The Bone Yard (3 page)

Bolan sat inside his car with the driver's window down despite an early-morning chill. He was waiting outside a phone booth set against the wall of a deserted service station. The night warrior was restless, smoking in the darkness and checking his watch at frequent intervals, noting the time since he had placed the call to Washington. Almost ten minutes now, and he disliked the waiting, felt too damned much like a sitting duck despite the knowledge that no one was looking for him.

Yet.

Allowing for three hours difference in time zones, he knew his party should be up and free to call him back by now. If Leo Turrin had been able to complete the contact. If the inside man was able to return his call without attracting any heat or bringing down suspicion on himself.

Mack Bolan cursed the uncertainty and knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Voluntary choice had placed him on the outside, and along with that decision there came certain minor inconveniences, for sure. And minor inconveniences could get a careless warrior killed. Bolan sometimes missed his contact with the wily Leo Turrin, once his closest covert ally in an all-out holy war against the Mafia. From his position in the highest councils of the brotherhood, Turrin had been able to provide the soldier with the kind of battlefield intelligence that could be indispensable for someone fighting on the run.

His inside view of Mobland had saved Bolan's life on more than one occasion, and the two of them had grown into a friendship that was deeper than the bond between most relatives.

When Bolan staged his six-day "Second Mile" assault against the Mafia, then disappeared into the Phoenix program, Turrin had been forced to sacrifice his seat at the right hand of La Commissione, withdrawing from the Mafia the way he entered it covertly.

Now Leo Turrin, a.k.a. "The Pussy," was busy riding a desk in the Justice Department.

He was a valued asset to the program, with his inside knowledge of the syndicate.

He was riding a desk, right, but Turrin was far from inactive. He had kept the land lines open to Mack Bolan, joining the Phoenix program as an active member. And when the choice came down to bailing out or selling out for Bolan, Turrin maintained their contact on the sly. At need, he could be reached — as "Leonard Justice" — and the Executioner had never doubted Leo's loyalty for a moment. Anything he had or knew was Bolan's for the asking. But the warrior used him sparingly, aware that he could compromise his closest friend and greatest resource, if the Executioner made their fleeting contacts a matter of routine. And they were back to square one. The war had come full circle for them, with Leo on the inside and Mack Bolan looking in. Except that there was now a new man in the Mafia reporting back to Justice, leaking out the information that was necessary for concerted moves against the brotherhood.

His name was known to Leo, and through him it came to Bolan. Hal Brognola's new man on the inside had grudgingly agreed to work with Leo, funneling intelligence to Bolan as the need arose, albeit cautiously. He had a reputation to protect and there were aspects to his underground existence that made Leo's stint within the Mafia look like a cake-walk in comparison. For openers, the mole — one Nino Tattaglia — was at one time a true-blue mafioso. Whereas Turrin had been trained and groomed for infiltration of the brotherhood and planted in its ranks deliberately by Justice, Nino entered as a true believer, working the underworld for half a lifetime, seeking nothing more than profit and the power that accrued through terror. At thirty-five he had attained the rank of first lieutenant in the Baltimore family of Don Carlos Nazarione before he stumbled into the hands of the Feds on a double murder rap.

The choice Tattaglia received was simple: go to trial and face the death house in an age of multiplying executions, or "turn over," stay inside the family as a mole for Justice.

The choice was simple, right, and Nino went for life without thinking more than twice. If there had been regrets along the way he kept them strictly to himself, and so far, all his information had survived the acid tests devised by Turrin and Hal Brognola.

Bolan had made but sparing use of Nino's talents, tapping in on certain basic information, but declining to involve him in the front-line action, anything that might expose his tenuous position or incline him to think twice about his deal with Justice.

Now for the first time the warrior needed hard intelligence about a do-or-die campaign, and he was hoping that Tattaglia was up to it.

They had devised a system similar to the one Bolan used for making contact in his early war against the mob. Bolan would call "Leonard Justice" at a private number, leave some brief message and a call-back number of his own before he severed the connection. "Justice" would connect with Nino on his own through any of several fronts that he maintained for such occasions, and the mafioso would get back to Bolan at his earliest convenience. Bolan killed his smoke and checked his watch again. There was a chance that Nino would not call. Bolan realized the pressure he was under, living on the razor's edge between the Mafia and the government; an edge honed all the sharper by his off-the-record link through "Leonard Justice" to the Executioner's private war.

As if in answer to his thoughts the telephone began to jangle; shrill tones ripping at the predawn silence of the parking lot. Bolan scrambled from his car and caught it on the third ring.

"Morning, Sticker." It was the code name he had used with Leo Turrin in the "old days," and it felt good, rolling off his tongue without a second thought.

"Morning, hell," the gruff male voice came back at him. "I'm not awake yet. What's the rumble?"

Bolan smiled.

"Rumor has it that Minotte bought the farm last night."

Surprise was evident in Nino's distant voice.

"Oh, yeah? I hadn't heard that. Who was selling?"

"They're a new firm in town," Bolan told him. "I take it that they're based in Tokyo."

There was a moment of thoughtful silence on the other end before Tattaglia continued.

"Well, uh, maybe I have heard of that, after all."

The Executioner sensed the mafioso's hesitance, realizing the position he was in, but it did not change the immediacy of Bolan's problem, the urgency of his need.

"I need whatever I can get," he prodded.

"Well, there might be something... sorta vague, you know, but nothing definite."

Bolan could feel the strain the other man was under, wondering how much to say, what to hold back.

"Anything at all. I'm on short numbers here."

"You've got a guy out there," Tattaglia said at last. "He runs a restaurant or something. Sushi, all that kind of shit. Name's Seiji Kuwahara. What I hear, he's sort of the ambassador from Tokyo. You know?"

"How firm is that?"

"It's carved in stone. Like, maybe, headstones, if he made the move against Minotte."

Bolan frowned to himself.

"You hearing war drums?"

"Nothing solid but it's on the edge. Chicago's asking for a sit-down with the Five Families, to protect their investments."

"Is it set?"

"Not yet," Tattaglia responded. "I get the message that somebody in New York is stalling. As to why..."

Nino let it trail away, and Bolan did not pursue it. He had plenty on his mind right there in Vegas, without wasting precious time on the motives of an unnamed "someone" in Manhattan.

"Okay," he said at last. "If you run into anything..."

"Just pass it on to Leonard J. I know."

There was another hesitation on the line and Bolan was about to break connections when Tattaglia spoke again.

"Hey, Striker?"

"Yeah?"

"Good luck. I really mean it."

"Thanks."

The line went dead and Bolan cradled the receiver, staring at it for a moment, mixed emotions welling up inside him. Instinct told him that Tattaglia was sincere or getting there, at any rate. And Bolan knew that nothing was impossible. There might be ways to reach the hardest heart, given time and patience.

But right now in Vegas, Bolan did not have the patience to sit back and wait for answers to come calling on him. He would have to hunt them down and find them for himself if he intended to find out what all the rumbles coming out of Vegas really meant.

And if the melee at Minotte's was a preview, open war between the Mafia and the Yakuza could lead to bloody chaos in the streets. He hoped to head it off with swift and surgically precise preemptive strikes. But in order to accomplish that objective he would need a better handle on the situation in Las Vegas. There were still too many open-ended questions: the vacuum left by Bob Minotte's passing, the role of Seiji Kuwahara and the reticence of "someone in New York" to make a stand. Mack Bolan had to know the enemy before he moved against him. And for that he needed hard intelligence, the kind that canny warriors use when making battle plans for doomsday.

By the time he reached his car the Executioner was well into a partial resolution of his problem. Bolan knew the source of the information he required. Now all he had to do was go and get it. It would be simple, just a matter of some skill, some raw audacity, and maybe a helping hand from Lady Luck.

The Executioner was rolling deadly dice in Vegas, and he knew that if he crapped out this early in the game he would be paying with his life.

No matter.

There was only one direction he had always chosen in the hellgrounds. Straight ahead.

The Executioner was rolling on, for all the chips.

Las Vegas is a two-faced town. It wears one face by night, another by day. A first-time visitor might pass through the streets at different times and never recognize the city. Looking for the lights, the girls, the glitter, he could lose himself in no time, coming out the other side a different man... if he came out at all.

Las Vegas is a different city in daylight.

Warm by early morning, temperatures would soar to a hundred in the shade by noon; the streets a wasteland shimmering with desert heat. With dawn all the neon is extinguished and the town takes on a faded washed-out look, more common to a farming town than to a thriving tourist center. Beyond the downtown Strip the city could be ordinary, even drab — a sprawl of prefab shopping malls and cookie-cutter housing tracts. The scattered slot machines in drug stores, fast-food restaurants and supermarkets stand like remnants of some alien culture, badly out of place and out of time amid the trappings of a workaday reality.

The city lives on gambling but its people dwell apart from the casinos, pursuing separate lives that seldom intersect the fast lane. The rates of homicide and other violent crimes rival cities many times her size, but there are also parks and churches, synagogues and schools. It is a side the tourist seldom sees but warrior Bolan knew the varied faces of Las Vegas. He knew the gambling mecca was a town made up of people, sure. The builders and the civilizers. And among them were savages preying on the weak and willing, sometimes turning on each other. But the Executioner stood ready to oppose them on the firing line. If necessary he would give his life to keep the cannibals confined within their rightful place. And if it did come to that he would be taking many of them with him when he went.

The civic buildings in Las Vegas are as drab as the casinos are flamboyant, and the metro police headquarters is no exception to the rule.

It squats on Stewart near the cross-town freeway like a fortress ready to repel invaders or to keep its secrets safely locked away inside. Bolan found a space reserved for visitors out front and parked his rental car, the plain sedan fitting naturally with the other cars already in the lot. He spent a moment double-checking his custom fake ID before he locked the Ford and made his way inside.

He was relying on role camouflage to help him through this penetration of what was, in essence, enemy territory. No disguise was readily available beyond the fake credentials, but the soldier knew that with sufficient audacity, and just a dash of luck, he had a chance of getting through it in one piece.

In any case, he had to try.

The human mind interprets everything that passes through the window of the eyes; it color-codes and classifies, provides the connotations that give meaning to the world beyond our noses. Given time, experience, the brain not only "sees," but it begins predicting just exactly what it should be seeing in a given situation, taking certain things for granted in the absence of a jarring visual contradiction. Thus, role camouflage.

Mack Bolan long ago had learned that it was possible to manipulate the image that a pair of searching eyes passed on for coding and interpretation. Given static circumstances, the warrior could anticipate what normal minds would "want" to see. With very little alteration in his own appearance, he could readily conform to meet those mental expectations, and the end result, as often as not, was a kind of de facto invisibility that served the Executioner well at need. And he needed vital information now. There was only one place he could think of where he might obtain it. If it worked he would be well ahead, perhaps securing the handle that he needed. If it failed...

A khaki sergeant on the desk examined his ID perfunctorily and signed him in, providing Bolan with a clip-on plastic tag identifying him as Visitor. The officer steered him through a pair of swinging doors that opened on an antiseptic corridor, and Bolan paced off fifty yards of waxed linoleum until he reached the door marked Homicide. A nameplate mounted on the office door identified the Homicide CO as Captain Reese. The man behind the desk inside was fiftyish, with thinning hair above a weathered face. He seemed uncomfortable and out of place inside a modish polyester leisure suit. When he stood up the jacket opened, and Bolan saw the Smith and Wesson Model 59 worn on his left hip, butt forward to accommodate a cross-hand draw. Captain Reese rounded his desk, and Bolan let him eyeball the credentials that identified him as a federal agent.

"Frank LaMancha, Justice."

"Sam Reese." There was immediate suspicion in the homicide detective's eyes and voice. "What can I do you for?"

"I'm with the racketeering task force," Bolan told him, "out of Washington. They sent me out to run a recon, lay some groundwork.""

"Ah..." His tone was noncommittal.

Bolan glanced around the office, sizing up the man.

"The AG seems to think you've got a problem," Bolan said.

The captain frowned.

"We've got our finger on it," he replied.

"Oh? You have fingers on Larry Liguori? Spinoza? Johnny Cats?"

A ruddy color seeped into the captain's cheeks.

"I know the names. We keep an eye on all of them." His frown became a scowl. "You're pointing fingers at a bunch of citizens, and damned important ones at that. Their money talks around this town."

"Who does the listening?" Bolan asked him.

Reese bristled.

"Back off, La Motta."

"That's LaMancha."

"Whatever. I admit we have a problem but we're working on it. What we don't need in Las Vegas is a pack of hungry federales getting in our way with all that green felt jungle bullshit..."

Bolan allowed himself a narrow smile.

"I guess you're working on Minotte, too," he said. "You don't waste any time."

"I can't afford to."

Bolan crossed the room to stand before a wall map bristling with multicolored stickpins. A shiny blood-red pin protruded from the near vicinity of the Minotte stud farm.

"You've got a gang war on your hands," he offered without turning around.

"Says who?"

"Says common sense. You think Minotte's Eastern visitors were wise men following a star?"

"There anything you don't know?"

"Plenty," Bolan told him frankly. "Like where Seiji Kuwahara and the Yakuza fit in."

There was a momentary silence, and when Reese responded his tone was less hostile.

"We're working on it. Kuwahara runs a restaurant on Paradise — the Lotus Garden. We know he's connected, but that's where it ends. No wants or warrants out of Tokyo, nothing."

"What about the hit team?"

"Zip, so far. If we turn anything at all I'm betting on illegals."

"There'll be more where those came from," the Executioner advised him.

"You telling fortunes now?"

"Just playing the percentages. Your town is primed to blow wide open."

"Never happens, fella. No one wants to kill the golden goose."

"The rules are changing, Captain. There's a wild card in the game. No way of telling where the chips are going to fall this time."

Reese stiffened, thrusting his jaw out.

"Whichever way they fall, we'll be there."

"Picking up the pieces?"

"Playing by the book, dammit. Chapter and verse."

"So you start out three innings behind." The captain's face and tone were sour.

"Tell me something I don't know already." Bolan shifted gears. "I understand the Daily Beacon's working on a series that could turn some heads around your town."

Reese raised an eyebrow.

"It's news to me — no pun intended."

Bolan frowned.

"You sound surprised."

Reese shook his head.

"Not really. Old Jack Goldblume's always got an ax to grind."

"Who's Goldblume?"

"He's the Beacon's owner, editor — you name it. Likes to call himself the "Voice of Vegas." Been around forever. Mostly he takes potshots at the IRS or FBI. He doesn't care much for you federal boys."

"His privilege."

"Yeah." The captain's tone informed him that the feeling might be mutual. "It's funny no one briefed you on him..."

Bolan's gut was telling him that it was time to disengage, and he could feel the numbers falling in his head.

"I assume that I can count on your cooperation, Captain?"

Reese's face was devoid of all expression as he answered.

"By the book, LaMancha. You've got your job; I've got mine."

Bolan nodded.

"Fair enough. We understand each other."

As he retraced his steps along the corridor to daylight, Bolan thought he understood the homicide detective. Reese had the typical Nevadan's thinly veiled suspicion of the federal government, the world outside the borders of his state.

The local leaders often seemed to see themselves besieged by hostile outside forces, persecuted by the blue-nosed moralists who stubbornly refused to see the silver lining of a legal gambling economy. Reports of mob influence in the industry were commonly dismissed as slander or, providing evidence of guilt was overwhelming, minimized as transient aberrations in a squeaky-clean administration. Never mind that local politicians from the legislature to the highest of judicial benches had been busted and convicted for accepting bribes from mobsters. Never mind that union leaders closely tied to La Cosa Nostra had been climbing into bed with top official spokesmen for a generation now, and federal agents had been lately capturing their antics with videocameras for all to see. Nevadans by and large were still defensive and defiant, stubbornly refusing to believe. And it was not, Bolan knew, that most of the state's citizens were actively involved in the corruption. Not that they supported it, by any means.

But he had seen the same phenomenon in action elsewhere — locals closing ranks against the allegations from outside that seemed to signify a "ganging up" by hostile forces, amounting to a persecution complex in extreme examples. Bolan hoped that Captain Reese would not turn out to be one of those extreme examples. The captain of homicide could do a lot to help clean out his town if he was willing to admit the dirt existed in the first place. It would take some courage, sure, to go against the men whose money talked in Vegas, but it could be done. With any luck at all, Mack Bolan would be showing Reese the way within the next few hours. And Las Vegas was all primed and ready for his kind of action, certainly. The different factions of the Mob were at one another's throats and the media was standing by in hopes of giving them some overdue exposure.

Everything Bolan needed was in readiness, except a handle on the Yakuza, and what exactly they wanted in this desert town so many thousand miles from home.

Not what, precisely; that was obvious in Vegas, the town that skimming built. In actuality the question was more how they planned to go about achieving what they sought.

And whether Bolan could move fast enough to stop them short of resolution. If he could not, then Las Vegas was in for a bloody season of suffering. If he could — well, there would still be blood enough to go around.

The warrior did not care for the alternatives, but he was used to playing by the rules that others had established for him. It was how you bent the rules that made the game your own. And Bolan was playing to win in Las Vegas. All the way.