Balefires Read online

  The directional mine on the Volkswagen's roof sawed them down with over a thousand steel pellets.

  Tullio's chauffeur hammered at his door, wedged by the force of the explosion. The four-inch glass of the windshield was fogged with shatter marks. The church facade was a haze of powdered stone; fresh splinters raised a hundred rosettes against the dark wood of the doors.

  The steps of the church were an abattoir. In the middle of it sat Enrico Tullio, screaming like one of the damned. Much of the blood splashing him now was his own.

  ***

  "Seventeen fucking bodies," screamed Big Tom Mullens, "and you didn't get Tullio! He'll use an H-bomb on us now if he has to!"

  "Tullio won't use anything," Nick said unconcernedly. He opened his black eyes and stared full at Mullens. The heavy gang-boss felt the impact. His stomach sucked in and he used the back of his right fist to wipe spittle from his mouth.

  "Tullio lost his guts through the holes that Claymore put in him," amplified Smokie Joe from the chair he had leaned back against the wall. "Sure, he'll live. He'll set up somewhere else, maybe go back to Chi and crawl to the boys who backed him for the takeover here. Butyou've seen the last of him, Big Tom. Every time he hears your name he'll remember the blast and the blood pouring down the stone beside him. When you play for keeps, you play the man; and Tullio knows now he can't play as hard as you."

  The phone rang, loud and terrible in the silent room. Danny Mullens bit blood from his lower lip and backed against the wall. Big Tom stared at the phone as if it were a cobra clamped on his leg.

  "Go ahead, Big Tom," rolled Smokie Joe's smooth voice."It can't be worse than you're already thinking, can it?"

  Mullens shot him a glance full of violence. He had no one to back a play, though, beyond a terrified sixteen-year-old and a bookkeeper shock-stoned to immobility. He turned his anger on the caller instead, snarling, "Hello!" into the receiver. His red Irish face changed as he listened, moving through neutral blankness to beaming, incredulous triumph. "Sure," he boomed, "but you got one hour. If you can't get through the hospital bullshit by then, then God have mercy on you, Tullio-because I sure as Hell won't."

  Whooping, Big Tom slammed down the receiver and swung over the table as if it were a vaulting horse. His arms embraced the two torpedoes. In his bubbling happiness he did not notice that they were still as coldly aloof as when he thought he had been tongue-lashing them for failure.

  "Time to talk about payment, isn't it, Big Tom?" suggested Smokie Joe easily.

  "Pay? Oh, Christ, yeah," Mullens said with startled generosity."Look, what do you guys really want for what you done?"

  "What you promised," said bone-pale Angelo. "Half the take my girls pull in."

  "And half of what I turn from skag," Nick added. "That'll be plenty when a few kids get strung out and start pushing it to their friends."

  "Huh?" Big Tom said. "Jesus, nobody could get hooked on the shit that gets out here. It's already been cut fifteen to one."

  "I've got contacts in Asia," Nick grinned. "What I move'll be pure as Ivory Soap."

  His words jogged a scrap of newsreel in Big Tom's memory."You were in Viet Nam, weren't you?"he asked."That's where you learned to use one bomb to set up the real one out in front."

  "We were in Nam," Angelo agreed with a smile that would have made a shark flinch. "We were sort of instructing there."

  Lod Mahoney stepped to Mullens' side and caught him by the wrist."Tom," he pleaded, "for the love of God, you don't mean to go into heroin? There's money, there's all the money we need in numbers. You know the people you got to deal with in drugs and whores."

  "Money?"sneered Smokie Joe from the other side."Peanuts! If you stick with that, you'll be a set-up for somebody else like Tullio who knows what can be done by a guy who's willing to. And if you welsh on us now, Big Tom, you won't have our help the next time it happens. What'll it be?"

  Mullens tongued both corners of his lips, looking from Mahoney to the expectant violence of the two torpedoes."I gave my word," he said at last."I'll back anything you need to set up."

  Their smiles dreadful reflections of one another, Nick and Angelo stepped to either side of the whimpering bookkeeper. "Smart cookie," said Smokie Joe. Nick's fist smashed Lod beneath the breastbone. As Mahoney doubled over, Angelo punched him in the back with enough power to pop a rib audibly. The plump man writhed on the floor like a crushed dog.

  "He ain't dead," Nick said."He ain't even unconscious. But his spleen's busted and he'll bleed out in ten, twenty minutes."

  Danny Mullens turned his face to the wall and vomited.

  "Get rid of the meat, boys," Smokie Joe ordered. "Never trust somebody who gets religion," he added earnestly to Big Tom as Nick and Angelo carried Mahoney out the door."They're worse than the ones who've been goody-goody all the time. They think they've got something to make up for, and they don't mind putting your ass in the hot seat if they decide it's the 'right' thing to do."

  The forelegs of Joe's chair thumped the floor as he stood. He tapped Big Tom playfully on the shoulder. "Come on, give us a smile. We're going places." Big Tom shook himself, a great bull of a man tearing loose the jaws of an emotion that troubled him. He forced a bloodless smile. "Yeah, up." "In a manner of speaking," said Smokie Joe.

  "I can't believe this," said Big Tom Mullens, shoving the account book across the scarred table.

  "You think I'm cheating you?"asked Smokie Joe without rancor."I'm not. And Nick and Angelo will keep their part of the bargain."

  "It's not that I think you're dragging me down," Mullens admitted, frowning perplexedly at the slim figure. Smokie Joe had proven as perfect an accountant as he had been an operations man before Lod's-death. "It's-well, Hell, Joe; I don't see how Nick could bring in thismuch, starting from scratch with no street organization. And Angelo running a cat-house in a college town-Christ, he could sell ice to Eskimos."

  Joe laughed in a satisfied way, a father preparing to explain to his son how he has gotten the stalled lawnmower to work."There's no secret about Nick," he said. "Sure, people push skag for money; but the best pushers are the ones who've just been turned on to it themselves. They're riding the crest, they're happy, and they want all their friends to be up there with them. God's a white powder to them, and they've got just as much enthusiasm as Paul the Apostle did."

  Smokie Joe's laughter as he stood was suddenly a terrible thing. He faced the window for a rippling but unshaded view through the Lexan panels."And these kids, they're so smart. They 'know' they can't get hooked if they only snort the stuff, it doesn't put enough in their bloodstream. Only they don't know that what we sell is 97% pure heroin-not until it's too late for them to care."

  Big Tom pressed his temples. The wealth that had trickled, then poured in over the past months had not improved his appearance. His suits were tailored silk, but his belly had begun to slop over his belt and sweat quickly marked whatever he wore. Perhaps his hair had not really thinned and it was only the heightened ruddiness of his face that made it seem so. "What about Angelo, then?" he asked.

  Smokie Joe turned. "You sell a customer what no one will give him," he said quietly."I think a tour will do better than any words I could use to explain. Come on, let's take a ride down to Third Street."

  "At three in the afternoon?"

  Joe cocked a thin line of eyebrow."At ten in the morning, Big Tom. Even bankers have started staying open the hours customers want-and we're selling what they can't get free, remember?"

  The drive was short and without further discussion. Big Tom's headquarters were in the old industrial section, near the railroad station and the car shops. Angelo had set up in a huge frame house, a Victorian leftover on the outskirts of the business district. The previous owner had once refused to sell, Mullens remembered, preferring to hold the property against future rezoning to commercial or apartment use. Until now, Big Tom had not wondered why the old fellow had decided to sell to Angelo.

  Smokie Joe swung the car through
the alley entrance to the fenced courtyard behind the house. There were already three cars within: a Buick, a Chrysler, and a rusted gray Nash. "The staff doesn't park here," Joe said. "Of course the girls don't leave at all."

  The door opened before either of the visitors rang. Angelo gave Smokie Joe a brief nod that could have been either recognition or obeisance."Good you could come, Mr. Mullens," he said."I think you'll be impressed by our operation-your operation, that is."

  Within, the house appeared to have been little modified from its original design. Down the rear stairs came a pair of laughing men, a huge black with boots, a loincloth, and a whip; and a middle-aged white man who used the brim of his hat to shield his face when he saw Big Tom. Mullens had already recognized Judge Firbairn.

  Firbairn scurried out the door. The black nodded to Angelo, eyed Joe and Mullens with mild interest before he swaggered down the front hall and into a room to the side. Something had dripped from his quirt onto Big Tom's wrist. It seemed to be blood.

  "That's Prince Rupert," Angelo volunteered. "Some of our customers prefer watching to doing. Rupert does real nice for them. And we use him for other things too, of course."

  "Why does he pad his crotch that way?" Big Tom asked, disgusted but unwilling to admit it.

  "It's not padded," Smokie Joe cut in, heading his employer down the high-ceilinged hall. "He has lymphogranuloma, and the scarring in his case has led to elephantiasis."

  "Jesus God!" Mullens grunted. "I don't know how you could pay a woman enough for that."

  "We couldn't," agreed Angelo with a smile. He unlocked the first doorway to the left. "Not money, at least. All the girls are strung out. So long as they get their four jolts a day, they don't care-they don't evenknow- who does what to them."

  He threw open the door. Big Tom gagged as he took in the bed, the extensive props, and the mewling woman who lay in the midst of them. He pulled the door closed himself. "She's only eighteen!" he said.

  Angelo spread his palms. "They age quicker than you'd think," he replied. "Then we got to sell them south or to Asia."

  "They come to us, Big Tom," said Smokie Joe. His eyes were as intense as diamond needles. "Remember that. Everyone of the masks, uses the words, for everything that's done to her. If they change their minds later, that's too bad."

  Mullens shook nausea from his mind."How in Hell are you running this? No fix on earth would cover up a deal like-" He waved his hands to save words he did not want to speak.

  "Think Judge Firbairn would sign a search warrant for this place?" Smokie Joe gibed.

  "There's other judges in the district. They haven't all been here."

  "You'd be surprised," said Angelo. "And even some who don't…

  "

  His voice trailed off but Smokie Joe had already opened the door of a converted broom closet and unlocked a drawer of the filing cabinet within. "Suppose you were about to launch a push against-well, you'd call them 'the forces of crime and decay' when you held your press conferences, I suppose. Then your daughter got drunk enough to take a dare from some girlfriends-girls she'd grown up with, though maybe if you'd paid more attention you wouldn't have cared for some of the company they'd been keeping recently. Took a dare and got in a little deeper than she expected.

  "So the next morning," Smokie Joe continued, snaking out a packet of photographs, "a messenger brings you a roll of Super-8 movie film. What do you do then, Mayor Lawrence?"

  Big Tom Mullens riffed through the photographs. "Jesus Christ, youdid get Betty Jane Lawrence! Jesus Christ! She goes to school with my son, he'sdated her!"

  "Still think Prince Rupert wears padding?" Angelo asked.

  "That's-God, I want to puke," Big Tom groaned, handing the stills back to his smiling lieutenant. "His cock, it looks like it'srotting."

  "Well, LGV is an incurable disease, you know," Smokie Joe agreed. "Not so very bad for a while, if you have the personality Prince Rupert does. And if you have an employer who gives you some fringe benefits.

  "Want to see more?"he asked, waving at the scores of file folders. When Big Tom shook his head sickly, Joe slammed the drawer and continued, "Between payoffs and this kind of pressure, Angelo here isn't in any danger. Nick's operation is a little different, though, since the heat on him is mostly state and we don't have the same kind of locks on that."

  "What's the matter?" Big Tom asked, turning toward the outside door as if it were the gate of his prison. "Couldn't you get a picture of the whole Drug Enforcement Division having a circle jerk?"

  "Oh, anything is possible," Smokie Joe said agreeably, following the big racketeer down the hall. "We'll have better luck if we give the state boys something to go after besides us, though. Shall Nick arrange a little diversion for them, Big Tom?"

  "Arrange whatever you want," Mullens said. "I'm not sure I give a goddamn about anything. Except that I don't want to see you any more today, and I don't want to see Angeloever."

  He slammed the door behind him, within inches of Smokie Joe's smile. From the front of the house came a scream, then another and another in rhythmic pulses. The smile grew broader.

  ***

  Big Tom Mullens slapped folded newspaper down in front of Smokie Joe who waited for him with a stack of account books. "I'm getting goddam sick and tired of people playing goddam games with me," he snarled. "I get a call from Shiloh Academy saying Danny hasn't showed up for classes in a month and a half. I get here and Nick hands me this paper, asking how I like the job he did for me. What job?"

  Joe calmly unfolded the paper."It's not unusual for boys your son's age to drop out of school, you know," he said.

  "I'm not spending eight fucking grand a year for that kid to drop out!"Big Tom said."He's getting chances I never had to really make it by going straight, mixing with all the kids whose folks had money without having to scramble for it. If Danny thinks he's going to throw that away, I'll blow his fucking head off!"

  "The money doesn't matter. Big Tom," said Smokie Joe. "You've got more money now than you could have dreamed of a year ago." He smoothed the front page and rotated it back to Mullens. "Nick probably means the headline," he said.

  Big Tom mimed the words with his lips, then read aloud, " 'LSD Poisons Bloomington Reservoir; Hippie Terror-Plot Slays Scores; City Paralyzed.' What the Hell?"

  "It's the diversion you told us to make," Smokie Joe explained with a smile. "Acid goes through the treatment plant without being filtered out. We backed it up with a letter to theDaily News saying that unless marijuana was legalized and the army was disbanded in three days, we'd do the same to every other city in the country. So now the drug boys-and just about everybody else-are not only in Bloomington and out of our hair, they've just about dropped hard drugs statewide to hassle hippies about pot. Slick, isn't it?"

  Big Tom's mouth was open but no sounds were coming from it. His palms were flat on the table to support his weight, but his forearms were trembling.

  The door opened. Big Tom spun around."Danny!" he cried. Then, "Hey, what in Hell happened to you?"

  The boy wore a greasy sport coat and a pair of coordinated slacks from which most of the right cuff had been torn. While his father had gone to flesh in the past year, Danny was now almost as cadaverous as Angelo. He looked down at himself in mild surprise. "Hadn't paid much attention to how I look," he said. "Not since I went to the doctor." His hand clenched a sheet of slick paper which he thrust at his father. "Does this mean anything to you?" he demanded.

  Big Tom scowled at the sheet, a page torn from a medical text. "I can't even read this crap," he said. "No, it don't mean anything."

  "Then maybe this does."The tone would have snapped Big Tom's head around even if the movement of Danny's hand from beneath his coat had not. Smokie Joe was watching the boy with an expression of bored resignation, that remained unchanged at the sight of a. 45 automatic wavering in the thin fist.

  "The men have business to take care of, boy," Smokie Joe drawled. His fingers drummed absently among the account
books. "Why don't you take your little play toy out and close the door behind you?"

  "Youbastard," the boy said, swinging the pistol full on the slim, seated figure.

  "You're the real cause, aren't you? I ought to use this on you."

  "Sure, kid," Smokie Joe agreed, tilting his chair back a little, "but you don't have the guts. You probably don't even have the guts to use it on yourself."

  "Don't I?" Danny asked. He looked at the baffled rage in his father's eyes, then back to Smokie Joe's cold scorn. The pistol seemed to socket itself in his right ear of its own volition.

  "Wait, Danny!" Big Tom cried. He threw his hands out as the gun blasted. The windows shuddered. Danny's eyeballs bulged and the ruin of his head squished sideways with the shot before his body slumped to the floor.

  Big Tom more stumbled than knelt beside his son. Smokie Joe scooped up the torn page from where it had fallen. "Sure," he said, "he probably tried curing it himself with what his roommate had leftover from a dose of clap last year. When the doctor told him what he had and what his chances were of getting rid of it now, Danny wouldn't want to believe him-who would?-and picked up a book to check it out.'Lymphogranuloma venereum is a disease of viral origin, usually transmitted by sexual intercourse.' Well, the only important thing about LGV is that it's like freckles-it won't kill you, but you'll carry it till you die."

  Mullens was squeezing his son's flaccid hands. "Normally just blacks get it," Smokie Joe went on. He squatted beside the wax-faced racketeer. "That isn't… shall we say, a law of God? Give her a chance and a white girl can catch it. And given a chance, she can pass it on to…" Joe's hand reached past Mullens to unhook Danny's belt."Funny thing-you wouldn't have expected Betty Jane to have been interested in a man for along time after Prince Rupert was done with her. Maybe she was too stoned to care, or maybe Danny-boy used a pretty-direct-approach. There's no real harm done by screwing a girl, is there?" He jerked down Danny's slacks.