Hawk nodded his crew-cut head. He knew what I was thinking. "Yes," he said, "the President. He has a special assignment for AXE and I'd like you to handle it."
Hawk's unblinking eyes pinned me to my chair. "You'll have to start right away… tonight."
I shrugged my shoulders in resignation and sighed. Goodbye, Betty Emers! But I was flattered I'd been chosen. "What does the President want?"
David Hawk permitted himself the ghost of a smile. "It's sort of a lend-lease deal. You'll be working with the FBI."
The FBI! Not that the FBI isn't good. But it's not in the same league with AXE or some of the counter-espionage organizations in other countries that we have to contend with. Like the Ah Fu in Red China for instance, or the N.OJ. of South Africa.
To my mind, the FBI was an effective, dedicated group of amateurs.
Hawk read the thoughts in my expression and held up a palm. "Easy, Nick, easy. This is important. Very important, and the President asked for you himself."
I was dumbfounded.
Hawk continued. "He heard about you from the Haitian affair, I know, and probably from a couple of other assignments. Anyway, he asked for you specifically."
I rose to my feet and took a few quick turns up and down the short length of what served as my living room. Impressive. Few men in my business are personally selected at the Presidential level.
I turned to Hawk, trying not to show my prideful pleasure. "Okay. Would you fill in the details?"
Hawk sucked on his cigar, which had gone out, then looked at it in surprise. No cigar, of course, should dare go out when David Hawk was smoking it. He looked at it in disgust and scowled. When he was good and ready, he began explaining.
"As you probably know," he said, "the Mafia these days is no longer a ragtag collection of Sicilian hoods running bootleg whiskey and bankrolling floating crap games."
I nodded.
"In recent years — beginning, say, about twenty years ago — the Mafia began moving more and more into legitimate business. They did very well, naturally. They had the money, they had the organization, they had a ruthlessness that American business had never dreamed of before."
I shrugged. "So? This is all common knowledge."
Hawk ignored me. "Now, however, they're in trouble. They've expanded so far, and diversified so much, that they're losing their cohesiveness. More and more of their young men are going into legitimate enterprise, and the Mafia — or the Syndicate, as they call themselves now — is losing control over them. They still have the money, of course, but their organization is breaking down and they're in trouble."
"Trouble? The last report I read said organized crime was at its peak in America, that it had never done as well"
Hawk nodded. "Their income is up. Their influence is up. But their organization is breaking down. When you're speaking of organized crime now, you're not just talking about the Mafia. You're also talking about blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos out west, and Cubans in Florida. Everybody is getting into the act.
"You see, we've been aware of this trend for quite a long time now, but so has the Mafia Commission." He permitted another pale smile to soften his weathered features. "You do know what the Commission is, I presume?"
I gritted my teeth. The Old Man can be so goddamned infuriating when he takes that patronizing air. "Of course I know!" I said, my irritation at his method of explaining this assignment obvious in my voice. I knew very well what the Commission was. Seven of the most powerful Mafia capos in the United States, each the head of one of the major families, named by their peers to serve as a governing board, the court of final appeal, Sicilian style. They didn't meet often, only when a major crisis threatened, but their decisions, carefully considered, absolutely pragmatic, were inviolable.
The Commission was one of the strongest ruling bodies in the world, when you took into consideration its effect on crime, violence and, perhaps most importantly, big business. I scanned my memory bank. Bits and pieces of information were beginning to click into place now.
I frowned in concentration, then recited in a monotone: "Government Security Information Bulletin Number Three-twenty-seven, June eleven, 1973. 'Latest information indicates the Syndicate Commission now comprises the following:
" 'Joseph Famligotti, sixty-five, Buffalo, New York.
" 'Frankie Carboni, sixty-seven, Detroit, Michigan.
" 'Mario Salerno, seventy-six, Miami, Florida.
" 'Gaetano Ruggjero, forty-three, New York, New York.
" 'Alfred Gigante, seventy-one, Phoenix, Arizona.
" 'Joseph Franzini, sixty-six, New York, New York.
" 'Anthony Musso, seventy-one, Little Rock, Arkansas. »
Easy. I waved a casual hand in the air-conditioned atmosphere. "Shall I give you a breakdown on each one of them?"
Hawk glared at me. "That's enough, Carter," he snapped. "I know you have a photographic mind… and you know I won't tolerate even subliminal sarcasm."
"Yes, sir." I would only take that sort of thing from David Hawk.
In slight embarrassment, I moved over to the hi-fi set and took off the three jazz records that had played through. "I'm sorry. Please continue," I said, sitting down again in the captain's chair facing Hawk.
He picked up where he'd left off a few minutes before, prodding the air in front of me with his cigar for emphasis. "The point is, the Commission can see as well as we can that success is gradually modifying the Syndicate's traditional structure. Like any other group of old men, the Commission is trying to block change, trying to bring things back to the way they used to be."
"So what are they going to do?" I asked.
He shrugged. "They've already started. They're bringing in what amounts to a whole new army. They've been recruiting all over Sicily, young, tough banditos out of the hills, just like they were when they — or their fathers — began."
He paused, chewing on the end of the cigar. "If they succeed well enough, the country could be in for a wave of gang violence that would match what we went through in the early 20s and 30s. And this time it would have racial overtones. The Commission wants to run the blacks and Puerto Ricans out of their territories, and they're not going to go without a fight, you know that."
"No way. But how are the old Dons getting their new recruits into the country?" I asked. "Have we any idea?"
Hawk's face was impassive. "We know exactly — or rather, we know the mechanism if not the details."
"Just a minute." I got up and took both our glasses over to the plasticized little counter that served as both bar and dinner table in SAMOCO's executive officer quarters. I made him another Scotch and water, splashed some brandy and soda into mine along with another ice cube, then sat back down again.
"Okay."
"It's really well done," he said. "They siphon their recruits through Castellemare in Sicily, then take them by boat to the island of Nicosia — and you know how Nicosia is."
I knew. Nicosia is the sewer of the Mediterranean. Every bit of slime that oozes out of Europe or the Middle East eventually coagulates in Nicosia. In Nicosia, the prostitute is the sophisticate, and what the others do on lower social scales is indescribable. In Nicosia, smuggling is an honored profession, thievery an economic mainstay, and murder a pastime.
"From there," Hawk went on, "they're smuggled on to Beirut. In Beirut, they are given new identities, new passports, then sent on to the States."