength under La Commissione, or the Council of Capos. This council, naturally, was U.S. based — and this brand of imperialism was even more invisible than the behind-scenes maneuverings on home soil.

Thus there was no such thing, per se, as a French Mafia. There were local mobs, home-owned and operated, but finding cohesion only in the franchise-like manipulations of the America families of La Cosa Nostra. Some American families maintained direct representation to their French interests, but on the broader scale of international syndication, Thomas Rudolfi was the indisputable authority.

Thus, Monzoor Rudolfi's dream of empire. He was, literally, in the Commissione's diplomatic service, directly serving the foreign interests of the American Mafia in their internationally syndicated strata of quot;business.quot; He was also lobbyist and payoff man, arbiter and counselor, a central point of contact for the various American families who were doing business in France, and a liaison between the syndicate and non-syndicated crime elements who plied the French trade routes. After nearly a decade of such service, Monzoor had established links and broad avenues of influence which, in everything but fact, had enthroned him as Monsieur Mafia of France.

His income was derived from a fixed percentage of business grosses, as determined by the Commissione. He was sternly forbade any quot;independent actionquot; on his own behalf, it being generally felt by the Council of Capos that a conflict of interest could thereby arise. As fair exchange for this latter restriction, however, the Commissione provided their ambassador of crime with a substantial living allowance and expense account, enabling him to move about freely and effectively in the higher strata of French society and thus better serve the masters at home.

Somehow, though, for Monzoor Rudolfi, this was not enough. There was nothing in this arrangement for the soul of a man, nothing to placate that insistent little voice from the inner man that cried for self-realization and fulfillment. If justice were to be done, Thomas Rudolfi would be officially declared Capo of France. It was his due. Instead of all the wealth moving toward America, with only a dribbling percentage left behind for the man who had made it all possible, the profits should remain in France and let the driblets cross the Atlantic. For some years now the conviction had been growing in the Rudolfi breast that this justice would inevitably one day find its level in the natural birth of the Rudolfi Family of France.

But now, on this particularly gloomy Paris day, Monzoor Rudolfi was a particularly troubled man. From the window of his townhouse study the massive architecture of the Arc de Triomphe was just becoming visible in a dissipating fog. He had moments earlier completed his third trans-Atlantic telephone conversation of the day — one of those guarded, heavily coded, and utterly depressing dialogues which usually left him with a mild case of the inner shakes. This one had left him with the outer shakes. Not only his dream but his lifestyle, his image — indeed, perhaps his very life — seemed to be in some precarious balance which was entirely beyond his direct control.

So Mack Bolan was in Paris — so what? Bolan was an American problem. Rudolfi should have no interest — certainly no percentage interest — in this mad chase across the oceans and the continents, this vendetta on the blood of a cheap rodman, a lone madman who should have been squashed months ago but for the gross mismanagement in the American branches. If Bolan meant anything to France, that meaning could only be stated in dollars or francs.

Rudolfi had long ago come to think of himself as a Frenchman. He spoke the language like a native, had begun to think in French and to speak English and Italian with an accent. Under his dedicated auspices, the French territories had established a power that would survive the rise and fall of a dozen republics — and, oui, of a dozen Commissiones. So who was this Arnesto Castiglione to suggest that it was time for a change in Paris? Eh? Perhaps it would be closer to the truth to suggest that it was time for a change on La Commissione. Eh? Oui.

What could this farmer, with an army behind him, know of the problems of Paris? What could anyone expect of a Capo who was not truly a Capo, or of a family which was not truly a family? The Paris headquarters consisted of five brothers-in-the-silence — non, but four now, the fifth lay in the morgue, poor Shippy, a toasted marshmallow of blackened remains. Rudolfi's crew! Ha! Was this not laughable? And yet this Arnesto had vilified and ridiculed this tiny family of France for failing to accomplish what all the collective armies of America had failed to accomplish, the squashing of the cockroach Bolan.

True, the cockroach behaved as a lion. But France had heard less than one day of his roar. How could the farmer of Virginia be so critical of France's restricted efforts?

Rudolfi thought that he knew the answer to that. Oui, he knew. He knew the workings of logic of these Capos who had once been common soldiers of the streets. Keep France poor, this was the plan. Keep France wholly dependent upon the small commissions from gigantic business deals, make her account franc by franc for each business expense and the most microscopic item of the operating budget. Keep Rudolfi's crew busy with decimal points and give them no time to dream of genuine empire. Let France continue to be poor and dependent upon the pleasures of the bloodsuckers of America. But ask her to risk all to capture Bolan, the Lion of America, the lion which all America could not ensnare, but let not France expect the reward which all America sought. Fail, then, and suffer ridicule and personal vilification.

The underground ambassador to France sighed and stepped away from the window — but not, he resolved, away from the dream — the image of the Arc de Triomphe lingering in the optic nerves. Oui, let that be the symbol of the lion hunt of Paris. France would triumph. If necessary, the budding Capo would descend to the streets and bear arms. But France would triumph. Let the foreign armies come, let the great white hunters descend en masse from the streetcorners of New York and Chicago and Philadelphia — and, yes, from the fields of Virginia — and let them prowl the boulevards de Paris; they would all go away empty handed and foolish-faced. France herself would bag the lion, and France herself would demand the reward. Let them try denying it.

Rudolfi was not without local power. He could command one thousand guns upon an hour's notice. He could command government officials, courts, and entire police corps. But this was not merely a contest of power. Non. This was a challenge to the soul of a man.

So, Thomas Rudolfi thinks with his balls, eh? He went to his desk, unlocked it, withdrew the prized luger with swastika inlays in the handle, tested the action, then picked up the telephone and buzzed the garage for his car. The dream, he had decided, was not going to crumble. It was going to grow. It would grow in the fertile soil of Bolan's carcass.