So why did she take in Bolan like a long lost brother when he ran into her during his third escape… from Wertheim? Why didn't she go through with her original plans and hand him over either to Hansie or to the law?
Yeah, why?
He heard himself asking the same kind of questions about Dagmar. And in his memory he could hear Charlie Macfarlane's answer. People aren't simple. This was a complicated girl… a bit of a nympho.
Could this be the answer with Zuta, too? It sounded screwy, but he reckoned it was possible. Was she telling the truth that time when she'd taken him in. Had she decided on the spur of the moment to keep him under wraps? Because she, too, was "a bit of a nympho," because she liked tall, lean men, and because she hadn't, up to then, actually set eyes on the man she was hunting?
In a crazy way it figured — pride in the all-around success of the Coliseum, the two houses linked by a secret passage, the oversize American automobile, the female gang boss routine, the continuous role playing in and out of bed. Didn't it all add up, quite simply, to an old-fashioned power complex? And if it did, what could boost that kind of ego more than a captive lover whose future, even if he didn't know it, lay completely in her hands?
All Bolan knew for sure at the moment was that Zuta was a dangerous lady who could decide at any time that his future was short.
He got to his feet. Perhaps a search was in order. Carefully he investigated every nook and cranny of the house. The drawers and closets in the kitchen were empty. A buffet in a small dining room was equally bare. Likewise with the bathroom. Before trying the living room, he checked the car in the garage. But all he found there was stale cigar smoke.
Bolan suddenly remembered that there was a surprising lack of papers or stationery in the apartment above the club. But a smart businesswoman like Zuta must check out her accounts someplace — her personal accounts, that is, not the stuff for the auditors that was processed between the apartment and the club.
It was clear now that half the time she was supposed to be purchasing supplies for the club, she was, in fact, riding around in the Cadillac with Hansie and selected members of the Team, waiting in the car while they pulled their strong-arm stuff. Maybe she spent the other half here in the house. Or the house she'd been standing in front of when he'd first run into her. Whose house had that been, anyway? Hers, too? Or maybe Lattuada's? He had to live somewhere. That made sense. Maybe she'd been waiting for the Yank. Whatever the case, her papers had to be someplace.
A smart woman like Zuta would have a safe somewhere. He still had the living room to check. On one wall in that room he noticed a framed painting of a bank safe. He removed the painting. Sure enough, a wall safe! Next problem: how to open it? He could blow it if he had some plastique. But, no, that would be a dead giveaway, anyway, and he didn't want to tip his hand just yet. Along with other talents, Bolan had a pretty fair knowledge of safecracking. It took him a while but, with a lot of sweat and patience, he finally got the thing open.
Inside, he found ledgers, day books, canceled checks, invoices, bank statements, stock certificates, insurance policies, bundles of letters and sheaves of typewritten documents. He picked out a couple of typescripts at random. One was a list of names, addresses, occupations and estimated incomes. He didn't recognize any of the names, possible «subscribers» to something. Possibles, anyway. The second document was similar, but there were fewer names, and after the estimated income of each was written in ink the name of a club, tavern, cafe, dive or whatever, followed by a thumbnail sketch of the person's tastes, amusements, spending habits and vices, with notes on particular weaknesses, tax evasions, dubious contacts, liaisons, undercover activities and the like. Bolan didn't need a crystal ball to figure out the score now.
The outrage, the self-reproach and the anger hadn't crystallized yet. But he was pretty certain he had usable material here, material that he might be able to turn to his advantage, stuff he could use to link the Schroeder killing to Zuta and get him out of the mess he was in.
Given the power complex he had imagined, and given the kind of person exercising it and the means employed, wouldn't it be true to form for such a person to celebrate, indeed, to perpetuate, her cleverness? Wouldn't someone like Zuta want folks to see how smart she was? Wouldn't such a person want to write it all down, just for the record? And in what form would such a lesson for posterity be?
By this time Bolan had sifted through most of the safe's contents. Among the stacks of paperwork, he came up with the answer physically before the word formed in his mind. Staring at him in the back of the safe was a thick diary, gold-tooled, gilt-edged and closed with a hasp and lock linking the front and back covers across the pages.
Was the book blank, or packed with damaging confessions? He was wondering how he could tease open the lock without leaving telltale marks when he heard the slamming of a door and Hansie Schiller's characteristic, lisping voice.
He jumped for the window. Damn, the torpedo was paying off a cab at the end of the walkway and heading for the front door! Bolan didn't know what the world record was for replacing a diary, locking a safe and racing to a broom closet, but he reckoned he must have clipped three-tenths of a second off it that day before he heard the hood's key grating in the lock.
He was still out of breath when he arrived a couple of minutes later at the bottom of the stairway leading from the apartment to the club and thumped the portholes to attract the attention of the gorilla waiter. "I changed my mind," he panted when the guy came to the doors. "Send me up a large Scotch from the bar, okay?"
It was while he was downing the whisky, and examining the apartment more carefully now that he knew just who its owner was — that he solved one of the puzzles that bothered him the most. He found something to explain the inexplicable: his own lack of dynamism and initiative during the past week.
It was in a jumble of lipsticks, eyeliners and mascara pots beneath the lid of a black japanned box that Zuta used for her makeup — a tiny plastic-capped glass vial half full of small pink-and-white capsules. He looked at the label. A trade name in German. But he saw from the formula that the capsules contained one of the CNS-depressant drugs, a benzodiazepine derivative. And this would, he knew, have the effect of minimizing anxiety, fear, tension and any sense of urgency, without diminishing sexual interest or drive. If Zuta had been secretly feeding him the stuff, it would account for his recent lethargy, and his compensating energy in the sack.
And it must be secret, too, hidden away in that makeup box. If the drug was for her own use, surely it would be in the medicine cabinet along with everything else.
The vial was half-empty. He replaced it carefully and closed the box. When his lunch was sent up later, he dumped the whole lot into the John, wine included, and flushed it away. It was unlikely that the kitchen personnel would be in on the deal, but he wasn't taking any more chances.
Once the dishes had gone, he went back downstairs to the porthole doors. They were still locked. The bar was crowded, and there were still a few tables occupied by late lunchers. He had to break out. Surely the gorilla waiter wouldn't dare resort to strong-arm tactics in front of patrons. What excuse could he give? The idiot son escaped from the attic?
Considering how dumb he'd been, Bolan thought bitterly, he wouldn't be far wrong at that! Then, through the window, he saw Hansie drinking at the far end of the bar with a kid of about twenty who looked like the son of King Kong. All they'd have to do, even if the boy was just Hansie's latest piece of rough trade, would be to follow him out into the street and take him there. Because the hood would know for sure that Zuta was keeping the warrior upstairs, was probably laughing up his sleeve about it.
Bolan decided that since he was being used as a pawn in the sultry gang boss's private chess game, he'd take the pawn's way out just for now and move one square back. He returned to the secret passageway and let himself out the garage window of the house at the far end.
He made two calls from the first phone booth he saw
. One was to call up Heinrich Alberts and his taxi. The second was to Freddie Leonhardt.
The newsman was surprised to hear Bolan's voice. "My dear old boy," he spluttered, "I didn't, that is to say, I never thought I'd be, I mean, I imagined you were still, uh, on the run."
"It's no thanks to you that I'm not, you double-crossing bastard," Bolan said. He paused, then added, "I guess you contacted the Windy City and discovered I really am Mike Belasko?"
"Oh, God, yes. I'm frightfully sorry about that. Really I am." Leonhardt sounded confused. "Ghastly trick to play on a fellow, what. I mean, when I say trick, well, the fact is those policemen were awfully persuasive, and…" He cleared his throat, suddenly aware that the weight of excuses was going to push him deeper into the shit…
"Okay," Bolan cut in. "Okay. I know the way cops can feed you ideas and get the right answers to loaded questions. Forget it. There are more important things to talk about. You can make up for it, in any case, if you have a half hour to spare. Do you?"
"Well, I, uh, yes, of course, old boy. I… what can I do for you?"
"Two things. One, get over to the U.S. consulate in the Harvesterhuder Weg, the annex that is, not the main consulate in the Alsterufer. How you do it, I leave to you, but I want you to contact the cipher clerk there and collect a printout Pm expecting from Washington. I can't go myself thanks to the situation Pm in. Plus I want you to ask the guy to send a service message and then wait for the answer." Bolan dictated the message.
"Got it," Leonhardt said. "And the second thing?"
"Do you believe I killed that girl?"
"My dear chap! No, no, certainly not. Good God, no!"
"Thousands wouldn't believe you, but I do. I guess I have to. Okay, call up Fischer, the cop in charge of the murder investigation, the guy you spoke to before, and tell him to expect a message of some kind from me within the next couple of days. Tell him it'll settle the question of who really did murder Dagmar Schroeder, and that it won't be a hoax. It really will be from me. Will you do that?"
"Of course, old boy. Where are you calling from? Can I call you back?"
"With your record," Bolan said, "do you imagine I'd tell?"
"Yes, but the answer to your message — how shall I tell you?"
"Don't call me," the Executioner said. "I'll call you."
He hung up and pushed his way out of the phone booth. Alberts's cab was waiting twenty yards down the street.
* * *
Bolan hit pay dirt at the second St. Pauli tavern he visited. He was sitting on a stool up against a mahogany-and-frosted-glass partition dividing the bar into two separate rooms, nursing a beer and keeping his ears open. He paid no attention to the bulky shadow on the far side of the art nouveau curlicues festooning the glass until he heard the voice that went with it.
"Gotta make it to those two dumps at Aumühle this afternoon. The boss figures the second creep, the one with the blonde, may shell out. But we'll have to knock around the character at the cathouse a sight more before he comes across." Then there was a hoarse chuckle.
The baritone growl with the hint of a lisp on the sibilants could only belong to Hansie Schiller. And if Bolan thought he'd hit the mother lode with that statement, the reply showed him the genuine nuggets shining in the bottom of the pan.
"Yeah," the second voice said. "I guess it'd be smart to put the arm on the guy PDQ. The follow-through is what counts when folks open up a territory, see. Cut the time in half again for the next approach, then make with the muscle, huh?"
Bolan smiled. And that was the inimitable Ferucco Lattuada.
It was only a confirmation of what the Executioner knew already, but he needed that confirmation. He had to have proof that his deductions were correct before he took the next step. The warrior shifted his position and stared over the barkeep's shoulder.
There was a mirror behind the tumblers and bottles ranged on the shelves. The bartender was filling a shot glass with schnapps from a dispenser inverted in front of those shelves; a waitress was pulling the flowered china handles of a draft tap. Between them Bolan caught a slanted, cubist view of the drinkers on the far side of the partition — Lattuada's lean, blue-jowled face tilted across a bottle of Glenfiddich and a crystal decanter of crème de menthe; Hansie's shallow hat crowning a tall German beer stein decorated with a colorful hunting scene.
"I gotta meet with the Wallmann mob in Bremen," the mafioso said. "Have to talk some sense into their fuckin' mouthpiece and get them to play ball, or we'll have to…" The remainder of the sentence was lost as an argument about the disarmament talks in Berlin broke out behind Bolan.
"You can't trust them. The whole thing's a con. Without that nuclear umbrella, I'm telling you, we'll be swamped within a year."
"Zoltan, you're too damned cynical. If the Russians feel…"
"No, he's right. The Reds'll be over that wall like rats up a…"
"Cynical, hell. I just see things the way they are."
"They don't want war any more than we do. If you would just…"
Bolan swiveled on his stool and leaned his head against the frosted glass, but it wasn't until the arguing men moved away that he was again able to hear the two voices beyond the partition. Even then the conversation was only in fragments.
"Fuck him over until he… long as we stop short of… the way Kraul's boys croaked Becker. But squeeze the bastard dry, because, shit, with all those broads…" He heard Schiller growl.
"Back from Bremen on Thursday, 7:35 at the main station… get the idea — act tough and then be tough!" Lattuada said.
Bolan tried his stare-into-the-mirror number again, hoping he wasn't going to meet the flinty gaze of one of the hoods. But they had turned their backs on the bar, crowded into a corner by a party of newcomers shouting ribaldries about the whores in the Eros Center on the Reeperbahn. A few minutes later they left.
Bolan went back to Alberts and his cab. "Between Reinbek and Aumuhle," he told the cabbie. "The white gates just before that gas station."
"I had you figured for a private eye or something," Alberts said as they headed for the autobahn and the bridge over the Elbe. "Maybe even a… what is it they call them? G-man?"
"That's a little out of style," Bolan said, smiling.
"Whatever. I'd have bet my shirt on it. But now I've had time to think and I see I was wrong. You're a reporter, right?"
"We can't all be cabdrivers or own a white Cadillac," Bolan said.
"No, sir. And we can't all remember the stories we read in the papers. Or the descriptions they print. Or the photos they're running now. But some folks do." Alberts pulled into the fast lane to pass a convoy of semis hauling containers from the docks, then added slowly, "A tall, lean man with an American accent, claiming to work for a newspaper. I wouldn't stick around in a crowd too long if I were you."
"There are two of us in town," Bolan said after a pause. "The cops picked the wrong one to tag with a killing, that's all."
"You don't need to worry," Alberts said. "I know an honest man when I see him. You learn to make judgments in my business. But I'd hide that face of yours, at least while you're in town. There's a newspaper on the back seat."
"Herr Alberts," Bolan said warmly, "you're a friend in need!"
He picked up the paper, unfolded it and held it open in front of his face, just a businessman scanning the latest stock prices on the way to his office. It was the German edition of the International Herald-Tribune.
He turned to pages four and five. The main heading on the right-hand side told him, via a three-deck pyramid, that the Berlin disarmament talks — preliminary session — had reached a successful conclusion. France was dubious, the story said, but an agenda had been agreed upon. A separate story was headlined: tough BARGAINING EXPECTED IN SECOND ROUND NEXT month. And there was a paneled think piece sub-headed: Will the Wall Come Down? Berliners Divided.
Bolan was idly glancing at the other items when his eye caught a headline in a box on the left-hand side: cargo seize
d in dockside brawl. With quickened interest, he read:
Armed thugs last night attacked a warehouse in the Fischmarkt area of St. Pauli, smashing through the doors with a bulldozer and overpowering the watchman. The hoodlums were ransacking a part of the building reserved for tannery supplies when they were surprised by a second group of miscreants wielding iron bars, blackjacks and knives. A pitched battle ensued in which shots were exchanged. At least one of the original raiders is thought to have been killed and two more wounded.
Police, alerted by anxious neighbors, were soon on the scene. But by the time they arrived the battle was already over and casualties removed. Sources close to the underworld recalled early this morning that there were striking similarities between this raid and a recent hijack in Lübeck.
The warehouse manager, called from his bed in the middle of the night, told our reporter that, as far as he could see on a preliminary inspection, the only loss suffered was a small consignment of goatskins checked in last week.
Bolan's pulse quickened. The way he read the situation, the East German who had ordered the smuggled narcotics wasn't taking the loss of his paid-for cargo lying down. He had traced the skins, raided the place where Lattuada had them stashed and seized them back, beating off a counterattack by the Team while doing it.
What this had to do with the gunfight in the woods at Aumuhle he couldn't say. But he was damn sure it was the same two gangs fighting out something… with the Executioner at that moment innocently playing Herr In-Between.
Near the big house with the white gates he paid the cabbie. "Should I come back later, maybe pick you up?" Alberts asked.
Bolan fingered his jaw. Zuta wasn't due back from Hannover until nine o'clock that evening. He nodded. "Yeah, you'd be doing me a favor. Let's see…" He glanced at his watch. "Meet me at the gas station at eight o'clock, no later. Okay?"
"Whatever you say." Alberts waved cheerily, made a U-turn and headed back toward the city. Bolan pushed through a spiny hedge and took to the fields surrounding the knoll on which the property was built.
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