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  The girl gave Bolan a horrified look, concealed herself behind the towel, and quickly retreated to the other room.

  Bolan asked Weintraub, “Who the hell is that?”

  The guy ignored it. He had something else still on his mind. “So what about Mario? What’s wrong with him?”

  “He went a little crazy.”

  “Yeah, but what’s with the eyes? What’d Carmen mean?”

  “Mario attacked me,” Bolan replied casually. “Crazy with grief, I guess. You don’t reason with a guy like Mario. I had to set him down.”

  “You set Mario down?” The lawyer’s eyes went to the ceiling, and he threw both hands into the air. “I think I’m going crazy,” he exploded. “I can’t believe any of this! I guess I won’t believe it until I’ve actually seen Tommy with my own eyes!”

  “I guess nobody believes it,” Bolan growled. “I’ve seen no signs, yet, of any excessive mourning. Except for Mario.”

  Weintraub fell back into the chair, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Can we talk like men?” he inquired, suddenly all cool and collected again.

  Another court gesture?

  Bolan took a seat across from him and replied, “I hope so. I got no time for little boys, Haggle.”

  “You’re not apt to see a hell of a lot of grief around here. Not over Tommy Santelli.”

  “No?”

  “Hell no. He was not the most beloved of all bosses.”

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “Are you conducting an official investigation?”

  “I sure am, counselor.”

  “Then I suggest you talk to Damon and La Carpa. Tommy’s greatest talent was his ability to manipulate superior men, to bend them to his own—”

  “Like you?”

  “Okay, sure, like me. From where I’m sitting, Talifero, you’ve got—”

  “I’m not a Talifero,” Bolan said mildly.

  “Sure you are. That’s a constructed term, not a family name. It means, loosely, ‘man of iron.’ I was using it complimentarily.”

  “I know you were,” Bolan replied pleasantly. “Just the same, I’m not one. And I don’t care to bear the image, even if you do think it’s a compliment. The Talifero boys were pure garbage. They loved nothing but themselves.”

  “And what do you love?” Weintraub asked, leaning forward intently, as though really interested in the answer to his question.

  “I love this thing of ours,” said Bolan-Frankie.

  The legal eagle again threw up the hands.

  “Uh-huh. So it goes on and on, does it? You guys have got to be the world’s last romantics. Your damned thing is dead. Don’t you realize that yet?”

  “It’s alive as long as I’m alive,” said the “Super Ace,” playing his role to the hilt. “But Santelli is dead, loved or not. Right now that’s all I’m interested in.”

  “The king is dead, long live the king,” Weintraub said, glassy-eyed.

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better go view the remains. Look, I’m not really all that—pay no attention to the way I’ve been acting. I don’t handle grief and mourning very well, that’s all. I’m glad you’re here. Otherwise it would all fall on me, probably. That’s good, you do it.” He got to his feet. “I’ll go down and, uh …”

  “Who’s the woman?”

  Weintraub tossed an irritated look toward the offending door and said, “Do me a favor. Leave her out.”

  “I leave nobody out,” Bolan replied coldly.

  “Hey. Frankie. She’s a piece of fluff, that’s all.”

  “You know better than to bring a woman onto a hardsite, Larry,” Bolan said in mild rebuke.

  “Tommy didn’t mind.”

  “And Tommy’s dead.”

  “Well, hell, she had nothing to do—hey, she’s a chick. Okay? She looks nice, she sings and dances, and I guess she’s the best hump I’ve had in a long time … but there’s nothing between the ears. Okay? She’s a fluff-head. You want to talk to somebody, you talk to La Carpa and Damon. That’s where I’d be looking. That’s where I will be looking.”

  “Should I tell them that?”

  “Forget it!” the lawyer said savagely and stomped out of there.

  Blackouts, yeah.

  The “fluff-head” was none other than Toby Ranger, lady fed of the special projects group. Bolan had last seen her in Nashville, working the drug circuit.

  The field of intrigue was shrinking so drastically that a guy could hardly put a foot down anywhere without stepping on an undercover cop. It was getting downright …

  Bolan stepped into the bedroom, and carefully closed the door behind him.

  Toby flung herself at him from three paces out, wrapping him thoroughly in sweet scented flesh with absolutely no insulation to cushion the shock.

  “My God, but I’m glad to see you!” she whispered. “I think I’ve really done it, this time!”

  What could she have done that she had not done many times already? The fabulous fed had done it all, to all, and with all. What could have her so lathered up now?

  Oh.

  Hey.

  Yeah.

  “You’ve still got blood in your hair, kid,” he gruffly warned her. “You’d better hit that shower again.”

  Blackout time … sure. And the dawn had just arrived.

  CHAPTER 7

  MARKS

  Toby Ranger and Mack Bolan went back a long way together. They’d first bumped heads in Las Vegas during the ninth battle of Bolan’s war. Toby headed a song and dance group called the Ranger Girls—and they had been something else, those kids, taking by storm a town where talent and beautiful women were more staples in trade. They could have had highly successful show-biz careers, had that been what they wanted. It was not what they wanted. Toby Ranger, Georgette Chableu, Sally Palmer and Smiley Dublin were undercover federal agents, working a pilot program to determine the extent of encroachment by organized crime into the entertainment industry.

  Helping in that program had been “the hottest comic in the land”—the one and only Tommy Anders (nee Androsepitone)—a very funny man who made Mafia jokes on stage and Mafia busts offstage. The five had proven to be quite a team in Vegas. They’d been sent on to larger problems, in other places. With Carl Lyons, another old Bolan ally from Los Angeles, they had evolved into the government’s SOG-3 (Sensitive Operations Group #3), a daredevil band of adventurers, who flung themselves into one hot spot after another around the world in the interests of America’s national security. They were not Mafia busters, per se. But the mob was involved in many areas that lapped over into national security matters. It was, therefore, not particularly astonishing when Bolan occasionally overran the SOG’s hunting grounds, or vice versa.

  After the Vegas gig, Bolan and the SOG had worked together in a more or less symbiotic relationship in several other mutually interesting operations—the latest in Nashville, where the combination did a pretty good number on Nick Copa, would-be heroin king of America. They’d left Carl Lyons in Nashville, very nicely placed in a crucial position within the Copa organization. It was one of the few times that Bolan had walked away from an easy hit on a budding Mafia boss, and he’d done so primarily as a co-operative gesture to his friends in the SOG.

  It was just a little strange that now Bolan had been offered a secret appointment in government service—as head of a new supersensitive operation which would, in effect, replace the SOGs. He was, in fact, just two days away from becoming Toby Ranger’s boss.

  Of the original four comprising the Ranger Girls, only two were left—Toby and Smiley—which was not a bad survival rate, considering the territory.

  But that survival rate was in danger of taking a sudden nosedive here and now, if Bolan’s instincts were functioning properly. Toby had come to Baltimore via the Nashville connection. Apparently the harvest of drug market dollars being reaped by the copa Organization was being channeled directly to Tommy Santelli—or so
Toby’s group suspected. This came as no particular surprise to Bolan. He had already begun to wonder about the dimensions of the Santelli empire. A hell of a lot of money had been finding its way to Baltimore from some very diverse points—enough to make a guy wonder about the logic of that flow.

  Toby had followed the flow from Nashville, and had, several days earlier, managed to wiggle her way into Larry Haggle’s bed. Santelli had been in Florida at the time, and things had been relatively quiet in Baltimore. Until yesterday. The crisis in Florida had produced a strong local reaction, with much coming and going via car, boat, and helicopter. According to Toby’s count, every major Mafia figure in the area had visited the bayside hardsite at least once during the early hours of Thursday evening. Santelli had not yet returned from his Florida fiasco; Larry Haggle was presiding over all of the urgent conferences at the hardsite, leaving Toby pretty much to her own devices.

  Santelli blew in at some time past midnight. There ensued a stormy, two-hour session in the study between the capo and his consigliere. At about four o’clock, Larry Haggle went into town on some unexplained mission (to meet Leo Turrin). At four-thirty, Santelli was still seated at the desk in his study, going over some papers, apparently all alone.

  Toby could not recall, or had not paid particular attention to the time, when she next ventured toward the study, but the room appeared then to be deserted, and was lighted by only a small desk lamp.

  “I knew that important papers were kept somewhere in there,” she explained to Bolan, “because Larry spent a lot of time in there every day—‘doing the books,’ he said. I wanted a shot at those books. I figured with all the other excitement, I had at least an even chance to make some copies and get the stuff back before it could be missed.

  “Well, I blew it. Someone beat me to it. The desk had been rifled. There’s a trick panel in the wall behind the desk, hides a safe. It was open and the safe was empty. Well, I was standing there at the desk cussing myself, when another trick panel slides open and Santelli himself steps into the study. He has a small bedroom hideaway tucked in there. I didn’t know that.

  “Well, there I was. And there was Santelli, staring at me like death itself. I was wearing nothing but a shortly negligee—comes just to the hips. I’ve found that’s the best costume for nighttime prowling. If it isn’t diverting, at least it’s good for a variety of fast cover stories. Not many guys are immune to the suggestion that a sexy lady finds them irresistible.

  “So I knew exactly what I had to do. It was all I could do. I opened the damned negligee all the way, posed prettily, and asked him if he was ready for his rubdown—made it sound like it was all Larry’s idea.

  “I don’t believe he bought that—not the suggestion about Larry, anyway. But he was certainly diverted. Didn’t even notice the safe or the desk drawers. But it was sort of dark in there, too. You know, spot dark. It’s one of those small fluorescent desk lamps, hardly more than a nightlight, and—”

  Bolan interrupted to ask her, “Could there have been a third person present in that room, Toby?”

  She vigorously nodded the golden head and replied. “Evidently there was. All the time. But back to the story … Santelli just came over and grabbed me. All over. No class, you know. Vulgar. Degrading. I guess he’d poked and tweaked everything I have before I could even catch my breath.

  “Well, so much for diversions. Next thing I know, I’m bent backwards across the desk, and the abominable wolfman is climbing aboard for fun and frolic. I asked him if we couldn’t find some place more comfortable—hoping that he would take me out of that office and into the bedroom before he could discover the pilferage. But he replied to the effect that the sight of a naked broad stretched out on a desk always turned him on.

  “So there I was, and I’d already resigned myself to another sacrifice for old mother justice.”

  “You weren’t fighting him off?”

  “Oh, hell no. What’s the percentage in that? Hell, I’d invited it. I was going for life, Captain Thunder, not virtue.”

  “I understand that,” Bolan replied mildly. “Just trying to get the picture.”

  “Well, here’s a picture for you. Little Toby from Chillicothe is stretched out bare-assed on a cold desk and awaiting the inevitable. The lord of the manse is—”

  “How was he dressed?”

  She wrinkled the pert nose and said, “God, that turned me off even worse. I felt like I was in a porno movie. He was wearing socks and a flowing black robe. Now that’s got to be—have you ever made love with your socks on?”

  Bolan ignored the personal inquiry. “He didn’t remove the robe, eh?”

  “No. Why’d you ask that?”

  “Still trying for a picture. Let’s get back to the porno movie. The kid from Chillicothe is stretched out across the desk and the lord of the manse is …”

  “He’s kneeling between my legs, tweaking me and leering at me. Then—”

  “He’s on his knees?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s the way you usually kneel. See, you bend both legs and support the weight of your body on your knees. That’s called kneeling.”

  “Sorry. No more interruptions. Go on.”

  “Well … he’s kneeling there tweaking and leering. I don’t know how long that goes on. I guess he’s trying to get it up, or something. But then suddenly I realize that he has stopped leering. He isn’t even looking at me now. He’s staring at that damned open safe.

  “I thought, oh hell, I’m going to have to kill this jerk.

  “But it’s as though he’s forgotten that I’m even there. His head snaps around and he seems to be looking at something across the room, in the darkness over there. “Is the picture vivid?”

  “It’s vivid,” Bolan assured her. “Then what?”

  “Then the lamp went out. The desk lamp.”

  “It just went out? All by itself?”

  “For damn sure, Santelli did not turn it off. Both of his hands were still on me. But the light went out. Maybe there’s a wall switch. I don’t know. I didn’t hang around to find out.”

  “That’s all? That’s the whole picture?”

  “Not by a hell of a sight. I was just explaining about the lamp. But the picture does get a bit dim at this point. I don’t know exactly what happened after that. I know that I was lying there on my back … on the desk. Santelli was kneeling in front of me with a hand on each thigh. The light went out. Something hot and wet spilled onto my belly. I mean, you couldn’t have spit once and counted to three between the moment the light went out and the first sensation of hot fluid hit my body. Santelli made a little sigh, and fell over onto me. The hot liquid was suddenly all over me and I realized that it was blood. I could smell it. He was dead weight. I guess I panicked a little. All I wanted was out of there. I managed to slip him aside, and roll clear. But his damned blood was all over me. I found my negligee in the dark and used it to sponge off some of the muck. And I made damned quick tracks to the shower.”

  “You just ran out.”

  “You’re damned right.”

  “What’d you do with the negligee?”

  “I cut it up in little pieces and flushed them down the toilet.”

  “That was smart.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “You’re sure that’s exactly the way it happened?”

  “That’s the best I can put it together, yes. Even for a pro, Captain Quick, that’s a pretty damned unnerving experience.”

  “I’m sure,” Bolan muttered. “Want me to leave it there?”

  “Don’t do me any favors. I’m okay now. Fire away.”

  He sighed, thought about it for a moment, then asked her, “How do you read it?”

  “I read it,” she replied darkly, “that someone wanted to get rid of the boss, and discovered the golden opportunity to put the blame on someone else.”

  “On you,” he said.

  “Sure. The perfect patsy. A lamebrain joy kid. What would I know?”

  �
�You were supposed to go crazy,” he suggested. “Scream and holler. They come running in and find you standing there with Tommy’s blood all over you. Two and two makes four.”

  “Something on that order, I guess,” she agreed.

  “But then there’s the open safe and the rifled desk. Evidently someone wanted more than a dead boss.”

  “I’m still working on that one,” she admitted.

  “And a small matter of the death weapon,” Bolan pointed out. “I didn’t see one lying about. And I looked for it.”

  “I’m sure it would have conveniently found its way to me,” Toby said, “if I had hung around and waited for it.”

  “And the open safe?”

  “That could have been handled, too,” she sniffed. “What the hell is this? Are you trying to hang this on me? Why would I bother to lie about it? To you, I mean. You probably came here to kill him yourself. What the hell!”

  Bolan nodded and said, “I did. But not that quick, and not that way. The man is not the empire. I want to kill it all. This is just going to complicate the matter.”

  “Well, don’t blame it on me!”

  “I’m not,” he replied quietly. “I’m just trying to find a handle, Toby.”

  “Hell, I know that,” she said, feigning a gruff tone. The dazzling fed lay back on the bed and tossed her towel aside. “See anything here you’d like to handle?” she inquired, still gruffing it.

  “Four or five things, yeah,” he admitted, grinning.

  “But not now,” she said, smiling up at him.

  “Nope.”

  “Wrong time and place.”

  “Yep.”

  “Story of our damned life together, Captain Cautious.”

  “Yes. And isn’t it hell.”

  “Do you think I’m dirty?”

  “Sure you’re dirty. But so am I.”

  She laughed softly. “Some men couldn’t handle what I am.”

  He told her, “That’s their loss. I handle it just fine. I put you right up there with Joan of Arc.”