Bolan thanked the guy again and went to claim his vehicle. It was fairly new, unmarked, with an inconspicuous antenna; Perfect. He slid in, cranked it, checked the radio, and checked the hell out of there.
The plan was only vaguely formed in his mind, but he knew what he had to do. How he would do it remained to be seen.
Off the numbers now and by the ear, the Executioner was again on the offensive. Let friends and enemies stand up and be counted. The jungle would claim her own.
Officers Larson and Papado were two short hours into their vigil and just beginning to settle into the tedium of a long stake-out.
They were positioned for surveillance of the main entrance to the Cadillac Tower Building, with a third detective stationed in the lobby and in direct radio communications with the vehicle.
Blown-up photos of one Bobby Cassiopea, lifted from a magazine and a couple of old newspapers, lay on the seat between the two men, sharing honors with composite sketches of the man of the moment, Mack Bolan.
Larson uncorked a thermos of coffee and poured a slug into a paper cup. “Want some?” he asked his partner.
Papado responded with a negative grunt, then added, “My ass is going dead.”
“Shift to the other cheek,” Larson suggested.
“I’ve run out of cheeks.”
“Play with your balls or something. That’ll get the blood to pumping again.”
Papado chuckled. “What we need on these gigs is female partners. I’d feel self-conscious playing with my own.”
Larson sipped his coffee, then swiftly lowered the cup. “Get a look at that guy?”
“Yeah. Right build but too old.”
“Better check him anyway.”
Papado sighed and spoke into a small transistor radio. “Paul. Close-sight an incoming.”
The response crackled back immediately. “Right.”
A moment later, “Strike three, you’re out.”
Larson grimaced.
Papado sighed.
The watch went on. Both men rubbed their eyes and stretched their necks, repeatedly. Papado cracked his knuckles, cast an apologetic glance at his partner, separated his hands, shifted his position on the seat.
“Police work,” Larson muttered ten minutes later. “The glamor of it all is damn near overpowering, isn’t it? I’ll end up with bifocals, barnacles on my ass, jock itch clear to my knees, and the ringing cry of ‘Pig!’ on my tombstone. Why, Pappy? Why the hell do we do it?”
Papado shrugged. “It’s a living.”
“So’s playing tennis. Or golf. For God’s sake, why this?”
His partner sighed. “We have to get into that again?”
A moment later, Larson said, “Sandy wants a divorce.”
“Smart girl,” Papado commented.
“I’m serious. She’s at the ultimatum stage. I have to choose between her and the force.”
“Too bad. You’re going to miss that girl, Chuck.”
“Get serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
“We’re just not making it. Financially, I mean. Hell, we just worry through from one payday to the next, juggling bills, dodging them sometimes. Have you been grocery shopping lately? Hell … I don’t know, Pappy.”
“You don’t know what?”
“We can’t touch those bastards, anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Larson muttered, “May as well take their envelopes.”
“Oh, boy,” Papado said heavily. “I’m going to let you have one right in the mouth.”
“Shit,” Larson said.
“That’s it exactly. Rub it all over you, why don’t you? Eat some, too. That’ll make you feel a lot better, won’t it? Listen. I’d let my wife sell her ass first.”
“I don’t know, Pappy. I just don’t know.”
“Then take it from one that does. I grew up with that shit. You take their envelopes, buddy, then it’s fair trade. They take your trembling immortal soul and use it for ass wipe. Look, I don’t even want to talk about this. Now I just don’t want to talk about it. You reading me?”
“I’m reading you.” A moment later: “Pappy, I was just bellyaching.”
“I know it.”
“Next time, go ahead. Do let me have one in the mouth.”
“I probably will.”
The partners lapsed into another silence.
Cops on stake-out duty had a lot of time to do nothing but think. It was perhaps their chief enemy.
A few minutes later their vehicle radio began making noises. “Strike Cadillac. This is Strike Seven Honcho.”
Larson’s eyes leapt along the communications bulletin. “That’s the roving detail leader,” he told his partner. “Delta channel.”
Papado punched a button on the radio and grabbed the mike.
“Go ahead, Honcho Seven.”
“Activity report.”
Papado rolled eyes at his partner and replied, “Negative. No come, no go.”
“Any contact with your surveillance subject?”
“Negative. Insider reports he is not logged in, repeat, not on premises.”
“Okay. The whole horseshoe is quiet. Spell each other for a break. But stay close.”
“Roger. Thanks.”
Papado returned the mike to its bracket and told Larson, “I thought the roving detail didn’t start ’til dark.”
The other officer shrugged. “They change the game every five minutes. You want to eat first?”
“Too early. But I’d like to air my ass. Walk around the block, maybe.”
Larson chuckled. “Okay. Go ahead. Don’t pick up any stray envelopes.”
Papado took a playful swing at his partner’s chin, stepped out of the vehicle, then leaned back in to say, “Don’t you pick up any stray Executioners. Save them ’til I get back.”
“Never worry,” Larson replied to that. “I’d bet a tenner the guy isn’t within fifty miles of here.”
The bored detective would have lost his bet.
“The guy”—most recently known as “Strike Seven Honcho”—had just cruised them at a distance of fifty yards.
Some minutes and some miles farther along, another patiently bored officer on the quietest duty of all completed an activity check with “Strike Nine Honcho” and turned to his partner with a sigh. “You ever get the feeling,” he asked, “that the watchers are always being watched? That was a strong signal. I’ll bet he was looking at us all the time we were talking.”
The other man shrugged and fed in another stick of gum to sweeten the tension-relieving cud. “Whole town’s uptight,” he commented. “You want to play the game, you take the cards they deal you.”
“I just don’t like playing the game with a joker in the deck.”
“Roving Leader is no joker. We get a positive contact, you’ll be damn glad that guy’s out there somewhere to back you up.”
“I hear Bolan doesn’t shoot at cops.”
“Maybe true. Maybe not. How’s he going to know you’re a cop? You got it tatooed across your forehead with neon ink?”
The patrolman chuckled nervously. “Maybe you’re right. The rovers weren’t due on until night shift. I guess this really is a Mad Dog alert.”
“Right. A guy comes busting up, shooting and throwing explosives, he doesn’t write any names on it. You just can’t call shots in a game like that guy plays, Jack. You can’t call them. Right?”
“Yeah, right, I guess so. Right.”
Wrong.
The “Strike Honcho” of the unofficial day watch was indeed writing names and calling shots.
It was the name of his game—the only game he cared to play.
16: SHIVERED
John Holzer was a cop who trusted his instincts. In the final analysis, according to Holzer, effective police work relied at least fifty percent on the intuitive process, with or without all the fancy technology that had been plugged into the war against crime. A cop who could not react t
o spinal shivers was only about half cop.
And Lieutenant Holzer had been fighting the shivers for a full twenty minutes. He finally gave it up and went into the tac room for a word with Joe Daley, an inspector with thirty years under his belt. Daley had been the long route with the Detroit force, from beat cop up through the ranks and now he was a candidate for promotion to district inspector. At the moment, he was the watch commander for the special strike force alert. He’d been a friend of Holzer’s father, a good cop who’d died with his badge on some years back.
“You’ve got the look,” Daley intoned somberly, “of a pup that went out to tree a bear and found himself up the tree and alone. Don’t like your detail?”
“It’s okay,” Holzer told the old family friend. “Tell me something, Joe. What do your shivers tell you about this case?”
“They’re not talking to me yet.”
“No?”
“No. But yours are, I guess.”
The inspector picked up a phone and said a few crisp words into it. Holzer held his tongue and fidgeted, his gaze roaming over the wall displays.
Daley hung up the phone and told his young friend, “Look, the guy hit your beat first. I can understand how you feel. You have a territorial claim. Okay. But a good cop—”
“It isn’t that, Joe. It’s … well … either I’ve completely flipped or I was talking to that guy a little while ago.”
Shrewd eyes measured the youngster. “Yeah? Where?”
Holzer’s gaze swerved left. “Right over there.”
“Right over where?”
“Just about where Kelso is standing right now.”
“I thought we were talking about Bolan.”
Holzer swallowed and said, “That’s the one.”
Joe Daley scratched his cheek. “And when was this?”
The lieutenant from Grosse Pointe consulted his watch. “Thirty minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you say something then?”
“The guy had vanished by the time my shivers stared talking sense.”
“And when was that?”
Holzer made a wry face. “Just about the moment he disappeared. I looked for him. Ran through the building like a loony searching for him. No catch.”
Daley commented, “And still no speak until now. Why not?”
“Do you always speak your shivers right off, Joe?”
“If it seems appropriate. Just what are you telling me, Johnny? Are you saying the guy came in and looked us over? He walked right into a police station, somehow found the right office out of a hundred possibles, cased the joint, and walked out? Without anyone in the place recognizing him—except you?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Holzer bunched his shoulders and gazed at the wall.
“Why would he do that?”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering for the past thirty minutes. Aw, damn it, Joe. Look at the record on this guy! He’s made monkeys out of every force in the country. The feds have been chasing him from hell to breakfast ever since his first hit. Not only that but every hood in the country who can scrape up the price of a Saturday night special is dreaming of collecting bounty on the guy. The mob has been fielding special head units from the word go. But he just strolls blithely through it all. How? How does he do that? We can’t even get a decent artist’s composite! What the hell does he really look like? Are cops really turning their heads when he passes by, or is it just that they don’t even know the guy is there? There has to be some explanation for—”
“Hey cool it, hold it there! In one-syllable words, exactly what the hell are you telling me, Johnny?”
“That’s the hell of it, I just don’t know,” Holzer admitted miserably. “Except … damnit, I know the guy was in here. And …”
“Yeah?”
“It doesn’t seem to be a police case, Joe.”
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know what it is. I know what it’s not. Look. Police methods are geared to the apprehension of criminals.”
“Whoever said they weren’t? And whoever said Mack Bolan was anything but a criminal?”
“That’s just it. You’ve hit it right there, Joe. It’s why the guy comes and goes as he damn pleases. Wrong methods, Joe. Damnit, we’re going about it all wrong.”
“You’re a cop, Johnny.”
“Right, I am.”
“Your old man was a cop. I’m a cop. Every man in this damn room is a cop. Now, how should we go about our jobs? What method should we be using?”
“This guy is militating us.”
“He’s what?”
“All right, maybe I used the wrong word. But this guy’s a soldier. He’s fighting a war, damn it. It is not a gang war—not in the sense we think of gang wars. And he’s not fighting us. He’s fighting them.”
“So? Go on.”
Several detectives were standing in the background, listening with interest to the conversation at Daley’s desk.
Holzer shot a glance at the men behind him and went doggedly on. “The guy was in here, Joe. He walked around the strike room for ten minutes or more, talking to everybody, reading the postings, taking notes. I thought he was some cop I knew from somewhere. I guess everybody else who thought anything at all had the same impression. But somehow my interest showed more than anybody else’s. He caught that, Joe. He caught it right off, knew I was wondering. He split quick then, and I tagged him into this room. He’d gone up to Kelso and shook him with some uncomplimentary observation. Kelso was debating the guy. The guy saw me coming after him. He picked my name off somewhere and hit me with it. Quick, oh boy, smooth and quick, and he worked me to a final sigh, let me tell you. Even got me to arguing with Kelso, then he simply faded away. Now, Joe—tell me something—have you ever known a hood or any other criminal type who could get away with something like that?”
The old cop was thinking about it. He sighed and came to his feet. “How many times,” he asked ponderously, “have you damn near hung a man with a thin-air case like that one? You expect me to go to the skipper with a Swiss cheese hypothesis like this? There’s more holes than facts. It probably was a cop you knew from somewhere. We got guys coming in here every five minutes. We got another planeload of feds due in most any minute. They swarm to this Bolan guy like bees to a honeycomb. It’s like a police convention around here. We got—”
“Joe, damn it—Inspector—I went back and studied the composites. They’re close. Damned close. And my hackles have been yelling at me ever since.”
“Well, get out of here with your hackles,” Daley said gruffly. He caught the agony in the young cop’s eyes and added, “Look, you’re a good cop. I wouldn’t take that away from you, Holzer. But hell, we’re all jumpy today. Instincts can be wrong as hell, especially when we’re leaping at every shadow. Based on what you’ve told me, I’m not going to go to the skipper and tell him that the man who caused this massive mobilization of very expensive police manpower casually dropped in to hobnob and swap ideas while we labored on with the dragnet for the guy. I’m not going to do that, Holzer. So you get out of here, get back to your own detail, and take your shivers with you.”
Someone in the background chuckled.
Holzer opened his mouth and closed it, then spun blindly away in angered defeat.
He bounced off another officer who had just hurried over for a piece of the watch commander’s attention.
“Inspector,” the guy announced worriedly, “we have something funny going on in Communications.”
Holzer froze and cocked his ear.
“What now?” Daley asked disgustedly.
“The roving details start with the night watch—right? There’s been no change in that?”
“No change,” Daley growled. “You don’t need those communications until—”
“That’s just it. The strike dispatcher accidentally turned on the delta channel monitor, and he heard a roving leader talking to a stake-out detail up in Harper Woods. I got to checking. Two other disricts r
eport radio contacts with roving leaders. That’s in Strike 7, Strike 8, and Strike 9.”
Holzer had moved back into position at Daley’s desk, listening with interest to the report.
The watch commander was staring at the man from Communications with eyes narrowed to mere peep-slits.
Holzer coughed delicately and said, “Are your shivers talking to you now, Joe?”
17: FATED
“Glad you caught the coder,” Leo Turrin’s taut tones greeted the Executioner. “This is very hot.”
“And getting hotter,” Bolan said. “I’ve been wanting to spot you. Where’s that phone booth, Leo?”
“Just down the street from Tommy Damio’s place. That’s our headquarters, please take note. You’re a couple minutes late. I was about to go on.”
“Sorry. I’ve been busy. Just got the message. What’s so hot?”
“Brognola.”
Bolan said, “Tell Hal—”
“No wait! Hear mine first. This is really hot, straight from the headshed. Hal says scratch all past favors, scratch everything. He’s putting it right on the line this time. This is tough, so hear me out. He says, quote: ‘Do not even breathe upon the person or the mere shadow of Butch Cassidy,’ unquote. It’s an order. He wants you to understand that.”
Bolan replied quietly, “Since when does the fed give me orders.”
“Not your orders, buddy—his, straight from the oval office, I understand.”
Bolan pondered that bit of information for a moment, then said, “It’s that grave, eh?”
“Worse than grave, Sarge. Those guys in DC don’t even breathe the name Cassiopea. They still use the code name, Butch Cassidy, in all references to the guy. The dirt they’re digging up gets more frightening with every bite of the shovel. There are ramifications here so downright scary that they—”
Bolan interrupted with a terse, “Okay, Leo. Tell Brognola I’ll try to not bruise the guy. But I am going to have a talk with him.”
“No, Sarge—no. Not even that.”
“Sorry, but I’ve got priorities too, Leo. I’m talking to the guy.”
Turrin’s voice was choked with defeat. “I know better than to argue with you. I trust your feel, Sarge. But for God’s sake, the fed doesn’t even want this guy to know that they know.”
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