"Okay, I"ll park and drain," Schwarz agreed.
"Pol, you stay on Lucasi. Keep a log on his every move outside that house."
"You"ll have it," Blanca.n.a.les quietly replied.
"Did you get those zoom lenses for the camera?"
The Politician nodded his head in reply. "I could probably get a flea from a block away."
"Great. Try to get a picture of every one entering that house, plus every one he meets away from the house. Unless you"re really tied into something fantastic, we meet back here in exactly four hours."
"What do I do in the meantime?" Gadgets wondered. "So far I"ve got a five minute job."
"Run over and drain the phone tap at Howlin" Marian"s," Bolan instructed him. "If you pick up something useful there, don"t save it. Beep me on Able Channel."
"Okay. Where will you be?"
"I think I"ll be at the Mission Bay marina."
"Who do we know there?" Politican asked.
Bolan smiled. "I hear that Tony Danger keeps a deep-water boat berthed there."
"I guess I never heard of Tony Danger," the Politician murmured.
"One of Lucasi"s lieutenants," Bolan explained. "Narcotics, mainly."
"That"s the guy," Schwarz commented, "was supposed to get the hundred grand."
"That"s him," Bolan confirmed. "I believe he was setting up for a buy. Heroin or cocaine, probably. They usually time the black money shipments for a fast in and out. And I saw Tony Danger at Lucasi"s awhile ago, pacing around and wringing his hands over the loss of that shipment. He was wearing a yachting cap."
Blanca.n.a.les chuckled. "That was Tony Danger, eh?"
"That was him."
"He turned green when I laid that autopistol on him."
"When he"s got it all together he can be pretty mean," Bolan warned. "He was one of DiGeorge"s favorite triggermen."
Schwarz was wearing a faint frown. He asked, "How does all this tie into the colonel?"
"Maybe not at all," Bolan replied. "I"m just hoping to stir the pot a bit. No telling what might float up off the bottom."
Blanca.n.a.les suggested, "Maybe some very straight big daddy with a dirty backside."
Bolan nodded. "That"s what I"m hoping for. A h.e.l.l of a lot of mob money is moving into the legit pipelines in this town. That"s what put Winco in business ... black money. But it didn"t move directly from Lucasi to Winters. There"s a middleman somewhere, a guy with plenty of clout. If we"re going to find Howlin" Marian"s lost soul, then we"ve first got to find the Big Middle."
"Okay, I guess that makes sense," Schwarz said.
"The same guy is providing the umbrella for Lucasi and his hoods," Blanca.n.a.les added.
"Probably," Bolan said. "It takes a certain kind of environment to support a Mafia entrenchment. If you find that entrenchment, then you know the environment is there also. So well try to knock some holes in the entrenchment. Maybe well get a glimpse of the environment as it rushes in to plug the holes."
"This is different than the L.A. operation," Schwarz decided.
"Quite a bit," Bolan agreed. "L.A. is a big roaring city, liberal, free-wheeling. That"s enough natural environment right there to cover routine mob operations. This is a different sort of environment. Much smaller. Conservative, strong civic spirit, a proud town. Somebody in a position of power and trust within that establishment has to be dirty if the mob is operating here on the scale I suspect."
"Or maybe a bunch of somebodies," Blanca.n.a.les growled.
"Maybe. Whoever or how many, we have to shake them up, get them churning, worrying. We already have a possible." Bolan stared for a moment at Schwarz. "After you"ve collected the Winters" intelligence, if you have time, find out what you can about a local wheel named Maxwell Thornton."
"Pretty big guy?" Blanca.n.a.les inquired. Bolan replied, "Yeah, pretty big. Let"s examine our problem here for a minute. We know the mob people in this area. We know pretty well where their interests lie and the type of routine operations they"re running. We could blitz them ... just lay all over them ... and we could do that very well, I think. But that wouldn"t put us any closer to the deeper enemy, and that is the one we really want this time. The Big Middle ... that"s our target. First, though, we have to find them."
"And you think this guy Thornton may be one of this Big Middle?"
"As I said, he"s a possible. Lucasi dropped the name on me. Maybe just as a stall, but sometimes a lot of truth seeps out of a deathbed stall. We have to check it out ... but very carefully. We don"t want to get these guys to running ... just shaking a little."
Schwarz asked, "What if they won"t shake?" Bolan"s voice dropped an octave in the reply. "Then well have to burn them out."
The Politician wriggled under an involuntary shiver. He coughed into his fist and said, "I"m starting to understand why you didn"t want this town on your hit parade, Sarge. It could get pretty nasty, couldn"t it."
Bolan was staring at the tops of his fingers. Schwarz commented, "What happened to the good old days of simple warfare, eh?"
"They were left quite a ways down the trail," Bolan replied quietly. "The thing gets more complicated all the time, Gadgets."
The expression in the electronics man"s eyes reflected a new understanding of this quiet man in executioner black. This was a new Bolan, a wary and sophisticated warrior-essentially the same man he"d known earlier in the wars, but with that subtle shade of difference ... he was a man with a high mission.
"There"ll still be plenty of fireworks before we close this one," Schwarz muttered.
"Bet on it," Blanca.n.a.les growled. He sighed. "Well, I"d better be moving out. How much range we got on these shoulder phones?"
"Figure ten miles," Schwarz replied thoughtfully, his mind obviously on some other matter.
"Figure a lifetime," Bolan quietly corrected him.
In this business, Bolan knew, each beat of the heart was a lifetime in its own right.
"You guys be very careful," he commanded gruffly. "Play it to the numbers, and very close."
The three solemnly shook hands and went their separate ways.
A city under quiet siege awaited their heartbeats.
6:
HARDCASE REVISITED.
The daytime routine was barely underway at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice when Captain Tim Braddock found himself in an interesting telephone conversation with his counterpart at San Diego.
"What makes you think you"ve got Bolan down there?" he asked John Tatum, homicide chief at the southern city.
"It"s just an uneasy feeling, at this point," Tatum replied in a troubled voice. "I"ve never had so much as a smell of the guy before, though ... I guess I"m hoping you can tell me I"m all wet."
"Well-----" Braddock sighed. He and Tatum had been friends for many years. "What"ve you got, John?"
"Item One, an apparent suicide. Let"s talk about that one first. Last night, late. Retired army general, once got a lot of press for his colorful combat activities in Vietnam. Lately head of Winco Industries."
"Howlin" Harlan Winters," Braddock said with a heavy voice.
"You knew him?"
"Not personally. Go on."
"He put an army Colt to his head and pulled the trigger, or so the evidence would indicate. Paraffin tests are positive-all the routine checks and physical evidence support the suicide angle. Coroner agrees."
"Did he leave a note?"
"No note. The county is ready to close it as a suicide, but...."
Braddock lit a cigarette and sucked in a lungful of smoke, exhaled violently and asked, "But?"
"Well ... Winters was a bachelor. Lived alone, except for a niece. She discovered the body, and-"
"How do you figure Bolan in this? What"s your Item Two?"
"I"ll take the last question first, it"s easier. Somebody pulled a heist on a shipment of cash skimmed from a Vegas casino. Happened just a few hours after Winters died. One of our undercover men phoned in the report a couple hours ago. He says that Ben Lucasi is frothing at the mouth and importing triggermen from all over. Our operative couldn"t get the full story, but he says it smells of a Bolan hit."
"Yeah, he likes to hit them in their money bags," Braddock mused. "That"s all you have on that?"
"That"s it."
"Okay, back to Item One. You think Winters was murdered, I take it. Is the niece a suspect?"
"h.e.l.l no, no, but Bolan is." but Bolan is."
Braddock sighed. "Okay, let"s have it."
"Let me background you a bit first. Winters had this beach-pad out near Del Mar. You know that area. Fifty percent of his property line fronts on a sheer cliff overlooking the ocean. The only way up from the beach is via an elevator which is controlled from above. In other words, no visitors from below without an invitation from above."
"I have the picture," Braddock said. "But isn"t Del Mar out of your jurisdiction?"
"Technically, sure. But we got called in for routine consultation and ... well... look, Tim, if Bolan is operating anywhere between Tijuana and L.A., don"t talk to me about police jurisdictions."
Braddock chuckled drily and said, "Well said, John. And welcome to the club."
The San Diego cop was becoming fl.u.s.tered. He growled, "Let me lay this out for you, will you? Now look, half the Winters property is secure from trespa.s.sers by the cliff. Okay. The other half is double-fenced and a pair of Doberman man-eaters roam a no-man"s-land between those fence-rows. Those guys are mean as h.e.l.l-a couple of very unhappy sheriffs deputies will attest to that -and there simply is no way past them without calling the house and getting an escort through the fang zone.
"Okay, this is getting interesting," Braddock commented.
"Yeah. Just wait. Miss Winters says that there were no callers last night. That is, no visitors. She doubles as a girl-Friday, housekeeper, chief-bottle-washer and all the rest for the general. She-"
"How much rest?" Braddock wanted to know.
"What? Oh, nothing like that, Tim. It was more like a father-daughter relationship. Winters raised the girl. Parents died when she was a tot. Army brat. He dragged her around the world with him. I checked her out thoroughly. She"s clean."
"Okay. Go on. What about Bolan?"
"Where was I? Okay, no official visitors. She went to bed at eleven o"clock or thereabouts. The dogs were on station. The general was working in his study. At a little past midnight, she was awakened by a disturbance outside. The dogs were snarling and carrying on. There also may have been a gunshot. She"s not sure on that point. She ran downstairs and found her uncle slumped in a chair near the fireplace, half of his head blown away. Claims that she fainted, doesn"t know how long she was out. Her story comes confused along in here. When she came around again, she says, the dogs were still at it. Suddenly they got quiet. A minute later, this man walks into the study. Are you ready?"
Braddock growled, "I"m ready. Hit me."
"This was a tall man, well built, athletic. She says he walked in like a cat. He was wearing a black combat outfit. Hands and face smeared with some black cosmetic. She further describes him as quote, guns and things strapped all over him, unquote."
Braddock found himself leaning tensely forward in his chair. He said, "Now wait a minute, John."
"No, hear it all first. She-"
"This was after after she"d found her uncle dead?" she"d found her uncle dead?"
"Like I said, it"s confused. But that"s what she says. The guy walks in, looks at the dead man, gathers up a sheaf of papers from the desk-memoirs, she says-puts them in the fireplace, and sets fire to them. Then he simply walks out."
"Bulls.h.i.t," Braddock growled.
"That"s her story, and we can"t shake it."
"Did he leave a marksman"s medal at the scene?"
"No."
"Then he didn"t kill the man," Braddock declared.
"How can you leap to a conclusion like that?"
"Look, you called me as a Bolan expert, right? I"ll leap to any d.a.m.n conclusion I wish. When Bolan kills he leaves no doubt that he was there."
"Okay, forget that angle for a moment. Maybe Bolan didn"t actually kill Winters. Maybe it was a suicide, just as all the evidence indicates. Other than that, Tim ... does this sound like Bolan?"
"Here and there," Braddock growled. "Did you have the woman look at mugs?"
"Sure. Nothing positive. She said it could could be the same man. Kept talking about his be the same man. Kept talking about his eyes." eyes."
Braddock sighed. He said, softly, "s.h.i.t."