Save the Children te-94

by Don Pendleton

  "You were on the right scent," Bolan told her. "Dutton is in Parelli's pocket. Parelli's got an ironclad hold on him."

  And not only that, Bolan thought, but Dutton had lied to him about simply being a member of the health club. Dutton was in this whole thing a lot deeper than he claimed to be. Maybe giving the guy a break had been a mistake...

  "I won't ask what that hold is," Lana said. "I don't think I want to know. To get back to Wallace, once I uncovered all of this, I went after something even more concrete."

  "You live dangerously," Bolan noted.

  "I live honorably," she countered. "After tonight, I know how careful I'll have to be."

  "What about Wallace?" he pressed.

  "His main office is at the orphanage," she went on. "I used to work there sometimes, filling in when somebody was sick or on vacation. When Mr. Wallace fired me, he forgot to get the key to that office and the one to the side door back from me."

  "You went right into his office?"

  "Maybe it was dangerous. I was mad, I was out of a job and there were three kids missing.

  "Anyway, I ended up walking out of there with an armload of files, enough to tell me what was really going on. Up to a point, anyway. There were all these kids, dozens of them, unaccounted for. It was like they were just systematically dropping off the face of the earth!"

  Bolan felt fear gnawing at his gut.

  Not fear for himself.

  Fear that he stumbled onto the most repulsive form yet of Cannibal Man in all his savagery.

  "Could there be any other explanation?" he asked.

  "I... don't know. My instinct says no. Those kids are being kidnapped and Wallace is part of the scheme. He knew I was at the day-care center by myself. He called to get me out of the room where the children were sleeping, out of the way. That's why I said the kidnappers had done it before; they've been working with Wallace."

  "It all hangs together," he said softly, half to himself. "I wish it didn't, but it does. Who's going to report orphans missing? It would have to be a big operation, then they got cocky and got you suckered into it. What did you do when you put it all together? Whey didn't you go to the police?"

  She emitted an unladylike snort.

  "You saw Wallace at that banquet tonight. I'd be the sour grapes out to smear the good-hearted employer who had to let her go, and even if the police did follow through, Wallace would have enough connections to know what was coming and doctor the records, and I'd be left there looking like a bigger fool than before.

  "At the first sign of an investigation he could play enough tricks with his computers to cover up anything, even something this bad. Phony adoptions, you name it. He'd find some way."

  "So you went after Dutton, trying for another angle of attack."

  "It seemed to be the only thing I could do. I knew if I could find some weak point somewhere in the puzzle, I'd have a good chance to put together something the police could really use, maybe even pressure the senator into helping me."

  Bolan shook his head.

  "He's been pressured by experts. You wouldn't have gotten anything but dead. You've been playing out of your league, Lana."

  She turned to him.

  "But I've been doing all right, haven't I?"

  He grinned in spite of himself.

  "Yeah, lady, you've been doing all right. But no further."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean from here on out, I do it alone."

  "Do it? "she echoed.

  "Put it together and take it apart," he growled. "You've helped me a lot, Lana. I came into this wanting to take out Parelli, you came into it wanting to get something on Wallace, and we connected at Dutton.

  "A Mob boss, a dirty politician and a scumbag you think is dealing wholesale in missing children. That group needs to be taught a few lessons."

  "I can help you."

  "You won't help me by getting killed. I've lost too many people I cared about because they wanted to help me. I don't want that to happen to you."

  "It's my fight too, goddammit," she snapped angrily. "I knew how dangerous this was when I started. I didn't ask for this, but when I saw what I had and that the police weren't capable of doing anything about it, I couldn't put it down and you're not going to take the fight from me."

  Bolan believed what she said because in her voice he heard fragments of his determination and beliefs.

  He made his decision, knowing he could very well regret it.

  "All right, up to a point, you're on," he told her. "Until the shooting starts, or until I think it's about to start. Then you do as I say, Lana. You have to promise me this."

  "Is that so?"

  "That's so. Take it or leave it. Decide now."

  She saw that he wasn't joking.

  "I'll take it," she said.

  For a few moments Bolan remained silent, thinking.

  His thoughts raced to the children whose faces he had never seen, who were in trouble, who had been torn away from those who cared for them.

  And now some demons out of hell were masquerading as human beings and ripping that security and love away.

  Bolan knew now with a cold certainty that he had at last identified the undercurrent of this Chicago setup that had been bugging him since this strange night began.

  Not the dirty senator.

  Not vague talk of a Mafia Godmother running the show.

  Not even the elusive target of Mr. David Parelli, himself.

  Every one of those angles combined to make this an unusually touchy operation for a man on the run from all sides, but here at last was the thread that tied all those diverse elements into one tight package marked for termination.

  The warrior shook his head sadly.

  Stealing children, the true innocents of the earth.

  But there would be a reckoning.

  And more hellfire and killing to back it up.

  Tonight.

  14

  Sergeant Lester Griff had never found it easy to concentrate at the precinct office that he shared with other detectives. Somebody always had a radio playing or the officers sitting around at their desks were constantly yapping at the other guys or pounding their typewriters as they wrote up reports or questioning suspects.

  Headquarters was a bitch.

  Especially since he was supposed to have been off duty tonight. He could have been home with Kathleen, trying to relax.

  Who was he kidding, Griff asked himself irritably. If he had been home, he might have been relaxed on the surface, for Kathleen's sake, but inside he would have been seething, just the way he was here.

  It was all the fault of that bastard, Bolan.

  That was what they called the guy and the name fit as far as Griff was concerned.

  All of Chicago was in an uproar because of Bolan's sweep through the city. Everyone from the mayor on down was hollering, which was why Griff and the rest of the Org Crime Task Force had been called in to man the office.

  Griff felt as if they were all hollering at him.

  After Bolan left his house, Griff felt he was duty bound to turn Bolan in. So he placed an anonymous call to a different precinct where he felt no one would recognize his voice. The sergeant gave a description of Bolan's car and the clothes he was wearing, knowing full well that Bolan could have changed both of those things within minutes of leaving his house. But Griff had felt there was no other option open to him. He relayed the information to a distant precinct to cover his own ass.

  No way was he going to let anybody know that there had been personal contact between himself and Bolan.

  If he did that, he'd be under pressure from the Commissioner, Internal Affairs, maybe even the FBI, and with all of that coming down, he would hardly be able to do what he had to do.

  For Kathleen...

  He glanced around the squad room.

  Everybody was busy, trying to get a handle on the seemingly nonstop, disconnected reports on Bolan and his latest campaign.

 
; It seemed as if the whole city had turned into a war zone since the Executioner hit town, but nobody in the Org Crime unit was really accomplishing anything, Griff had realized shortly after reporting in.

  He opened the middle drawer of his desk, took out a bottle of antacid tablets and started popping them into his mouth one at a time as he stared blankly at the dirty linoleum on the floor, wondering what he should do next. Griff shook his head, amazed at the ease with which everything in a man's life could turn to crap all at once...

  * * *

  Detective sergeant Harry Laymon sat at his desk, facing his partner, Lester Griff.

  Laymon had reports spread out on the metal top of his desk but he was not really paying any attention to them. He was watching Griff eat the stomach pills as if they were candy.

  Laymon was a short, stocky man with close-cut blond hair. He had been a cop for seven years, a lot less time than his partner, but he knew when something was wrong, like now, with Griff.

  Laymon pushed the paperwork to the side and stood.

  "I'm going to get some coffee, Les. You want some?"

  Griff shook his head and threw another tablet into his mouth.

  "No thanks." He chewed on the pill. "Bad for my stomach."

  "Sure," Laymon grunted.

  It wasn't coffee that was eating away at Griff's stomach, though. Laymon was certain of that.

  A coffee maker sat atop one of the file cabinets in the corner.

  He strolled over to it, got a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the machine and poured a cup of strong black. He made a face as he sipped from it.

  Cops had to make lousy coffee, Laymon thought sourly. It was part of their job description.

  Across the room, Laymon watched as Griff lifted his desk phone and started to dial.

  Laymon stayed where he was.

  Griff seemed more nervous than usual, edgy. He had an almost furtive look on his face as he spoke quickly into the receiver, as if afraid he was going to be overheard.

  Laymon wished he had seen the number Griff had dialed.

  Holding his cup carefully so that the hot liquid would not slosh out onto his hand, he threaded his way back across the busy headquarters office, dodging some of the other scurrying Org Crime unit detectives.

  Griff saw him coming and hung up the phone.

  Laymon felt a surge of anger.

  The guy was his partner, dammit, he thought. Griff didn't have any right to keep secrets from him. It wasn't like they were married, but when you worked with a partner for several years, the relationship was damn close to a marriage, at least as far as being honest with each other was concerned. A cop's life could and often did depend on his partner and that meant trust was the name of the game.

  Maybe it was just some sort of personal problem, Laymon thought. He knew Griff's wife wasn't in the best of health; maybe she was having trouble again. But if that was the case, why was there such a guilty look on Griff's face, Laymon wondered as he found his seat again.

  "This Bolan business is no damn good for a cop's sleep, is it?" Laymon said, trying to make conversation more than anything else.

  "Yeah," Griff grunted.

  "Seems like every time the guy comes to Chicago it gets worse," Laymon went on. "That Bolan's like a blizzard. You hope for the best and wait for it to move on."

  "I wish he had just left us alone," Griff said with sudden vehemence.

  Laymon glanced sharply at his partner, then gazed across the room of ringing phones and men taking in new reports at the map of central Chicago on the wall, multicolored pins denoting the scenes of action since Bolan had made his presence known earlier that night at the New Age Center.

  "At least he hasn't wasted anybody yet who didn't deserve it."

  Griff reached for his roll of antacid tablets again.

  "Ah, hell," he rumbled. "What does it really matter, anyway?"

  Laymon had never heard Griff talk like that. There was a fatalistic tone in the older man's voice that surprised Laymon, and worried him.

  "Uh, look Les," he ventured, "if something's bothering you, if there's anything you want to talk about..."

  Griff cut him off with an abrupt wave of his hand.

  "Nothing to worry about, kid. Everything's under control, really. Except for this damn Bolan situation, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that, much as we'd like to. You say it's like a blizzard. I say a whirlwind is more like it. There's no way in hell of knowing where he'll strike next, damn him."

  "Right." Laymon nodded, trying to sound casual. "Say, who was that you were talking to on the phone a minute ago?"

  Might as well ask it straight out, he thought.

  Griff grimaced, trying to hide the expression.

  "Uh, I was just checking in with Kathleen, making sure she was all right. Thought I'd better tell her it looks like we'll be here most of the night."

  A plausible enough answer, Laymon thought.

  It was also a lie.

  He wasn't sure how he knew, but his gut told him that Griff was lying. Les hadn't been talking to his wife.

  Laymon started to wonder if he should go downstairs and have a long talk with the guys in Internal Affairs.

  But if he did, what would he tell them? Hey, guys, my partner's acting screwy? What cop didn't act screwy from time to time, especially an Org Crime cop with the Executioner chewing up everything in sight? There could be a good reason for Les's unusual behavior and not necessarily an illegal one, Laymon assured himself.

  Laymon was not sure he wanted to place his life in Griff's hands anymore, not the way he had been acting, all moody and sullen and preoccupied during the past few weeks.

  It was a hell of a thing to contemplate, all right, especially coming at the same time as all this Bolan trouble.

  But it was a decision Laymon knew he was going to have to make.

  * * *

  "What do you think you are doing? ''

  Denise Parelli looked up from the desk, over the stacks of files and record books piled there.

  "I'm getting this material together so we can destroy it," she snapped. "And that's no way to talk to your mother."

  David Parelli swaggered into the room that served as his mother's office on the ground floor of the Parelli home.

  Denise Parelli was proud of her son's good looks. As she stared at him, she saw the close resemblance he bore to the only man she had ever really loved, his father, her deceased husband, Vito.

  Well, maybe it wasn't exactly love, Denise reflected, but Vito was the only man who had ever come close to earning her respect. David did not have the animal something inside that Vito had had. David tried, and he was feared by others, but not by her.

  "Don't tell me you're afraid of the cops getting hold of that," David sneered, parking himself on the corner of the desk. "We've been running rings around the law and we'll keep right on doing it."

  "It's not the police I'm worried about."

  "Bolan?" David laughed. "The guy's overrated."

  She stared at him for a long moment.

  "Son or no son, David, sometimes I wonder where you got your brain. I told you that Bolan was here tonight."

  His eyes dropped before her glare.

  "Uh, yeah, well, I'm sorry about that, Ma, I should have had the security here beefed up."

  "What was the trouble tonight at the yacht club?" she asked him. "That was Bolan, too, wasn't it?"

  "Yeah, it was."

  "He must have gone there right after he left this house. Why would he do that unless he picked up some sort of clue from here? He didn't find you at the yacht club, did he?"

  "You know he didn't, Ma, you know where I was."

  She nodded.

  "It was a trap for Bolan. And to set it, you had to guess he was coming here. You knew I was here with Randy, and you didn't beef up security."

  He chuckled nervously.

  "Hey, Ma, I knew you'd handle yourself. It was Bolan who had to watch himself."

  "He ro
ughed up Randy pretty bad."

  David sneered.

  "That little pretty boy twerp had it coming."

  Denise Parelli tried to tell herself that she did not discern jealousy in her son's voice and eyes.

  "Look, David," she said, "we have a lot of trouble here. If we're not careful Bolan will bring the whole operation down on top of us. We've got to cover our tracks."

  "What about tonight's... shipment?"

  "That will go out as scheduled. We'll just move up the time a little bit. I've already spoken to Wallace. He'll see to it. But after that, I think we need to let things cool down for a while before we do any more."

  David shook his head.

  "You're letting Bolan stampede you," he scoffed. "We can handle him. He drops a couple of marksman's medals around town and expects everyone to crap in their pants. Not me, Ma."

  "I looked into his eyes, David," said Denise. "I saw what we're up against. And I knew a lot of people who tried to handle Bolan. They're all dead. Besides, you did not exactly strike me as the soul of bravery once you found out the Executioner was in town and looking for you."

  "I've got men to take care of that sort of thing." David's face flushed with sudden anger. "What do you want me to do? You want me to get a gun and go face Bolan down in the street like some goddamn cowboy?"

  "No, David. I don't want that. I don't want you dead."

  Parelli's fist slammed down on the desktop.

  "Then tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do!"

  She couldn't help but smile slightly at that.

  Senator Dutton had used those exact words when he called to tell her that Bolan had cornered him in the hotel.

  So did Randy Owens when he finally got around to calling her after that business down on Rush Street.

  Everyone looked to her for direction, it seemed.

  That was the way it had been with David's father, after the cancer got too bad for Vito to function, she recalled. On the surface her husband had still been the strong, fear-inspiring don of the Parelli family.

  But inside he had been unsure, full of doubt born of the pain and his own mortality staring him down.

  Vito the Butcher had never expected the woman whom he had married strictly as a showpiece and to give him an heir, to possess the intelligence and business sense she had demonstrated, let along the ruthless drive that gradually turned her from adviser to the true head of the family.