Chapter Fourteen

Beverly Hell

Flower Child Andromede reached into the trunk of the automobile and hastily unwrapped the felt-covered grenade launcher, affixed it to his rifle, and snatched up a prepared pouch of rifle grenades. Then he slammed the trunk door and jogged around the end of the car and ran along a six-foot-high wall that fronted the property directly adjacent to the DiGeorge estate. About fifty feet before reaching the thick hedgerow that marked DiGeorge's line, Andromede vaulted to the top of the wall and slithered along on his belly for another twenty feet, halting in the protective overhang of a date-palm frond.

He could see the rear of the DiGeorge house clearly from this position and could even hear small groups of men moving noisily about the grounds, laughing and passing wisecracks back and forth. The entire place was brightly lighted. Two men were playing toss with a tennis ball beneath the floodlights of the tennis court. Another group was at the opposite side of the yard, rolling small balls along a luxuriously green runway. Bolan had been right, and then some. Andromede could spot a full company on this end of the estate alone. He smiled and fitted a grenade onto the launcher. It was going to be "liberation night" for quite a few earthbound entities.

Andromede, however, did not feel quite ready for liberation himself. He carefully calculated an assault pattern to provide him the best possible chance for a successful withdrawal, arranged his grenades along the wall for a quick pickup-and-reload capability, then quietly awaited the signal. He was vaguely wondering where Chopper was, when a thick shadow detached itself from the hedges just forward of his position. He immediately recognized the squat bulk of Fontenelli and softly cleared his throat to signal his position. Fontenelli moved into the shadow of the wall and advanced silently, to stand just beneath him.

"You see okay from up there?" Fontenelli hissed.

"Perfect," Andromede whispered. "I'm going to walk 'im in from right to left, up by the house. That oughta jar the piss out of 'em."

"Hope Bolan knows what he's doing," Fontenelli said after a brief silence. That joint is crawling alive with some of the meanest hoods in the country."

"Better keep it quiet," Andromede suggested. "Four of them were walking along the hedge there a couple of minutes ago."

"I wanta tell you somethin'," Fontenelli hissed.

"Make it quick."

"You know 'bout my old lady and her screwin' around while I was in 'Nam."

"Yeah, I know."

"We got two kids back in Jersey."

"Yeah, I know."

"If I don't make it, I want my bucks to go to my kids. To the kids, not to Miss Hotpants."

"You'll make it, Chopper."

"Yeah, but if I don't..."

"Okay, don't worry—I'll take care of it."

"Maybe you won't make it either. Tell Bolan, on the radio."

"Tell him yourself."

"Can't. I lost it."

"You lost your radio?"

"Yeah. Somewhere back there in those hedges. Damn harness came loose."

"Stay close to me then."

"Yeah. Tell Bolan, eh?"

"Okay. Now shut up."

Fontenelli moved silently away. Andromede watched him drop to the ground and crawl into the hedges; then he lost sight of him. Chopper's concern had momentarily unnerved the young Puerto Rican. What the hell—they were all fully aware of the chances. That was the name of the game, wasn't it? Live until liberation. Liberate the other guy before he can liberate you. That was the game. Andromede shivered involuntarily. He was not yet quite ready to end the game, despite all his bravado concerning life and death. Liberation was much easier to contemplate when it was happening to the other guy. Andromede cleared his mind of the unessentials, kept his ears open for the signal from Bolan, and cast his contemplations toward the liberation of others.

Then a distant, double cra-aack of twin high-powered rifles firing simultaneously split the calm and froze Andromede's contemplations. Someone at the far side of the house was yelling. The cra-aacks were coming in rapid succession now, and men were running about excitedly in the yard next door, cursing loudly and calling to one another.

Andromede smiled grimly and tensed at the trigger, his ear bent to the small radio. The liberation was on.

Julian DiGeorge did not like the attitudes of some of his nephews. Some of them seemed more worried about their standing in the community than about the threat to the family. And it seemed that everybody wanted to talk about the forthcoming police roustings more than they wanted to plan for the already established threat to Mack Bolan. Leonardo Cacci, the smooth, college-educated nephew at DiGeorge's right hand, was on the board of three banks, he was coining up big in local politics, and he was very unhappy with the thought of taking up a gun and taking on a fight that was obviously so far beneath his personal image.

Cacci's ivory smile might charm the female voters of his congressional district, but it sometimes made DiGeorge want to throw up. DiGeorge's underworld earnings had provided the money that built the braces that had kept the ivory in that smile. Cacci was a nephew; it was one thing to put on legit airs in public, quite another to try to snow Uncle Deej with "one's" responsibility to "one's" community. DiGeorge wondered just how far Leonardo would survive without the constant propping of family money. "One" would not survive far, that was certain.

Then there was Johnny Trieste. Yes, there was always Johnny Trieste, it seemed. He sat at DiGeorge's left, a great, hulking pig of a man who had never found it possible to become a "one." Johnny had been around for as long as DiGeorge could remember, and he'd never changed one hair, not one fat wrinkle. He spoke English with the overtone accent of a nightclub comic, and he had never learned to read it or to write it—but he could count American bucks. Yes, he could certainly count American bucks.

Johnny had never been anything more than a bagman, but he'd been the best bagman in the business. And nobody could complain about a man who'd become the best at anything—if that was all he wanted to do. But Johnny was sort of embarrassing, at times, to be around. He did not blend into the new environment, the new circles—he did not even blend into the family any more. He had been a loyal Maffiano, though, loyal to the very core.

And he'd been around long enough that he had a certain influence in the family councils. Right now, Johnny Trieste was terribly concerned over the possible police harassment. Johnny had been dodging a murder conviction for thirty years. He had made a courtroom escape in New York just moments before the reading of the death sentence and had made his way west and enjoyed the protection of the family all these years. Still, each potential contact with the police sent him into tremors. DiGeorge felt a sympathy for the old Maffiano, but ... business was business, and the family came first.

Johnny Trieste was hunched over the table, staring into a glass of wine, and Leonardo Cacci was regarding him with one of those phony ivory smiles. DiGeorge was saying, "Look—first things first, Let's talk about..."

And then something had happened to the back of Johnny's head; it seemed to just burst open for no apparent reason. At that exact moment, Leonardo's smile disappeared in a shower of ivory and frothy blood. For a startled instant, DiGeorge thought that Johnny's shattered head had flown over into Leonardo's mouth. Johnny's huge bulk settled onto the table in a way that left no doubt in DiGeorge's mind that the thirty-year-old death sentence had finally been executed. Leonardo's head had jerked back suddenly, the body following and rocking the chair onto its rear legs; then over he went, chair and all. Only then did the twin cra-aacks announce the reason behind it all.