Baltimore Trackdown by Don Pendleton

he meant was not to call from any phone inside this place. The cops have a way of putting two and two together. Wait a minute — I’ll check with somebody.”
    Bolan went up to the first floor with Nino and waited around the TV set until Frank came back.
    “Yeah, Lonnie, I was right. Call Augie, but do it from a pay phone down at the shopping center. It’s a mile straight down the road. Harder to trace calls from a pay booth.”
    “Wheels?”
    Frank went outside with Bolan and whistled up a crew wagon. The driver bailed out, and Bolan thanked him and drove to the front gate. It opened automatically. Frank had called the gate guard telling him to let the next car through.
    Bolan grinned as he wheeled down the road. He knew there was no way he could have sneaked out of Don Carlo’s armed fortress without somebody getting suspicious. He also knew that Nazarione would not want a long-distance call from his house to another Mafia family don. They had to let him go outside to make the call.
    At the shopping center Bolan parked and walked across half a block of parked cars to a phone booth. He called the Baltimore police department and left a message for Chief Jansen. He told them, “I have a tip that Carlo Nazarione is going to try to shoot down Chief Jansen in the next twenty-four hours. Tell him to lie low for two or three days.” Bolan hung up before they could trace the call. Even if they had the automatic readout of the calling number on their system, the Executioner would be miles away before any radio-dispatched police unit could arrive at the pay phone.
    He wasted another half hour, then rolled back toward the big house that Mafia money had built.
    The Executioner pulled up to the entrance. The heavy iron gate stood open. Unusual. He drove ahead, saw no one in the guardhouse. More lights were on now in the drive and in front of the big house than before, when he had driven away. Trouble. Bolan put the rig in gear, angled the car down the middle of the drive, kicked the lights up to bright, then hunched low and jumped out and sprinted fifteen feet into the shrubbery at the side of the drive.
    In the darkness, he ran for the gate. It was a trap. He turned and saw the car swerve toward one side of the drive, but it recovered and rolled slowly into the lighted section in front of the house.
    Twenty shots barked into the quiet evening, then a dozen followed, and soon more gunfire ripped and punctured the heavy car, blasting out all the glass, killing the engine, blowing out the tires. Somebody wanted to be sure that the driver wound up with his head in a bucket.
    Mack Bolan sprinted out the front gate, which was still unmanned, and ran down the winding roadway toward the first lights at the corner a block away. Just as he turned into the next street, he heard tires squealing at the gate. The Executioner ran into the dark driveway of the second house and stepped behind the attached garage.
    He touched his .45. It was still in place and loaded. Evidently the godfather had sensed something wrong and called Augie Bonestra in Boston. It would not take them long to discover the hoax and set up a trap of their own.
    Bolan saw a crew wagon wheel along the street, moving slowly, with men staring out rolled-down windows.
    Maybe next time, the Executioner thought. There was no chance they were going to find him tonight. It might take him a little longer to get back downtown, but he would catch a taxi sooner or later.
    As it turned out, it was later.

6
    The men of the Baltimore Police Department swore you could set your watch by the movements of Chief of Police Stephen C. Smith. He arrived at his second-floor office at 07:49 every morning. He went over the status reports on his desk from the past two watch captains, made any recommendations at once and cleared his desk.
    By 08:02 he had greeted his front-office staff and had poured a cup of coffee from the communal pot, then started the rounds of his assistant chiefs, looking for