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  “Just like we agreed,” the underboss replied. “We give them three days, and that’s the limit. And a third of those are due for re-supply today.”

  “Well I don’t care,” the Capo declared stubbornly. “You got to freeze, and that’s my decision.”

  “Sure, okay,” Ciprio replied, his voice muffled with anger.

  “Franco, that’s another worry you got. You make sure nobody gets assy with me, you make sure the freeze sticks.”

  “It’ll stick,” the enforcer assured his Capo.

  Ciprio and Vericci stared at their fingertips, their faces utter blanks.

  “And get Bolan. Bring his head to me.”

  “I’ll gift wrap it.”

  “I don’t care how it comes, just so it gets here. I want to kick it in the bay myself. Understand? Myself.”

  “You will, I promise that.”

  “Okay.” The old man got to his feet.

  Vericci asked, “What about a wake for Joe and our other friends?”

  “Forget that for now,” the Capo said sadly. “We’ll make it up to them later.”

  The boss went out and the small man, Matty, followed quickly behind him.

  The others remained at the conference table, eyes downcast with unhappy thoughts.

  Presently Thomas Vericci sighed and remarked, “Well, this bastard is hitting us right where it hurts. Now just how long do you suppose we’ve got to play dead? I got a two million dollar import deal that’s going to die quick if I don’t pick up on it.”

  “The old man panicked,” Ciprio said. “He’s just—”

  “He’s just following orders,” the enforcer declared heavily. “The commissione has put out these guidelines, and this is the way they say to play it. So if anyone here don’t like it, just go pick up that red phone and make your complaint to you-know-where.”

  “Do they know?” Ciprio asked quickly. “I mean, do they know that Bolan hit us tonight?”

  “Of course they know,” Laurentis told him. “That’s the first thing the old man did—was notify them.”

  “I guess we’re going to have the Taliferi swarming all over us now,” a lieutenant said dismally, referring to the mob’s national gestapo.

  “I guess,” Laurentis agreed. “If we don’t get to Bolan quick.”

  “Not we… you,” Vericci said. “Remember? You wouldn’t stand for it any other way.”

  Ciprio laughed and a couple of his lieutenants joined with him.

  Coldly, Laurentis said, “You stupid shits. You stupid fucking shits.”

  “I don’t see anything to laugh at, neither,” Vericci commented. “The fact is, all of us have got to worry about this Bolan. Right, Franco?”

  “Right is right,” the enforcer growled. “I was putting that on for the old man’s sake—that stiff upper lip stuff, I mean. We got a hell of a serious thing on our hands here, and I guess we better all face up to that right now. Look, anybody in their right minds stopped laughing at this Bolan boy a hell of a long time ago.”

  Vericci was nodding his head in agreement. “I saw what he did down in Palm Springs,” he declared quietly.

  “Right, he tore through there like a hurricane—and when he left, all anybody could say was, “What the hell happened? That is, anybody who was left alive. Now we got the bastard here. And you all heard Matty. He’s right, you know. That guy comes on strong… damned strong. So we got to put it all together that’s all.”

  “I don’t see how one guy could be all that bad,” a lieutenant commented.

  Laurentis growled, “Well go tell it to New York, and to Chi and Vegas. Go tell it in L.A. and Palm Springs. I’m telling you, we got a hell of a thing on our hands here.”

  “So what is it you’re saying, Franco?” Vericci asked. “What do you want us to do? Turn everything we got over to you?”

  “Exactly,” the enforcer replied.

  The two underbosses locked eyes briefly, and some unspoken understanding moved between them.

  Ciprio sighed and said, “Well, if we got a business freeze… then I guess… why not? The sooner you crack this guy the sooner we can get back to normal. Okay. Everything I got is yours to command, Franco.”

  “Me too,” Vericci said quietly.

  Ciprio added, “Except.…”

  “Except what?”

  “Except you got just twenty-four hours. That’s all.”

  “That’s not enough,” the enforcer angrily replied.

  “That’s all you got,” Ciprio insisted. “That’s all any of us has got. And then it all starts to cave in. How about those niggers over in Fillmore, Tommy? How long will it take them to realize that they’re on their own? And how about the slant-eyes down on Grant? You willing to give them two or three days to get their tongs on the streets again?”

  “Ah hell, I don’t know,” Vericci said.

  “Well I do. And I got the same problems over in Richmond—also that bunch of sickle-and-hammer do-does in Oakland. Now we just can’t go and freeze ourselves out of the action for more than a day, I know that. I’ll tell you all, Don DeMarco with you, I’ve worked too hard to get this territory humming the way I want it. I ain’t about to lose it now to some asshole soldier boy who thinks—”

  “Bullshit!” Laurentis yelled. “Can’t you understand nothing? This boy don’t want your damned territories! He wants your blood, man, your blood! You can’t limit me to no twenty-four hours for a hit like this!”

  Vericci calmly moved in as peacemaker. “Franco’s right, Vinnie. We can’t tie his hands with unrealistic conditions. What d’ya want, Franco? Just tell us what you want.”

  “I want every rodman, every street soldier, every runner—I want every damn bookie and pimp and whore and bagman this town has got. I want all your union boys—the bartenders and waiters and cabbies and everybody. I even want the shoeshine boys and newspaper boys, the strippers and the musicians and everything else we got a handle on or a gig into. I want a damned army out on those streets, in the bars and the hotels and anywheres else this guy might want to light down. And I don’t want no excuses or hardship cases. I mean I don’t want no sick stomachs or aching heads or falling arches or any of that crap. I want vigilance—I want a town that’s all eyes, ears, and noses—and I want it around the clock and everywheres within running distance of here.”

  Ciprio said “Whooosh.”

  “That’s what it’s going to take,” Laurentis insisted. “I been studying this boy’s footwork. I know how to bag him, but I got to have the troops, I got to have them.”

  “I wonder if Roman called Mr. King,” Vericci mused.

  “I figure he would, yeah, I think so,” Laurentis replied.

  “We might get some help from that direction.”

  “We might, yeah,” the enforcer agreed. “But we can’t count on it. We got to figure it’s our problem and ours alone. That’s the way I figure it.”

  “Okay, go to it,” Vericci told him. “Well put out the word, don’t worry. Same telephone setup?”

  Laurentis nodded. “The same.”

  “Okay. We’ll put out a net like this town has never seen before. We’ll locate him, Franco. The rest will be up to you and your boys.”

  “Hell, I can hardly wait,” the enforcer said. He pushed himself away from the table and strode to the door.

  Almost as though some sixth sense had telegraphed his movement, the library door swung open and two of the silk-suited torpedoes met the enforcer in the open doorway. They fell in behind him, already others were leading the way across the foyer, and the Bay Area storm troopers made their impressive exit without a word spoken between them.

  The war for San Francisco was now official.

  And back in the conference room, a worried and fretful Vincenzo Ciprio was telling his brother underboss, “I don’t like it, Tommy. I just don’t like it one bit. We just give Crazy Franco more raw power than even Don DeMarco has had these past years. I don’t like it one bit.”

  “Relax,” Vericci s
aid soothingly. “You think I wasn’t up on that idea too? But listen, that crazy bastard has had the old man’s ear more and more these past few months. I worry about that, too. Listen. Maybe we finally gave Franco enough rope to tangle himself in, eh? Eh?”

  Ciprio chewed the idea for a moment, then he smiled, got to his feet, and took his cadre out of there.

  More than one war was brewing in San Francisco.

  3: AN HONEST SHOT

  She had led him through a maze of back streets and alleyways, picking her way surely and silently across the abandoned nightclub belt and into Chinatown.

  Bolan had maintained a discreet distance throughout, barely keeping her in sight and varying his track from one side to the other at erratic intervals.

  They crossed Grant Avenue and descended deeper into the labyrinthine bowels of the western Chinese section and along a narrow street of storefronts—a mixed business-residential neighborhood of two and three story buildings with most of the residential community occupying space above the business.

  It was a fringe district at the edge of the main tourist area, with a sprinkling of gift shops, restaurants, and bars catering to visiting Caucasians jumbled in with fantan parlors, shops, and cafes which obviously serviced the Chinatown residents.

  The girl halted between a pair of almost identical restaurants, threw a quick look over her shoulder, and abruptly disappeared through a darkened doorway.

  Bolan passed on by to the next street intersection, crossed over, and reversed the route in a careful recon of the neighborhood, prowling the area for several minutes to get the lie of the land and scouting for possible shadows on his backtrack.

  He found the China Doll waiting for him in an unlighted foyer, a tiny cubicle which barely accommodated the opening of the door from the street. He had a quick impression of pleased oriental eyes, and then she was moving through the musky darkness of the stairway and along the second-floor hall.

  She went to a door at the end and fussed about with a key while Bolan quietly scouted that level, counting doors and mentally overlaying the floor plan on his larger picture of the neighborhood.

  The girl had the door cracked open and she was standing outlined in a faint light from the other side, waiting for Bolan to join her. Instead he went on up the stairway to scout the third level, and she was waiting patiently in the same position when he completed his recon and joined her at the doorway.

  “Are you always so careful?” she asked him in a voice that was quietly sober and exultantly tense all at once.

  He said. “I try to be. Do you know why?”

  She gave her head a quick little jerk and replied, “Yes, I know who you are. And I am Mary Ching. We are allies, believe that. Will you wait for me here while I bring my friends to talk with you?”

  His eyes coldly swept that perfect face and he asked her, “Why should I?”

  “You will be safe here,” she assured him, matching the coldness of his voice. “And you may find my friends intensely interesting. For intelligence purposes if nothing else.”

  “How long do I wait?”

  “One hour, no more.”

  “Too long,” he told her.

  She showed him the tiny automatic and hissed, “I could have shot you a dozen times if I had hostile intentions. Trust me for one hour.”

  He grinned suddenly and said, “Okay. But look—don’t go yelling my name around. It attracts crowds.”

  “I know.” She pushed the door full open, smiled and said, “Welcome to my humble pad. See you soon.”

  Bolan growled, “Yeah,” and the girl whisked herself softly along the hallway and disappeared down the stairway.

  And then Bolan walked into the most pleasant surprise of the night.

  He closed the door and leaned against it, surveying the “humble pad” with a quiet appreciation.

  It wasn’t exactly luxury—it was just damned good taste—and the little flat above the Chinese restaurant was about as appealing to the senses as any place Bolan had been lately.

  There was a lot of red and black, soft lights and softer silks and satins, delicate tapestries and fragile little figurines—nothing overdone but all of it beautifully balanced and blended—a place of quiet dignity and beauty.

  It was a one-room affair but there was plenty of walking space, even with abundant furnishings and a cozy corner-kitchenette. A closet-sized bath with a folding silk screen for a door completed the accommodations.

  Bolan advanced to the center of the room and placed the machine-pistol on a small table… and then he received a second surprise, this one a bit more jolting.

  A sectional couch had been split and cornered against the far wall… and each section was occupied by a sleeping girl. Both were Caucasians, blonde, apparently young, and huddled beneath light blankets.

  Bolan would have been more comfortable with a discovery of a wide-awake crew of Mafia head-hunters.

  His inner debate was resolved at about the second heartbeat and he was spinning about to quit that place when a tousled blonde head lifted itself from a pillow and a pair of cool blue eyes raked him from stem to stern. A pleasantly modulated, but sleepy voice declared, “Far out.”

  Soothingly he said, “Relax, wrong door, I guess. I’m leaving.”

  The voice was wide awake now and teasing as it warned, “Keep on leaving and I’ll start screaming.”

  “I thought this was Mary Ching’s place,” he explained.

  “It is. What are you made up for? That is really far out.”

  He said, “Mary didn’t say anything about roommates. I’ll wait for her outside.”

  “Don’t be square.” The girl flung back the blanket and sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. She was wearing nothing but glowing skin, and doing that quite beautifully.

  Bolan could have been a lifesized poster, for all the feminine awareness she was according his presence.

  “We don’t live here,” she told him. “We’re just crashing for the night. So don’t leave on our account.”

  She shivered and drew the blanket over the bare shoulders.

  “Make some tea or something, huh?” she suggested lazily.

  Bolan said, “I guess that’s your department.”

  She told him, “Monkeyshit,” in a quietly disgusted voice and lunged across to slap the other girl’s upraised behind.

  That one whimpered and burrowed deeper into her blanket.

  The live one struggled to her feet and crossed to the bathroom, her blanket draped carelessly from the waist and trailing along behind. She left the folding screen ajar and straddled the toilet seat, staring curiously out at Bolan as she noisily disturbed the waters of the porcelain bowl.

  He turned away and decided, hell, to make the tea after all. He put a kettle of water on the burner and rummaged through the cupboard, finding and deciding upon a jar of instant coffee.

  “No tea, just coffee,” he called in to the blonde.

  She was bent over the wash basin, now, splashing water on her face and gasping with the coldness of it. “Is it organic?” she called back.

  Bolan muttered to himself, “How the hell would I know?”

  She strode into the room, sans blanket and patting at her face with a small handtowel.

  Bolan, what the hell, looked her over and liked what he was looking at. Any man would. She had those flowing lines and flawless skin that a guy associates with erotic fantasies, large swollen breasts with the pinkest nipples Bolan had seen anywhere, firm and erect as any plastics job could assure—one of those ripple-soft bellies plunging into velvet thighs and belled hips, a swooped rear-deck with the soft overhang visible even from the front.

  Sure. She had it all, right where it belonged and in ideal portions.

  “If it isn’t organic I wouldn’t touch it,” she was telling him.

  Again Bolan turned away from her and fiddled with the stove. He didn’t know about the coffee crystals, but Bolan himself was sure as hell organic, one hundred percent male organic, an
d it was no time for delectable female pastries to be flaunting themselves at his maleness.

  “Honesty,” she was saying in that old-young girl’s voice. “That’s what this sick world needs the most. No deceits, no additives or deductives, just pure organic honesty.”

  He said, “Yeah, with all the chemicals left out.” He could have done without a few male type chemicals himself, at the moment.

  When he looked again the towel was lying on the floor of the bathroom and the girl and the blanket had returned to the couch.

  She was lying there on her side, an elbow in supporting position and the blonde head elevated and resting on an honest palm. The blanket was riding loosely amidships and not providing much in the way of warmth or security. Just honesty.

  He told her, “It’s plain old mountain grown Folgers, and if it’s good enough for Mrs. Olsen, then it ought to be good enough for anybody. Do you want some or don’t you?”

  She suggested, “Why don’t you come over here and ball me awhile first.”

  He said, “What?”

  “Ball. You know.”

  Bolan poured the steaming water into his cup and growled, “Thanks, not now.”

  The girl shrugged and said, “Square.”

  He said, “Sane.”

  She giggled.

  He growled, “Putting me on, weren’t you.”

  “Not all the way. I wouldn’t mind if you really wanted to. I mean, what’s the hassle? Person to person, that’s what life is. Right?”

  He said, “I guess so.”

  “I mean, if you want to slurp and hunch awhile, and if that’ll make you happy, then why not? Right?”

  He said, “Pure organic honesty, eh?”

  “Right. I mean, why get turned off by a shot of honesty? That’s what you did. Right? You turned off the minute I started laying it out. I mean, it’s natural for girls to pee, you know. All of us do. So why do it behind closed doors? Right?”

  “I guess it’s a matter of conditioning,” he told her.

  “But it turned you off. Can you admit that?”

  He smiled. “Maybe.”

  “Male chauvinist pig,” she said lightly. It didn’t sound as though she meant it.

  He fixed her coffee and took it to her. Her eyes thanked him and she asked him, “What’s the gig with the weapons of destruction?”