Chicago Wipe-Out

It was a bloodmobile.

12

Battle site

Bolan's battle plan was simple in conception but delicately complex in its execution. A lone man in a frontal assault could never hope to overcome the staggering array of forces pitted against him; Bolan held no illusions in this respect. He had known from the begi

Jake Vecci, boss of the Loop, had emerged as Bolan's bonus baby, the big wallop of the battle order. Greed and fear, the human factors that had combined to create the Cosa Nostra, were now being recombined in Chicago — in only the slightest variation of the original formula — to destroy it. Bolan was the chemist, Chicago was his laboratory, and the most primitive ills of mankind were his materials.

And yes, he just might shake this kingdom down, after all.

The nagging worry in Bolan's mind at the moment, however, was that the larger enemy, the truerot that had drawn him magnetically to this troubled old city, actually lay outside the kingdom — that is, outside the family organization itself. Wherever Bolan had gone in the past to battle the syndicate, he had found a condition wherein the mob seemed to be both the cause and the effect of organized evil. This did not appear to be the case at Chicago.

The Stein intelligence bothered Bolan. Oh, the mob was well represented in those notes, okay — they were just as busy in Chicago as anywhere, manipulating and looting and raping their human environment with all the gusto characteristic of Mafiaentrenchment everywhere.

But... Bolan could not shake the growing conviction that the mob's position at Chicago was a unique one. This was a "made" city, yes, but the Cosa Nostrahad not made it. They were simply a part of the fix and, Bolan suspected, a relatively small part. Actually, it seemed, the city had "made" the mob, not vice versa. The iron grip of power that held this town in virtual slavery did not appear as a typical exercise in Mafia domination. Mafiosiwere not astute politicians, they did not have the finesse nor even the interest required for the delicate maneuverings that kept a political machine functioning and self-perpetuating.

When the mob really got their hooks into a town, they simply raped it, sucked it dry, and left it writhing in ruin. Like Reading, Pe

So why hadn't Chicago been sucked dry, if the mob had truly been in charge here for so many decades? The answer, in Bolan's troubled mind, was that the mob was simply operating a franchise in this town. So okay. Who issued the franchise? Who was the actual "Mr. Big" of this fantastic empire of corruption and clout, an empire which — according to the Stein intelligence — was powerful enough already to dominate bothpolitical parties in some areas of the state, send handpicked men to Congress and to the legislature and city councils, install federal judges, and even strongly influence the national political organizations and conventions.

Cosa di tutti Cosi, eh? Bolan smiled wryly to himself. It was a mere imitation, a second-generation blueprint. Chicago, it seemed, already had its own version of The Big Thing — and Chicago did not belong to the Cosa Nostra.

The Executioner sighed regretfully and shook venal Chicago out of his thoughts. Somewhere he had read that "a people have the government they deserve." Bolan would let the people of Chicago worry about Chicago — and maybe, he decided, people all over the country should start worrying about Chicago. His job was impossible enough as already laid out — and his war was with the Mafia, not with an entire American city and a political way of life.

This shaking-out process helped. A little, It defined the battle-ground and put the enemy in better focus. Bolan did not now "want" The Big Four — he merely wanted the syndicate member of that cartel, "Don Gio" Giova

The supper club known as Giova

Through some mysterious reasoning, it was later decided that the water-recreation plan was "unfeasible" — and, by an equally mysterious set of circumstances, the plot of parkland which fronted the river was "acquired" from the county by a recently incorporated firm identified as Club's Management, Inc. for the ostensible purpose of constructing and operating a public entertainment facility at that location.

The "public entertainment facility" which emerged was, of course, Giova

Just south of Gio's stolen grounds lay the promised but only half-completed (nine holes) public golf course; directly west and across a specially constructed road lay the park proper, covering eight hundred and sixty acres of mostly unusable and therefore unused scrubland. With the river at Ms back, Don Gio had a rather secluded setting for his night time playground. Only to the north did he have neighbors, a straggling line of upper middle class "estate-ettes" which Don Giova

The club itself was an imposing structure of American colonial architecture which, under standard construction procedures, would have cost perhaps a million dollars to build and outfit. It had not cost Arturo Giova