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  Rickert smiled genially. “Sure, but how?”

  “Let’s go talk to the chief.”

  “What about?”

  Braddock’s breath whooshed out in a heavy sigh. “If we can’t reach Bolan, we’ll just have to reason with the other side. It’s roundup time, Charlie.”

  “Aw hell, Tim.” Rickert’s geniality had taken a rapid departure. “You’re not talking about a Mafia roundup.”

  “Sure I am.” Braddock rocked forward in the chair and depressed a button on the intercom. “See if the chief’s in,” he said tiredly into the interoffice communicator. “If he is, get me an open door. I have to discuss an urgent development in Hardcase, soonest possible.”

  A male voice acknowledged the instructions. Rickert was lighting a cigarette. “It’s a useless exercise, Tim,” he said heavily. “We don’t have a damned thing to even book them on, and you know it. Their lawyers will be down here with writs before we can get the doors closed.”

  “So we’ll bust them again an hour later, and we’ll keep on busting them every hour on the hour until we can get Bolan on ice. At least it’ll keep them off-balance and prevent them from launching any sort of armed offensive.”

  “But we’ll be playing right into Bolan’s hands,” Rickert said nervously. “We don’t have a line on every nephew in this town. The ones we don’t get will be ripe meat for Bolan’s butchers.”

  “Well, goddammit, I’ve got no great bleeding heart for Bolan, Charlie—but I sure as hell don’t fancy myself as the Mafia’s father protector, either, for God’s sake. Bolan will get to a few of them. He’s doing it anyway. So that’s a hell of a sight better than having our streets running blood. Hell.”

  “I think it would be a mistake,” Rickert persisted bitterly. “First thing you know, we will be hanging a Legion of Merit around Bolan’s neck.”

  “One thing you have to learn, Charlie,” Braddock snapped. “That’s when to turn off the just-plain-cop and turn on the twentiest century.” His gaze flicked past Rickert, to take in the lean figure of a man who had just stepped into his doorway. The man was deeply tanned, had very prominent cheekbones, and was neatly dressed in an opened-neck white shirt and slacks. “Yes?” Braddock asked, acknowledging the visitor’s presence.

  “Are you Captain Braddock?” the man asked.

  Braddock nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “They sent me up here. I was in Hollywood last night, and saw these men running out of this building, see. I saw in the papers this morning—”

  “Right down the hall, please. First door on the left.”

  “Sir?”

  “You want to make eyewitness report on the robbery at the Tri-Coast Studios, don’t you?”

  “Yes sir. They sent me up here.”

  “Please go into the large room just down the hall, first door on your left. They’ll take your statement there. And thank you for coming in.”

  “Are you sure?” The man was peering uncertainly along the corridor, standing half-in and half-out of Braddock’s doorway.

  “What?” Braddock was becoming impatient.

  “Well, I passed that room. There’s radios and stuff in there. I just want to report—”

  “That’s the proper place to give your statement, sir. Just walk right in and tell the man at the desk why you’re here.”

  The man smiled. “Well … okay.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the captain said, forcing a smile.

  The man moved uncertainly down the hall. Rickert was wearing a strained smile. “That’s twentieth century, eh? Saying ‘sir’ to a wetback?”

  “That’s right,” Braddock replied through tight lips. “A citizen is a citizen, and every one of them rates a ‘sir’ in this building—until they’re booked, anyway. And he wasn’t a wetback. I’d say Cherokee or Navajo. That’s about as citizen as you can get.”

  “An Indian?” Rickert asked, slowly stiffening upright in his chair.

  The two men locked eyes for a tense instant. Braddock half-rose from his seat, then settled back with an embarrassed grin. “Hell, Charlie, you made my blood run cold for a second there,” he said.

  Rickert chuckled. “Goes to show how subjective you can get on these twenty-four-hour cases,” he replied. He leaned forward to crush out his cigarette. “What the hell would Bolan’s Indian be doing up here at Hardcase Central?”

  “Go ask him,” Braddock suggested, grinning.

  “Ask him yourself, you’re the coordinator,” Rickert replied, entiely satisfied with the change of atmosphere in the captain’s office. He had over reacted to Braddock’s decision for a Mafia drag, he realized, and he had needed that little diversion. Thank God for stumbling, wide-eyed, dumb-ass “citizens” who, lost or not, were determined to do their civic duty. Bolan’s (ha-ha) Indian had pulled the twenty-four-hour cop’s fat out of the fire. For the moment, at any rate.

  Down the hall, a bronzed man with prominent cheekbones was performing a citizen’s duty, filing a written eyewitness report of a crime—and mentally filing an unwritten eyewitness report on the plan and layout of Captain Braddock’s control room. Bolan’s Indian had plenty to do at Hardcase Central.

  Chapter Ten

  THE SOFT SELL

  “A directional mike is out of the question,” Schwarz reported glumly. “It’s a hard building, any way you look at it.”

  “Internal security is a loose goose, though,” Loudelk told Bolen. He tossed a small notebook onto Bolan’s lap. “They call the operation Hardcase. The names of the detail leaders and their areas are in the notes there. Got that from a duty roster pinned to a bulletin board in their control room.” He withdrew a three-by-five card from his hip pocket and waved it gently in front of Bolan’s eyes. “And guess what this is. Phone numbers and radio frequencies on the front, code words on the back.” He produced a folded paper from his shirt pocket and added it to the loot on Bolan’s lap. “And this is an area map, showing zones of responsibility for the various details.”

  Bolan was wearing a broad grin. “Bloodbrother, you’re a master craftsman,” he said.

  “Place was wide open. I just walked in and picked it up. This Braddock, the cop in charge, looks more like a judge than a cop. He’s hard, though, and the other cops respect him. They call him Big Tim. Behind his back, anyway. His office adjoins their control room. Floor plan’s in the notebook. They’re running a military operation there, Sarge. I’d say they want us real bad.”

  Bolan nodded, the grin still in place. His eyes were traveling down the list of radio frequencies printed on the card. “Can you cover these frequencies, Gadgets?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I’ll have to get some more gear. I’ll need some cash. I’d say … oh, about at least two thousand. If you want to cover all those at the same time.”

  “Money is no object,” Bolan replied. “What better use for Mafia green, eh? Draw what you need from Politician. Need any help?”

  Schwarz shook his head in a decided negative. “I shop better by m’self,” he said.

  “Okay, but play it cautious. Don’t excite anyone’s curiosity. Brother, you cover him, separate vehicles, SOP. From this moment forward, no one leaves base camp without a cover man.”

  “Let’s chow up first,” Loudelk suggested, his eyes on Schwarz. The electronics man nodded, and they went off together toward the kitchen.

  Schwarz halted in the doorway and turned back to Bolan. “You get anything worthwhile from that tape I sent back?”

  “Plenty,” Bolan assured him. “Chopper and Gunsmoke are out reconning a couple of leads right now.” He got to his feet and strolled over to join Schwarz in the doorway. “And a special little chunk of dynamite I saved for myself. I didn’t know quite how to use it, but now … well, I believe Loudelk’s intelligence has shown me the way. Listen, Gadgets, get those radio monitors set up just as soon as possible. They’re going to be a hell of a weapon for us.” He started to walk away, then whirled back and added, “And listen—I don’t care how much it costs�
�set up a mobile capability. Maybe we can use the horse as a rolling command post. You know what I’m thinking of?”

  Schwarz was smiling with bright enthusiasm. “I know exactly what you’re thinking of. I dunno if I can do it in one day, though.”

  Bolan slapped him on the rear and said, “Sure you can. A genius can do anything.”

  Schwarz grinned and went on into the kitchen. Bolan walked back across the big room and onto the patio. Deadeye Washington was out there, working over his sniper piece with a cleaning cloth. “You ate yet?” Bolan asked him.

  Washington nodded solemnly. “If you can call a TV Dinner eating,” he replied. “When we gonna get a cook around here?”

  Bolan ignored the question. “We have work. You’re on me. Side-arm only, street clothes. Meet me out front in ten minutes.”

  Washington sighed and grunted up out of the chair. “Good thing,” he said, chuckling. “Gettin’ lazy. Been about twelve hours since I sweated bird turds.”

  Carl Lyons pulled his car into the driveway of the modest tract home, thoughtfully eyed the sack of groceries on the seat beside him, and mentally ran over the list of items Janie had asked him to buy. He had detoured via the barber shop for a quick trim, where he had further dwadled over some television replays of the latest Rams games, and unavoidably the shopping list had become somewhat blurred in his memory. He poked absently into the sack, hoping he hadn’t forgotten anything. He needed to lie down for at least an hour before dinner and then return to duty. He certainly had no desire to spend the balance of his free time running back and forth to the supermarket.

  The young policeman stepped out of the car, dragging the sack with him and then swinging it under one arm. He kicked the door shut and headed up the walk to the kitchen door, pausing momentarily to reposition a child’s tricycle that was blocking the way.

  His wife was standing at the open door of the refrigerator, peering into its depths with a perplexed frown. This was the way Lyons appreciated Janie best—candid, off-guard, unaware of her husband’s observation. Not that she exhibited an affected manner in his presence; it was just that she had a special quality that shone more brightly in personal solitude. She looked up and caught him gazing at her with a special quality of his own. The luminous eyes flashed in a startled smile, and she said, “Thought you were either lost or arrested. You’ve been gone for an hour and a half.”

  “Haircut,” he explained, fanning the back of his head with an open palm. He placed the sack on the drainboard. “I probably forgot something.”

  Janie was still standing at the open refrigerator. “I could have sworn we had a bottle of Seven-Up,” she said.

  “Now that wasn’t on the list, Janie,” Lyons declared defensively.

  She smiled. “Go tell it to your friend in there. How am I going to mix him a drink if we have no mix? Huh, Mr. Detective?”

  “What friend?” Lyons asked, frowning.

  “Mr. Mac-something-or-other. He said you were expecting him. Aren’t you expecting him?” She slammed the refrigerator door, reading the expression on her husbands face. “These salesmen!” she exclaimed in controlled fury. “They’ll try anything to get in the door. Go in there and tell him we don’t want a thing, not a thing, unless he has an instant money tree for nothing down and nothing a week. You tell him. I have to get supper.”

  Lyons was already moving through the swinging door and along the short hallway. He hesitated at the archway into the living room. A tall man in a conservatively tailored suit stood at the window, his back to Lyons. Neatly trimmed blond hair shimmered in the sunlight filtering through the window. Lyons’s four-year-old son, Tommy, was holding the man’s hand and pointing to something in the yard.

  The man turned slowly to acknowledge Lyon’s entrance, a faint smile twisting at his lips. “We meet again,” he said softly. “Fine boy you have here.” He ruffled Tommy’s hair with a gentle hand. “He was just telling me about your mole problem. You’d think, in this atomic age, someone would have come up with a sure cure for lawn pests.”

  Lyons’s heart was thundering in his ears. He glanced at his son, who was tugging trustingly at the man’s fingers, and his mouth went dry. “Mama needs you in the kitchen, Tommy,” he croaked.

  The boy stared at his father for a rebellious moment, then scowled unhappily and marched obediently out of the room. The tall man spread his hands in front of him, palms down, as if to show that they were empty and unthreatening.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Bolan?” Lyons snarled in a tightly controlled voice.

  “A brief truce, like last night. In the interests of justice.”

  “Last night was a fluke! You’ll never walk away from me again, Bolan.”

  “Don’t go off half-cocked,” Bolan warned softly. “I have no wish to bring warfare into your home.” His eyes flicked toward the kitchen door. “Those are nice people in there. Let’s keep it peaceful.”

  Lyons was angry enough to spit brimstone. “You’ve got a goddamned nerve, coming into my house. All right, Bolan. Let’s hear what’s on your mind?”

  Bolan’s eyes swept to a small plastic case resting on a table near the window. “I brought along a tape player. I want you to listen to a recording we made from a drop in Varone’s Hollywood apartment.”

  “Why?” Lyons was developing interest despite himself.

  “I want to see if you can identify a cop, from his first name and his voice.”

  “Again, why?”

  “Because this cop is on the Mafia payroll.”

  A brief silence ensued; then: “But why do you bring it to me? Just because I froze once doesn’t mean I’ve become your bosom buddy. Why me?”

  “Because I figure any good cop will want to uncover a bad one. And I can’t very well walk into the Hall of Justice with it, can I?” Bolan’s eyes flicked once again to the kitchen door. “You are a good cop, aren’t you, Lyons?”

  The dective’s lips twitched under a strongly guarded emotion. “All right. Play your tape. You want to sit down?”

  “Thanks, I’ll stand.” Bolan twisted to one side to rest his hands on the tape player. “It’s best that I stay right here in the window. My outside man would get nervous if I moved out of his sight.”

  “You think of it all, don’t you?”

  A faint smile played on Bolan’s face. “Have to,” he replied. “It’s the only way I stay alive. You should try playing fox over the hill someday, with yourself as the fox.”

  “Don’t cry on my shoulder, Bolan. You’re the guy who blew the whistle that started the game.”

  “See any tears?” Bolan asked pleasantly. “I was just apologizing for busting into your home this way.”

  “I believe you are apologizing,” Lyons admitted grudgingly.

  Bolan looked surprised. “I am.” He pushed a control at the front of the player. “I made a copy of the pertinent part of our tape and put it in a cartridge for you.” He adjusted the volume control. “You’ll have to listen closely. There’s a bit of background noise here and there.”

  The little tape player had surprisingly good tonal quality. A thick voice swelled up from the tiny speaker, saying, “How the hell did they get onto me? How did they know? You find out! You hear me? That’s what you’re getting paid for!”

  A reedy, sneering voice came in, following a short pause. “Don’t remind me of my sins, Varone. Don’t get too shook up, either. We’ll have this guy on ice soon enough.”

  Lyons’s eyes flared wide, then narrowed speculatively. He moved closer to the tape player, hardly breathing, listening intently to the damning conversation. His eyes swiveled to Bolan moments later, his lips twisting with disgust as the thick voice whined, “We ain’t been giving you two grand a month to just—”

  It was a short recording. When it was finished, Lyons turned the machine off, dropped into a chair facing Bolan, and said, “That put a ball of mush right in the pit of my guts.”

  “You know the guy?”

  Lyons
was staring levelly at Bolan’s belt buckle. He nodded his head in silent affirmation.

  Bolan slowly brought out a package of cigarettes, lit one, and offered the pack to Lyons. The policeman ignored the offer. Bolan returned the pack to his pocket, slowly exhaled, and said, “It’s Lieutenant Charlie Rickert, isn’t it?”

  “Where are you getting these names?” Lyons snapped. “Where’d you get mine”? How did you—?” He smiled suddenly, with the lips only, and clamped his mouth shut. “I’m not running a private agency here, Bolan,” he continued in a more pleasant tone. “Don’t you ever come here again. The next time I see you, I’ll do all my talking with my gun. Now get out of here.”

  “Don’t take it all out on me,” Bolan replied mildly. “I just made the recording. I didn’t say the words.” He was moving toward the door. “I’ll leave the player with you. Give my regards to your lovely wife.”

  “Leave my wife—”

  “Okay, okay. You really better do something about those moles, though. They’re playing hell with your lawn.” He smiled, stepped through the door, and closed it lightly behind him.

  Lyons stepped quickly to the window. Already the bold bastard was moving past the corner of the hedges and out of sight. Lyons sighed, a grim smile playing at his lips.

  Janie came through the swinging door at that instant and cautiously poked her head around the corner. “I see you got rid of him,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I have a feeling it’s not for long,” he replied. He raised a hand to the back of his neck and squeezed down strongly on the bunched muscles.

  “You didn’t buy anything from him, I hope,” his wife wailed.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I’m afraid I bought quite a bit.”

  Chapter Eleven

  SNEAK PREVIEW

  The horse was behind the camouflage netting when Bolan and Washington returned to the base camp, and the big vehicle was the object of multiple attentions. Hoffower and Loudelk were spraying the van with a fast-drying paint. Fontenelli was crawling about on the roof with an electric drill. Blancanales and Zitka were struggling with a large framework of wood shelving, being arm waved through the huge doors by Schwarz.