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But not as bitter as the taste of betrayal, he reflected.

  Don Fiavorante would not have believed it, but the proof lay before his eyes. Computer printouts. Unmistakable computer printouts. They had been laid on the walnut table by a soldier from Boston who called himself Remo Mercurio.

  "Check 'em out," had said the soldier, of whom Don Fiavorante had not heard.

  He had only to glance over the bottom-line figures to see the truth. Don Fiavorante looked up, his placid gentlemanly expression unchanged.

  "You have done me a good turn, my friend," said the don, meeting the hard gaze of Remo Mercurio with his own frank regard.

  "Skip it," said Remo casually.

  "The contract is yours, if you want it."

  "I don't. "

  Don Fiavorante's manicured hands had lifted questioningly. "That is it? You want nothing in return?"

  "You have Don Carmine clipped," Remo had replied, "and I'll have all I want."

  "Perhaps you would like to take his place, eh?"

  "I'm available," said Remo coolly.

  "Ah, now I understand. I will consider this. Once the irritant has been removed from the scene. Go now. With my blessing."

  And so Don Fiavorante had sent one of his own soldiers to do the necessary but regrettable.

  The plan was perfect. Don Carmine was moving heroin through commercial courier delivery services. The soldier would appear in the guise of a UPS deliveryman, the better to enter the LCN building without difficulty.

  But there had been no call. What could have happened? wondered Don Fiavorante in the coolness of his walnut alcove.

  Chapter 31

  When Carmine Imbruglia read of the fate of Nicky Kix and his fellow soldiers in the Boston Herald, he threw the paper across the room and howled, "They were ready for us. Someone tipped them off?"

  "But who?" asked Bruno the Chef, his face characteristically blank.

  "I dunno. I dunno. Let me think."

  Carmine Imbruglia screwed up his face into a homely knot. He chewed on one knuckle.

  "I see two possibilities here," he said, swallowing a fragment of dry skin. "One, it was that Tony. He was the only one who knew we were makin' a move, except you and me."

  "What's two?" said the Chef quickly, hoping to steer his don away from the delicate subject of personal loyalty.

  "Two is if we can't make more money to pay off Don Fiavorante, we gotta figure out a way that Don Fiavorante gets less."

  "Don Fiavorante don't think that way."

  "Maybe," said Don Carmine slowly, "Don Fiavorante shouldn't think at all."

  Bruno (The Chef) Boyardi's dull eyes grew very, very worried as Don Carmine got to his feet and strode over to a bank of windows along one side of the LCN conference room.

  His knotted expression melted into one of open surprise as his gaze went through the dark windows.

  "Look what we got here!" he said.

  "What?" asked Bruno the Chef, peering out.

  He saw a step van the color of dried mud.

  "It ain't got no markin's," growled Don Carmine.

  "Sure, it has. See the little gold shield on the side?"

  "Looks like a fuggin' badge," muttered Don Carmine. "Can you make out the letters?"

  "U . . . P . . S."

  "The military! They sent the fuggin' army after us," howled Don Carmine, lunging for his tommy gun. He yanked back the charging bolt and waited.

  When a man in a drab uniform identical in color to the step van's paint job emerged from the driver's side, Don Carmine opened up through the windows.

  The racket was calamitous. Glass shards cascaded like glacial ice letting go. Smoking brass shell casings sprinkled and rolled about the floor.

  Struggling to hold the bucking muzzle on his target, Don Carmine Imbruglia laughed with whooping joy.

  "Take that, army cogsugger! You ain't takin' Cadillac Carmine, the Kingpin of Boston!"

  "I think he's dead," said the Chef when the drum ran empty.

  "Sure, he's dead," Carmine said, smacking the smoking weapon lustily. "This is a tommy. A good American weapon. It kills better than anythin'."

  "Maybe we should get rid of the body," suggested Bruno the Chef, watching it bleed with vague interest.

  "Get rid of the truck too. Dump it in the river. That's why I picked this joint. The river's a great way to get rid of dead guys. "

  "Okay, boss," the Chef said amiably, starting for the door.

  "But make fuggin' sure you dump it on the Boston side of the river," Carmine called after him. "Let the Westies catch the blame."

  "They don't call them Westies up here, boss. They're Southies. "

  "Westies. Southies. Irish is Irish. Hop to it. And when you're done, get that Tony in here."

  "Right, boss."

  Chapter 32

  The Master of Sinanju examined the patient in the bed.

  He was old. His bone structure whispered of the Rome of Caesar's day. His skin was waxy and yellow as old cheese.

  "What is his illness?" Chiun asked Harold Smith.

  "Poison. "

  "Ah, the stomach," intoned Chiun, who in deference to his antiseptic surroundings wore ivory white. He looked about him. A doctor in Harold Smiths employ stood off to one side, looking concerned and even puzzled. They were in the hospital wing of Folcroft Sanitarium.

  "He is in an irreversible coma," the physician said defensively. "There is nothing you can do for him. I told Dr. Smith that."

  The Master of Sinanju ignored the quack's obvious ravings and examined the machine that forced the comatose unfortunate's lungs to pump, and touched lightly the clear tubes that provided unhealthy potions.

  Without a word, he began ripping these free.

  This brought the expected reaction from the physician. Seeing his barbaric machines desecrated, he made protest.

  "You'll kill him! The patient must have his intravenous liquids. "

  The Master of Sinanju allowed the lunatic to approach, and with a deft movement snatched up one of his waving forearms and inserted a clear tube into it.

  The doctor's face acquired a perplexed dreamy expression and, made docile by the poisons that were supposed to cure the sick, he allowed himself to be seated in a nearby chair.

  "Are you certain that this will work?" asked Harold Smith anxiously.

  "No," said Chiun gravely.

  "Then why are you-?"

  "There is nothing to lose," said Chiun, shaking his hands clear of his white sleeves. "This man has been pampered by machines until his will to function has been lulled into a lazy sleep. If he dies, he dies. But if he is to recover, his body must be convinced that this will happen only if it struggles for life."

  And before Harold Smith could protest, the Master of Sinanju abruptly plunged his long fingernails into the exposed wrinkled pot belly of the patient.

  The man's emaciated body jerked as its spine squirmed and twisted like an electric arc sizzling between contact posts.

  Using both hands, Chiun plunged his nails deeper into the sickly greenish flesh.

  And into the patient's ear, he whispered a delicate warning.

  "Fight for your life, lazy one. Or I will take it from you."

  Harold Smith turned away, his teeth set, his eyes closed. In his mind's eye he saw ten eruptions of blood. One for each of the Master of Sinanju's remorseless fingernails.

  The next phase of Smith's plan depended upon bringing his patient back to health.

  Chapter 33

  "In onore della famiglia, la famiglia a abbraccio," intoned Don Carmine Imbruglia in a corner office at LNG headquarters, lit by sullen candlelight.

  "I don't know what the fug it means," he said ruefully, "but they always talk that kinda crap at one of these things."

  "What things?" asked Tony Tollini, looking at the dagger and pistol that lay crossed on the table before him. For some reason, the windows were obscured with black crepe.

  "Baptisms," said Don Carmine.

  "Oh. Is someone bein
g baptized?"

  "Good question. You are."

  Tony Tollini's eyes bugged out. "Me?"

  "Don't be modest. You done good for LCN. We're gonna make you one of us."

  Tony started to rise, saying, "I don't-"

  Bruno the Chefs meaty hand pushed Tony Tollini back into his seat.

  "Show some respect," he growled.

  "What . . . what do I do?" Tony asked, weak-voiced.

  "Almost nothin'," Don Carmine said casually. "Here, gimme your hand."

  Tony Tollini allowed Don Carmine to take up his shaking hand. Don Carmine lifted the silver dagger off the table with the other.

  "Okay," said Don Carmine. "Repeat after me, 'I want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends.' "

  " 'I want to enter into this organization to protect my family and to protect all my friends,' " Tony repeated in a dull voice.

  " 'I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta.' "

  " 'I swear not to divulge this secret and to obey, with love and omerta,' " Tony added, wondering what an omerta was. It sounded like a weapon. Maybe a Sicilian dagger, like the one Don Carmine was waving before his eyes.

  A quick pass of the glittering blade, and the tip of Tony's index finger ran red with blood.

  "Okay, I cut your trigger finger," said Don Carmine. "Now I cut me." Don Carmine sliced the tip of his trigger finger and joined it to Tony's. Only then did it begin to sting.

  "Somebody gimme me a saint," called Don Carmine.

  "Here," said Bruno the Chef, pulling a laminated card from his suit pocket.

  Don Carmine looked at the face. "I don't know this one," he muttered.

  "Saint Pantaleone. He's good for toothaches."

  "Toothaches! What are we, dentists now?"

  "I got a busted biscuspid, boss."

  Don Carmine shrugged like a small bear with an itchy back. "What the fug. A saint is a saint, right? You, Tony, repeat after me," he said, touching a corner of the laminated card to the sickly yellow candle flame.

  " 'As burns this saint . ' "

  " 'As burns this saint,' " said Tony, watching Saint Pantaleone begin to darken.

  " 'So burns my soul. I enter alive into this organization and I leave it dead.' "

  "Do I have to say that last part?" asked Tony, watching the card blacken and shrivel, giving off a pungent stink.

  "Not unless you wanna enter the organization dead," said Don Carmine blandly. "In which case that's how you will leave it. The river runs only one way. Get me?"

  Gulping, Tony Tollini finished the oath of allegiance.

  Beaming, Don Carmine dropped the card into a green glass ashtray, where it curled up like a grasshopper in its death throes.

  "Congrats!" he said. "You are now one of us! With all the rights and privileges of bein' a made guy."

  "Thank you," said Tony Tollini miserably. When he had entered the corridors of IDC a decade ago, he had never imagined it would come to this.

  Don Carmine spanked the table hard. "Bruno, get us some wine. Red. While I think up a new name for Tony, here."

  "I have a name," protested Tony, looking at his Tissot watch.

  "What, you in a rush? This is a sentimental moment. Me, when I think back on my baptism, I get all choked up. You, you look at your fuggin' no-numbers watch. That's it!"

  "What is?"

  "No Numbers! That's what we're gonna call you. No Numbers Tollini."

  "Hey, I like that, boss," said Bruno the Chef, setting down several glasses and beginning to pour blood-colored wine from an oblong green bottle.

  "No Numbers?" said Tony (No Numbers) Tollini.

  "You'll get used to it. Now, drink up."

  They drank a toast. Tony thought the wine tasted a little salty until he realized he was bleeding into the glass. He switched hands and started sucking on his trigger finger, which really tasted salty.

  It was then that Don Carmine grew serious.

  "No Numbers, on account of your quick rise in our organization, we're gonna give you a very important job to do."

  "Yes?"

  "One that's gonna help you make your bones."

  "Please don't break my bones!" No Numbers Tollini said tearfully.

  "I said make. That means you gotta kill somebody."

  "Oh, God. Who?"

  Don Carmine Imbruglia leaned into No Numbers Tollini's melted-by-fear features and exhaled sweet wine fumes.

  "Don Fiavorante Pubescio, the rat," he whispered.

  "My uncle?"

  "He's screwin' us. He's gotta go."

  "I can't kill-"

  "What 'can't'? You took the oath, same as me. Same as Bruno there. If a made guy don't do like he's told, other made guys have to discipline him. It ain't pretty, either. It usually means expulsion from the organization."

  "Does that mean . . . ?" Tony gulped.

  Running a finger across his throat, Don Carmine nodded sagely. "This ain't IDC, kid. Remember that oath."

  Tony swallowed. He tasted the blood on his trigger finger. His blood. He decided too much of it had been spilled already.

  "Whatever you want, Don Carmine," Tony (No Numbers) Tollini said hollowly.

  Chapter 34

  Antony (No Numbers) Tollini parked his red Miata on Canal Street in lower Manhattan, where the scent of tomato sauce from Little Italy and soy-sauce aroma wafting up from Chinatown commingled into a breathable cholestoral-MSG mix.

  He got out, buttoning the lower button of his Brooks Brothers suit to conceal the silenced .22 Beretta that Don Carmine had presented to him with words of fatherly advice.

  "It's very simple, kid," Don Carmine had said. "You walk up to the hit, tell a few jokes, make him feel good, and whack him out while he's laughin' with you. He'll never know what hit him."

  All during the ride down from Boston, Tony Tollini rehearsed how it would be. He would meet his Uncle Fiavorante in the walnut alcove where he held court. He would surreptitiously pull the Beretta from his belt and fire from under the table. He had seen it done that way in dozens of movies. Uncle Fiavorante would never know what hit him. The threat of the deadly weapon would be enough to get him out of the building alive.

  Tony Tollini turned onto Mott Street, nervously wiping his sweaty palms on his gray trouser legs. He had never killed a man before. At IDC he had stabbed a few in the back, corporately speaking. But that was different. It was business. There wasn't any blood.

  Tony Tollini decided that he would approach the task before him in true IDC fashion, forthright and unflinching. It would be no different than an employee termination. Besides, how much blood could there be? The bullets were .22's.

  Resolutely Tony knocked on the blank panel that served as the door to the Neighborhood Improvement Association. It opened quickly and the blue-jawed tower of bone and muscle asked, "Yeah?"

  "I'm here to see the don."

  "Who're you?"

  "His nephew, Tony."

  "One sec." The guard called back. "Boss, you gotta nephew named Tony?"

  A distant voice croaked back, "Sure, sure. Show him in."

  Tony was practically hauled inside and marched between two men into the dim black walnut alcove. A figure sat hunched in the gloom. Tony squinted in an attempt to make him out. The figure looked up querulously.

  He frowned, "You ain't my nephew, Tony."

  "You aren't Don Fiavorante," Tony blurted, staring at the waxy yellow face before him.

  No Numbers Tollini realized he had said the wrong thing when the two guards threw him to the floor and pulled his clothes apart. One came up with the Beretta. The other hauled him back to his feet and sat him down so hard in the chair facing the strange old man that Tony felt a bone break somewhere. He thought it was his coccyx.

  The old man-he looked like an anorexic corpse-dug a pale shriveled talon into a stained paper bag and extracted a single greasy fried pepper, which he began to chew methodically.

  "I don't know you," he sa
id, his voice a dry rattle.

  "Cadillac sent me."

  "I don't know that name."

  "Cadillac Carmine, the don of Boston."

  The old man stopped chewing. One eye narrowed in slow thought. The other fixed Tony with watery wariness.

  "We ain't talkin' about Fuggin Imbruglia, are we?"

  "He calls himself Cadillac."

  "He would. How'd that assassino get to be in charge of Boston?"

  "Uncle Fiavorante gave him the territory," said Tony, figuring only the truth would save him now.

  The old man resumed his chewing. "Fiavorante, he is your uncle?"

  "Yes. "

  The old man waved a well-chewed pepper in the direction of the Beretta, held loosely in a guard's hand. "You come to see your uncle with a cold piece in your belt?" he asked.

  Tony said nothing. The other watery eye opened to match its mate. "I see things very clearly now. Can you handle a shovel?"

  "Why?" asked Tony.

  "Because somebody's got to dig the grave."

  "Not Uncle Fiavorante?" Tony asked in horror, momentarily forgetting his mission.

  "Naw, we already planted him. I was thinking of giving you the adjoining plot. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  No Numbers Tollini leaned forward across the scarred walnut table, not noticing the fresh gouge that was the rusty brown of dried blood.

  He decided to play his trump card. "Listen. I'm a very, very good friend of Don Carmine's," he confided, trying to sound like Robert De Niro.

  "And I got a very, very big vendetta against that rotten Fuggin," returned the old man.

  "I'm a made guy, I'll have you know," Tony added, lowering his voice to a sinister growl. "They call me No Numbers. No Numbers Tollini. Maybe you heard of me."

  "If I ain't made you, you ain't made. I wouldn't have a guy in my outfit calling himself No Numbers. What kind of name is that?"

  "I can get you computers," Tony said quickly. "All you want. I can make your operation as successful as Carmine's. More successful. I swear."

  "Fuggin' Carmine couldn't operate a laundry."

  "He's getting rich up in Boston," Tony pleaded. "I can make you rich too. Give me a chance to show you, and I'll have you interfacing with every node of your heirarchy. You'll be completely on-line, networked, integrated and paperless. That means no incriminating backup disks."

  "What is this you're talkin'? I've been out of action a few years, yeah, but people don't talk like this now, do they?"