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Viaselli crime Family.
Other than a few photographs of Felton and Viaselli, that was pretty much it.
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Conn was disappointed there wasn't more to go on.
In this business, the more information you had going in, the more likely you
were to come out alive at the other end.
Once he was up to speed, MacCleary brought the envelope down to the basement
furnace. As he fed the papers into the fire, he noted the latest addition to
the virtually empty cellar. A plain metal box was tucked away in the shadows
behind the furnace.
Smith had mentioned the box to MacCleary in passing, as if discussing the
weather forecast.
The coffin had arrived at Folcroft a few months back, the day Smith had
finally connected the White House line.
This was part of the ultimate fail-safe. Together with the cyanide pills, this
was how CURE's secrets would remain secret. If the agency was ever
compromised, Harold Smith would calmly descend the cellar stairs, climb into
his specially ordered coffin and swallow his suicide pill.
Standing in the heat of the furnace, Conn noted that there was only one
coffin.
In spite of the CURE director's earlier crack about their age, Smith was still
planning a different kind of death for each of CURE's original agents. For
Smith, this would be the way. Quiet, neat, alone. For MacCleary-the old field
hand-it would be something away from Folcroft.
He tried not to think about what or when that might be.
With his hook, Conn flipped shut the cast-iron door of the furnace and turned
for the stairs.
He met no one on his way outside.
When MacCleary pushed open the heavy fire door that opened on Folcroft's
employee parking lot, thin fingers of drifting snow twisted around his ankles.
Though winter was still hanging tough in the northeast, Conn smelled just a
hint of spring on the breeze that blew off the sound. He held the aroma for a
lingering moment before climbing behind the wheel of his dull green sedan.
The engine purred and he drove down the gravel drive and out through the main
gates. The solemn stone lions watched in silence as he steered out onto the
tree-lined road.
It felt good to be leaving Folcroft. It always felt good to leave. For Conrad
MacCleary, leaving a place-any place-was always preferable to staying. He had
an apartment in Rye. There wasn't anything there except four walls and an
empty fridge. It felt good to leave there, too.
Someone else would have considered him a man without a country. MacCleary knew
better. Sure, he might not have a real home or a family or anything remotely
approaching a normal life, but the one thing he always would have was a
country. More, he had the best damned country ever to grace the face of God's
green earth.
"Give me your beatniks, your hippies, your bigmouth feminists yearning to burn
bras," he muttered as he drove down the lonely road. "Dammit, she's still
worth a life."
The patriotism of Conrad MacCleary was so strong a thing that no power in
heaven or on Earth could have shaken it. Not even the knowledge that the life
that would soon be forfeit to protect America would be his very own.
THE TWELVE-STORY APARTMENT complex stood in majestic contrast to the dingy
three-story buildings of East Hudson, New Jersey. Norman Felton, Don
Viaselli's man, lived in the sprawling twenty-three-room penthouse of Lamonica
Towers. Since CURE's only link to Maxwell was Felton, MacCleary started
there.
For three days MacCleary studied the comings and goings of Felton and his men.
The first thing he realized was that this Felton was connected. Conn took care
to avoid the police cars that patrolled with the regularity of a private
security force outside the big building.
MacCleary spotted Felton several times. Viaselli's likely enforcer was a
powerfully built man in an impeccably tailored suit. With him at all
times-like an angry shadow-was Jimmy Roberts, his manservant bodyguard.
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There was a handful of others Conn could tell belonged to Felton. They had the
look. They dribbled in and out of Lamonica Towers at irregular intervals.
Unfortunately, Conn couldn't see every entrance at all times. There was no way
of knowing just how many men Felton had up there.
On the morning of the third day, Felton appeared through the front door with
his bodyguard. When the two men got into a limousine and drove away, Conn
decided he had waited long enough.
Conn had spent the past few days studying the habits of the doorman. The fat
man vanished each day for five minutes at nine o'clock. Felton's limo was
barely out in the street when the doorman checked his watch. Like clockwork,
the man whirled in his blue-and-red uniform and disappeared inside the
gleaming glass doors of the apartment building.
MacCleary was out of his car and across the parking lot in twenty seconds.
Through the front door in twenty-two.
Keeping his left sleeve pulled low to conceal his hook, he crossed the lobby
as if he belonged there. Through a door beyond the lobby reception desk, Conn
caught a glimpse of the doorman and a few other Lamonica Towers employees
drinking coffee. They failed to notice MacCleary as he crossed to the
stairwell entrance.
He took the stairs to the second floor, then took the elevator to the eleventh
floor. Back to the stairs, he climbed up to the penthouse fire door.
He was surprised to find the door unlocked.
Conn was instantly wary of a trap. Yet there were no guards in the hallway
beyond. A quick examination revealed no alarm system hooked up to the door.
Maybe reputation alone kept Norman Felton protected. In a strange way-with his
connection to Don Viaselli-Felton might enjoy some of the same safety afforded
the village of Sinanju by the reputation of its Master.
Still, Conn was determined not to go the way of the seven dead and missing
government agents who had preceded him. He walked with care down the short
corridor to the main twin doors of the penthouse.
These doors were locked. Using a set of burglary tools he pulled from his
pocket, as well as the curving tip of his hook, Conn quickly picked the lock.
He slipped inside.
The decor was tasteful and opulent. Smith had supplied him with a floor plan
of the apartment. MacCleary steered a direct course to the back of the suite.
Pale morning sunlight filtered through the gauzy drapes of Felton's study.
MacCleary hurried to the desk. Sitting in the well-oiled leather chair, he
used his hook to pop the metal lock face off the top drawer. It sprang free
with a soft click, dropping almost silently to the plush carpet.
Conn searched the desk quickly and methodically. There was nothing of
interest. Apparently, Felton had a daughter attending Briarcliff College.
There were some personal letters from her secured in ribbon. MacCleary hadn't
seen anything about a daughter in Smith's dossier.
"You're slipping up in your old age, Smitty," Conn muttered under his breath.
Other than the letters, there were a few legal documents and some uncashed
dividend checks secured with a paper clip. There was also some payroll
information on a Jersey City auto junkyard. If there was a connection to
Maxwell in the pile of innocuous papers, Conn MacCleary couldn't see it.
"Maxwell, where the hell are you?" Conn grumbled.
There were no file cabinets in the room. Rows of tidy bookshelves were loaded
with unread books. A few pictures hung on the mahogany walls. Otherwise the
room was empty.
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