Sicilian Slaughter

And one hell of a job it was, too! Beautiful. He had guys beating down his door to join up. He had booze, babes, a bunk five feet wide, and never enjoyed any of them! He found himself not only recruiter, screening officer, training officer, and troop commander, but Don Cafu's house captain. Only by luck did he escape the yardboss job. Fortunately, Don Cafu had a long-time totally trusted retainer who watched the estate grounds, with a crew of locals and several studs who'd finally lost the last-ditch battle with the U. S. Immigration Service and gotten shipped 'home.'

During his easy life in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, Eddie The Champ had lost forty-three pounds. None of his expensive New York tailoring fit. He felt strong as a bull and horny as a billygoat. When he got time to lie awake and think about women, it lasted perhaps three minutes after he awoke at dawn, until Don Cafu pressed the buzzer that rasped like an angry wasp in Eddie The Champ Campanaro's ear.

Eddie bounded from his old-fashioned bed with the five-foot-high hand-carved headboard and mashed the button on the intercom, this particular dawn in late spring. 'Yeah, Chief, I'm awake.'

'Get down here, now!'

'Okay, Chief, soon as I finish washing my face, and I gotta shave.'

The old man spoke English quite well. He was another of the deportees, years past; but when anger and passion overtook him, he fell back into his mother tongue, and Campanaro could hardly follow the cursing, shouting, absolute commands, so much slang, some of it omerta stuff, the forbidden language. Except to those inside.

Campanaro got off the bed and lit a cigarette, coughed, poured a huge handpainted crockery basin full of tepid water, dropped a thin washcloth into the water, then hooked an equally fancy large jar from under his bed.

A ton of money the old bastard must have, Campanaro thought, a ton— weigh it! Renting soldiers out to Frankie Angeletti for a thousand clams a day! Got to be big stakes to afford that kind of overhead.

Sicily. Home. Rich. Respected. Feared. And you want to take a leak, what do you do? Pull a jar out from under the goddam bed. Or walk a hundred yards out back. Christ. Like friggin' Korea!

Campanaro did his business, then turned to the basin beside the large pitcher and washed quickly, smeared his face with soap and ran his double-edged razor over his light beard. Swarthy or not, he was lucky in that respect. He had no blue jaw with grainy stickers sprouting an hour after shaving.

He dressed hurriedly in native clothing, all he had that now fit him. He tied his trousers up with a thin cord, slipped his feet into rope-soled sandals and headed for the door as the intercom rasped again, like an angry wasp.

8 Agrigento anguish

Don Cafu stopped pacing and stared at Eddie The Champ. 'Well, well, you got nothing to say? You gonna stare till the words drop off the paper?'

Eddie shrugged, flapping the long eight-page radiogram. The whole thing was in an open code of which Eddie understood perhaps a tenth. Christ, it was like Navajo, for which there was no alphabet, no written language. That's why the Marines used Navajos for radio telephone operators during the Pacific war and in Korea. Even when the gooks intercepted a transmission, loud and clear, five by five, they got nothing but gibberish. How can you write down something that don't exist on paper, but is only noise?

The old greaseballs had the same kind of thing, but they had over the years worked out a phonetic phraseology, which they kept to themselves. In all the world, Eddie figured, maybe fifty guys knew enough of the 'language' to read the radiogram.

'Hah! Some goddam house captain I got!' Don Cafu snarled. 'What if I'm not here when this came in, hah? What about that?'

'Chief, I can't help not knowing,' Eddie said. 'You old guys — '

'Now you calling me a greaseball, hah? My own house capo? You go ahead, tough guy. Try it. Then you be a grease spot! I throw gasoline on you, a match, phoof! And like you never existed. Gone, a puff of stinking smoke.'

'Okay, Chief, okay. That still don't tell me anything except what we already know. I don't dig.' Eddie waved the radiogram. 'You want me to know, you got to tell me. It's not doing any good yelling at me because I don't read your secret codes.'

Don Cafu whirled on Eddie, hooded brown, reptilian eyes flashing with anger, and then he stopped, sighed, let his shoulders sag. He shuffled across the tiled floor and patted Eddie on the arm. 'You're right, Eddie. You're a good boy and you're right. My anger I'm taking out on you. Here, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and maybe some brandy. There's a chill in the air this morning.'

Eddie felt no chill. He felt sweat under his chin and along his flanks. He sat down at the round old-fashioned hand-carved table, facing the don. He spread the radiogram on the white cloth. Don Cafu poured coffee for them both, slurped noisily, opened a bottle of grappa, refilled the cup and stirred with his finger. Eddie thought, the table manners of these old greaseballs would gag a buzzard.

Don Cafu slurped again, put his cup down and jerked his chin at the radiogram. 'What it says is no more seventy-five thousand bucks a day rental for our soldiers, Eddie.'

'What! Some son of a bitch's crossing us! That goddam Frankie!'

The don quieted Eddie with a gesture. 'Don't curse the dead. It's bad luck.'

'Dead? Wha — '

Don Cafu gestured again, and Eddie fell silent. 'You know of this Mack Bolan, this Executioner he calls himself?'

'You ain't telling me one guy took out seventy-five of our best, Chief.' Eddie shook his head. 'Excuse me, boss, with all respect, but that's bullshit. No way! I personally trained those guys. Physical conditioning, weapons, stealth, fire and maneuver.' Eddie flicked the radiogram, shaking his head. 'If that's what this says, somebody's putting a shuck on you, Chief, trying to cross you, work our soldiers without paying.'

'You a good boy, Eddie. I like you. But you got a mouth on you gonna get you killed one day, you don't learn.' Don Cafu smiled; he looked like a death mask. 'This came from The Man. You understand me, Eddie, capo di tutti capi?'

'Boss of bosses.'

'That's right, Eddie. So no more about a shuck, hah? No more about stealing our soldiers or bullshit, hah?'

'Okay, okay, I'm sorry. So what happened, and please, Chief, don't tell me this Bolan cat wiped out seventy-five of our best.'

'Kill them all? No. I think he killed only about thirty, personally, you understand? But how you like that, hah? One man, thirty deads! The rest, they kill each other or now in jail.'

'And Frankie, our payday?'

'This you listen close, Eddie. The commission sent a wild card hit-man to Philly, an expert, the best. And you know what happens? I tell you, listen close. This bastard Bolan takes the hit man — ' Don Cafu snapped his fingers like a gunshot ' — and sells him to Frankie as himself. You understand?'

'Jesus Christ in all His truth!'

'Hah? That's right. You know what else he does, Eddie. He collects the bounty on himself, this bastard Bolan. One hundred and ten of the Large. That was our money, Eddie.'

'You mean for the soldiers we sent, all the expense we had training them, getting them smuggled in ... we get nothing?'

'You a smart boy, Eddie. You catch on fast.'