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  Bolan was trying to reconstruct her in his mind but he could not pull it together.

  A wild card, yeah.

  Her voice was small and femininely contrite as she told him, “I’m not that dumb. I recognize the debt. And I’m properly grateful. I can’t help it if my damn tongue goes off on its own. I don’t know why I say things like that. I don’t mean them. I guess it’s a defense. I guess I am dumb.”

  Bolan gave her a sidewise glance but that was all.

  She said, “You have every right to dislike me. Okay. I accept it. So we can’t be friends. But there’s no reason why we can’t be allies.”

  From “competitors” to “allies,” eh?

  “We need to pool our resources. You scrub my back and I’ll scrub yours.”

  Thanks, no. Her balls would make Bolan uncomfortable.

  “To tell the truth, I don’t like you either. You’re a savage and I detest savagery. The only hope for this world is peace and love and gentleness.”

  Which is why the lady took up karate.

  “But of course I think I understand you better now. I mean, especially now. Your whole life is immersed in brutality. I can see why you would think that brutality is your only answer, why you would feel the need to respond in kind. I mean, you’re so caught up in all that.”

  Yeah, lady. Dumb is the word.

  “Our differences are not unbridgeable, though. If you could just forget your vendetta until we clear up this mess, if you could resist the urge to shoot everything you don’t like … I mean, you know, if we both give a little …”

  She was patronizing him, coming on like an elementary school teacher determined to be kind but firm with the schoolyard bully.

  He asked her, “And what are you willing to give?”

  She said, “Well … cooperation. Friendship. More than that—camaraderie.”

  “And just exactly what does that mean?” he asked quietly.

  She batted those blues and replied, “Whatever you want it to mean.”

  Bolan chuckled and told her, “That is the most unenticing proposition I’ve ever had.”

  “Go to hell!” she blazed. “I try to talk to you like a—like a …”

  He said, “Like an equal?”

  “You’re the most impossible man!”

  “No, I’m just a man,” he said quietly. “I happen to believe that what I am doing is necessary. Not for myself but for you—and for all the millions of others just like you. See, I agree with you, lady. The only hope for this world is peace and love and gentleness. But you try that routine on that carload of aborigines we just encountered. They were not shooting popcorn balls, you know. And those two sadists last night were not trying to baptize you into holy grace. After the experiences you’ve had, the average person would have awakened to the idea that we do not live in a gentle world. As for myself, there’s no vendetta. I rarely experience any urge to kill. But I can kill and I do. I have no apologies to anyone for that. Least of all, to you. But I also do not thump my chest in victory over the kill. I am not proud of the kill. I just know for every one I do not kill, a hundred gentle folk—maybe thousands—will never have any hope whatever for a gentle world where love and peace can prosper. You want to be my ally? Then you should know the name of my mission. Eradication is the name, death is the game. The wolves are after the flock, Miz Landry. I intend to kill every damn one of them I can find.”

  “Every damn one,” she echoed softly.

  He sighed. “By George, I think she’s got it.”

  “You didn’t kill Captain Logan.”

  “He’s a sheep, not a wolf.”

  “But he’s as bad as any. He’s allowed himself to be corrupted. He’s a police official who is playing along with them.”

  “He’s a victim of the oldest game there is,” Bolan explained. “The man is a prisoner of love and nothing else. His shackles are chains of compassion … for a plucky lady who’s been battling cancer for half their married life. Your friends at the club found his single weakness and operated on it like a surgical team—a damned skilled team. Now he dances to their tune, sure, but don’t you believe that he’s enjoying it. That same surgical knife is now poised at the very heart of that plucky lady. Nobody but Ben Logan is keeping it from plunging in. There’s your baddy. Sic ’im, Landry. Go get ’im. I mean, you’re so caught up in all that.”

  Silence reigned in that vehicle for a couple of minutes. Bolan pulled into a shopping center, halted the vehicle, reached across the girl to open the door, and told her, “Goodbye. My advice to you last night is now down for doubles. I suggest you request police protection. I hope you make it.”

  The girl pulled the door closed. She did not look at him as she said, very small voiced, “I’m not getting out of this car. I’m staying with you.”

  He said, “The hell you are.”

  She said, “Yes I am. Please. Let me stay. I promise, no more badmouth, no more lectures. Please … Mack, please.”

  Bolan drummed his fingers on the padded dash, then lit a cigarette and let the smoke out in abrupt little puffs. Presently he told her, “You’re sitting in the hellgrounds, you know. They move with me, wherever I go. Aside from the fact that I’m a danger to you, you must understand also that you are a danger to me. You’re something else to worry about. Something else to …”

  She turned glossily sincere eyes to the big stern man beside her and very quietly said, “I guess I’m one of the sheep, too, though. I need you.”

  “That sounds like a surrender,” he solemnly observed.

  “That’s what it is,” she said. “Please. Accept it.”

  Bolan sighed and eased the car back into the flow of street traffic.

  A wild card, sure. So just what the hell was she surrendering?

  10

  TRUCE

  Bolan took the lady to another safe house at the opposite side of Cleveland, in the Shaker Heights district.

  “Are you parking me here?” she asked warily.

  “I’m parking us both for awhile,” he told her.

  “How many of these places do you have, for goodness sake?”

  He smiled and said, “Enough. It’s a sad truth of the war, a safe house is safe but once.”

  “Once used then forever rejected, huh?” she commented. “What, do you come in and scatter these places all over town just on the chance it may be needed? Isn’t that terribly expensive? For that matter, where do you get the money? Your whole thing must be frightfully expensive.”

  “I have this arrangement with the boys,” he told her. “I allow them to contribute to my war chest from time to time. I can’t think of a better use for dirty money—can you?”

  “Yes, that’s poetic justice, I guess. You make them finance their own destruction. You mean you just simply rob them.”

  “Why not?” he replied, expecting no answer.

  “Well, because it’s still robbery!” she said indignantly. “Wherever that money came from, it belongs to somebody. It should be returned to the rightful owners.”

  Bolan told her, “You figure a way to do that and I’ll liberate the whole boodle. What is this? You promised no more lectures.”

  “It’s not a lecture. It’s an intellectual discussion.”

  “So screw this into your intellect,” he replied coolly. “The Mob is a multinational corporation. Their yearly take exceeds the gross national product of many small nations. Most of it comes in as entirely willing contributions from the working people all around the world—in nickles and dimes from the numbers rackets and the slot machines and sports pools and all the other little games—in dollar bills by the fistful from the crap games and the massage parlors and honest whorehouses, from the bookies, from the juice merchants, from the millions of little shakedowns that go down on the streets of our cities every day—in hundred-dollar bills by the crate from labor rackets, from industrial kickbacks and financial frauds and looted companies. We haven’t yet reached the area of thriving casinos, wholesale hij
acking, stolen and counterfeit securities, and all the thousands of supposedly legitimate businesses that are strangling competition in the free market. Give it back? You wouldn’t find a taker! The poor suckers can’t wait ’til payday to contribute more!”

  “I guess I’ve struck a nerve,” she said quietly. “I thought you were my nice quiet old giant.”

  He grinned at his own long-windedness and asked, “Quiet what?”

  “Private joke,” she said. “Never mind. Does this nice safe house come equipped with an honest john? I feel the need to inspect for new possible bruises.”

  Bolan pointed the lady toward the bathroom and sent himself directly to the telephone for another conversation with his eastern contact.

  “I may have something useful for you,” Turrin reported. “Judge Daly is semiretired. He has no pending cases. He hears nothing now but those cases falling within his particular area of expertise.”

  “And what is that?” Bolan wondered.

  “Government antitrust prosecutions.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s regarded as something of an authority in the matter. His opinions are quoted far and wide, accepted almost as gospel.”

  Bolan said, “Uh-huh.”

  “Not one of his decisions has been overturned in the higher courts for, oh, years and years.”

  “Okay, maybe that is something. It’s a start, anyway.”

  “All right. Another item. Morello was kept in a box for the last two years Augie Marinello was alive. Augie considered him unstable and highly dangerous. There was even some talk, at one time—oh, a year ago—of writing a contract on the guy. I told you he was into the distribution of snuff films. Sarge—the guy makes snuff films. We know of at least two that came from him.”

  “Who is we?”

  “It’s quiet but general knowledge here at the headshed.”

  Bolan said, “Okay. What else?”

  “Not much. It was felt for the past year that Morello was trying to find a way out of the box. He’s got stuff planted in Phoenix and Tucson. Also a hidden interest in a couple of Nevada casinos. He’s also been bankrolling some large narcotics buys via Canada. I guess it’s no coincidence that he’s coming out roaring now that Augie is dead and buried.”

  “You mean,” Bolan said, “The feeling is there that he’s been quietly setting something up.”

  “Yeah. For at least a year. Oh, I forgot—he’s been importing people, too. You know, from Sicily.”

  Bolan said, “I suspected that. He has a shipload here, now.”

  “Well, that’s been strictly forbidden too, ever since you walloped the last bunch.”

  “Well, hell, it’s a merry-go-round,” Bolan commented.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  The lady had returned and gone quietly to a chair at the far side of the room. She wore nothing but a bath towel, tucked in at the armpits, draping almost but not quite to thigh level. Bolan turned disturbed eyes away from that unsettling sight and told his undercover friend, “Okay, I have company. Thanks for the intel. I’ll try to keep you posted.”

  “One more item, Sarge, if you can manage it.”

  “Okay, go.”

  “Susan Landry graduated magna cum laude from Ohio State University school of journalism two years ago. She’s from a prestigious Ohio family. Her maternal grandfather is Franklin Adams Paceman, currently one of the big guns in the Ohio legislature. Her father is senior partner in a respected law firm in Columbus, the state capital. The girl has worked on several Ohio newspapers, both before and after her graduation. Most recently she’s been unemployed. Her editor at the Plain Dealer said he thought she was doing some freelancing and maybe working as a stringer for one of the big national weekly news magazines; he didn’t know which one or even for sure if she was.”

  Bolan said, “Good work. Nothing at all in very recent history, eh?”

  “Nothing at all, right.”

  “I have to go,” Bolan said. “Check you later. Love and kisses.”

  Turrin growled, “Watch that,” and hung up.

  Bolan stared at the telephone for a moment, then got up and went to the kitchen, avoiding the girl entirely. He filled a coffee pot and put it on the stove. When he looked up from that chore, she was standing in the doorway with questions all over that pert face.

  He put his hands behind him and said, “So. Made yourself at home, I see. Great. We’ll have coffee in a minute.”

  “I thought you were a chocolate freak,” she said coolly.

  “That was then. This is now. We’re having coffee.”

  She said, “Shove it.”

  “Bite your tongue,” he said soberly.

  “You’re running, aren’t you.”

  “No. Just resting.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re running from me.”

  He said, “Okay. What should I be doing?”

  “You should be looking at my hurts.”

  He said, “Why should I be doing that?”

  “Because you put them there, dammit, and your mirror is not long enough for me to look at them. I could get gangrene, or worse.”

  “No way,” he said. “I already checked them. And I did not put them there. Your swimming buddies did that.”

  “I mean the new ones.”

  “Oh. You have new ones. And I gave them to you?”

  “You made a tackling dummy out of me, didn’t you? Of course I have new ones! You threw me all over the damn yard!”

  Bolan chuckled and said, “All right. Come over here and let’s take a look.”

  “You’re not going to do it here in the kitchen!”

  “Where am I going to do it, then?”

  “Well, certainly not here! Not in this damn kitchen!”

  He sighed and said, “Where are your hurts, Susan?”

  “You just go to hell!” she raged, and stomped away from there.

  Bolan laughed softly and waited for the coffee, then poured a cup and took it with him to the bathroom. The bedroom door was closed. He removed his coat and gunleather, took off his shirt, and cleaned the little furrow in his shoulder.

  A journalism major, eh?

  He snared a bottle of antiseptic from the first-aid kit and invaded the bedroom. The lady was lying across the bed, atop the covers, bare feet dangling over the edge, the towel totally abandoned and lying on the floor.

  He gently slapped the highrise bottom as he sat beside her and told her, “Okay, let’s deal. You tend my hurts and I’ll tend yours.”

  Her voice was muffled by the bed but he understood the response. “Go to hell!”

  She did have a rather unhappy looking bruise on each thigh just below the highrise. Bolan sighed and returned to the bathroom, wet a towel with cold water, then went back to the lady and ministered some cold-towel therapy to the injured area.

  “You have a very interesting bottom,” he told her.

  “What do you mean interesting?” she groused.

  “Well, from a masculine point of view.”

  “You mean stimulating.”

  “Okay. You’re pretty good with words, aren’t you?”

  “I have a few for you, superman.”

  “I’ll bet you do. And I’ll bet you learned them at journalism school.”

  That beautiful back went rigid. “Wise guy!” she said.

  “I thought we had a surrender understanding,” he told her.

  “Nuts! You didn’t accept the damn surrender.”

  Bolan splashed the antiseptic on his shoulder and tossed the wet towel across the room. Then he stood up and removed the rest of his clothing.

  She turned over, looked up at him, and smiled. “Hey,” she said, gloating, “I guess I am rather stimulating, at that.”

  He gently slapped away a questing hand. “We have to get square first.”

  “Okay,” she spat. “You can start by telling me where you found out about the journalism bit!”

  “That’s exactly where we’ll start, Miz Landry,” he
retorted icily. “Then you can tell me how you parlayed your magna cum laude into the Pine Grove swimming pool!”

  She came to her knees, batted his hands aside, and flung her arms around his torso, pressing closely with all that voluptuous womanhood.

  He growled, “Aw dammit, Susan!”

  There were those moments when a war—any war—simply had to stand down and make room for the purely human needs of a man for a woman and a woman for a man.

  Such a moment was now.

  “Let’s not fight,” she whispered. “Truce. Let’s truce.”

  She was the journalism major, not Bolan—magna cum laude, at that—and if she wanted to use the word as a verb then that was quite all right with him.

  As it turned out, though, it was more a war than a truce—a glorious war without dishonor to either side—both armies first sending out scouts and recon patrols, then attacks and counterattacks, retreats and withdrawals, maneuvers on the flanks and full frontal assaults up the center, regrouping and girding again and again until both armies were totally expended.

  A glorious war, yes, and then the true truce with honor—a warmly affectionate and responsive truce.

  “You magnificent giant,” sighed the general of the one side.

  “Magna cum laude with balls,” said the other contentedly.

  “You beautiful trigger-happy savage. You raped me.”

  “But that’s okay, Peace and Love. You raped me right back.”

  “Twice.”

  “I owe you one, then.”

  “Try. I dare you to try.”

  “God, that’s an empty threat if I ever heard one. Who was squawling about her hurts?”

  “Who was inflicting them, you sadist?”

  “Yeah but who was yelling charge, charge?”

  “Okay, my scowling savage. That’s it for sure. That’s the final insult. It’s time for another truce.”

  “I don’t think I could stand it,” he said tiredly.

  But he knew that he could.

  There should be, he knew, at least one meaningful truce in every war. Whether verb or noun, yeah—at least one per war. And sometimes two.