Part 6 (1/2)

”We'll see,” Thomkins told him. ”Want to come along?”

”Even if the guy did walk away, would he take refuge at Don Stefano's joint?”

”You're the Bolan expert,” the cop replied ”Would he?”

Persicone sighed and said, ”h.e.l.l, he might.”

A loud whoop sounded from overhead, halting the two men in their tracks as they trudged toward their vehicle.

The bucket rig was swung out over the adjoining grounds and nestling into one of the trees which lined the wall over there. Strauss, his face glowing in the beam from the rig's spotlight, was waving something in his hand and shouting down at them.

”It's a pocket, Cap'n!” he yelled. ”A black pocket off a uniform! Ripped off, not burned!”

”There you go,” Thomkins declared in a half- audible reaction to the find.

”Give that boy a promotion and a cigar,” Persicone commented.

”Bulls.h.i.+t,” said the chief of the get-Bolan detail. ”It would've been easier the other way. That ties it, you know. That just flat out ties it.”

They were hurrying to the car now.

Persicone said, ”There's no sweetness to the victory, eh?”

”Victory, what victory?” the Captain retorted. ”If we don't find the guy at Angeletti's, do you know what I'm going to do next?”

The FBI man was grinning. ”I'll bite. What?”

”I'm going to a.s.sign a fire truck and an ambulance to the guy. And then I'm going to go home, get drunk, and go to bed.”

Persicone chuckled and said, ”You're glad he made it and you know it.”

”Get screwed,” the Bolan-chaser growled.

The tart rejoinder could have been a benediction.

For sure, the confusion over Mack Bolan's free- fall fate had added the edge to make it a night for miracles.

Chapter 11.

Contained.

Bolan had scouted the area thoroughly two days earlier, even drawing sketches of the grounds with topographical notes of terrain irregularities and plotting probable floor layout of the house interiors.

It was one of several similar two-story residences on that block, in a neighborhood which was cla.s.sed as ”upper-middle”.

It was about a one-acre plot, and the house took up much of that.

There was a brick wall on all four sides, a fancy iron gate with remote-control locks operable from a vehicle or from the house, a winding drive that skirted the property and took all the advantage there was of the limited ground area, circling to the back and through the carport, then back down to the gate. Made it look like a great deal more than it was.

The Capo's next-door neighbor was a pediatrician. The man across the street was regional sales rep for a paint company. Another neighbor was a retired university professor.

It was an affluent neighborhood, but not a ”rich” one.

Bolan had learned that Angeletti had lived here for twenty-two years, since just after the death by pneumonia of his wife. It seemed to be all the home that the widower needed or wanted, with both the kids off to school during the earlier years and flinging around with their own things after that.

There were no grandchildren-not even a son- in-law or daughter-in-law.

Philippa had been ten when her mother died. Maybe that was why, said idle tongues, she had never learned to act like a woman.

Bolan had heard no explanations for why Frank had never learned to act like a man. In some ways, sure, Frank the Kid managed. It was said that he'd laid every hooker in Philadelphia and adjacent areas. Only hookers, though-Frank had never shown a serious interest in any woman.

So, sure, it was a good enough ”home” for Stefano Angeletti. He didn't have to impress anybody. Not lately. And there were no embarra.s.sing questions from the federal tax people about how he could afford to live so high. Don Stefano did not live high, not in any way that showed.

There were ways that did not show, of course. Bolan had heard also of the ”much fancier joints” tucked away here and there for those secret week ends and seasonal vacations. Retreats, they were called. But the stories had it that the only thing Angeletti ever retreated from was his own family.

He maintained a home for them-in which he stayed with them for tolerable periods-a home which was not really a home by any usual standard.

It was actually a business headquarters, around which was fabricated a synthetic and baldly hypocritical environment of togetherness and familial devotion, intermixed with gun-toting bodyguards, late-night comings and goings and ”business deals”, an occasional party of chosen ones, a steady procession of Philippa's lovers and Frank's hookers, and the ever-present tensions of a Mafia Capo's struggle to maintain authority in a crumbling empire.

The Angeletti family had been in trouble for some time.

Some of that was attributable to Stefano's advanced years. He was seventy-four. He had ulcers, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, and failing kidneys. But he had a strong old heart and he was still as mean as sin.

Most of the problems had come from outside. Stefano had lost the protection of anonymity some years back, thanks to Kefauver, and later Bobby Kennedy and that sharp old bird from Arkansas, 1 Senator McClellan. He'd been getting considerable hara.s.sment from the feds and, lately, from local police agencies as well.

Also, Stefano had been subjected to gentle but insistent pressures from La Commissione to refine and update his operations, to bring in some new blood, to beef up, consolidate and firm up the ties with the national organization.

Philly had been a family operation for much too long-it was an anachronism in the modern Mafia.

Augie Marinello had once tried to engineer a marriage between Philippa and a young Turk from one of the New York families . . . purely as a business arrangement and to give the Don an alternate heir who could be regarded as ”in the family”.

But Philippa herself put the death seal on that idea, and the Don himself had not pushed the thing since he'd not been overly enthusiastic over the project either.

Frank was the Angeletti heir, and by G.o.d Frank was going to get some legs under him some day even if Don Stefano had to manufacture some for him.

The gradiGghia had apparently been intended to serve as Frank the Kid's artificial legs.

It took more than legs to make a Capo, however. It took a head, also, and n.o.body yet had figured out how to transplant a man's head onto a kid's shoulders.

Such was the status and the state of the Angeletti household on that night of unlikely nights when Mack Bolan came to call.

He had no clear idea of what he was going to do there, nor how. The Executioner was simply playing the game by ear, hoping to brazen his way out of an impossible situation and perhaps somehow to regain the initiative in a hopeless and decidedly unpopular war.

He was strongly aware of the fantastic odds which were quickly marshaling to the other side's favor.