There was something particularly immoral about this kind of a fight, something that jangled at Bolan and ruffled him deep down where he lived. He crouched there, breathing hard and waiting for the next one, and the realization came on him stronger than ever before that man was just another kind of animal, a beast of prey that devoured its victims’ flesh, killing to live, and ofttimes living to kill. And in moments of stress such as this, he reverted back to type and became more animal than man.
Bolan felt a terrible kinship with those dead beasts lying there, and in a sudden flash of insight he understood beasts like Sam the Bomber and Freddie Gambella. They had been brutalized by forces they did not comprehend, the same as those German Shepherds. And they reverted to type, the same as those Shepherds had done.
And what about Mack Bolan? Hadn’t he become brutalized as well? Yes. Sure he had. But that realization did not change anything. The whole thing was a point of survival, and every man had to survive his own way. Brutalized men survived through brutality, or failed through it. If another Shepherd came, Bolan would kill him—and if a Mafioso came, Bolan would kill him too.
Suppose he had tried to reason with those devil dogs that came on him from the blackness of night? Who would be lying there, torn and dead, a survival failure? Bolan knew who, and he knew that a guy would get the same results trying to reason with a Mafioso. You didn’t reason with brutes, you simply killed them. Many people had tried to co-exist with the Mafia, and the Mafia had left them torn and bleeding. Well—Bolan had his own way of surviving, and it was their way, and the main difference between them lay in Bolan’s ability to use it faster and better. He knew that he would remain alive only so long as that difference existed.
Now he had decided that there were no more dogs, or they would have been along by now. He went on, warily continued the soft probe, and he saw many interesting things which went into his mental file.
Then he withdrew, took the dead dogs with him and buried them beside the VW, and laid his plans for another day as he made the long drive back to Manhattan.
He knew that hardsite now, he knew its defenses and its weaknesses, and he knew how to grind it to powder. And one day very soon he would do just that.
8: LOVERS
The hour was late and the roads were practically deserted in a rapidly developing snowstorm. On a sudden impulse, Bolan took the interchange into the Cross Island Expressway for a swing through the Bronx. It was about as good a way as any to get to Manhattan, at this late hour, and Bolan found himself being drawn back to the neighborhood of Sam the Bomber. He felt curiously frustrated and at loose ends with himself, as though the day somehow should not be allowed to end on the note he’d taken with him from Stoney Lodge. Sam the Bomber represented an item of unfinished business, a loose end that needed tucking in.
Bolan cruised past the house that Human Engineering had restored and saw nothing but a faint nightlight to the rear, then he drove on into the next block and found a place to leave the VW. The snowflakes were wet and bloated and being pushed by a respectable wind, yet Bolan went into it with nothing to keep him warm but the Beretta and the thermal suit.
New glass had replaced the mess of the earlier hit; all was still and dead at the front of the house. Bolan went on around the side and into drifting snow and silence and darkness, reaching the rear just as a heavy car came whining slowly up the alley, wheels spinning with too much power versus too little traction. Headlamps arced across and momentarily illuminated the rear of Chianti’s house, then abruptly disappeared as the car wheeled into a garage. Bolan moved swiftly across the open area and reached the corner of the garage just as the engine was silenced.
A door slammed, then another, and a muffled voice said something in an impatient tone. A light went on inside the garage and a roller-door slid to a close, then a floodlight came on and illuminated the area between the garage and the house. Bolan pressed into the shadows and waited.
Another rumble of voices, a deep male basso voicing a complaint about the weather and having to drive in it, another one saying something with regards to what had to be expected at this time of year. Then a side door opened and a big guy in a trench coat emerged, stepping directly in front of Bolan. The butt of the Beretta slammed into the base of the big guy’s skull and he pitched forward into the snow with a soft grunt.
Sam the Bomber appeared in the open doorway. He said, “Dammit, Al, I told you to watch your …” And then he saw Bolan, and the wicked black Beretta, and he said, inanely, “Oh hell, I thought he slipped.”
Bolan told him, “You both slipped, Sam.”
Then a third person stepped into the light and looked Bolan over in a cool appraisal, and Bolan knew an impulse to turn around and walk away from there. She was an older version of Valentina, the girl he had loved and left in Pittsfield so many lifetimes ago, and she was giving him that same disapproving look which Val had used on him from time to time.
She saw the Beretta, of course, and there was little doubt that she knew who Bolan was and why he was there. But she cooled it, and told him in a chatty tone, “Such a night to be out, and you in little more than underwear. I told Sam we could go some other night, Thursday maybe, but you would have thought tonight was the last chance he would ever have. So we drove clear to Connecticut just to see the children, and in this weather, and we just saw them Sunday.”
She was watching Bolan’s face, and he had to look away from those eyes; he knew what she was telling him, and he did not wish to offer her any false comfort.
Chianti told her, “Go on in the house, Theresa.”
She was maybe forty, and way out of Sam’s class if Bolan was any judge. But then, Val had been out of Bolan’s class, too—yet she had prayed over him and wept over him and begged him to just let her love him. Bolan was wondering if Theresa prayed and wept over her Sam.
She was looking right past the Beretta and into Bolan’s eyes as she told her husband, “Why don’t you ask your friend in out of the snow and I’ll put on some coffee.”
Chianti said, “Yeah, that’s a good idea, Theresa. You go put on the coffee. We’ll be along in a minute.”
Bolan had not spoken since that first terse announcement to Sam the Bomber. He was looking at Theresa Chianti but he was seeing and thinking of Valentina, dear tender Val with the guts of a Viking and the heart of an angel—and he had not thought of her for a long time, would not think of her. He did not want to think of Sam the Bomber’s wife either. This was a side of the wars he had always diligently avoided; Bolan did not like to think of weeping widows.
Now he spoke, and he told the composed little woman, “It’s a good night for coffee, Mrs. Chianti.”
Her eyes sparkled and she threw a quick glance at her husband, a glance that she must have known might have to last her a lifetime, and she smiled at Bolan and her gaze lingered for a moment on the fallen bodyguard, and then she went toward the house.
Sam murmured, “Hold it just a minute, huh Bolan? Until she gets inside.”
Bolan held it. He said, “I’m sorry about the lady, Sam.”
The doomed man sighed and replied, “Me too. Uh, I don’t guess you’d like to take me somewheres else for it. I mean, I’d sure rather Theresa didn’t have to see it.”
The snow was swirling between them in sticky gobs and clustering about Sam’s face and melting and running down in rivulets. The Beretta and Bolan’s gun hand were beginning to show an accumulation also, but that hand had not wavered.
Now the black blaster waggled ever so faintly and Bolan said, “Are you packing, Sam?”
Chianti nodded his head. “In my belt, left side.”
“So use two fingers of your left hand and get rid of it.”
The Mafioso’s face showed that he thought his request was to be granted. He did as he was told, dropping a snubnosed .38 into the snow at his feet.
The weather was not bothering the Executioner, but a spreading coldness was centering in his chest, deep inside. He told the contractor�
��s contractor, “You need to retire, Sam.”
“I been thinking about that,” came the somber reply.
The woman had reached the house. A light came on, in what was obviously the kitchen, and Bolan could see her standing there at the window, hands clasped in front of her. He told Chianti, “If I were you, I’d stop thinking about it, and I’d do it.”
“If I had a chance, Bolan, I think I would,” Chianti replied in a voice already dead.
Bolan’s words were as cold as that spot in his chest as he told the contractor, “You’ve got that chance, Sam. But only one. After tonight, your chances are all used up. So go get some coffee and think about it. Go on.”
It took a couple of seconds for the message to reach the Mafioso. He stared at Bolan unbelievingly, then asked, “You mean it?”
Bolan said, “For her, Sam. Not for you. For her, one time only.”
Chianti lurched about and staggered toward the house, not looking back once until he reached the top of the steps. Then he threw Bolan a dazed glance and hurried inside. Through the window, Bolan saw the woman throw herself around her husband’s neck, and then Bolan got away from there.
Yeah, one time only for love was not asking too much. Bolan just hoped he would not have cause to regret it. Somehow, though, it seemed that he had found a good note with which to close the day.
To state it in Rachel Silver’s language, something had sparked between a German Shepherd and a man known as the Executioner, and the man had flung that spark back into the beast’s face. There was a difference. There had to be. Otherwise, survival was not even worth it.
Bolan was wearing his buckskins and purple glasses when he pulled into the garage at the East Side apartment building. The attendant gave the daisied VW a distasteful once-over and told the Executioner, “This is a private garage.”
Bolan said, “Don’t lay that on me, man. The Lindley chick wants me to pick up some stuff.”
“At one’clock in the morning?”
Bolan shrugged. “Better late than never, man. Whatsa matter, you got house rules here, curfew or something?”
The guys eyes wavered. He asked, “Who did you say?”
“Lindley,” Bolan replied boredly. He squinted at an open notebook lying on the seat beside him and added, “Eleven-G, it says here.”
The attendant nodded and picked up a house phone.
Bolan suggested, “Tell her it’s the Man from Blood.”
The guy gave him a hard look. Bolan chuckled and told him, “That’s the name of the service, dad. You change it, I can’t.”
The garage attendant completed the call, spoke briefly into the phone, and told Bolan, “Okay. Park over there at the service dock. And keep the noise down, it’s a little late for commercial calls.”
A minute-and-a-half later Bolan was pushing the button outside the Lindley-Clifford-Silver apartment. Lindley responded, her face a study in perplexed anxiety. She wore a transparent negligee and little else, and the initial reaction to the hippy-type at the door was a confused one.
Then Bolan smiled and pulled off the freak glasses. She grabbed him and pulled him inside and closed the door, all in the space of one muffled little yelp. She gasped, “We had you dead!”
Bolan said, “Not quite. I’m only staying a minute—just wanted to check you out.”
“Well gee thanks! You could have called or left a message or something, you know!” She was building up a head of outraged steam. “I mean, we didn’t nurse you night and day just to ho-hum you out of our lives with no idea whatever of what had become of …”
She ran out of breath and steam at the same time and melted against him, arms encircling his neck and pressing into a close embrace. Bolan rubbed her spine and patted her hip and told her, “You’re right, I should have checked back sooner.”
“I wish you had,” Paula murmured. She pushed away from him and nervously massaged her forehead, “Evie has been so shook up … she ran out of here about eight o’clock to look for you … and she isn’t back yet.”
Bolan said, “That was a dumb—”
“She had good reason!” Paula cried, flaring up again.
He was showing her a baffled frown. “You’d better give me all of it.”
She said, “Well it begins with a bloodstained foyer and an empty apartment. Obviously there had been a fight here, of some sort. It looked as though they had caught up with you, and took you away. We knew it couldn’t have been the police, or they would have been here waiting for us. Then Evie began having hysterics all over the place. She thought she was responsible. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that Evie talks a lot. It seems that she had let something slip about you staying here, and she—”
Bolan interrupted with a taut, “Who’d she slip it to?”
Paula tossed her head nervously and replied, “She’s been running around with this political action group, a young lib movement. She had lunch with a couple of the boys today. They’ve been having a lot of trouble lately with the hardhat faction, and the boys were discussing this. So Evie bubbled out with the information that she had just the man to take care of that problem. One thing led to another and she was swearing them to secrecy and telling them … all about … you.”
Bolan sighed and said, “Damn, this could be dangerous, Paula. Not for me so much as for you girls.”
“Well, at any rate, Evie left here at eight o’clock to touch base with the lib group and to find out just how far the story had gone. And I’m getting worried … I can’t reach any of them by telephone … and, well, she’s been gone five hours.”
“And Rachel?”
“Rachel has been meditating ever since we discovered the bloodstains.”
Bolan made a pained face and asked, “Is it unusual for Evie to be out this late?”
Paula shook her head. “No, she’s a free spirit. But … well, it was her frame of mind when she left here, and …” She pulled on a bright smile and said, “Oh nuts. If I had a dime for every hour I’ve spent worrying about that dumb bunny, I could branch out. Now, Evie is completely out of my mind. You are there. Let me fix you something to eat, and you tell me what you’ve been up to.” She was moving across the foyer and tugging at Bolan.
He stopped her and told her, “No, I can’t stay. I came by to pick up my stuff and let you know I’m okay.”
“So you’re checking out,” she said, giving him the sorrowing eye.
He nodded. “It’s time, isn’t it.”
She sighed. “I guess it is. You have a place to stay, huh?”
He said, “Yeah. Little joint near Central Park. Serves my purposes fine. Look, Paula … I appreciate … I’ll keep in touch, eh.”
“You do that,” she replied soberly.
“Could I, uh, get you to bring my suitcase out here? Tell Rachel, eh, after I’ve left, tell her I … hell, you know what to tell her.”
“Yes, I know what to tell her,” Paula said woodenly.
She whirled away in a flash of silk. Bolan watched her cross the big room and thought of how nice it could be for an ordinary guy who didn’t have to worry about jeopardizing every life he touched.
Then she was back with the suitcase and walking him to the door.
She dropped the bag to the floor and informed him, “You’re going to kiss me goodbye, mister.”
He did so, and she moulded against him at every possible joining surface. The soft lips held him and dizzied him as warm sweet currents passed through and finally he broke the connection and told her in a ragged whisper, “That’s some crazy therapy,” and then he had the door open and the bag in his hand and he was getting away while he could.
He looked back as he rounded the corner to the elevators, and she was still there in the doorway and he thought God, how he’d love to have a normal life.
Downstairs, he made a production out of opening the side door to the micro-bus and rattling the bag around as he stowed it, then he tossed a wave toward the attendant’s shack and called over, “Groove, dad, missi
on accomplished.”
The guy ignored him. Bolan climbed into the VW and took his time lighting a cigarette before he cranked the engine and turned on his lights and got the windshield wipers in motion, then he eased out the clutch and circled onto the exit ramp.
A blur of motion to his left was the only warning, and then Rachel Silver ran into his path and stood there daring him to run her down. She wore a bulky maxi-coat and high-heeled boots, and Bolan was betting nothing else. He hit the brakes and shifted into neutral and crossed his arms atop the steering wheel, and then the door opened and she slid in beside him.
“I’m going with you,” she announced, lips trembling and gasping for breath.
“The hell you are,” he told her.
The attendant had come out of his office and was standing just outside giving Bolan a direct stare.
Rachel said, “If I’m not, then get ready for the loudest screaming fit of your life.”
Bolan sighed and put the VW into motion. “I guess you’re going with me,” he muttered.
She snuggled toward him and her lips quivered as she told him, “I saw you dead.”
He eased carefully onto the snowpacked surface of the street and asked her, “And when was that?”
“About an hour ago. You were lying face down in blood and two men were standing over you and laughing.”
Tightly, Bolan said, “Wrong guy. As you see, I’m still here.”
“It was a vision,” she explained, shivering violently and scooting closer to him. The coat gaped open momentarily and, yeah, Bolan won the bet, she wasn’t wearing a damned thing beneath it. “A vision,” she repeated, “not a televised report.”
“Well, thanks for the tip,” he said. “But I get visions like that all the time.”
“Don’t joke about it,” she warned him. Both hands went around his arm and she gave it a desperate little squeeze. “Before you die, Mack Bolan, you’re going to give me love.”
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