Blowout Read online

  At the end of the street sirens warbled. A green-and-white police car, and then another, roared down from the Reeperbahn direction and turned east. A third patrol advanced more slowly and stopped two hundred yards from the hospital. Three uniformed cops got out.

  On an impulse, Bolan bought a bunch of dahlias and joined the line of men and women shuffling toward the hospital entrance. It was the best camouflage he could think of. In the wide, stone-flagged corridor leading to the stairs he stopped suddenly, hit by an idea. He could use the hospital not just as a temporary cover but as a positive step along the road he had to travel.

  He turned around and went back to a glassed-in information desk by the doors. A middle-aged man in uniform sat over an admissions book behind the screen. Bolan waited while two women made inquiries about a relative with a broken leg. What was it that Dagmar had said? Or was it Sally Ann? He cast his mind back over the past few turbulent days.

  That's not his real name, of course, but that's what everyone calls him…

  Charlie, the hamstrung owner of the Coconut Grove.

  Charlie what? Charlie Fairlawn? Charlie Fairbarn? Charlie Farnsbarn, that was it!

  Bolan remembered that the guy, like the alto player at the Sugar Hill and the cloakroom attendant at Tondelayo's, was a West Indian. There were always Brits playing in the Hamburg clubs; the Beatles had made their name there. He guessed that Charlie Farnsbarn was some musicians' equivalent of John Doe or Jean Dupont or Billy Whatsit. But what was his real name? Had she ever said?

  Kind of a Scottish name, you know, although he comes from Trinidad. Mackintosh? McKay? McEvoy?

  "What can I do for you, friend?" The guy behind the desk was looking at Bolan's peaked cap. «Friend» was a concession, as one underling to another. He would help all he could, though the bourgeois would have to fill in the requisite forms.

  "Kind of a problem," the Executioner said, doing his best, good though his German was, to de-Americanize his accent. "Would a guy who was injured, that's to say had an accident in St. Pauli, be brought here?"

  The man pursed his lips. "Depends. What kind of injury? What part of St. Pauli? Which ambulance answered the emergency call? You don't know. Could just as easily be the Hanseatic General or Jerome Bonaparte in the Heidenkamps Weg. Not likely to be the Sisters of Mercy, though." He shook his head. "Too far east, see."

  "Yeah. I get it. It could be here just the same? It was… a severe leg injury. Andreas Bernersstrasse."

  The lips were still pursed. Breath whistled inward between them. The eyebrows rose. "It could be. Yes, from the Andreas Bernersstrasse. It could be. Date of admission?"

  "The seventh. In the afternoon."

  "Hmm. Mostly cracked bones that day after the big freeze. And auto accidents. They ought to sand the damn roads sooner." He turned the pages of the big book. "We'll give it a whirl, anyway. And the name?"

  "That's the problem," Bolan said. "I'm not certain. I don't know the person very well. I just saw the… accident, and I wanted to know how the guy was getting on. He's a foreigner. Kind of a Scottish name. Mac-something, you know. The first name is Charles. Oh, and he's a black guy. From Trinidad."

  "Foreign, eh?" The information clerk chuckled. "We don't log the color of their skins or where they come from. Not anymore." He was running a stubby forefinger down the column of hand-written entries. "Let's see… the seventh… Schwartz… Cameron, D. I.? No, that was the messenger from the British consulate with acute appendicitis. Mach, E.? Multiple internal injuries and a severed arm? Come to think of it, he was local. Truck driver had an argument with a shunting locomotive down at the docks. Anyway, you said legs, didn't you? Here! What about this one?" The finger halted at the foot of a page. "Macfarlane, C. J. F. Severe damage to outer hamstrings and adductor magnus."

  Bolan knew before the injuries were listed. Macfarlane was such an obvious candidate for distortion to Farnsbarn. "That'll be it," he said. "Is he still here?"

  "Yup. Transferred from Emergency to General Surgical yesterday." The clerk wrote the name of the ward on a card and handed it through a pigeonhole in the glass. "Second floor, turn left."

  "I'm obliged," Bolan said. "Thanks a lot."

  "Any time," the clerk replied. "I hope he appreciates the flowers."

  Bolan grinned and made for the stairs. Charlie Macfarlane was in a large general ward at the end of a long passageway smelling of chrysanthemums and rubber tubing with an aftertaste of ether. There were groups of relatives sitting or standing around the patients in their high, white-painted iron beds. Others stood uneasily in the corridor, waiting their turn. A woman cried softly behind screens masking one corner of the ward.

  It wasn't necessary to ask a nurse where Macfarlane was. He was the only patient without a visitor and the only man who was black: a bulky Negro with iron-gray hair and thick lips that still bore the marks of a beating. He was leaning back against the pillows with his eyes closed when the Executioner sat down in a chair beside the bed. Behind Bolan, a stout woman was talking in whispers to an elderly man with one arm in a sling. Around the bed beyond Macfarlane several overdressed females fussed over a pale and sickly youth, arranging flowers in vases and fruit in bowls.

  "Charlie?" Bolan said quietly.

  The black man opened his eyes. He dragged himself into a sitting position. "Who the hell are you? If it's the cops, I told you three times already I've nothing to…"

  "Relax, Charlie," Bolan interrupted. "Take it easy. It's nothing to do with the law."

  Macfarlane looked more frightened still. "An American! Shit, you're not…"

  "No way." Bolan played his joker early in the game. "I haven't been sent by Lattuada, if that's what you mean. Him and me ain't exactly buddies."

  The maneuver was successful; the gamble paid off. "Well, that makes you a buddy of mine for starters," the injured man said viciously. He gestured toward the foot of the bed, where a frame beneath the covers held sheets and blankets away from his legs. "They tell me I'll have to learn to walk again, with a steel fuckin' cage at first, and then leg irons for the rest of my life. I was an athlete, man."

  "Okay, okay," Bolan soothed. "That makes two of us. Me, I'd…"

  "What he do to you?"

  "Only pin a murder rap on me, that's all. Nice guy."

  "Hey!" Macfarlane reached for a crumpled newspaper lying between the bed and his night table. "It says here there's an American up before the judge this a.m. on a charge of…"

  "He didn't wait to hear the result," Bolan said. "Charlie, I'm on the run. I don't have too much time. I'm trusting you because I have a hunch we're on the same side. And we both want to get Lattuada, right?"

  "You can say that again."

  "To put you in the picture, I got Dagmar away after they'd done the Coconut Grove, when you were already out."

  "Jesus, I wondered what the hell… And then I saw that she had been…"

  "Okay. Now listen, Charlie, I'll give it to you straight, the way it happened. After that I'd like you to answer one or two questions, if you would."

  The man in the bed frowned. "Depends on the questions."

  "Dagmar walked out on me a half hour after we left the Coconut Grove," Bolan said. "I spent the whole next day looking for her. I combed every dive in St. Pauli and Altona and some on the far side of the river. Finally I located her outside her own apartment and I made a date with her for the following night. For some reason she wouldn't see me that same night. We were going to talk about the Team and their racket. She was going to answer questions, too. But I never got to see her again. Alive, that is. When I showed for the date she was already dead, and every clue pointed my way, including some they'd stolen from my hotel room."

  Charlie nodded. "That figures. It sounds like the way they work. Efficient."

  "Efficient, as you say. Now I can understand why they'd want to pin the killing on me. I'm American, and Lattuada's description fits me. If I went on poking my nose, I could blow Lattuada and his connection with the racket. But
why would they want to eliminate Dagmar in the first place, Charlie? Why?"

  Macfarlane shrugged, then winced as the movement disturbed some dormant pain in his savaged body. "You tell me, man. They don't follow no rules."

  "Okay. Let's take it from the top. Simple questions first. Lattuada and the Yank are one and the same, right?"

  "Right."

  "And he masterminded the campaign that put the Team at the top in the protection racket?"

  Macfarlane nodded.

  "The Team being led, so far as the strong-arm stuff goes, by this Hansie character?"

  "Hansie Schiller, the iron fist in the fairy's glove, yeah."

  "They were wrecking the Coconut Grove, and the Sugar Hill later, because you hadn't come across with the loot, right?"

  The Trinidadian nodded again. "Bastards. As if they hadn't got enough, muscling in on Tondelayo's for a percentage. I said I'd see them in hell before…"

  "Okay, Charlie," Bolan cut in. "So they took you up on it. They sent you to hell." He glanced at the injured man's feet. "But who were they still fighting after they'd put you out? Who were the other soldiers?"

  "Friends of mine. Guys who have been strong-armed out of the same racket themselves. It was strictly a business operation, but they wanted to do it."

  "Guys connected with Kraul?"

  Charlie's eyes closed. "Who's Kraul?"

  The Executioner let that one go with the tide. "All right. Now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Who was Dagmar? How did she fit in? What was her connection with the Team, and with you? She told me she'd come to see you about a spot in the floor show at Tondelayo's. The Sugar Hill, too. But there's no floor show at Tondelayo's, and only on Sundays at the other dump. How come, Charlie?"

  A bespectacled nurse in a starched cap and apron wheeled a trolley loaded with enamel bowls and thermometers in glasses through the ward. She stopped by the bed beyond Macfarlane's. "Frau Meyer," she said severely, "I've told you before, only two visitors at a time! The others must wait outside and take their turn. It exhausts the patients."

  "Dagmar was Lattuada's ex," Macfarlane said. "Nothing legal, but they were shacked up together awhile."

  "And so?"

  "Things were kind of tough after she walked out on him, and I helped her some. Found her the Kinderplatz apartment, fixed her up with a job, and like that."

  "Were you laying her?"

  "Not especially. I mean no more than anyone else."

  "What was all this floor show routine?"

  "That was just…" Charlie shrugged again, and winced. "It was like kind of a cover. Not that we needed one. But it gave her a reason to come and see me in case folks were nosy, see. She'd been a dancer once. Me, I was always saying I should start a floor show at Tondelayo's, expand the show at the Sugar Hill, like broaden out, okay? The story was that she'd come to discuss what kind of show it might be. You dig?"

  Bolan nodded. "The guy in the men's room at Tondelayo's told me she was his connection for drugs. Or some girl called Dagmar was."

  The West Indian lowered his eyelids and plucked at the sheet. "I wouldn't know anything about that."

  "Look, Charlie," Bolan said urgently, "it can't hurt her now. I have to have the full story if I'm to nail Lattuada. It's tough enough as it is, being on the run. If I don't know the score, how can I help?"

  "I guess you're right." Macfarlane sighed. The eyes closed altogether. "All right. Well, yes, to tell the truth we had a little business together. Being the boss. I couldn't afford to get caught with the stuff. Besides, I wasn't always there. Also the kid needed the money. You understand?"

  "So you figured nobody would suspect a pretty blonde of being a pusher? And that was why you needed the floor show cover. Was this connection with or without the Team's knowledge?"

  The man in the bed was silent for a moment. The pale boy in the next bed whined, "Please don't fuss, Mother. I've got plenty, really I have."

  Macfarlane opened his eyes. The whites were the color of chicken fat. "That was the trouble," he told the warrior. "Dagmar's business with me was private. I reckoned those bastards were taking enough off me anyway."

  "But they found out?"

  "They found out. Lattuada was mad as hell because she wasn't using one of his wholesalers, and because we held out on him and he wasn't getting his cut. That was why they were told to take Dagmar with them when they'd fucked over the Coconut Grove, so they could choke the details of the operation out of her and louse it up."

  "But they choked the life out of her instead, two days later. Why the hell should they have waited? Just to pin it on me? Why should they want to kill her anyway?"

  "Don't ask me," Charlie said. "Maybe just because she knew too much. Maybe as a lesson to their own pushers. They play rough, those motherfuckers. Maybe because of something else, something we don't know about."

  "Yeah," Bolan said slowly. "Maybe. She said she couldn't see me that night because she had to fix something, something she hoped she might be able to fix on the phone. Was there a phone in that apartment?"

  Charlie shook his head.

  "It doesn't make sense," the Executioner said. "It doesn't quite add up. Almost but not quite. From the little I saw of her, what you've told me figures, and yet there still seems to be something missing. If she was too scared to leave the apartment, and she had no phone, how could she hope to fix anything? And she was scared, too. That was genuine enough. Maybe there was nothing to fix. But in that case, why bother to tell me there was?"

  "People aren't simple," Charlie said. "This was a complicated girl. She was a bit of a nympho, for starters. She couldn't say no. So she'd get herself in a mess and say the first thing that came into her head to get out of it. She'd tell you one thing in the morning, meaning every word of it, and then tell you something totally different that night, meaning that, too. Finally she'd get to believe her own lies, and lie again to explain that away." He compressed his bruised lips and shook his head once more. "That didn't stop her looking pretty, and it didn't stop fellows trying to make her."

  "You're telling me all that crap about having something to fix could have been a stall? It was just that she already had a date lined up that night, but she wasn't prepared to admit it?"

  "Maybe. Girls catch on pretty quick that there's a whole heap of men like to believe they're the only horse in the race. That doesn't stop the girls playing the field when they feel that way, but they have to hide it. And once you're on mat kick, it becomes a habit, like anything else."

  "Yeah," Bolan agreed. "A habit you can't kick." He shook his head. "You could be right at that, Charlie. It sounds too simple, but it does stack up with the details, as far as I know them."

  "Let me bring you a nice piece of meat in a Pyrex dish," the woman at the next bed urged. "Boiled chicken they give him! And carrots any mensch she would have thrown them in the garbage can already!"

  "What I can't understand," Bolan said, "is why they waited those two days. If it was so important to get the girl at your place, important enough to kill her, as it turned out, why didn't Lattuada go straight to her apartment that same night? They knew where it was, didn't they?"

  "Sure. But maybe you're talking about two different things," Macfarlane said. "I mean, like the need to kill her may have come out of something that happened the night she wouldn't see you. Maybe it had nothing to do with what they wanted her for at the Coconut Grove. You never know."

  The Executioner frowned. "It's possible. Only thing is, that would mean she was in some way, directly or indirectly, in contact with Lattuada or the Team on the night in question. From what you know of Dagmar, would you figure that was possible? Could she have been playing some kind of double game?"

  "Dagmar never played any other kind. But the only person could answer that would be Lattuada's boss."

  "Lattuada's boss! You mean…? But who in hell is that?"

  "You tell me!" Charlie Macfarlane said.

  Chapter Eleven

  On the follo
wing day, with the thaw continuing and sidewalks awash with gray slush, it started to rain before dawn and continued to rain all day. Mack Bolan awoke early in an atmosphere heavy with the odors of soot, diesel fuel and smoke from a coal stove that wouldn't draw properly. He had slept in a waiting room at the Hamburg train station among the handful of travelers condemned to catch the postal train to Lübeck and the Baltic coast and those who had arrived too late to make it home on the last buses or subway services the previous night.

  Bolan himself had drawn a blank on his attempt to make the BMW in the hotel parking lot. Approaching the Drehbahn on a circuitous route when he left the hospital, he saw that police were stationed in pairs at both the hotel entrances and at the foot of the ramps leading up to and down from the garage floors. He guessed they would be covering the elevators inside, as well.

  No dice, then, on his aim to locate Lattuada and the drug baron, especially since St. Pauli and other likely neighborhoods would be under intense surveillance from squads briefed to bring in the killer Belasko. He would have to lie very low until the heat was off.

  It would even, he guessed, be unwise to check into some kind of lodging house in the suburbs. He wasn't too certain of German police procedure, and there was a chance that all registrations, as in France, were automatically checked out. A railroad terminal seemed as good a compromise as any. The cops would certainly be watching, but they would be at the barriers, casing the travelers leaving town and paying little attention to the floating population centered on the station itself. In any case it would be safer than roaming the streets on the day of his escape.

  He passed the daylight hours in a movie theater, emerging to buy coffee and a bratwurst when rush-hour commuters flooded the station concourse. After that he returned to the theater until it closed at midnight.

  Now, stiff from a few hours' sleep on a wooden bench, he limped downstairs to the washroom and splashed cold water on his face. Before he did anything else, he would have to buy a razor and a replacement for his ripped jacket. Buttoning his stolen raincoat against the downpour, he left the station with the city-bound office workers.