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  Schwarz spotted Bolan’s approach. He stepped through the shelf framing and swung down off the tailgate, grinning at Bolan in quiet exuberance. “We’re almost set,” he announced. “I got all solid-state, self-contained gear. All we have to do now is get it set in the racks, install the antenna mast, run a few connections—and we’re in business.”

  “The antenna problem is my biggest worry,” Bolan told him, critically eyeing the big rig. “With all those things sticking up out of there, it’s going to look suspect as hell.”

  “I already thought of that,” Schwarz assured him. “No sweat. I’m running just one whip, horizontal along the roof, with couplings per set. That will be the only thing showing, and it’ll be hardly noticable. Chopper is punching me some holes, and I’m running the antenna leads along the inside to each coupling.”

  “I’m not sure I understand that.” Bolan grinned. “But I’ll take your word for it. Good show, Gadgets. How much longer before you’re finished?”

  “Couple hours, at the most. It’ll work, Sarge.”

  Bolan slapped him on the shoulder and went on to the house. He found Harrington and Washington conversing in low tones on the patio. Harrington raised his voice, lifting it toward Bolan, and announced, “Yeah, man, we had a swingin’ afternoon. That Varone cat has his fingers in just about everything.”

  Bolan pulled a chair away from the patio table, turned it around, and settled onto it in a straddling movement, his arms draped across the backrest. “Tell me about it,” he said, alertly interested.

  Harrington did likewise, bouncing his chair about to directly face Bolan. “First off,” he said intently, “I get the idea that even his recording outfit is slightly off-color. You know what a ‘cover’ is, in record talk?”

  Bolan shook his head in a negative response.

  “Well, some outfit comes out with a pretty good record, see, and they plug hell out of it—promotion, you know, a bit of oil to the deejays here and there—you know the routine. The thing starts climbing in the sales charts, hits the top forty, and it looks like it’s going all the way. A hit, see? So I guess it’s a pretty much accepted practice for other companies to bring out a record just like it—same song, see. This is called covering. You could think of it as legitimate competition—except that the outfit that brought the thing out in the first place has took all the risks and spent all this money in plugging and promoting.”

  “I’m following,” Bolan assured him.

  “Well—Tri—Coast never puts out anything but covers. They call it covering, I call it stealing. They use the exact same arrangements, never change a damn note. And here’s the worse part—they pick up these starvin’ kids who are trying to make it big out here in Hollywood, see, pay ’em a damn thin fee for cutting the record, and that’s it. The artists never make another penny off that record, no matter how many it sells, and Varone is rolling in profit. He’s the worse kind of rat, Mack—he’s exploiting kids, the rock groups and folk singers who are just dying for that big chance. He’s giving them crumbs and making a killing for himself.”

  “But nothing illegal,” Bolan observed quietly.

  “Not that anyone could say for certain. There’s talk that his distributor leans pretty hard on deejays and the small record shops. Payola for the deejays and kickbacks to the record shops if they sell a certain quota. I don’t know if there’s a law against that or not.”

  “Okay, how about the other activities?”

  Harrington put on a grim smile. “Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty. He’s pushing everything, from girls to acid. I get the idea he’s a silent honcho in a big modeling agency out on Wilshire. He’s also collecting money from a guy who has an office up on the Strip, calls himself a theatrical agent. The only flesh he peddles, though, is girl flesh. Showgirls, mostly, strippers and that type. And I smell a call-girl operation, loud and clear.”

  Bolan nodded his head. “You said something about acid.”

  “Yeah, hell, the whole bit. Grass, speed, acid, goofballs, the big H—everything that kicks or purrs.”

  “How do you know?”

  Harrington grinned. “I found someone who shared his bed and board for a while.”

  Bolan’s eyebrows rose. “A girl?”

  “Yeah. And what a girl. All boobs and butt, beautiful as a rose and just about as brainless.”

  “She knows quite a bit about Varone’s operations?”

  Harrington shrugged. “In a general sort of way. You can never tell about these dumb ones. How much detail they know, I mean. She came in to record a cover for Varone ’bout three months ago, then stayed on to keep his bed warm for a few weeks. Lived right there in his apartment above the recording studios. Then he got tired of her and showed her the way out.” A faint smile briefly lighted Harrington’s face. “She’s like a damn recorder herself, Mack. Push one button and she records. Push another and she plays back. I can’t figure a guy like Verone letting her learn that much, then turning her loose on the world. Unless he just figured she was too damn dumb to have learned anything about him. She is dumb, Mack. But all her mental energies seem to work through her memory cells. No kidding, she’s like a damn tape recorder.”

  “Could you find her again?”

  “Sure,” Harrington said, smiling. “You want to talk to her?”

  “Maybe.” Bolan was staring fixedly at his fingertips. “What was Varone doing today?”

  “Busy-busy,” Harrington replied. “Chopper has the log. We split off at two o’clock. He stayed on Varone while I checked out the other stuff.”

  Bolan nodded, his face devoid of expression. “I’ll get with Chopper for the details. What impression did you get, Guns—from what Chopper told you, I mean?”

  “About Varone? I’d say he’s running scared. He made about six stops, one of ’em at a big joint up in Beverly Hills. Stayed in there about twenty minutes. And then he drove all the way down to San Pedro.”

  “Who’d he see there?”

  Harrington shrugged. “Chopper said he went into this warehouse on the waterfront. Stayed about five minutes, then bugged straight home.”

  Bolan got to his feet. “I’d better talk to Chopper. Sounds like things are shaping up. Deadeye?”

  “Yeah?” Washington had been listening attentively to the conversation. He was now grinning broadly at Bolan, leaning forward to intercept his words.

  “Get ready for a fire mission. You and me. Take my big sniper down to the range and sight it in up to 300 yards. Give me ’scope calibrations for every hundred feet. Better do the same for yours if you haven’t already.”

  Washington was all smiles. “Hot damn,” he said.

  “Will I be in this one?” Harrington asked.

  “You bet you will. You and Chopper will flank us.”

  “Where’s the hit?”

  “I’ll have to talk to Chopper before I’m sure. But from what you’ve told me, along with what I got from Gadget’s tape, it looks like Beverly Hills.”

  “The big joint?”

  Bolan nodded. “The big joint. Varone’s been trying to set up a family council. Beverly Hills sounds like the place. I’ll take Zitter and Bloodbrother out there for a recon while we still have some daylight.”

  Bolan left them and headed for the horse to speak with Chopper. Harrington looked at Washington and said, “He doesn’t believe in sitting around, does he?”

  “I was tellin’ you what that soul did this afternoon,” Washington said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “So, see—he just walked up to that policeman’s house and rung the doorbell. I see him in there talking to the little boy. Then the cop gets there, and Mack is standin’ there in the window, talkin’ to him like a soul brother—cool, see, like egg custard on a summer day, and then he …” Deadeye Washington had found something to believe in. He believed in Mack Bolan’s guts.

  Sergeant Carl Lyons picked up his detail assignment at the operations center, then stepped hesitantly into Captain Braddock’s office. The ca
ptain was having a desk-top dinner of coffee and sandwiches. He looked up with a scowl. “Something on your mind, Carl?” he asked.

  Lyons stood just inside the doorway. “I didn’t see Rickert’s name on the board,” he replied. “Wondering if he’s on tonight.”

  “He’s on a special,” Braddock growled. He distastefully eyed a sandwich, lifting a coffee cup to his lips instead.

  A surge of emotion had briefly illuminated Lyons’s face. “Undercover?” he asked tautly.

  Braddock’s eyes smiled across the rim of the cup, as though he were visualizing the unlikely suggestion. “Rickert’s a bit old for intrigue,” he replied. “What is it, Carl?”

  “Oh, it’s a … personal matter. What’s coming off, Captain? The assignments are all shuffled.”

  Braddock stared at his young sergeant for a moment; then he smiled and said, “Close the door and come on in, Carl. You have a moment, don’t you?”

  Lyons nodded and advanced into the office, taking a chair at the front of the desk.

  “Don’t even mention this to the men of your detail,” Braddock told him. “We are setting the wheels in motion for a Mafia dragnet, scheduled for first thing tomorrow. It’s a harassment move, pure and simple, and the only object is to prevent the buildup of a Mafia army in response to the Bolan threat. We will be altering the Hardcase. strategy also, and you’ll be kept abreast of developments in that area. Is Bolan getting to you, Carl?”

  Lyons was thrown temporarily off-guard by the sudden question. “I don’t … how do you mean?”

  “What did you want to see Rickert about?”

  “Is he working the details of the dragnet?”

  “How come you answer every one of my questions with one of your own?”

  Lyons colored and cleared his throat. “That son of a bitch was at my house today.”

  “What son of a bitch?”

  “Bolan.”

  A heavy silence descended. Presently, Braddock said, “It took you long enough to tell me about it.”

  “I wanted to see Rickert first.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, Captain, he just walked right into my house. My son entertained him in the living room while Janie was trying to rustle him up something to drink!”

  “No, dammit-Bolan!”

  Another silence; then: “I can understand how you feel, Carl. Look, we’ll put a man on your house. Next time he—”

  “He won’t be back. He sat there and waited for me. I talked to him. He did what he came to do, and he left.”

  “I see. No—I don’t see. Just like that? He left?”

  Lyons curtly nodded his head. “Damn right. I wasn’t about to risk a gunfight. Not with Janie and Tommy fifteen feet away.”

  “All right. There are various questions that immediately come to my mind, but for openers, what did he come to do?”

  Lyons glared steadily into his superior’s eyes for a tense moment; then he wordlessly got to his feet, walked out of the office, and returned an instant later carrying a small plastic case. “Something here I want you to listen to,” he announced in a choked voice. “Make your own conclusions. I’ve already made mine.”

  Zeno Varone’s voice rasped through the telephone line in a threatening snarl. “Well by God, Charlie, you just better put a spike in it, that’s all I can say. Just what the hell you think your job is, anyway?”

  “Don’t talk like a total ass,” Rickert came back in an angry near whisper. “This isn’t anything I can control. It’s value enough that I’m even able to tip you to it.”

  “We won’t stand still for no rousting, Charlie.”

  “And just what in hell do you think you can do about it?” responded the lieutenant’s infuriated whisper.

  “I’ll tell you what we can do about it! We’ll slap ’em with so many false-arrest suits, they’ll—”

  “Then you’ll have to do your slapping from a cell! I’m telling you, they are beginning the roundup at eight tomorrow morning. Now you take it from there!” An abrupt click and a hum announced the disconnection.

  Varone shouted into the hum, “You’re not too goddamn important to get your name on a contract, Rickert! Rickert? If you hung up on me you sonnabitch, I swear, I’ll …” A short pause, then: “The sonnabitch hung up on me.”

  Bolan smiled at Loudelk and turned off the recorder. “Glad we stopped by to pick this up,” he said. “Stop at the next phone. I want to make a call.”

  Loudelk nodded and angled into the outside lane of traffic. At the next intersection, he swung into a service station and halted the car alongside a telephone booth.

  Bolan dropped his dime through the slot and dialed the number of the police switchboard. “It’s urgent that I speak with Lieutenant Charlie Rickert.” he told the switchboard operator.

  “Just a moment, please.”

  “He’s on the Tim Braddock detail, Hardcase.”

  The word seemed to be a magic key. “Oh, yes, just a … ringing.”

  Bolan thanked the operator, smiling grimly at Loudelk through the glass of the booth. A deep male voice answered the first ring. “IIardcase.”

  “Urgent for Charlie Rickert,” Bolan responded. “He said I should call him here.”

  “Just a sec. He’s on special. I’ll get that number.”

  “Thanks.” Bolan winked at Loudelk.

  The voice returned to the line almost immediately. “Hang on, I’m going to flash the operator.”

  “Okay.”

  The operator responded on the third click. “Transfer this call to thirty-seven-eleven,” the officer instructed.

  Bolan again waited while the new connection was being made. A female voice answered. “Urgent for Charlie Rickert,” Bolan said.

  “Just a moment, please.”

  Bolan hummed a tune under his breath. “Who is calling please?” the woman asked a moment later.

  “It’s a hardcase,” Bolan said.

  “Rickert here,” announced a surly voice, after another brief wait.

  “Rickert, this is Mack Bolan.”

  “Yeah, well, this is Little Annie Fannie. I don’t have time for—”

  “Shut up and listen to me. This is Bolan. I’m hitting your buddies tonight.”

  A short silence later, Rickert said, “On the level? This is really who you say?”

  “I don’t have time for games either, Rickert.”

  “Okay. So now just tell me when and where you’re hitting so we can be sure to stay out of your way. What is this? What do you want?”

  “I just want to play a tape for you, Rickert. It will be delivered to Braddock first thing in the morning, but I thought I’d give you a sneak performance. You listening?”

  “I’m listening.”

  Bolan touched the rewind button on the recorder, then punched the playback control and snuggled the telephone mouthpiece against the recorder’s speaker. He let it run for about thirty seconds, grinning at Loudelk all the while, then stopped the recorder and returned the telephone instrument to his ear. “How’d you like the sneak preview?” he asked in a cold voice. “Pretty sneaky, eh?”

  The telephone line was silent. Bolan jiggled the hook, and the switchboard operator came on. “Your party disconnected, sir,” she announced. “Do you want me to ring back?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Bolan said, grinning into the mouthpiece. “I guess it’s a permanent disconnect. Thank you, operator.”

  He left the booth and returned to the car. “How’d he take it? Loudelk asked, smiling.

  “He took it hard,” Bolan replied. “And … I think he took it on the lam.”

  Chapter Twelve

  THE SQUEEZE

  “All right, here’s the situation,” Bolan told the assembled Death Squad. “The pressure is building, strong and fast. The local Maffianos are in a state of general alarm. They’re using the pattern I’ve been expecting them to all along, closing ranks and making preparations to crush us the next time we show ourselves. It’s Vanh Due all over
again, but with a troubling difference. That difference has been created by the police interest in this operation. The pressure is on the cops, too, and they’re trying their best to lower the boom on us. So we have to worry about two fronts. There’s also another item that’s liable to throw us a curve. The cops are worried about the Mafia buildup. They view this whole thing as a sort of gang war that could spill out onto their streets at any moment. So they’ve added a bit of spice to the pot. They’ve decided to begin a harassment campaign that will keep the Mafia off-balance and unable to wage warfare. Okay—so the word has been leaked to the Mafia. They know that the cops are going to begin rounding them up first thing tomorrow.”

  “What effect will this have on our plans?” Zitka asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Bolan replied, frowning. “I do know, though, that our success depends on getting our job done at the quickest possible pace and getting the hell out of this area. L.A. has about the toughest police department in the nation, and when these guys gear up for you, you can bet that your days are numbered. Two immediate effects, or possibilities, that I can see. Either we’ll get knocked off our pace as a result of the police interference or else the Mafia will go into hiding or take a trip or something until the heat’s off. Either move will defeat us, or at least defeat our objectives.”

  “We can lay low, too, can’t we?” Andromede said.

  “Not around here,” Bolan quickly replied. “We can’t afford to give the L.A. cops that kind of time-factor to work with. Like I said, these guys know their business. Given enough time, they’ll find us and they’ll nail us. I had allowed five days for this L.A. operation, and that’s all. We’ve already used two.”

  “What are you getting at, Mack?” Zitka asked worriedly.

  “Well …” Bolan scratched his forehead. “Tonight might be our last chance for a grand slammer. I’d say twenty-four hours at the very most. There’s too much working against us now.”

  “You’re saying it’s a full-dress Vanh Duc tonight, then?”

  Bolan soberly nodded his head. “Either that or a full abort.”