Detroit Deathwatch

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan sipped his coffee, then stared into the cup with see-nothing eyes. “Prostitution, eh?”

  “That’s the general impression. But not just prostitution.”

  “Slavery.” He spat it, like a bad taste in his mouth.

  “That’s the nice name. Two of the victims turned up recently. One was found in the gutter of a Mexican border town, across the Rio Grande from Texas. She was dead from a heroin overdose. The other took the quick way down from the top of a posh resort hotel near Acapulco.”

  “Canada to Mexico,” Bolan muttered.

  “For those two, yes.”

  “Sending prostitutes to Mexico,” he commented heavily, “is like carrying coals to Newcastle.”

  “Toronto thinks that Mexico is just one stop on an international circuit. Big time. Jet set party girls, sort of. This idea is based mostly on the missing girls themselves. They’re not just pretty girls, Mack. They’re spectacular girls, without exception.”

  “Will it never end?” Bolan growled.

  “Name of the game, friend,” Toby replied soberly. “Sex for sale is damned big business, or hadn’t you heard?”

  “For sale or trade,” he reminded her. “Some guys will sell their souls to hell for a free peek into that cosmic sprawl.”

  “What?”

  “Pet theory of mine regarding the basis of sex. Forget it. What about Georgette now?”

  “Well, back to Toronto. They decided that the victims were either kidnapped or lured with false promises. Which means, then, that most of the girls will have to be broken. You know the routine.”

  Yes, Bolan knew the routine. Terror, repeated rape, degradation, shame, drugs—and, if nothing else worked, the threat of “dirty pictures” being sent home to families and friends.

  Toby was continuing the report. “Georgette has this friend in Toronto who is someone big with the police establishment. I don’t know the whole story, but I do know that the contact was made through our office in Washington. She got a release from Washington and volunteered to help Toronto with the usual undercover gig. Georgie’s a real phantom at that stuff, as you should know.”

  Yes, Bolan knew. “This was when?”

  “About six weeks ago. She took a job at one of the suspect places, go-go girl. Had one meeting with her contact man a few days after she started. She reported at that time that she had been introduced to Tony Quaso, but not by that name. He was posing as a talent agent from New York, but she recognized him immediately. As the story went, he was supposed to return the next night with another agent, to catch her routine. Toronto had her under constant surveillance. They had her room bugged, two of their men had jobs in that club. But Georgette vanished a few hours after that report to her contact. Hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

  “Six weeks,” Bolan growled.

  Toby tossed her head and said, “I gave her a couple of weeks to surface. Then I asked the home office to put me on the case. They didn’t say no. They said hell no. So … I hadn’t had a real vacation for two years. I had leave coming and I took it.”

  Bolan sighed. Half of his breakfast remained untouched and forgotten. He lit a cigarette and glared at the wall. Finally he said, “So you cultivated Tony Quaso.”

  She nodded her head and made a wry face. “I figured that would be the most direct approach.”

  “So what did you learn?”

  “Not much, I guess. But I was getting there, until tonight. And I did get at least a sniff of Georgette’s trail. I believe they found out about her federal connection.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “Personal experience I had. I walked into Quaso’s joint out here on Six Mile Road and asked for a job. The manager auditioned me and hired me on the spot. I was billed as Linda Lakemont but I was on the payroll as Linda Walters. Three nights after I started, Quaso himself came in during the last act and issued a royal summons for me to join him at his table. One of the bartenders brought the drinks, in a joint that has a cocktail waitress for every three tables. That put my teeth on edge, and I was scared to death to drink it, but I did. Then the same bartender came back for the empties. He used the old two finger trick when he picked up my glass. You know, two pinkies inside to preserve the fingerprints outside.”

  “You think they ran a make on you?”

  “I know they did. Soon as I got away from there I beat it to a Washington hotline and passed the word to my buddy in the fingerprint bureau. He punched my prints into the computer as Linda Williams, with a bust in Houston for indecent exposure and lewd performance in a public place. The very next day I got the tip from Washington that an official ID request had come in through regular police channels. It’s no secret that the mob owns cops everywhere. Well, later when Quaso and I became pals, he just had to get cute and let me know that he knew about my sordid past. I pouted then, until he told me how he found out. He said they’d had some trouble a while back with ‘a broad’ who’d been playing games with them. Since then, they were taking pains to know who they were playing with.”

  “He made no bones about his underworld connections?”

  “He bragged about it,” Toby said. “Shall I tell you how many times I had to sit through The Godfather?”

  “He’s not bragging now,” Bolan said quietly. “So I loused up your direct connection. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “I already had all I was going to get from Tony the Louse. I think that place out there on Grosse Pointe is holding some secrets, though.”

  “Is that just instinct? Or do you have something solid?”

  “About half and half. One night after Quaso and I had … gone to bed, he got a call from someone in Toronto. It was just monosyllables from our end, but I caught a word or two from Toronto. Something about a special shipment of meat, great stuff, that kind of talk. Quaso wrote something on a pad by the phone. Next morning the pad was clean, but I picked the impressions off the sheet below. It was just two groups of numerals. One was 1492—fourteen ninety-two—the other was a time, 6:30. Now what does 1492 suggest to you?”

  Bolan muttered, “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

  “Right. And the Sons of Columbus have themselves a dandy little yacht club smack on the Canadian border.”

  “Okay, it could mean something.”

  “Sure, it could.”

  He sighed. “You need help, Toby.”

  “Is that an offer?”

  “Helpmeet.”

  “What?”

  He showed her a sober smile. “The Canuck helped save my skin once.”

  “I guess it’s an offer,” she said, giving him a perplexed gaze. “I, uh, I couldn’t have asked you, Mack. You’ve got enough to …”

  He said, “I need a new angle of attack, anyway.”

  “Well …”

  “We need to hit directly at the source.”

  “Toronto?”

  He nodded glumly. “You still have a pilot’s license?”

  “Sure. I’m Toby. Fly me anywhere.”

  “You’ll have to leave your badge at home.”

  “Oh, sure. I told you, I’m on leave.”

  “I’m the boss. You do what I say when I say it.”

  “You’re the boss,” she agreed soberly. “When do we start?”

  “How does five minutes sound?”

  She leaned across the table to plant a kiss on his lips, holding her own there in light contact as she told him, “Like music, Captain Quick. Like a fresh new sound from a fresh new place. God loves you, Captain Wonderful.”

  Bolan wasn’t so sure about God, but the message from the helpmeet was very clear.

  And, this time, he couldn’t decide whether it was good or bad.

  Necessary, though, yeah. Cosmic magic, maybe.

  The onus, for damned sure.

  10: BACKTRACKED

  Toby first placed a brief call to Toronto—then she rented a Beechcraft single-engine job, and they flew due north out of Detroit before angling eastwar
d across Lake Huron for the penetration of Canadian airspace.

  She was a good pilot and an excellent seat-of-the-pants navigator. They crossed the width of the Ontario boot and reached Toronto without incident, putting down at a small field near the shoreline of Lake Ontario.

  A few brief words from Toby cleared a path there and saw them speeding into the city, minutes later, in a rented car.

  Bolan did not ask, nor was he told about the “special arrangement” that the girl enjoyed. He suspected that it had to do with Georgette’s “someone big with the police establishment.” He knew that someone with considerable authority, and probably great concern for the fate of the missing policewoman, was working some magic for them.

  They reached the “suspect place” on Toronto Harbour while the day was still young. Following Bolan’s instructions, Toby canvassed the neighborhood in two slow passes, then she parked directly at the entrance to Simon’s Grotto, a “girls girls girls” joint that apparently catered to the waterfront crowd.

  The girl remained with the vehicle while Bolan made a frontal assault on the problem. He wore a dark, neatly tailored suit, nylon turtleneck, and the Beretta Belle.

  Simon’s was dark, reeking with a thousand identifiable odors, and mostly empty of patrons. A narrow doorway with a chair placed in the opening divided the joint—into day and night, probably.

  “Day” was a long bar with greasy wooden stools and a line of small tables along the outside wall.

  “Night” was a fair-sized lounge with many tables jammed close together, now with chairs upended atop them. A large stage spanned the far end.

  There was a smaller stage in the day room, behind the bar. It held a couple of wicker props and a life-sized poster of a fetching filly called Tootles LaFleur, below which was scrawled the announcement: Luncheon Show.

  Yeah. Bolan could see it with his inner eye: luncheon with Tootles—bare bouncing boobs with beer and a cheese sandwich and pretzels to lift a guy briefly from deadening monotony and hopeless mortality. Sure, every man sought his own cosmic magic at the level available.

  The guy behind the bar had no magic left whatever. He gave Bolan a disinterested greeting and waddled along the backbar like a walrus on his final march to the sea.

  “No lunch ’til eleven,” the barman announced from several paces back. “You want beer, we got—”

  “Where’s the boss?” Bolan growled.

  “What?”

  He pinned the guy to his tracks with a fierce glare and a voice of sheer ice. “The man, damn it!”

  “Oh, he uh …”

  “Don’t screw around. It’s a long way from Detroit.”

  “Oh, sure,” the walrus said, glad to be relieved of further thought and, therefore, responsibility. “Just through the door there, turn left. Office is behind the stage. You’ll find it.”

  Bolan found it with no difficulty whatever and with no loss of time. He was moving quickly along a narrow hallway when the door presented itself, bearing the neat sign: “Mister Simon. Private.”

  Bolan presented the door with two hundred pounds moving fast behind a driving foot, and the flimsy thing splintered away in full surrender.

  Two guys were seated at a table along the back wall. One was stacking currency, the other was feeding coins into a counting machine—or, that’s what they had been doing.

  Now they were lunging onto their feet and grabbing for revolvers that were perhaps no more than a heartbeat too far away. The Belle leapt into that void and sealed it there—one heartbeat away—with a pair of rustling little persuaders that had no respect whatever for the privacy of mere flesh and bone.

  One of the guys spun into the wall. The other hit the corner of the table and the whole thing went over.

  A fortyish guy behind a rickety desk gasped, “My God! My God!”

  The guy had no god, and he must have known it right away. Both hands immediately shot skyward, and he stammered, “No—not armed—wait!”

  Bolan went over there and placed the warm muzzle of the Belle at the center of Mister Simon’s forehead.

  “Take it!” the guy gasped. “Hell, it’s yours, I’m giving it to you. Take it!”

  The icy Bolan gaze slid disdainfully to the scattered stacks of bloodsoaked currency. “That? I didn’t come for that.”

  He kept the Beretta where she belonged and flipped a marksman’s medal onto the desk. “Pick it up,” he commanded.

  Simon picked it up, then dropped it with a shivery jerk. “Oh, my God! Hey, I’m not—no! Wrong guy! My God, I’m not Mafia!”

  Bolan told him, “You stink like it, guy.”

  “I’m not! I swear! Let me prove it! I’ll cooperate! Tell me what you want. Hey, just tell me!”

  “Girls girls girls,” Bolan intoned coldly. “At wholesale prices. What’s the going price of one girl, Simon? About fourteen ninety-two?”

  “What? What? Hey, hey, look now! I’m a supplier, that’s all. After that I don’t know nothing! I swear!”

  The Belle pressed her advantage, and the guy’s head went to full backward tilt. Now he was staring “straight up toward his forlorn god. “You better think up something better than that, guy,” the voice from hell advised him.

  “Well, God, give me a hint! What d’you want?”

  “Your goof, Simon. Not theirs. Now it’s too late. I don’t deal for dead girls, guy.”

  “Well, wait! Wait now! Which girl was it?”

  Bolan produced a glossy photo of Georgette and held it above the guy’s bulging eyes. Simon wilted a bit more as he breathed, “That one.”

  “That one.”

  “Well, I don’t think she’s dead,” the guy said, choking around the acute curve of his distorted throatline. “Lets talk—hey, look. Let’s discuss this like reasonable men. I want to help you. I can’t help you if I’m dead.”

  Bolan seemed to consider that for a second, then he eased off and told Simon, “You’ve bought ten seconds’ worth of reasonableness.”

  “What can I do in ten seconds?”

  “Five, now.”

  The guy’s eyes rolled in their sockets, and he screamed, “They found out about her!”

  “Found out what?”

  “She’s a cop! What the hell, I had nothing to do with that! I just supply them.”

  “Too bad,” the iceman replied, and the Belle bore back in.

  The guy screamed, loud and frantically, “She’s not dead!” Spittle was trickling down his chin, and a vein in his neck was pulsing much too rapidly.

  Bolan eased off again, as much for his own sake as anything else. The guy could die without any help at all at this point, and that was not the name of Bolan’s game.

  He told Simon, “Okay, you bought another ten seconds.”

  “God, Jesus—thanks, thanks. I’m leveling with you, Mr. Bolan. I want to help you.”

  Bolan was not, of course, overly certain of that. A dying man would say most anything, if he feared death enough. He stepped back a pace and sheathed the Beretta. The guy was in a half faint, wobbling in his chair, eyes swinging dully from side to side. The head found its natural level, and the guy stole a quick glance at the men on the floor. Horrified eyes jerked back quickly, skittered away from Bolan, came to rest on his own hands, which were now splayed out across the top of the desk, knuckles white with desperation.

  “I want the girl, Simon,” Bolan said calmly. “And you’ve got no seconds, guy, none at all left now.”

  In a voice hoarsened from violent emotion, Simon said to the Executioner: “I’ll show you all I have to show. I have to get on my feet. And I’ll show you.”

  Bolan pulled the guy out of the chair and steadied him against the side of the desk. There was no compassion for this man, this dealer in human degradation. He would squash a thousand guys like this one without a tremor if that would save one girl one hour of the fate dealt to them by these cannibals.

  All of that loathing and disgust was hanging there in plain view as Bolan told the soul merch
ant, “So show me.”

  Toby was fidgeting and peering anxiously at the entrance to Simon’s Grotto when Bolan emerged from a doorway farther along the wharf and returned briskly to the car.

  He slid in beside her and said, “Let’s go.”

  She put the car in motion as she asked him, “How’d you get way down there?”

  “These guys love tunnels,” was all he said.

  They cleared the neighborhood and were circling toward the throughway before the girl prodded him with a quiet, “Well?”

  “I got what I came for,” he told her. “Let’s get back to the plane.” He saw the agitation in her eyes and added, “Hang onto hope, Toby. Our gal could still be alive. Call your friend from the airport. Tell him he’s been watching the wrong point. They move the stuff through Simon’s floor and along an old storm drain. Drop it into small boats that can get under the wharf. The drop point is about two-hundred yards west of Simon’s. They move the girls the same way. Rendezvous with a larger craft out beyond the harbor. Incoming stuff takes the same route in reverse.”

  She nodded impatiently. “I’ll pass the word. But what about Georgette?”

  “That’s the part you don’t pass along,” he replied. “Not until I say different. Timing is all important now. I don’t want any police movements upsetting that.”

  “Georgette, damn it.”

  “You’re going to have to trust me, Toby. More than I trust you. When—”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say!” she protested.

  “Maybe so,” Bolan growled. “But that’s the way it has to be. You can hope, but not too loudly. Beyond that, you just have to trust that I’m doing what needs doing, and go along quietly.”

  She fumed, “Well that’s the damnedest, most outrageous …”

  It was a bad shot, sure, but a relative cruelty. Toby had too much of her own ass into the problem. If Bolan told her everything he’d learned and begun to suspect about the current status and possible fate of Georgette Chableu, then he chances were pretty good that Toby would lose professional cool and charge off in a disastrous direction. She did not need that extra burden, and Bolan did not intend to impose it upon her, regardless of what she might be thinking at the moment.