On that hot desert morning of October 5th, however, 'Genghis' Conn realized that his sabbatical had ended. The pace of progress had caught up to Palm Village; violent death had found its way to his peaceful city. Three dead hoods lay in the coroner's vault at the local funeral home, a hapless old farmhand was barely hanging onto life at Memorial Hospital, and now this big-deal L.A. cop was telling him that his quiet little town was harboring, for God's sake, the Executioner.
'Is it always this hot here?' Captain Tim Braddock complained. He passed a hand across his forehead and squinted into the cloudless sky. 'How the hell do you stand it?'
'It's only a hundred and two,' Conn replied, lying a little. 'This is the cool o' the morning. Wait 'til this afternoon.' He pushed open the door to the small building which served as a combination city hail, jail, and police station, and waved his two visitors inside.
Braddock nudged Carl Lyons in ahead; the three lawmen stepped into air-conditioned comfort and moved along a narrow hallway past a door marked CITY CLERK and through a swinging door at the rear. The air conditioning ended here, in Conn's office. Desert coolers filled the window openings. A door of opaque glass and imbedded wire mesh, just beyond an I-formation of desks, opened onto the cell block.
'This the jail?' Lyons asked.
'That's it,' Conn replied, jerking a thumb toward the dreary hole beyond the door. 'Rarely has any guests . . . 'cept on Saturday nights, and then, God, you can't stand the smell of the place. I pour a gallon of pine oil on that floor every Monday morning and just let it set all day.'
His visitors had seated themselves; Lyons on a tattered leather couch at the wall, Braddock perching on the edge of a desk. Conn eased into a chair at the center desk, pushed his hat back off his forehead, and said, 'What makes you think I got the Executioner in my town, Captain?'
Braddock replied, 'Call it a hunch. How many officers on your force, Chief?'
'Twelve,' Conn said, his voice a bored monotone. 'Besides myself. Run three rotating watch sections, with a light nightwatch.' He smiled tiredly. 'Everybody works on Saturday night, all night long. We only have two cars, only one of them is fit to be on the highway. Every once in a while, we double up the watches and give ourselves a decent stretch at home.' He grunted and reached for a cigar. 'You interested in knowing how much I pay my patrolmen?' Receiving no response other than an embarrassed drop of eyes, he went on: 'Myself, I put in a 20-hour day, every day, 'cept once in a while I run Dolly and me into L.A. for a night to ourselves. We get gigglin, drunk, see all the floorshows, and have ourselves a ball with the swingers.' The Chief stared at his cigar during a thoughtful pause, then added, 'So you think Mack Bolan's responsible for the carrion over at the coroner's.'
Braddock shifted his weight uncomfortably and said, 'We put out a full poop sheet on Bolan more than a week ago. We were hoping to get the full cooperation from the outlying communities. If you'd just sounded a Hardcase alert last night when the shooting occurred, Genghis, we'd be some valuable hours closer to Bolan right now.'
Conn ignored the lightly scolding tone of Braddock's message. 'Last night happened to be one of my nights in L.A.,' he explained. 'As for this Hardcase alert, my night watch just didn't see the thing that way.' He bit the end off the cigar, then laid it down and chewed on the plug in his mouth. 'Besides we don't have clear jurisdiction. Happened outside of town, you know. 'Bout two miles outside.'
Braddock tossed a hopeless glance at his young sergeant, sighed, and said, 'Let me bring a squad in here, Genghis.'
Following a short silence, Conn replied, 'Okay. On provisions.'
'What provisions?'
'You don't bust my town. Meaning, you don't disturb the balance we got here. Law enforcement in this town is strictly my business. You want Bolan . . . okay, you come in and get him, if you can. But you don't bust my town in the process, and you don't bother any of our citizens.'
'Of course,' the Captain grunted. 'That goes without saying.'
'And you march every one of your men in here and let my people get a good look at 'em'
Braddock nodded assent.
'No marked cars, and no uniforms, and you work it quiet . . . damn quiet.'
Braddock sighed and glanced at Lyons. 'I just hope we can,' he said.
Conn spat the plug of cigar into his hand and raised inquiring eyes to the Los Angeles cop. 'Meaning?'
'Meaning that wherever we find Bolan, we're likely to find a covey of Mafia triggermen right close by.'
'I want no shooting in my streets, Braddock,' Conn said coldly.
'Neither do we,' Braddock replied. He arose with a sigh and moved toward the telephone. 'Can I use this phone?'
'Reverse 'em.'
'Huh?'
'The charges. L.A. is a 45-cent call.'
Sgt. Lyons grinned and reached for a cigarette, watching the color flow into his Captain's face. He winked at Chief Conn and lit the cigarette as Braddock's index finger was stabbing into the telephone dial.
'You don't say much, do you?' Conn observed.
The Sergeant exhaled the cigarette smoke, smiled, and said, 'No sir.' He drew a finger across his throat, rolled his eyes toward the Captain, and sent Conn another wink.
The Chief soberly returned the wink and bit another plug from his cigar. He liked the youngster okay, but that Braddock . . . well now, there was something else. Conn did not give a damn about the 45-cent toll call. The youngster realized that, and apparently Big Tim knew it also, judging by the color of his face. But Big Tim also knew that he wasn't going to just walk in and take over Genghis Conn's town. That was the important thing.
Another important thing was occupying Genghis Conn's mind also. If the Executioner was in town, there was only one reason why he would be here . . . and only one place he was likely to be interested in. This was something the big shot L.A. cop did not know. But Genghis Conn knew. And Genghis rather liked the peaceful balance which had been achieved in his town. He had already decided to keep it that way.
Chapter Seven
Lou's crew
The Cosa Nostra was the only 'family' Lou (Screwy Looey) Pena had ever known. Born in the forbidding slums of East Harlem in the early twenties to a tubercular and dying mother and an imprisoned father, he had been left to more or less shift for himself at a tender age and had grown up as an unofficial ward of the neighborhood. As his mother lingered and his father languished, young Looey ate wherever he could find a place at a table and slept in any crowded bed which would admit him, the tenacious youngster learning early to 'live off the streets' and to accept graciously any crumbs tossed his way. It had been a mixed neighborhood of Italians, Jews, and Irish, in which ethnic feuds and rivalries erupted with monotonous frequency. For his first eight years of life, little Looey did not recognize ethnic differences; his hungry belly was receptive to bagels and raviolis alike; a bowl of Irish stew had been his idea of a feast. Pena's life took a dramatic new direction in his eighth year, however, when his dead mama's niece arrived from the old country and took the youngster under her wing. From Cugina Maria, then but 22 years of age herself, Pena found an identification of ancestry and learned to be proud of his Neapolitan roots; he also began attending school, at first reluctantly and then feverishly as his young consciousness responded to the challenges of knowledge. During his sixth year of schooling, Maria 'moved in with' a member of a neighborhood gang known as 'The 108th Street Raiders.' She took Looey with her into the new environment; unknown to Maria, Pena immediately quit school (he was then 14) and became a part-time member of the Raiders, working under the tutelage of Johnny 'Third Leg' Saccitone, Maria's lover. It was at about this time that the infamous gang wars and underworld intrigues were reaching the climax which would see the firm establishment of the Cosa Nostra families.
Pena served six months in a reformatory at the age of 14, another four months at the age of 15. During this latter stretch, he killed a fellow inmate in a knife fight on the athletic field. He beat this rap by successfully feigning insanity and was transferred to the State Hospital, from where he was discharged at the age of 16. Now wise to the ways of his world, he successfully evaded the reach of the law thereafter and was formally initiated into a Cosa
