Don Pendleton - Continental Contract

Silent rage vibrated across the telephone connection as Quick Tony Lavagni awaited the verbal reaction from the man at Castle Farms. His fingers were going numb on the instrument and he had moved the other hand up to help support the growing weight of it when the cutting voice finally found words of expression.

"I thought I told you," came the hot-ice response, "that I just wanted him spotted and tailed. When did I tell you, Tony, that I wanted Bolan snatched and hustled off somewheres?"

"That was their idea, Mr. Castiglione," Lavagni explained in humble misery. "I told those jerks how to handle it, but they had to get ambitious. I tried to tell 'em this Bolan wasn't no ordinary number, but they just had to find it out for theirselves. I told 'em..."

"Fuck what you told 'em!" Arnie Farmer yelled. "Now you listen to me, Tony, and you make sure you get it right this time. You take that black judas of yours, and you take a crew — a full crew, you hear? — and you get your ass over there. You shake that goddam place apart and you shake that bastard loose, you hear me? And you bring 'im back here in one piece. Now is there anything hard to understand about that, Tony?"

"No, Mr. Castiglione. I got it."

"Great. I hope so for your sake, Tony. How many frogs you say bit the dust over there?"

"I get it about six or seven, plus one of Monzoor's personal crew — a boy name of Shippy Catano."

"Uh huh. And so how many are you taking with you, Tony?"

"I guess I better take at least a dozen."

"You shithead! Whattaya mean, a dozen! Now, Tony, listen to me! You ain't thinking! Don't talk to me any dozen! Listen, you get out here, you hear me? Bring Fat Angelo and Sammy Shiv, and I guess you better bring that nigger. A dozen! Listen, brains, I want that boy! You hear?"

"I hear, Mr. Castiglione."

"So get it out here, and I mean right now. We're going to plan this thing to the last step, and we're gonna do it all ourselves. No more Frenchmen, you hear? Those guys fight with their feet and fuck with their face, and I guess they must think with their balls. I don't want nothing more to do with 'em. You hear?"

"Yessir, Mr. Castiglione, I hear."

"You better be here in one hour."

Lavagni assured his Capo that he would, and grimly rung off. He turned to Wilson Brown with an angry scowl and told him, "Arnie Farmer thinks he wants Bolan. Listen, Wils, I'm up to here with that guy. It's come down to this, Wils — it's him or me. You hear me? It's him or me."

"I hear you, man," the big Negro replied, grinning. "But I guess you better tell it to Bolan."

"I'll tell 'im, Wils. You think I can't tell him? You think I been that long off the street?"

The grin left the black man's face as he followed Quick Tony out of the room. He was feeling a bit sorry for his boss. Lavagni would tell it to the devil himself rather than face Castiglione with another failure. Yeah. That Bolan cat sure better look out. Desperation could make a mean enemy. Wils Brown knew it. Wils Brown was an expert on desperation, man.

In Paris, a dream was in the process of crumbling, an empire which never had been was now in danger of never being, and Thomas "Monzoor" Rudolfi was an unhappy and shaken man. America's silent ambassador to France, serving the subsurface society, Rudolfi was a forty-five-year-old lawyer and American citizen. He had lived in Paris since the early sixties and was officially regarded by the French government as a broker and advisor to American business interests in France.

Rudolfi moved in the best circles of Parisian society, maintained a chateau near the city which was frequently the scene of lavish weekend parties, and he kept a townhouse within sight of the Arc de Triomphe. He was close to many highly-placed government officials and politicians, was on a first-name basis with various French industrialists and financiers, and was frequently seen at social functions involving the higher echelons of France's cultural mediums. A bachelor, his name at various times had been linked with certain female notables of the theatre, films, and the fashion world. Thomas Rudolfi, a blood nephew of one of the founding fathers of La Cosa Nostra in America, had found the good life in France.

His had been a career of frustration, however, all the foregoing notwithstanding. Monzoor was a man of little personal wealth or power in the family hierarchy, though he in fact orchestrated a wide variety of the syndicate's interests in this area of the world. The Mafia, in its worldwide operations, resembled a feudalistic monarchy with strong imperialistic leanings, with each feudal chief, or Capo, an autonomous imperialist in his own right. Foreign "territories" had been staked out, cultivated, and jealously guarded by individual American families — then welded together for mutual strength under La Commissione, or the Council of Capos. This council, naturally, was U.S. based — and this brand of imperialism was even more invisible than the behind-scenes maneuverings on home soil.

Thus there was no such thing, per se, as a French Mafia. There were local mobs, home-owned and operated, but finding cohesion only in the franchise-like manipulations of the America families of La Cosa Nostra. Some American families maintained direct representation to their French interests, but on the broader scale of international syndication, Thomas Rudolfi was the indisputable authority.

Thus, Monzoor Rudolfi's dream of empire. He was, literally, in the Commissione's diplomatic service, directly serving the foreign interests of the American Mafia in their internationally syndicated strata of "business." He was also lobbyist and payoff man, arbiter and counselor, a central point of contact for the various American families who were doing business in France, and a liaison between the syndicate and non-syndicated crime elements who plied the French trade routes. After nearly a decade of such service, Monzoor had established links and broad avenues of influence which, in everything but fact, had enthroned him as Monsieur Mafia of France.

His income was derived from a fixed percentage of business grosses, as determined by the Commissione. He was sternly forbade any "independent action" on his own behalf, it being generally felt by the Council of Capos that a conflict of interest could thereby arise. As fair exchange for this latter restriction, however, the Commissione provided their ambassador of crime with a substantial living allowance and expense account, enabling him to move about freely and effectively in the higher strata of French society and thus better serve the masters at home.

Somehow, though, for Monzoor Rudolfi, this was not enough. There was nothing in this arrangement for the soul of a man, nothing to placate that insistent little voice from the inner man that cried for self-realization and fulfillment. If justice were to be done, Thomas Rudolfi would be officially declared Capo of France. It was his due. Instead of all the wealth moving toward America, with only a dribbling percentage left behind for the man who had made it all possible, the profits should remain in France and let the driblets cross the Atlantic. For some years now the conviction had been growing in the Rudolfi breast that this justice would inevitably one day find its level in the natural birth of the Rudolfi Family of France.

But now, on this particularly gloomy Paris day, Monzoor Rudolfi was a particularly troubled man. From the window of his townhouse study the massive architecture of the Arc de Triomphe was just becoming visible in a dissipating fog. He had moments earlier completed his third trans-Atlantic telephone conversation of the day — one of those guarded, heavily coded, and utterly depressing dialogues which usually left him with a mild case of the inner shakes. This one had left him with the outer shakes. Not only his dream but his lifestyle, his image — indeed, perhaps his very life — seemed to be in some precarious balance which was entirely beyond his direct control.