Joe Stanno ran his body shop out of the old Gold Duster in those days. They called him Joe the Monster, and with reason. But he could not measure up to Bolan when the bad shit hit the fan. He called for reinforcements and the Mob sent in the meanest bastards they could muster — no less than the bloody Talifero brothers, with a private army at their backs.
Reese closed his eyes as he recalled the hot reception Bolan gave the brothers at McCarran International. The nervy bastard shot the tires right off their charter jet, leaving twenty guys laid out like slabs of beef along the runway.
Joe the Monster lost it all in Bolan's final hours on the Strip, along with half the Talifero team — the other twin got smoked somewhere back East, and the Executioner had left Las Vegas cleaner than he found it.
For a while.
It was not a solution, no. But Reese suspected it was never meant to be. Acting on his own initiative against the odds, the man they called the Executioner had made a difference in Las Vegas, and that was all that counted.
Part of Reese admired the gutsy bastard, though it would not do to say so in mixed company. A part of him was almost sorry when the guy flamed out in Central Park.
No, scratch the "almost." Reese was sorry when the soldier bought it.
Goddamned sorry.
Now the telex out of Justice had arrived, on top of all the other problems he was looking at. It said the Executioner was still alive and kicking ass. No word on where the hell he had been hiding for so long, just a curt advisory to keep the eyes peeled. Bolan might resurface anywhere, at any time, and bagging him was suddenly the number-one priority again.
The Feds thought he was heading west, but then again.
Reese did not want to think about the consequences of a second Bolan visitation. Not with all the crap he was facing on the job. He had a psycho killer on the loose who liked to butcher joggers and another with a taste for little girls. He had a rising murder rate among the Cubans, with a drug war in the offing. Kuwahara's Japanese were squaring off against the Brotherhood and now he had LaMancha and his goddamned strike force horning in. They would be breathing down his neck at every turn and muddying the waters in their efforts to be "helpful" — if he let them. "Your town is set to blow wide open." Great.
He was not losing any sleep about Minotte or his soldiers at the stud farm. Vegas was a better place without them, and the means of their abrupt departure did not faze him in the least. Old Benny Siegel used to say, "We only kill each other," and for Reese's money, none of last night's crop were likely to be missed.
Minotte's "family" would lay him out in style down south, and Kuwahara might be burning incense for his hitters. But to Captain Reese the lot of them were so much garbage, ready to be carted off for landfill somewhere.
He was troubled, though, by what had gone down after Bob Minotte and his men were wasted at the hacienda.
There was solid evidence of someone crashing through Minotte's gate, but they were outbound, and the chase crews all had come to heavy grief a few miles down the highway from the stud farm. No sign there of Kuwahara's samurai, and Reese was wondering if Seiji's action was the only violent game in town. If not.
There's a wild card in the game. The rules are changing. Shit.
The homicide detective shrugged. No matter, if he had a single mob war brewing, or a double cross — whatever. Reese had no intention of permitting mayhem in the streets of Vegas. It was his damned town, and he would hold the line no matter what.
If they could find a quiet way of killing one another off, the captain would not bust his chops to interfere with family business. Laissez faire was SOP in Vegas, even if the vast majority of locals could not quite pronounce it.
Live and let live, even if it came down to dying. But if the war slopped over from the gutters to endanger innocent civilians, Captain Reese was ready to engage in some constructive carnage of his own. He had a list of names and he was not above some hard harassment, bringing in a few of them across his fender if he had to. Anything to make his point.
It might not come to that, of course. He might get lucky. But experience had taught him that the odds were always with the house, against the bettor in Las Vegas.
Captain Reese knew that there was only one sure thing about the present death game. He had not yet seen the last of brutal jungle warfare in the desert.
6
"I know exactly how you feel."
Frank Spinoza held the telephone receiver away from his ear, trying to mute the caller's strident tones. He rocked back in the leather-covered chair, legs crossed, examining the spit shine on his Gucci loafers and waiting for the caller to wind down a little.
"Certainly I've been in touch," he said when there was a moment of dead air. "The minute that I heard. The families share our mutual concern."
"They'd better," the voice on the other end informed him brusquely. "If the commissioners don't want to fight for what they've got in Vegas, I'll take care of it myself. And there are others who'll stand by me, too, you betweencher ass."
Impassive, Spinoza heard him out, even though his gut was churning now, trying out the soothing phrases he had learned by watching, listening as the capos talked among themselves.
But Johnny Catalanotte, as the on-site representative for the Midwestern family, had the strength of an army behind him, and he was no one to fool with.
Unless you had the talent.
"Believe me, John," Spinoza said, turning on the chair, "they're meeting on it now. It's top priority, no question. I'm waiting for their word."
And he proceeded to lay it on, spinning castles out of smoke for Johnny Cats. He talked an army into existence and had it standing by his shoulder, ready to move when the word was given, assuring his anxious caller that the word was on the way. By the time he finished Johnny Cats, while not eating out of his hand, at least was not gnawing on the fingers, either.
"I'll be waiting, Frank," the man from Cleveland told Spinoza solemnly. "But not too long."
"There should be something later in the morning, Johnny. By the time you get here, anyway."
"I hope so, Frank. For your sake."
"I'm not worried, Johnny."
"Someone better be."
The line went dead and Frank Spinoza cradled the receiver. He found his palm wet where he had been holding the phone and blotted it with clean-pressed linen.
He knew his answers had not satisfied the Cleveland connection. Johnny Cats was still steaming, but at least he was more rational, less primed for an explosion than Larry Liguori, the Chicago mouthpiece. Liguori was still agitating for a full-scale sit-down to resolve the Kuwahara situation. He would not be satisfied with anything Spinoza said or did until he saw some solid action taken to resolve the problem — preferably by serving up some Japanese heads on silver platters. Now, with Bob Minotte and his soldiers cooling at the county morgue, Liguori's adamant position was immensely stronger than it had been days, or even hours, earlier.
Las Vegas was a powder keg, and Frank Spinoza felt as if he might be sitting on the lid, waiting for it all to blow around him. When it went, he didn't know if he could salvage anything from the debris or not. If it went, not when, he reminded himself. Got to keep thinking positive.