War Against the Mafia

'Don't worry about that,' she said, obviously enjoying the explosiveness of the encounter. There was no room to stretch out in the tiny dressing room; it was also obvious that she had dealt with similar situations before. She pulled the little bench around and pushed Bolan down onto it, seated on the end, then she climbed aboard, straddling man and bench, seizing and stuffing him in with an obviously practiced maneuver and settling onto him with a harsh bounce. Bolan experienced an immediate tremor, his arms going about her and squeezing her fiercely to him as his back sought the surface of the bench. She went down with him, murmuring, 'Good, good.'

It had happened so quickly as to seem totally unreal to Bolan. 'I don't suppose that did much for you, eh,' he muttered apologetically.

She lay there, the magnificent breasts spreading across his chest, lips nibbling at his neck, entirely relaxed.

It can wait,' she told him. 'You guys always come back full of TNT or something.' She struggled to her feet, smiling ruefully at his midsection, pulled a towel from a shelf and dropped it onto him.

'Are you a prostitute?' he asked her, point-blank.

She blinked at him, then smiled. 'Sure,' she said, still smiling.

'Then it really doesn't matter to you, does it. I mean...'

'I know what you mean.' She retrieved the male trunks from the floor and tossed them at him, then began pulling on her own trunks. Then she stared at him silently for a long moment, picked up the bra, seemed to be debating something in her mind, then hung the bra on a wall peg. 'But you're wrong,' she said suddenly. 'It does matter. And I'll show you. It will be better next time. Now that you're de-charged. Well- come on. Let's take a swim. And after that... Well, we'll find a better place than this damn shack. Okay?'

He grinned at her. 'Okay,' he said. He got into the trunks, and they both went out and took a topless dive into the pool. Bolan was looking forward to the next time, and the next place. Obviously, Mara was also. It was the most exhilarating swim Mack Bolan had ever taken.

5 - A Master's Stroke

Walter Seymour was disturbed. It had not been easy to build a place for himself in the organization. Not with a name like Walter Seymour, for Christ's sake. Now if his name had been Giovanni Scalavini-or some such- the road would have been a lot smoother. Even Nat Plasky had an edge on him, purely because the name sounded better to the old guard-even though any idiot would know that Plasky was no wop. Seymour had outrun Laurenti quite simply because, right blood or not, Laurenti had never been and would never be anything more than a nickel-and-dime hood. He'd had a hood's intellect and a hood's heart-a perfect combination and an ideal mentality for the nickel-and-dime business of payday-loan collection. Seymour had never liked the Triangle operation. He was honest enough with himself to admit that what he'd disliked about it the most was Laurenti. The Triangle front provided a good repository for illegal dollars, and Seymour would have been content to see it run as a strictly legitimate loan company-it had been the mentality of Laurenti that made Triangle a brass-knucks operation. Laurenti simply had a loan-shark mentality-and, of course, Triangle was Laurenti's baby. He was a wop, and the old wops liked him, and his ties with the organization had extended back through several generations and even into the old country.

So- in a way-Seymour had been almost happy to see Laurenti dead. Not just from a personal viewpoint, he kept telling himself, but from the business angle as well. Laurenti, and Laurenti types, were bad for the organization. Seymour was glad he was dead. At the same time, Seymour was disturbed about those deaths. Who the hell had decided to gun down Laurenti and his people? Who the hell and why the hell?

Seymour was a realist. He knew that the 'man upstairs' at Pittsfield had never fully accepted him. He'd been on probation for ten damn years, and nobody knew it better than Walt Seymour himself. Now if this damn GI, this Bolan guy, could come up with ideas of an organization rub-out, and if the press could think that way, and if the cops could think the same way-then for damn sure the man upstairs and all the men upstairs around the country might be thinking that way, too. It was no closely guarded secret that there had been bad blood between Seymour and Laurent!

Yes, Walter Seymour was disturbed. He was disturbed about several things. The damn GI disturbed him. Even though he'd been thoroughly checked out and stamped genuine, there was something about the guy that just didn't ring. Walt Seymour was not 'buying' Mack Bolan -not lock, stock, and barrel. Not for the moment, at least. Too many people, too damn many nosey people, were interested in the organization. Congressional committees, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the FBI-everybody had a big nose and an itching finger for the organization. And Walt Seymour was wondering about Mack Bolan's nose and fingers. Every manner of infiltration had been tried on them. The local cops had tried, the feds had tried, even other organizations had tried-but nobody had ever succeeded, not in any way that mattered. Walt Seymour was disturbed about Mack Bolan.

Something-something-just did not ring for Sergeant Mack Bolan. The best way to spot a phoney, in Seymour's mind, was to make a close inspection. The best way to inspect Mack Bolan was to get him on the payroll. Give him a loose leash, keep eyes, ears, and instincts open, and let the phoney reveal himself. Anybody could have sent him. Even the man upstairs could have sent him. Of course, if he was not a phoney- well, a guy like Bolan could be an asset to the organization. He could be an asset even to Seymour. Leo Turrin was beginning to give Seymour trouble. Turrin was smart, likeable, ambitious-and he had the right sound to his name. Yes, Walt Seymour was disturbed about Leo Turrin. He'd put Bolan with Turrin. It would be a masterful stroke, he decided. If Bolan was a phoney, then the man most likely to get hurt by him would be the man next to him. Yes. Yes. He'd put Bolan with Turrin. It would be a masterful stroke.

6 - A Matter of Viewpoint

'The first thing you gotta remember,' Turrin told Bolan, 'is that I'm the C.O. You can think of yourself as the First Sergeant if you want to-but just remember that I'm the C.O. Then the second thing you gotta remember is that we never use the word 'Mafia'! Understand? It's The Organization.' You work for the organization and the organization works for you. That's the way it works. But you're not a member. You could never be a member. Your blood ain't right, see. Even Seymour ain't no member.'

'There's a difference?' Bolan wanted to know.

They were in Turrin's automobile, a fancy canary-yellow convertible, and Turrin was giving his new protege a lift home from Seymour's suburban home. 'Sure there's a difference.' He punched in the cigarette lighter and fished in his pocket for something to light, finally accepting a Pall Mall from Bolan. 'Look, the organization goes back for centuries. Got started in Sicily, the home of my ancestors. It was sort of like Robin Hood, only this ain't no fairy tale, it's for real. I'll bet you didn't know-the Mafia is a real pure idea-real democracy, you know, democracy for the little people. For the ones that was getting shit on. It was even better than Robin Hood because it was a mass movement.'

'No, I didn't know that,' Bolan admitted.

'I'll bet you didn't know that 'Mafia' translates back to mean 'Matthew.' Matthew means 'brave, bold.' It had to be a secret society because it was going up against the establishment, see, the establishment of those olden times. There was tyranny, see, and all the money was divided up between the rich bastards, the noblemen, the aristocracy. All the laws were rigged to keep the poor people poor and the rich people rich. See? That's how all laws got started. Everywhere, not just in Italy and Sicily. Laws were written to protect the rich bastards, see. So these bold, brave guys got together in a resistance movement. They set up the Mafia, and it's been nip and tuck ever since.' 'Hippies,' Bolan grunted. 'What?'

'Early Italian hippies,' Bolan said, grinning. 'What were they demonstrating for-a pizza in every pot?'

Turrin's face clouded. 'I don't think I like your sense of humor. I'm being serious. The Mafia is a very democratic idea.'