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him into a "set-up" — an ambush from which there was no possibility of return.
    Curiously enough, this rumor served only to intensify Little Tony's loyalty to the Don — as though he were trying to prove by his own example that the old man had been wrong about his father. This was supposed to explain why Tony Rivoli Jr. had become the tiger of the DeMarco palace guard. Certain members of the official family had their private reservations about this explanation, and they would quietly express their own ideas about Tony Rivoli's tigerhood to anybody but the tiger himself. Whatever the background, Little Tony was elevated to full captaincy in a formal "blood and kisses" ceremony on the eve of his thirtieth birthday, and he had been the militant spirit of DeMarco House ever since.
    Nobody except Don DeMarco now called him "Little Tony" to his face. The tag had become a ridiculous one, anyway. The "House Tiger" stood just under six feet tall and weighed close to two hundred pounds. Hardened gunmen became nervous under his casual stare, and visiting dignitaries treated him with cordial respect.
    It was common knowledge among the palace guard that Mr. Rivoli had "a mean streak" — especially concerning his women. He never had any particular woman more than once, and frequently his "victims" were carried out in the dead of night — bloodied and whimpering. Only once had an official complaint been brought against him in this regard, and on this instance the complainant had failed to show up in court. She had, in fact, failed to show up anywhere, ever.
    At the time of Mack Bolan's smash into San Francisco, Tony Rivoli was thirty-three years of age, which put the two tigers into roughly the same age group. Bolan was not much taller and no heavier than the Tiger of Russian Hill. Each had come into a certain formidable reputation for ferocity and dedication to a cause. But these similarities met only on the surface of the men.
    Mack Bolan's savagery was directed only upon the savages of his society. Tony Rivoli's ferocity seemed to be an inherent part of his inner nature, and it was directed primarily into a defense of savagery as a way of life.
    On that morning following the strike against North Beach, Rivoli's tiger force was under full alert. The tiger himself had been up the entire night to personally supervise the defense arrangements, and he greeted the arrival of daylight as an unwelcome intrusion into this highly stimulating game of suspense.
    He had been hoping that Bolan would come on in and make a grab for the old man. Nothing in Rivoli's secret fantasies would have provided more entertainment than to have Mack Bolan at his mercy.
    Tony Rivoli, of course, did not know the meaning of mercy. It was a nonexistent quality of human relations that strong men grovelled for and ended up screaming for. But it was something which Tony Rivoli had never in his entire lifetime actually dispensed — neither in fact nor in fantasy. In the tiger brain of Tony Rivoli, mercy was simply a fantasy of the weak, and nothing would give him more real pleasure than to reduce Mack Bolan to one of those screaming pulpy lumps of whimpering flesh.
    He would take him alive, of course. All of his gunners had been solemnly informed that the man who killed Mack Bolan would get a bullet in each knee. Rivoli wanted the bastard alive — alive and whole and sweating and dreaming of mercy, yet knowing all the while that there would be no mercy.
    The defenses had been set up with that very idea in mind. Nothing obvious. Hell no, don't scare the bastard away. Let him think it would be easy — as easy as that hit on Dum-Dum Fasco at the China Gardens. Let him think it would be waltz job, a quick in and a quick out like he'd always had. He would find it a quick in, sure. That's exactly where they wanted him, in. But the only way out would be through Tony's playroom on the third floor — and he would find that a worse way than none at all. Yeah, they'd take the