-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Squad Michael Milan Rose Ann Levy and Shadow Lawn Press�1989 Shapolsky Publishers, Inc. 136 West 22nd Street New York, NY 1001 ISBN 0-944007-52-X 304 pps. � First/only edition -- Out-of-print --[2]� Mitchell Field I'm working the heavy bag in the gym over at Mitchell Field. I'm back in my own world again. Throwing punches in flurries while I'm ducking and weaving, putting combinations together that don't give a man time to think. Make him blink his eyes' cause the left stays square in his face. I move in, punching on the bag. I clinch and steady it. Catch a breath. Keep my head low. Then I move out, punching off the bag even faster. Can't let him. come after me. Can't let him get started. Play peek-a-boo, crouch, snap a jab, jab, jab. Double up on the jab. Triple up on the jab. Snap it. I like the way a punch feels when you connect with it. And I like throwing the short stinging jabs that make a man's face burn red and puffs up his eyes. Or connecting with a hooking uppercut dug right under his diaphragm that sucks out all the air and locks him up so he can't move, or a straight overhand right that lands flush on his nose and flattens it out in five directions at once. When you throw a good punch, you throw it right from the dead center of your fear with the weight of your whole body behind it. You use your leg muscles and drive your fist with the swing of your shoulders. You make your contact right on your knuckles and punch through his face like you're taking his head clean off. All fighters hit from fear. They feed on fear. Fear is what keeps us alive. Maybe I'm feeling too good. Maybe I think I look like the kid I was fifty years ago when I wanted to be a movie star. Maybe all the weight I lost has taken off the years as well. I say it's 1944 again and I'm fighting some piece of pork in the Navy championships. I skip to my left and dig a quick, hard uppercut into the bag and push off with two high left jabs. I'm up on the balls of my feet, dancing away, making him work if he wants me. Then I'm low and in tight, fighting out of a crouch and playing peek-a-boo behind my gloves with the cement-foot palooka lumbering after me, measuring my head for his one lucky shot of the night. He wants my pretty face spread all over the canvas. I pull my head back and drop my hands. I flash him my Jimmy Cagney grin before I slip away. Take the poke, you fuck. You're goin' through the ropes. Swish. His wild right goes sailing over my head like he's in slomo. So I set him up again with two high jabs that split his lip. Bam, bam. The gorilla's head snaps back. Where'd they come from, you sonofabitch? I fake a looping right with my shoulder more than my hand and he pulls his head back. Then I fire a left hook straight up under his chest cavity with everything I got. I feel the oomph of that punch all the way across my back, down the backs of my legs, and straight to my ankles. The gorilla's whole midsection seizes up. He gasps for air. I know he's ready. I push off the hook with a high double jab just as he drops his hands. Bam, bam. The jabs sting his eyes so they water right up. Then I smother him with as many rights and lefts as I can throw in one minute flat. My arms work like pistons driving into the heavy sand. I keep throwing my punches as the sweat runs through my sweat band like It's a teabag. I keep throwing 'em until I'm out of air and near gasping. Then I throw two more just to push off the bag. Even when a man's knees buckle and he's going down you still bury him with all the punches you can throw until they pull you off. Make them pull you off. Make them scream. Make them throw themselves in front of you, but never stop hitting. Now I'm starting up again with a deuce of spring-loaded lefts-the fastest left hand in the world is what they called 'em forty years ago�but just before I go sliding back to 1944 and the USO party that always used to follow the fights, I see this black Marine out of the corner of my eye. He's big like a heavyweight, mean like a prize fighter, and his eyes follow every move I make. I circle around the bag to get a better look at him, but I bob in and out so he don't know I'm giving him the once over too. He's watching me like a scout so I give him something to look at while I flash face cards in my mind, looking for a match with his. Dance for the man, I say to myself, and I do the Ali shuffle out of a peek-a-boo. I see the Marine's head bob when my head bobs, his fists clench when I throw a punch, and his hips move when I go up on my toes. It's like he's clocking me for somebody else. Now he walks up and stands directly alongside the heavy bag. "Tom Seamus," the Marine says, referring to a fighter I used to manage years ago. "Irish Tom Seamus out of Boston. Didn't you used to manage him? Whatever happened to that kid?" This Marine is tall and thick-framed, maybe six-three or four, about thirty-five years old, and he has hands like a pair of wrecking balls. One good shot from either hand would bust somebody's head right in half. He's got a prize-fighter's stance, legs spread apart so he can move either way, fists slightly clenched, and arms bent at the elbows. I can see that he's used to having his hands bandaged and curled up inside gloves. "Couldn't get him any fights outside of Boston," I say between breaths. "He put on a lot of weight and got slow-footed. Finally got a job with his brother loadin' bananas or something." I point to the Marine's balled-up fists. "You still get in the ring?" He has a shaved head the way many career Marines do and a thin mustache that sits almost directly on his lip. His eyes are bloodshot enough to tell me he likes to drink, and the unmistakable twist of his flat nose tells me that he's broken it more than once. He may be big, but he's been hit by someone just as big and powerful as he is. It's hot in the gym and I can see large beads of sweat breaking out all over his forehead. But most of all, I can't take my eyes off the polished double bars on his shoulders. "Once in awhile," he says with a gleaming killer's smile that I never want to see facing me in a ring. "I'm just up from Pensacola where some of your old friends asked me to stop in and say hello," he says in a voice loud enough for everyone in the gym to hear. Then he lowers his voice. "There a place we can talk?" "How about some coffee, Captain?" I ask him. He tells me to suit up and meet in him in the commissary across the quadrangle from the gym. It's not an invitation, though, not the way he keeps his voice level and flat and breaks it off when he's finished. He's not asking; he's giving me an order. Sonofagun, I'm getting an order. But there's something about his attitude that tells me he's more than just a career officer. Career officers never stare at enlisted men�they look through them like they're invisible. This guy's staring at me like he's taking surveillance pictures of everything I do. His eye's widen when he says Pensacola because he wants to see what I do. But this a game I've played before with cops and feds, especially when they talk about friends of mine from a place where I don't have no friends. I don't ask him. who the friends are supposed to be and he doesn't give me any names. So now we both know that I know that I don't have any friends in Pensacola, but I'm gonna go ahead and play his game anyway. And he's all smiles and I'm all smiles, but when I'm alone in the locker room I make sure that my .45 is loaded and strapped nice and tight to my ankle. I ain't gonna whack out no Marine captain in the middle of an commissary in broad daylight, but I ain't gonna be no sitting schmuck either. So I'm sitting across from this guy at a table in the very rear of the room when a waiter brings over a bowl of strawberries and puts it in front of me. The Marine says nothing. Now he's all business and not smiling anymore. "I got the right fruit?" He asks in a low voice while I just blink my eyes once in response. It's been years since anybody used the fruit code. I had thought it died along with J. Edgar Hoover and Mr. C., but I was in for more surprises. The Marine puts his clenched fist on the table and slides away his hand. There on the table in front of him is a Krugerrand, shining even in the recessed lighting of the commissary. The strawberries, the gold coin-probably even freshly minted, I figure as I look at it�who's around that still remembers the Squad? It's got to be ancient history, I'm saying to myself over and over as I look at that coin. When the Old Man died they just shoved it under the rug and quietly shredded all of the records. Then the Marine slides the coin across the table so it sits right in front of me. I'm still not saying a word. I don't know where this guy's from but he ain't no Sicilian�he's either a fed or KGB. And if's KGB, he's got maybe two minutes before I pop 'em. I raise my knee real slowly while I reach down for my ankle holster. Maybe I'm just scratching my leg. Maybe I'm tightening a shoelace. Could be doing anything as far as he's concerned. But he stares right at the spot where my hand was and waits until I stop moving. Maybe he's showing me professional courtesy or maybe he wants to see if I'm dumb enough to pull a rod right in the middle of an officers' mess. "Mike, the Enforcer," he finally says, nodding his head at the table where the Krugerrand sits. "It's a contract." Now my head's really spinning. This is 1987 and the Squad's been dead for fifteen years. I'm only a disabled vet nowadays and a sports promoter who stages exhibition cards with tank fighters at the Nassau Coliseum. Who's this guy working for? He's bigger than Larry Holmes and using a code that was retired while he was still saluting DIs in boot camp. He very slowly reaches inside his shirt pocket for what looks like a white envelope while he keeps his other hand square on the table. At least he knows the drill. Gotta give somebody credit for that. He pulls the envelope out of his pocket and puts it on the table. He's got nothing else in his hands. Now he breaks the seal on the envelope and takes out a computer printout. I can see the serial number even from across the table: 80762546. A blast from the past. Then he hands the printout over to me. "Believe me, Mike, I thought the old days were dead and gone," he says. "But your serial number is still active." I don't say a word because I'm not supposed to. I just look down the printout for the names of the people whose executions have been ordered by someone who is obviously in a very high position at the Department of Justice. But I can tell you, I'm not liking this one little bit. "I didn't want to be the courier on this one," the Marine says after a pause. "I thought we were supposed to be playing it by the book. But I guess I'm wrong." I know all of the names, of course. Caporegime, underboss, John "Johnny White Roses" Rosario, his brother Billy Rosario, and Jake "Four Eyes" Littman. All of them belonged to the Johnny "The Skinner" Santos crew, the borgatta down in New Orleans. I ran gold out of the States with the Rosarios over twenty-five years ago for the CIA when we were setting up the Indochina pipeline. Now I'm getting real nervous. Anybody who even knew about the Squad in the Department of Justice knew that Families were off-limits. That was a line we never crossed-it was part of the deal. I couldn't help remembering, as I looked at the strawberries and the gold coin on the table and at the flimsy piece of paper in my hand, how I got into this business in the first place. Although I didn't know it at the time, it was at my first meeting with Frank Costello, the Boss of all Bosses, the head of the Commission. I was only a kid, fresh out of the Navy, still feeling my oats because we won the war, and strutting around the Lower East Side like I owned the place. How could I have known then that among my friends and benefactors Meyer Lansky and Sam Koenig, their associate cappo de tutti cappi Frank Costello, and their ally, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, my fate had been sealed. In 1947 my life was plotted out by four people who had made and broken the lives of thousands of people. But I knew none of that. It was revealed to me slowly over the course of the next forty years in hundreds of places I was ordered to visit where I executed contracts on people who had received judgments of death. The Marine was still sitting there, sweating through his collar and along his armpits, looking at me closely as if he could read my mind. What was he thinking? In his mind, was I just an old hood from the streets who would do a quick job for a few bucks that nobody else would touch? Was he sent to find a fall guy who would take the rap for another botched CIA enterprise? Was he thinking that someday soon he would hand somebody else a contract on my life.? Was he even a Marine? It had been twelve years since anybody had asked me to do a hit. Since that time I'd walked away from it. I'd walked away from the world of amateur spymasters and secret governments and presidents of corporations who bought and sold the lives of people who might someday get in their way. When I worked for Mr. Hoover, I believed I was on the side of justice, even if it meant bending the rules of justice when the fit wasn't right. But the one thing I'd wanted, I'd finally got. I'd walked away with my life. Now some guy wearing a Marine captain's uniform had just pushed a gold coin across the table and handed me a contract on lives of people Id known since I was a kid. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep my mind from going back to that one day forty years earlier when I'd first met Frank Costello and this whole business started. pps. 15-20 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
