Miami Massacre by Don Pendleton Read Free Book Online Page B

following closely on Portocci's heels, and were waiting here for Bolan to show his face at the airport. But he foxed them. He got off at Jacksonville instead, hopped another plane down, maybe even got here ahead of the other flight and tailed Balderone from the airport. Then
blaam.
Here lie two
Cosa Nostra
bigwigs dead at our feet. It's just too perfect for coincidence . . . it's Bolan's way."
    "The package, then, was just a diversion . . . or a grandstand play."
    "More than likely," Hannon replied, "a clever ploy. He had it timed to get here ahead of the chartered plane. He was expecting a welcoming committee, so he sent them something to welcome, then lay back somewhere out of play where he could make an identification. The rest was a simple tail job."
    "Sounds pretty thin to me," Wilson argued.
    "It's thick enough to activate the Dade Force," the captain said heavily. "I'm here to tell you, in fact, that we're taking over. You can make your routine reports to Homicide, Lieutenant, but you see that I get it first. Understood?"
    Wilson frowned and said, "Yessir, that's understood."
    "All right, so wipe the frown away. The metropolitan police have one large-sized problem on their hands, Lieutenant, and it involves a helluva lot more than solving a couple of murders. How many more would you say are on The Executioner's list? Who and where are they? Our winter season is just gearing up. Thousands of people arriving daily in this city. Hotels filling up, the beach teeming, a music festival just about to get underway, the Caribbean traffic in high hypo . . . you know the scene. Now, who among those many thousands are marked for execution? How do we isolate them, and how do we find a phantom executioner before open warfare breaks upon our tourist season?"
    "Okay," Wilson replied quietly. "So it's a job for the Dade Force. I want to stay on it, though. Can you swing it?"
    Hannon grinned. "I already did. You're my Homicide Liaison. So let's get to work. Haven't you come up with any leads as to where those shots were fired from?"
    The young lieutenant pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest. He crooked a finger at the captain and returned to the chaise lounge. "Let's run through it once," he said thoughtfully. "Our only eyewitness is a hysterical girl. She was apparently right here at the scene, in that folding chair there. Portocci was on the lounge. Balderone standing here somewhere, talking to Portocci. The girl says that Portocci was stretched out just about the way he is now, but sort of twisted to the side and staring at the girl. She said he reached toward her at the moment he was hit. Then he fell back to the lounge, present position. Doc says he got it right through the upper lip. The bullet tore through directly beneath the nose, took out the roof of the mouth, the palate, on through the throat and emerged at the base of the neck, severing the spinal cord. That's a superficial and might be changed some by a full pathology. Now, figuring that angle of entry and the fact that Portocci was lying back and turned toward the girl, we figure it came from up the beach . . . lord knows how far up . . . and from a considerable height. I have a small army up the beach now, canvassing for witnesses to the gunfire — but god, do you know how many buildings they have to cover?"
    "How do these conclusions check with the hit on Balderone? Can't you come up with a triangulation?"
    "There's the rub," Wilson replied, smiling ruefully. "The girl didn't even know that Balderone was shot until his body was found in the pool. She doesn't remember what his actions were when Portocci was hit. So we don't know where he was when he caught his, not precisely. We can guess that he was running for cover, toward the building there. If so, he lost the race by about two steps. We found blood at the corner of the pool, on the flagstones, so we assume that he went into the water at that point."
    Hannon was strolling toward the bloodstains at the