Miami Massacre

As though to confirm Lavangetta's conclusions, the wail of sirens rose up faintly in the distance. He said, "I knew it!"

"It's a long ways off, Ciro," Di Carlo assured him.

"Just the same, it makes me nervous. I wish the Talifero brothers would report in. I'd sure like to know . . ."

After a brief silence, Di Carlo said, "You should have gone out to the boat, like the others. That's the safest place, Ciro. You should've gone."

"All of 'em didn't go yet, Sal. And that's why I didn't either. Look down there and tell me who you see gossiping by the pool."

Di Carlo craned over the railing, "Looks like Georgie the Sausage Man and Augie Mary."

"That's exactly right, and I'll tell you also exactly what it is George the Weenie is try'na put in Augie's head!"

Di Carlo soberly nodded his head. "He's really been pitchin', Ciro."

Lavangetta snorted a string of obscene words, then added, "I ain't going to stand for it. You know that. I won't take that, Sally."

"I wouldn't take it either," Di Carlo agreed.

After a brief silence, Lavangetta fervently declared, "I wish this Bolan would come in here, Sal."

"He's going to be a dead son of a bitch if he does," Di Carlo growled.

"Yeah, but so might somebody else, Sally, if you know what I mean."

Di Carlo thought about that for a moment, then: "I guess I get you, Ciro."

"Yeah, I guess you do. I wish he'd come in here before everybody makes the boat, that's what. And I wish he'd blast a certain weenie king right in his liver sausage, that's also what."

The sirens were becoming louder. Di Carlo sniffed the air and said, "I smell smoke, Ciro. Maybe this Bolan is already here and is right now burning the joint down."

Lavangetta laughed quietly. "Maybe somebody is going to think so anyways, Sally."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"This Bolan" was not at that moment burning the joint down, but he was quietly casing it from a soft drop some 200 yards down the beach. The binoculars could not give him the full details, but his mind supplied what the eyes omitted and the general lay of the place came out into a quite logical extension. He studied the bell tower and the men standing on the balcony just below, then shifted to the adjoining roofs and what he could see of the beach area and the galleon. Hardmen were everywhere. They patrolled the beach, perched upon the otherwise deserted galleon, and hovered in the shadows of the red slate roofs. It was a hardsite, no mistake about that.

Bolan's attention returned to the men on the balcony of the penthouse. The one who was waving his arms about seemed vaguely familiar. Bolan racked his memory, sliding through the newspaper and magazine photos he had studied so often, and then he had his "make." It was Ciro Lavangetta, a bit heavier in the jowls than his pictures indicated, but Ciro nonetheless. The man with the worried face standing beside him Bolan could not make, but he would remember him if he ever saw him again.

Bolan wondered what would happen if he were to lob a round of HE into that bell tower. If he could work in about a hundred meters closer, he could do it . . . but then he might lose his angle in the intervening rooftop. As he debated the question, the two men left the balcony and went inside.

Bolan was a bit elated around the core of cold deadness which had settled into him upon finding Margarita's mutilated body. He had located a Capo; undoubtedly others were on hand also. It was a hardsite, and that usually meant VIPs present. He fell to studying the terrain between his soft drop and the hotel. If he could find a rise down there somewhere, maybe he could get that angle he needed, and maybe that angle would give him the passport he needed for entry into the hardsite. One way or another, he meant to get in there.

Salvatore Di Carlo was greatly disturbed and excitedly whispering "Dammit, Ciro, I'm telling you — cold crying Christ, it ain't worth it. You can't just take it on yourself to-"

"Stop telling me what I can't do!" Lavangetta replied furiously. "The old weenie's got one foot in the grave already anyway, he's got hardening of the dollar signs in his arteries, and I'm not taking no more shit from that weenie!"

"Just th' same, Ciro, you know better than me that-"

"That's right, I know better than you, Sally. Listen, he's done everything to me all day except shiv me. And if you could only see, I probably have shivs sticking out all over me just the same. If I'd been screwed by that old cock knocker every time he thought about it, I'd have a hole like Madame Bazonga."

"Well, it's your funeral I guess, Ciro."

"What do you mean, my funeral? It's our funeral, Sally, if we let Georgie make weenies out of our territory. Isn't it? Our territory, Sally."

"Yeah I figured you'd be getting around to that, Ciro."

"You better be damn glad I am. It's just you and me now, Sally, don't forget that. You and me. And listen, I don't want no fucking around on this job. I'm hoping, Sal, that you're understanding what I am telling you."

"Sure, I understand you, Ciro," Di Carlo replied in a defeated voice. "But I guess you better tell me exactly what you've got in mind."

"What I got in mind, Sally, is bleedin' the weenie with a Bolan bite."

"Shit, you say the fu

Ha

A uniformed patrolman followed Ha

"I would not be at all surprised," Ha

"Sir?"

"Never mind. Any make on the girl yet?"

"No sir. Except that she's Cuban, and she's wearing-"

"Hell I know all that!"

"We don't have an identification, captain."

"All right. You stay right here with the car and you don't let anyone touch it, I mean not the chief himself, until the lab boys release it. Then you get it down to the police garage and you seal it up tight. You tell the lab people that I want something to definitely relate those charred corpses to this vehicle. I want physical evidence."

"Yes sir."

Ha

"Twelve, sir," came the reply.

"All right, release six of those and send 'em over here. We'll assign definite stations while they're en route. What'll it take, about an hour?"

"Half that if we blue-light them, Captain."

"All right, blue-light them. Next I want a Dade alert call. I want every man on the job, and it'll take a doctor's statement to alibi any absence. You get them in and assembled and I'll have instructions by the time I get in. Have they gotten anything from Tommy Ja

"No sir, but he's conscious and they're still trying. He's in the room right next to Lt. Wilson, by the way."

"Okay, I'm coming in. Get those calls going."

Ha

Bolan had completed his recon and the picture was entirely readable to his mind. No one, it appeared, was going to bed. The patio gardens were filled with seemingly relaxed and congenial men, sitting around tables, talking, laughing, drinking — living it up. Except for the hardmen who were placed strategically about the perimeters, the Hacienda reeked with party atmosphere. Only a couple of details belied this. First and most graphic, no women were present. This was a large item. Secondly, the waiters did not move like waiters. They were clumsy, and frequently dropped things, and seemed to forever be scrambling their orders, producing an almost comic opera effect with much good-natured kidding and heckling from those being served.