Don Pendleton - Chicago Wipe-Out

Meninghetti growled, "Well now wait a minute, Jake. Are you going out there too?"

"Sure I am."

"You'll be walking right into it!" the caporegime replied despairingly.

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't." Vecci's mind seemed to be made up. Even his good humor was returning. He winked at Pops Spanno and said, "Go out and tell the boys to get ready. We're loadin' up."

"Loading up in what ?" Captain Hamilton groaned.

"Stop worrying, we're not riding in your bubble-gum machines, that's for sure. I ain't dumb enough to go rolling in there in police cars. Save about two out, and send the rest of them on, Ham."

"What're we saving two for?"

"Escorts, dammit. You ride the front one, and you move through this town damn quick, you hear?"

Hamilton protested, "Jesus Christ, I can't go running off just..."

"The hell you can't," Vecci calmly told him. "The only thing can stop you is a bullet in the head."

The Captain's face turned a beefy red. He spun about and slammed out of the office.

Joliet Jake grinned and told Meninghetti, "Okay, Mario. Let's get moving. Get those crew wagons around in front. I want 'em out there in five minutes and loadin'."

The crew chiefs were scrambling to their feet. Meninghetti told them, "Come on outside, boys. We'll run through this once over lightly, and let's not make no mistakes." As the men filed out, he turned to his boss and asked him, "Are you going to call ahead?"

"Sure I'm going to call ahead. You think I'm nuts or something? Damn right I'm calling ahead."

"Are we going armed?"

"You kidding? You go with every damn arm you got!"

The caporegime frowned and followed his crewchiefs out of the office.

Joliet Jake was already on the phone and punching the number for Giovanni's. It would not be proper to call Don Gio direct, not at a time like this, but Gio would get the word relayed to him. He'd better. There was only one way to straighten out a misunderstanding like this — well, two ways — and Jake knew exactly what they were. It would either take soft words or hot lead.

Either way, Jake sure wasn't waiting until half his soldiers had gone over to the other side before he started working toward that understanding. Hell no. Joliet Jake hadn't survived forty years on the streets on that kind of dumbness.

A taxicab was idling at the curb in front of Manny's Posh. The meter was ticking and the cabbie was chatting amiably with his fare, a tall man in a gray suit and topcoat. A gray Homburg was worn square across the forehead, a leather patch covered one eye, and an unlit pipe was clamped loosely between his teeth. A small square briefcase sat on the seat beside him.

Another man in gray emerged from the club and stepped in front of the cab to peer agitatedly down the street.

The cabbie told his passenger, "Okay, he must be the one. That's Captain Hamilton out of Central."

The man with the eyepatch murmured his thanks and dropped a twenty dollar bill over the seat as he exited.

Hamilton had moved into the street and was waving down an approaching vehicle, a police cruiser. The cruiser pulled to the curb behind the taxi; Hamilton walked along the street side of the cab, moving with care on the freezing surface, and was intercepted beside the police car by the man with the eyepatch.

"Are these your vehicles, Captain?" the man snapped.

"Who wants to know?" Hamilton replied, eyeing the man warily.

The guy showed him a thin smile and said, "Tell you what, Captain. I won't mention your name if you won't ask mine."

"Okay, what's up?" Hamilton said, sighing.

"Jim has had about a dozen calls about this police parade you've got here. He says, for God's sake, break it up."

"You tell Jim I've been trying to do that for nearly half an hour. And you tell him, furthermore, that something's going to have to be done about that crazy old man in there. I believe he still thinks he's living in the 1950's or something."

"Jake can be hard to take sometimes. But so can a two block lineup of police cars. What's the idea?"

"Aw, that old lunatic got this wild plan for planting torpedoes in police cars and running Bolan to ground. I think he wanted to show the youngbloods around here that the old men still have plenty of the oldtime muscle. Anyway, he thought he was going to personally capture Mack Bolan and proudly display his head on a warpole or something. But I've got him talked out of it. I was just coming out to send the cars away."

"I recommend that you do so without further delay."

"Yeah. Listen, can you get a message to Jim for me?"

"I'll try."

"Jake has gone plumb crazy. He thinks there's a contract let on him or something, and he's going out to Giovanni's now for a showdown. He's taking a big head party, and I've been elected to escort them out there. Tell Jim to for God's sake do what he can to head this off. There's no telling what might happen. All of us might be in for a whole lot of hell."

"You're not escorting him with all these cars, I hope."

"No, he very kindly settled for a two-car escort. Look, I've got to get this moving, so..."

"By all means. Do me a favor first. Get me a ride to Central."

"I'll call in a car," the Captain agreed. "Don't forget that message."

"Okay, and listen... a word of advice. If things do start going to hell — well, when it gets down to sheer survival remember that first and last you're a cop. Get me?"

"Thanks, I'm learning that fast."

Captain Hamilton leaned into the cruiser and reached for the radio microphone. The man with the eyepatch limped along the sidewalk and took a station at the curb where the taxi had been. Seconds later another cruiser pulled to the curb, the man got in, and the car sped away.

Minutes later the cruiser eased into the "officials" lane of the Central Police Station in Chicago's loop area. The tall man in the gray suit stepped out, thanked the officers, and went quickly up the steps and inside the station. He was exhibiting a barely noticeable limp, the topcoat was draped neatly over one shoulder; he carried the briefcase in one hand, the unlighted pipe in the other. As he threaded his way through the confusion of uniformed policemen and newspapermen crowding the main lobby area, the man with the eyepatch could have been taken for a police official, a lawyer, or simply a businessman on an errand with the law.

The man was, in fact, none of these. He was the most wanted "criminal" in town at the moment — he was Mack Bolan, in another daring exhibition of "role camouflage."

His uncovered eye scanned the building directory in a lightning sweep as he walked casually past and on to the back stairway, then he penetrated deeper, past the bull rooms and along teeming corridors, and into a quieter area of the building until he found the offices he sought

The plaque on the door read, Department Liaison . He entered and walked through a deserted anteroom, inspecting plaques on the three doors opening from there and selecting the one marked, Mr. McCormick, State .

Bolan rapped with his knuckles and went inside. A pudgy man of about fifty looked up from a solitaire layout on the desk, showed a visitor a sour smile, and said, "If it's business, you're too late. If it's not, then you're lost."

"Are you Josh McCormick?" Bolan asked quietly.

"That's me. Stuck in town on the worst night of the year. I guess you're not lost, eh."

"You do the liaison work between the department and the state prosecutor's office." It was a statement, not a question.

The man nodded his head, eyes narrowing in a late inspection of his guest. "I'm one of them," he conceded.

Bolan set the briefcase on the corner of the desk, opened it, and withdrew the Stein notebook. "What stuck you, Mr. McCormick?" he asked in a cold voice, "The weather — or your moonlighting job?"