Don Pendleton - The Violent Streets

"Some dude, who knows? I told you it was an outside contract, right? The customer fingers his mark, and I count the dollar signs."

"I'll want the customer's name."

Benny Copa stiffened in his swivel chair, knuckles white as he gripped the armrests. There was new fear behind his eyes that had nothing to do with Bolan and the deadly silenced Beretta inches away from his nose.

The guy was silent for a long moment, but in the end the fear of clear and present danger won out, loosening his tongue.

"Really, man, I could buy real trouble by answering questions like that."

And it seemed the guy would never quit trying.

"You have trouble, Benny," Bolan reminded him curtly. "You're trying to buy time."

There was another, shorter pause. Then Copa opened up.

"Well, hey, I only know the dude's voice, can you dig it? We made the arrangements by phone."

Bolan's answering voice was almost sad.

"You commit five soldiers without knowing the customer's name? Goodbye, Benny."

The Beretta slid out to full extension, and Bolan was tightening into the final squeeze when Copa gave a strangled little yelp and threw out both hands, palms open, as if to ward off hurtling death.

"Wait! Shit! All right, man, I'm sorry."

The Beretta never wavered from its target.

"The name," Bolan said, his voice icy.

Benny Copa was sweating profusely. He wiped his forehead with a shirtsleeve, but it didn't seem to help.

"The name's Smalley," he almost whispered, "as in Roger. Satisfied?"

"What is he to you?" Bolan asked.

Copa looked incredulous at first, and then a canny little smile crept its way across his pale, damp face.

"You really don't know, do you?" Benny said, shaking his head. "I'll be goddamned and go to hell."

Bolan waited silently, ticking off the numbers in his head and staring at one round eye along the slide of his Beretta autoloader. Copa felt the vibrations of imminent death, and started talking again.

"Roger Smalley, man... he's only the deputy P.C. for all of St. Paul, that's all."

"So what was this Smalley character after? Why did he send you to the airport? No one knew I was coming in."

Now it was Copa's turn to be genuinely in the dark. "We weren't after you, man. All I know about you is what's going down now... And that's enough, thanks."

Bolan jammed the Brigadier's muzzle against the man's sweating nose. "Keep talking facts, little man. Who were you after? And why?"

"The customer said something about a bad detective," replied Copa, fast. "He said this dick had kidnapped a girl from the hospital. I guessed we had some sort of vigilante on our hands, a guy getting away with all kinds of shit and embarrassing the Commissioner. But it was just a contract, don't you see? No big deal."

Looking into Benny Copa's frightened eyes, he had no doubt the little guy was leveling with him.

He lowered the Beretta a notch, maybe half a notch.

"Okay, Benny," he said at last. "Live."

Bolan backed away from the littered desk and toward the door opposite. He could see relief tempered with caution flood into Benny Copa's face and form. The little mobster was desperately wanting — hell, needing — to believe that he was off the hook, but he couldn't quite accept it so suddenly. As the final realization hit him, he started to regain a touch of his natural bravado.

"Jesus, fella," he said, "you really had me going there."

After a quick glance around at the bodies on the floor, he added, "You also left me a helluva mess to clean up."

"Your problem, Benny," Bolan told him curtly. "You could have gone with them."

Copa snorted, grinning from ear to ear.

"Right, hell, buttons are everywhere... dime a dozen."

The little hood seemed struck by a sudden inspiration.

"Hey, wait," he called. "Maybe we can make another deal."

Bolan paused in the doorway.

"You've got nothing else I want, guy," he told the little cannibal.

"Well, Jesus, hear me out, huh? I'll double what you're getting now. Name your price. I could use a man of your... abilities."

Bolan said nothing. He was amazed at the guy's gall in trying to buy him and his gun.

"Listen, really," the mobster prodded, "I know natural talent when I see it. These boys were no shitheads, you know? Not like the old days, hell, but okay. You didn't take them out with no friggin' beginner's luck."

Bolan remained silent, letting the guy spill his guts.

"Fact is," Copa continued, "damned few guys I ever heard of could take two men... three men... in a face-to-face. Some of the old aces maybe, but hell..."

Behind those weasel eyes, wheels were turning, gears clicking into place as an embryonic idea or suspicion took shape. Benny's face underwent subtle changes, and Mack Bolan's gut rumbled in response, feeling something coming.

"You know, if it wasn't so goddamned far out... hey, uh, listen... that wouldn't be a Beretta you're holding, would it?"

Bolan saw the end coming, inexorably, the last unknown variables falling into place behind Benny Copa' s suddenly haunted eyes.

And he nodded.

"You called it, Benny."

Copa's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, then he licked his lips and tried again.

"You're dead, guy," was all he could manage.

"So are you," Bolan told him.

And the Beretta chugged once, putting a 9mm parabellum round through Benny Copa's left eye socket and slamming him over out of sight behind the desk. There was no need to check his condition, and Bolan didn't bother.

He put Copa's place behind him swiftly, his mind occupied with his own thoughts. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the office phone began jangling overhead, loudly and insistently. There was no one up there to answer the call.

Back in his rental car and rolling, Bolan heard the grim words again in his mind. First spoken by Pol Blancanales in predawn darkness, and now, again, by the late and unlamented Benny Coppacetti.

You're supposed to be dead, guy. Dead and buried.

And yeah, theoretically, hypothetically, Mack Bolan was buried. Parts of him had been shed forever in Southeast Asia, in Pittsfield, in the final New York firestorm of his second mile against the Mafia.

It might come to pass that another part — or all of him — would be buried right there in St. Paul that very day, but he couldn't — hell, wouldn't — live in fear of the unknown and the inescapable. It was not his way, and never would be.

Mack Bolan was alive and living large.

All the way to a meeting with the assistant P.C. of St. Paul, yeah, and beyond that, if necessary, into the gates of hell itself.

From the journal of John Phoenix:

We live in a cyclical universe. It seems that everything repeats itself, and comes full circle given time. I know that to be true of life and death, love and hate. I am finding out that it is also true of war. Nothing stays the same in life or war, but in the end, nothing changes.

At one time, during one existence, the Mafia was my enemy and primary target. I believed that the disruption and destruction of their cannibalistic operations was the highest goal I could aspire to. With time, the "unwinnable" conflict resolved itself into something else, and I began to see a dim light at the end of the tunnel. And there was a victory of sorts, however temporary, but not before my war against the Mafia had gone full circle and returned to the city, to the ground where it had begun.

This is a new war, against new enemies, but I cannot escape a sense of deja vu. The circles keep on turning, and in time all the faces of the predators and victims take on a similarity that is inescapable. I begin to feel that I am fighting the old war all over again, this time dressed up in a new disguise. The names of the enemies have changed, their addresses have shifted, but down deep, where the soul rot takes root and consumes healthy tissue, they remain the same.