“Carmine.”
“What’d you ask me?”
“Is Carmine bankrolling the push in Bloomington?”
“Not much, I think.”
“How much is not much?”
“A little coke, maybe some chemicals. Nothing big. They already got a circuit over there. I think he maybe financed a couple of small buys in the Caribbean that found its way to Bloomington. But he’s very leery of the stuff. Nothing to do with conscience, just prison bars. He’s too cagey to risk the big fall.”
“You’re not stupid, eh?”
“I try not to be.”
“Does Carmine have a woman in Nashville?”
“Nothing regular, no.”
“But she meets him sometimes at the Ramada. After the prime rib.”
“Sometimes, I think. Probably.”
“Don’t say it because you think I want to hear it. Say it because you know it.”
“Okay. I know it.”
“You didn’t know it a couple minutes ago.”
“It slipped my mind. Look, this is all very nervous for me. You know how long I been staring up the muzzle of that big blaster?”
“What’s the lady’s name?”
“All I get is Jackie.”
“Jackie?”
“Yeah, like Jackie Onassis. Only of course not. I think he imported her from around Chicago. She wants to be an artist, I get. Takes lessons there in Nashville. Carmine got her a cabin in the hills somewheres outside of town. Oh. It has an overlook. She calls it the studio. Ten lessons and she’s got herself a studio already.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Not—no. He brought her by here once. She stayed in the car while he came in for something. I didn’t see much of her.”
“Young and pretty?”
“Sure. Carmine wouldn’t get caught dead with anything but. A snazzy blonde, that’s all I caught.”
“Three o’clock at the Ramada?”
“That’s right.”
“The flag comes down in two minutes, Harry. Make sure you’re not around when it does.”
“You saying goodbye and farewell?”
“You got it. But Harry … remember the ground rules. And remember that I didn’t come to Indiana to get whacked by Carmine Tuscanotte. I don’t intend to be. If I walk into something unhappy at Nashville, I’ll know why. And I’ll be looking for you, Harry.”
“I never claimed to be the brightest guy in the world, Mr. Bolan. But I’m telling you I’m not stupid.”
“Goodbye, Harry.”
“I’ll take one of the cars.”
“Take whatever you want. Just do it within one minute and thirty seconds.”
The guy still did not quite believe it. He walked out of there backwards, not for a moment removing the gaze from Bolan’s cold eyes, then pivoted into a full gallop from the doorway.
Bolan heard an engine cough to life and a moment later tires chewing gravel along the drive.
So much for that.
And what had been gained?
Perhaps nothing.
But Bolan had the feeling that he would encounter Carmine Tuscanotte at three o’clock in Nashville. What else, and who else, may be encountered there was material for secondary speculation.
But the feeling in the gut was good.
The Executioner would be in little Nashville at three o’clock.
CHAPTER 6
FOUNDATIONS
Glistening eyes met him at the door as he stepped inside the cruiser. She said, “I was getting worried. A car came down about ten minutes ago. Went by me like a bat. I thought—well, I heard a shot a few minutes before that. Just one shot. I was afraid that …”
Bolan went on to the rear to shed the combat rig, telling her, “It went very well. No complications. The guy in the car was Harry Venturi. Tuscanotte wasn’t there.”
She said, rather breathlessly, “Oh,” and just stood there rather awkwardly in the war room as he checked in the personal arsenal.
Bolan said, mainly to fill the silence, “Venturi cooperated. Or I hope he did. He says Tuscanotte will be in Nashville at three o’clock. A business meeting at the Ramada Inn.” He flashed her a quick smile. “Little Nashville, that is—just west of here.”
“Can we believe that?” she asked, rather mechanically.
“The gut says so,” he told her.
“I have pictures of the car,” she reported. “Actually I videotaped it. We have front, side, and rear coverage. About fifteen seconds worth. If you need it.”
He replied, “Yes, that’s good. I’ll want to take a look at that.” He stripped off his blouse and gave her an oblique gaze. “I’m going to take a navy shower.”
She pulled the blank gaze away from him and turned rather stiffly toward the bow of the cruiser. He finished undressing and moved into the tiny shower stall. “May as well get us moving,” he called out to her. “We’ll go to Columbus first and pick up your vehicle.”
The girl gave no verbal response to that but a moment later they were underway.
Bolan quickly washed away the stains of combat and was getting into fresh clothing before they reached the juncture with highway 46. He dropped down beside the girl and pulled the command console toward him.
There seemed to be no words between them. A tension, though, yeah, hung almost tangibly in the atmosphere separating those two seats.
He programmed the video for slow motion replay and ran the tape several times. The broadside coverage provided a rather good study of the fleeing vehicle plus its occupant in clear profile. It was the face of a defeated man, not an elated one. It was enough to make the gut feel a bit better. He tried to share it with the girl.
He said, “Good job, April. I’ll know that car if I see it again. And that’s quite a study of Harry Venturi.”
She ignored that completely, instead quietly inquiring, “What happened up there?”
Something was eating her, that was obvious. He replied, “Standard routine. I penetrated. Saw that Tuscanotte was not present. Conducted a search for physical intelligence and interrogated a prisoner. Ascertained the probable whereabouts of the mission target.”
“Who got shot?”
“Is this a debriefing?” he asked lightly.
“Does it bother you to talk about it?”
No, it didn’t bother him. Not in the way she was thinking. “Skids Mangone intercepted 240 grains of .44 Magnum immediately behind the left ear. That was at a distance of about twenty feet, so he absorbed more than a thousand foot-pounds of energy within a sphere incapable of containing it. In short, he died before he knew it.”
She shivered and said, “Gross!”
Bolan said nothing. They were by now running east along highway 46 toward Columbus. A moment later, the girl said, “I noticed that two of your garrotes were missing. What are they? Disposables?”
He gave her a one-word reply. “Yes.”
That pretty face wore no expression whatsoever. “What do you—how do they work?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m just trying to understand you. Your business, I mean.”
He replied, a bit drily, “And garrotes are my business, eh?”
“Well if you’d rather not talk about it …”
Bolan sighed and stared at the pretty lady for a long moment, then he told her, “Look, I know what your head is into. Mine has been there enough that I can recognize the atmosphere. But I want—”
“You don’t have to justify anything to me,” she said miserably.
“Wouldn’t try to,” he replied. “But there’s something you need—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she protested.
Bolan said, “Okay. We won’t talk about it. It was a bad idea to start with. We’ll pick up your car then I want you to go on ahead to Indianapolis. Stick close to the plane. I want to be airborne again by midnight.”
“That isn’t fair!” the girl said angr
ily. “Our agreement was—”
“Fair has nothing to do with it,” Bolan coldly told her. “This is no game of cops and robbers, good and bad. It’s warfare, lady, and all the rules of war apply. Our agreement was that we’d give it a try. What we were trying was your belly for warfare. You don’t have one. So you don’t belong here. That’s all the fair there is to it.”
“That’s a lot of bull!” she cried. “You already said that I did well. A good job, you called it. You’re firing me because … because …”
“Because you’re not a good cheerleader? Forget that, you’re thinking like a kid. And maybe that’s the whole problem. Well, no, that isn’t fair—scratch it. The problem is that you don’t have your head screwed on for this sort of assignment. That’s neither good nor bad, it’s just the way it is.”
“What you mean is that I’m not the bloodthirsty type!” she replied nastily.
He showed her half a smile and said, “We’re going to talk about it, eh?”
“Damn right we’re going to talk about it!”
He said, “Go ahead.”
“Just because I believe that life is sacred doesn’t mean that I can’t … that I …”
“That’s a rather broad statement.”
“What?”
“Life is sacred. Is that what you really mean?”
“Yes. Shall we begin our discussion there?”
“Begin with the elephant.”
“Huh?”
“Life is sacred, you say. How ’bout the elephant?”
She said, “There are degrees of—but, yes, her life is sacred.”
“And the flea on the elephant’s back? Alive—so sacred?”
The lady was beginning to enjoy the conversation. A small smile accompanied the response. “I bet I know where you’re headed. I’ll agree that the flea is life.”
“But not sacred?”
“To another flea, maybe.”
“You’re playing the question,” Bolan said. “You say the elephant is sacred because it’s alive but there’s some doubt about the flea. What’s the problem? Is the elephant more alive than the flea?”
“She’s a lot larger,” said April Rose, twinkling just a bit.
“But we don’t measure life by its size. Life is a force—isn’t it? It pops out wherever it can. As an elephant—as a flea—as a flower.”
“As a man or a woman,” she added.
“So life is a force, really, not a thing.”
“We’re talking about different aspects, I believe,” she replied. “I’m talking about men and women. Human life.”
“So we’re not really talking about the sanctity of life, then.”
“Same thing,” she said.
“You just said they were different.”
“Mack, you cannot equate a flea with a man.”
He grinned and said, “But the same thing that energizes the flea also energizes the man. At what point does that energy become sacred?”
“Oh, so now life is energy! Really!”
“Doesn’t matter what you call it,” he said. “If you agree that it’s a constructive force. Do you?”
“Constructive? Not always.”
“It starts that way, doesn’t it. That’s the dividing line. The whole universe is dissolving, I’m told. Isn’t that what they call the law of entropy? Everything is breaking down—dispersing—is that right?”
She said, “You’re a bit out of my depth. I think it’s a bit out of yours, too, isn’t it?”
He told her, “You’re the one with the master’s degree in physics. I barely got through high school science with my head intact. I’m asking you if the law of entropy is valid.”
“If it isn’t,” she replied, smiling, “then all of twentieth century science is built on illusion.”
“What is the first law of life?” he asked.
She was still smiling. “This is getting us nowhere. You’re trying to enmesh me in doubletalk.”
A moment later, he asked her, “If everything is breaking down and dissolving, what builds the flea and the flower? Wouldn’t that be the first law?”
“I suppose. I really don’t know.”
“So what builds life in a dissolving universe? What builds the flea and the flower?”
“Same thing that builds the man, I guess,” she replied quietly. “It’s not doubletalk. I’m sorry.”
“What are we talking about?” he murmured.
“Sanctity of life, I guess.”
He said, “I think—April, if anything is sacred about life, then it has to begin right there—with the reversal of the law of entropy. This life force is a counterforce. It builds. Constructs. In a universe where everything else is falling apart.”
She said, very quietly, “Yes. I guess that’s true.”
“So it’s the force itself that is sacred. Not elephants and fleas, men and mice.”
“So?”
“So there are corruptions in the translation from force to form. Form is not necessarily sacred, whether we’re thinking of fleas or men. The form is not sacred. Depends on what it does … and maybe why it does.”
“Maybe so,” she agreed, in a voice once again going distant. “But I think we’ve missed the whole point of—”
“What is the point?” he said. “The flea represents a successful construction of biological form in a dissolving universe. It is life bottled up and holding together, maintaining, while all around it falls apart. But for only a little while. Soon—especially soon in the case of a flea—entropy finally overcomes that fragile bottle and the flea returns to the dissolving universe.”
She was giving him an odd look. “That seems to be true, yes.”
“So what’s the point?” he asked.
“Answer that,” she told him, “and I’ll get you an honorary degree at the university of your choice. This has gotten away from us, Mack. What the hell are we talking about?”
He gave a tired sigh as he told her, “We’re talking about warfare, April. You think it stinks. All the time. Okay, so do I. But I say also that it has its place in whatever scheme is moving this old universe. It could just be that a touch of warfare—appropriately applied here and there—is what sanctifies the whole endeavor. Men and women are not sacred. The things they do, maybe—but there’s no sanctity in a bottle of energy.”
She said, “That’s what we are, huh? Bottles of energy?”
“Until we step outside the bottle, sure.”
“Oh, dear me. We are getting, I believe, into sanctimony.”
He gave her a fish eye as he replied, “That’s where we started, dear.”
“No, I said—oh, okay, score one for the soldier. What about peace and love, General?”
“Sergeant,” he corrected her. “Generals are soldiers of the abstract. Sergeants are soldiers of the specific.”
“I stand corrected.”
She was getting nasty, again. He said, “What about peace and love? Noble concepts. But illusions of the human mind, I’m afraid, fleeting constructions in a dissolving universe, a misdirection of the creative force that is constantly at war with the entropic tug.”
“I can’t believe that you really think that. Or that you would say it, anyway.”
He said, “I believe it and I said it. Peace as an abstract is laziness and defeat. It’s the human mind’s counterpart for entropy. Its only goal is death because death is the final peace. We even call it that when we try to rationalize some meaning into death.”
“And what is love?” she snapped.
“In the abstract or in the specific?”
“Let’s take the abstract first.”
“Fear.”
“What?”
“Love in the abstract is fear. It’s a veiled recognition that everything I’ve been saying is true. It’s the fear of loneliness, of total isolation, in a crumbling universe—a subconscious doubt that anything is sacred.”
She said, “Bunk!”
“You give lip service to bro
therly love because it reassures you that you’re not really alone,” he told her.
“I resent that! I do not give lip service! I think I can truly state that I love all mankind!”
“It’s easy to say. But how many people do you love?”
“I thought we were talking about the abstract form of love!”
“We are. So, say it’s not lip service. Tell me, then, lover—how do you sleep at night?”
“What do you mean?”
“So many of those you abstractly love are in agony right now, April. There are fiends afoot, and not all of those are human. The fiends of hunger, disease, of ignorance and superstition, of natural calamities. How dare you, young lady, pamper yourself through six years of public education while all around you loved ones are in agony. Why the hell weren’t you out there feeding them, and carrying water, and binding wounds? Who the hell are you kidding, other than yourself? You have no love for mankind.”
“I’ve heard all that before!” she said angrily. “It’s pure bunk! I can’t prostrate myself with silly grief over something I cannot possibly control. I can’t take care of all the … the … But that doesn’t mean that I don’t care!”
“Uh huh. We’re getting to the nitty of this philosophical discussion.”
“Pseudo philosophy, you mean! I don’t see any tassels of learning on your combat rig, soldier!”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said quietly. “You’ve been patronizing the mean old killer boss, haven’t you?”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said, softening the voice somewhat. “I’m sorry. But I don’t think either of us is qualified to lecture on human philosophy.”
“Who is?” Bolan replied gently. “The human situation is pretty much in the same condition as it was when the first philosophers began their discourses. It’s enough to make you wonder, isn’t it, if any of them ever really caught the truth? Philosophy is simply a stretch of the mind—any mind—and my stretch is as valid as any man’s who thinks. I’ll tell you a battlefield truth, though. I’ve never seen a soldier in combat who was not stretching his mind to its limits.”
“So love is fear, huh?”
“In the abstract, yes. It becomes something else when it gets specific.”
“What else?”
“You said it a minute ago. It becomes care.”
Monday’s Mob Page 5