He left her on the single bed and backtracked to the bathroom for some towels. The lady was alive and Bolan needed answers from her in a hurry. Later he could give thought to searching out a haven in the hellgrounds for her.
Safety was a slim commodity in Vegas, getting more scarce by the moment. Soon there would be no free zones on the battlefield. Before it came to that Bolan had to have some answers. Solutions to the host of problems that were plaguing him, binding his hands in what appeared to be at least a three-way war.
There was the Yakuza with Seiji Kuwahara at the helm, united in a singleness of purpose that could make them deadly in the clenches. And the Mafia — now anything but solidly united, from the glimpse that Bolan gathered of the meeting at Spinoza's just before he brought the curtain down. If anything, the family representatives seemed likely to attack each other, long before they got around to Kuwahara. There was the Bernstein faction — if it still existed as an independent entity.
Finally there was Bolan, taking on the world as usual, with every hand against him in the hellgrounds. The odds were with the house as always, but perhaps, just maybe, he could find the key to trimming down those odds a bit.
With good fortune and an assist from the kindly Universe he might even find a way to turn them around for a change. And there again he needed answers.
Insight.
Truth.
Another scarce commodity in Glitter City — but the Executioner had time to dig for it.
A lifetime, if it came to that.
Perhaps a deathtime.
Either way he was committed — to the end of the line.
Bolan gave the woman a brisk rubdown that slowly restored a ruddy color to her body. She started showing signs of life as he was finishing, first coughing, moaning like a trapped and injured animal, finally thrashing out with slender arms and legs in all directions. She had surprising strength — the natural result of desperation. Bolan held her down gently until all resistance ebbed.
When the first defensive spasms passed he brought the sheet and blanket up around her chin, tucking her in like a child. He turned the lights up so that she could see him when she woke, then sat astride a straight-backed chair pulled up beside the bed.
Her eyelids flickered moments later and she looked around, getting her bearings. The eyes settled on Bolan, sparking with recognition, and he was pleased to see her rigid form relax a bit beneath the coverlet.
"It's you, again," she said when she had found her voice."
"Afraid so."
She risked a little smile, without conviction.
"Don't be scared. I'm glad to see you."
There was a momentary silence, as she searched the shadows in each corner of the room for any hostile presence.
"The others..."
"They're not with us anymore," he told her simply.
"You... oh, I see." She was remembering Minotte's more than likely, and the showdown on the highway afterward.
He changed the subject, treading softly.
"Where's your roommate?"
"Working nights. She wasn't here when they showed up, thank heaven."
Bolan felt a measure of relief. He had been half expecting to discover yet another female on the premises, this one already cold and stuffed into a cupboard somewhere by the goons before they settled down to handling the main event.
"Okay," he said, "you'll need to warn her off before we leave. Police will have the place sealed off."
"Those men..."
Bolan read the question in the woman's eyes, and answered it forthrightly.
"I don't have time to move them out." He paused, then continued. "Some questions, then we have to get you out of here."
"I understand. I'll make it up to her... somehow."
She started to sit up and the covers slipped. Hasty fingers grabbed for the sheet, color flaming her cheeks before she made the save. For the first time Lucy Bernstein seemed to realize that she was naked — and that she had not put herself to bed.
She tried to feign bravado as she spoke to him again, putting a bold face on her obvious embarrassment, "I guess I don't have many secrets left."
His answer was a thoughtful frown.
"I wouldn't say that."
"Oh"... She saw that he was serious. Her small self-conscious smile evaporated. "You said you had some questions?"
Bolan nodded, jumped right into it with both feet.
"How long have you worked for the Beacon?"
Lucy looked surprised, taken off guard by his choice of subject matter.
"Going on three years now. I applied right out of journalism school. That's USC," she added, perhaps attempting to impress him.
Bolan was impressed already — by the woman's beauty, by her courage... but he was curious about her, too. And he could not afford to take her at face value.
He still needed answers, and he tried a new approach — direct now, sharp.
"I guess the family hookup helped," he said.
She looked confused again.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He shrugged.
"It means Jack Goldblume and your grandfather go back some forty years. It never hurts to know the boss."
"My grandfather..."
"What do you know about him, really?" Bolan interrupted, silencing her protest.
There was more color in her cheeks, and it was temper now, with no trace of embarrassment. She came up on one elbow, losing the covers again in the process and retrieving them distractedly, her full attention on the nature of Bolan's questioning.
"I know that he's a kindly decent person, Mr. "Blanski." Oh, I've heard the stories — all about his whiskey during Prohibition, and the gambling clubs. I know that he was questioned by Congress more than thirty years ago."
She paused, regarding Bolan with a fine hostility, and when she spoke again her tone was almost haughty.
"It's ancient history, my fine self-righteous friend. He's never been indicted, never been convicted — nothing!"
"What's that supposed to prove?" he asked her calmly.
She was momentarily speechless and the soldier took advantage of it, veering off along a different track.
"You're working on the Syndicate. I guess you've heard of Frank Spinoza?"
"Certainly." Her tone was stiff with barely suppressed anger.
"That's Frank Spinoza from New York," he prodded.
"I said I know who he is."
But Bolan would not let it go until he made his point.
"Spinoza from New York, who has his office at the Gold Rush."
Lucy was silent now. She watched his face with something close to apprehension in her eyes.
"Your grandfather's casino," Bolan finished.
"Jack Goldblume used to run the PR there."
"I know all that," she said. "So what?"
"So, maybe nothing. Maybe I don't buy coincidence."
"You think that my grandfather got me this job?"
Bolan shrugged.
"Well, you're wrong, mister," she snapped. "I'm a damned good reporter. There were other offers when I graduated, other opportunities. I picked the Beacon and Las Vegas. Me. I like it here, okay?" She was convincing, sure, and Bolan wanted to believe her. But even if she was leveling, it did not mean she knew the full extent of what was going on behind the scenes.
"Who came up with the idea for a Mafia series?" Bolan asked her.
Lucy frowned and somehow it only made her more attractive.
"It just came down," she answered. "I guess the city editor..."
"Or Goldblume?"
She thought about it briefly, nodding.
"Maybe. He's involved in every aspect of the paper. What's the difference?"
Bolan answered her with a question of his own.
"If you were trying to get rid of someone like Minotte or Spinoza, how would you go about it?"
She paled briefly as the memories of last night came flooding back on her again.
"I'd
say the Bruce Lee fan club had a fairly workable idea," she said at last.
"Agreed. But let's suppose you're trying to avoid a shooting war. What then?"
"I don't know. Set him up, I guess. Indict him on some charge." An idea clicked inside the tousled head, and Lucy's mouth was dry when she continued. "Or you could turn the spotlight on him. Make him vulnerable... run him out of town with bad publicity."
"It's worked before," the soldier told her.
She saw where he was going now and did not like it.
Verbally, she tried to head him off.
"What's wrong with that?" she challenged. "They should be driven out of town."
"I'm less concerned with method than with motive."
"Obviously."
Bolan took the jab for what it was and let it pass, forging ahead in hypotheticals.
"Suppose you had a score to settle, from the old days. Suppose that someone ripped you off years earlier, and now you've got a chance to make it right, with interest."
Lucy Bernstein's voice became indignant.
"This is nonsense. I don't understand..."
"I think you do," he told her softly.
"Well, it doesn't matter what you think. My grandfather... Jack Goldblume... they're not gangsters like Spinoza. They're both respected businessmen." He did not answer. In the silence, she continued speaking, and if Bolan read her tone correctly she was trying to persuade herself now. "Do you know how much money my grandfather gave to charity this year?" she asked him. "Last year? How much Jack Goldblume spent on civic service programs?""
"Where'd it all come from, I wonder?"
"God damn you!"
"He has," Bolan told her simply, rising from the straight-backed chair and stretching his legs. "You may still have a chance. Get dressed."
"Where are you taking me?" she demanded.
"I've got a friend who specializes in providing sanctuary, more or less official."
There were tears glistening in her eyes, but the voice was tough, unyielding.
"Wait up there, mister. I'm a big girl now. I've got a job, responsibilities..."
A big girl, right, and Bolan did not need to be reminded of the fact.
"You're marked," he told her coldly. "Show up for work with Bob Minotte's family on the hunt, and your next deadline will be just that."
She winced at the play on words and seemed about to answer, but she kept it to herself.
"Get dressed," he said again. "We're out of time."
The clock was running, and Bolan felt the fourthdown pressure without knowing yet exactly what or where his goal might be. The puzzle was expanding and he had more jumbled jigsaw pieces in his hand.
Lucy Bernstein had a puzzle of her own to deal with now — her own dilemma of the heart and soul. She had some private problems to resolve. There would not be an easy answer for her, Bolan knew. But then, a big girl had to live with that reality. The Executioner had long ago adjusted to the grim reality of living in the hellgrounds. He knew there were no easy answers in the trenches, ever — and no respite from the pressure, either.
He would drop the lady off with Tommy Anders, trust the comic and his people to secure Lucy Bernstein for the duration of his Vegas strike. Whichever way it went, the campaign would be short and decisive. But the intervening time would give Anders a chance to pick her brain a little. Anything he might be able to extract would be a bonus. As for Bolan, he was already thinking toward the next engagement with an enemy who kept on changing shapes and faces, multiplying. Somewhere soon the answer would walk up to him and tap him on the shoulder. Now, the only problem was that when it came it might be carrying a knife to plant between the Executioner's shoulder blades.
Las Vegas is a city of illusion, and Bolan was not sure that anything he had seen so far was real.
No, scratch that.
He had seen real death, for damn sure. No way to mistake it for show biz make-believe.
He lived in a universe where stark reality was everything. The only avenue of escape from grim relentless truth was a parabellum mangler through the brain.
And he resided in the charnel universe by choice, damn right. Along with others like Brognola and Tommy Anders — the combatants who elected to spend their season in hell here on earth.
No one had drafted warrior Bolan for this holy war. He had elected to provide his body and his soul, a living sacrifice. But Lucy Bernstein.
She was something else again.
A big girl, right, who might not get much older if allowed to wander pell-mell through the battlefields of Bolan's war. Accustomed to the newsroom she was unfamiliar with the no-rules rules of war, and there was no damned time to train her in the martial arts that she would need to eke out a survival in the trenches.
Let the woman find her peace or purgatory in her own way, her own time. Mack Bolan had already found his course of action and he was proceeding with it, undeterred and undetoured by any of Glitter City's myriad distractions.
There were lots of big girls out there, right. And there were lots of big guns, too.
Right now most of them were not aimed at Bolan, but the coming hours would change all that. The Executioner was counting on it.
11
Frank Spinoza finished loading the clip for his Browning Hi-Power automatic pistol and snapped it into the pistol grip, working the weapon's slide to chamber up a live one. He eased down the hammer and set the safety, enjoying the weight of the loaded gun in his hand. Reluctantly he reached out to stow it in the top desk drawer, then reconsidered, slipping it inside the waistband of his slacks, on the left, where it was hidden underneath his jacket. The solid weight of it felt good there against his ribs.
For the first time since that afternoon Spinoza felt secure, sitting there behind his massive desk inside the private office. The gun was part of it, he knew. And the layout of the office helped. No windows.
He had been expecting Paulie Vaccarelli's knock, and even so, it made him jump involuntarily. Spinoza gripped the padded arms of his swivel chair, willing himself to relax with an effort.
"Come ahead," he ordered.
The houseman stepped inside, the door ajar behind him and his body sealing off the opening. His rugged face seemed out of balance now with a bulky bandage on his cheek across the wound he received from flying window glass.
Spinoza wondered if he would ever stand before another open window totally at ease, without feeling fear in the pit of his stomach.
Paulie's voice cut through his private thoughts, a welcome interruption at the moment.
"Abe's here."
Spinoza cleared his throat to rout the squeak.
"Okay. Thanks, Paulie."
The houseman backed out and a moment later Abe Bernstein entered. To Spinoza he was moving like a little boy expecting trouble from his grade-school principal. Hell, everyone knew it must have been a hundred frigging years since Bernstein was in school. He looked like some cartoonist's notion of Methuselah, standing there impassively watching Frank through his wire-rimmed spectacles.
Spinoza did not know exactly how old Bernstein was — a very cautious estimate would place him somewhere in his early eighties — but whatever it was, he looked his age. The thinning hair was frosty white and Bernstein's tailored suit could not disguise the thickening around his waist, the slight droop to his shoulders. He still carried himself pretty well for his age, but the years had carved deep furrows in his face beneath the sunlamp tan and added on some surplus chins. The old man used to be some kind of hot shit in his day, when it was booze from Canada that brought the bucks instead of grass from Mexico and coke from South America. The frigging Purple Gang, for crying out loud. What was that, some kind of Jewish ethnic humor? Spinoza felt like laughing to himself. Those bad-assed Jews had ruled the roost around Detroit — until they ran into the Brotherhood. It did not take them long to cut and run when they came face-to-face with bold and bad Sicilians.
Purple Gang, my ass, Spinoza thought. More like the Yello
w Gang. And where were they now? Filling bone orchards back east, most of them. A few survivors had retired into obscurity or lived, like Bernstein, on the sufferance of the Brotherhood.
Manhattan owned Abe Bernstein body, soul, and diamond pinky ring — the whole nine yards. Spinoza broke the silence, speaking as he would to a subordinate, his voice and manner vaguely condescending.
"Abe, I need your help."
"Whatever I can do," the old man answered.
"We've got some company coming in. A lot of company. They're landing at McCarran in."
"Oh..." he made a show of consulting his Rolex, "let's call it ninety minutes."
Spinoza met the old man's eyes and dropped his bomb.
"They're going to need some rooms."
"How many?" Bernstein asked.
"All of 'em."
Abe's smile faltered, freezing at half-mast.
"You're joking, right?"
Spinoza shook his head, eyes never leaving Bernstein's face.
"I've never been more serious."
That did it for the smile. Old Abe was glowering at him now across the desk.
"It's Friday night. We're almost full, Frank."
"So?"
"So, that's three hundred fifty rooms with paying guests. We can't put all those people on the street. You can't need all those rooms."
Spinoza shrugged, enjoying the game now.
"You're right. They'll only need a third of that. Fact is, I want an empty house."
A hesitation, Bernstein judging just how far he dared go.
"Why's that, Frank?"
Spinoza allowed himself a frown although he felt like laughing in the old man's face.
"I don't owe you any explanations, Abe. But since you ask, our visitors are going to need their privacy." He paused, dragging it out to get the maximum effect from his pronouncement. "It's a head party, Abe. We're going hard."
"I see."
His tone informed Spinoza very clearly that he did not like it. Which was fine. The old man did not have a vote in the proceedings.
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