The bedside lamp came on. Willie Walker, smiling grimly, leaned over the bed and fitted a key into the handcuffs with which Pena was manacled to the metal bedpost. 'When did they start the bracelets routine?' he asked.
'Just last night,' Pena whispered. 'Christ, it's about time you was showing up. I had the signal out since yesterday afternoon.' He drew his hand free and massaged the wrist, then reached hurriedly for his clothing. 'This guy blew it, and the L.A. cops ate after Lou Baby's ass.'
'No need to be quiet,' Walker informed him. 'We got the cop.'
Pena grunted. 'How about the old lady?'
'Her, too. You better hurry it, though. This Franky Lucky might be making it here most any time.
Pena staggered into his trousers and said, 'Who the hell is Franky Lucky?'
'Oh hell, there's a lot been going on you don't know about,' Walker told him. 'This Franky Lucky is a rodman from the East. He's got a contract on you, Lou.'
Pena's eyes flipped wide with alarm. 'Awww,' he said unbelievingly. 'Deej wouldn't go that far.'
'The hell he wouldn't.' Walker had knelt and was slipping socks on Pena's feet as the grizzled Mafia veteran was struggling into his shirt. 'He thinks you made a singin' deal with the cops. The boys have been lighting candles all night. They're even making plans for a secret wake.'
Pena's fingers fumbled with the buttonholes at the shirtfront. He seemed stunned. 'We gotta get to 'im,' he mumbled. 'He's gotta call it off. I just about got this thing sewed up now. You get on a phone, Willie, and tell 'im. I'm right in Bolan's tracks now. Tell Deej that Bolan got a face job, right here in th' Village. Tell 'im I been all this time finding that out. Tell Deej I also know the guy that give 'im the face job, and I'm right now finding out what this Bolan looks like now. You tell 'im that, Willie, and get 'im to call off this hit.'
Walker nodded his head in somber agreement. 'I'll try, Lou, but you know how these things go. Whattaya got in mind? I mean . . .'
'I'm going after this plastics man. You know the place, this rest home on the east side.'
Walker appeared dazed. 'Well hell, I guess we should'a known,' he said. 'Listen. Four boys are watching outside. Don't worry, they're with you. You take 'em on over there. I'll try to call Deej from here, then I'll join you over there later. But we better make it quick. Somebody comes in here and finds the cop and his old lady and some hell is gonna cut loose in this town.'
Pena slipped into his coat. 'You know how much I 'preciate this, Willie.'
'Sure, sure,' Walker said. He handed Pena a gun and dropped some loose bullets into his coat pocket. 'You better beat it.'
Bolan's Mercedes rolled quietly through the early-morning stir of the village, past the blackened hulk of Lodetown, and halted at an outside phone booth two blocks beyond the square. He consulted the directory, found Robert Conn's home address, then drove three blocks further on and parked the Mercedes on a side street several doors down from the Conn residence. He opened a gun case, withdrew a long-barreled .38, checked the load and spun the cylinder, affixed a silencer, and jammed the weapon into the waistband of his trousers, then walked up the alley behind the row of houses.
He found Genghis and Dolly Conn in their bloodsoaked bed, their throats slashed, the bodies cold in death. Bolan muttered his regrets and quickly searched the rest of the house. Finding nothing of value, he immediately withdrew and returned to his vehicle. He put the car in motion and slowly circled the block once, pondering the unexpected development. Then a chilling thought struck him. He wheeled the Mercedes about and proceeded directly to New Horizons. He parked at the rear beside a dark Plymouth, noted a radio microphone clipped to the dashboard of that vehicle, and cautiously entered the clinic. He paused just inside the door and elevated his head, as though sniffing the air, then drew the .38, checked the snub .32 reposing in the sideleather, and advanced quietly to Jim Brantzen's private quarters.
Big Tim Braddock lay just inside the door to Brantzen's apartment, curled on his side, blood soaking into the carpet under him. A pistol lay several feet away. Bolan knelt quickly and felt Braddock's forehead. It was clammy. Bolan grunted and stepped cautiously into the kitchen.
He found Jim Brantzen, clad only in pajama bottoms, stretched out on the dining table, his head dangling over the edge. Bloodied pliers and wirecutters lay beside him on the table. Bolan winced and a guttural snarl tore up through the constrictions of his throat as he inspected his friend's mutilated body. Of all the atrocities Bolan had witnessed in the hamlets of Vietnam, he had never seen anything to equal the ferocity of this obvious interrogation. They had twisted the nipples out of his chest, probably with the pliers. The entire torso was a raw pulp of mutilated meat. The ribs gleamed through bare spots where the flesh had been stripped away. The surgical fingers of the right hand had been whittled to the bone. Both earlobes were missing, his nostrils were slit up both sides, laying bare the bridge of his nose, and deep grooves had been carved beneath each eye. Worst of all, to Bolan's way of thinking, the hideously tortured surgeon was still alive . . . and aware.
His breath was coming in ragged gurgles, blood bubbles forming about the mutilated nostrils, and all in the overtones of a ceaseless moaning. A bloodsmeared bottle of whiskey stood on a nearby stand, a stained towel lay in a pan of cold water; evidence, to Bolan, that the valiant surgeon had been repeatedly forced to maintain consciousness.
Bolan's hands moved carefully beneath his friend's head and he tenderly lifted it. 'Who did it, Jim?' he asked with a shaking voice. 'Who did this?'
Brantzen's eyes flared, dulled, then flared again. The lips moved, dribbling a red foam in the painful whisper: 'They . . . called him . . . Lou.'
Bolan nodded. 'I know him. I'll get him, Jim.'
'He . . . knows . . . sketch . . . has sketch.'
'I'm going to get him, Jim.'
'He . . . He . . . knows . . .' The right hand jerked up; glazed eyes stared at the skeletonized fingers; then the eyes closed, and Jim Brantzen died.
Tears squeezed past Bolan's tightening eyelids. He groaned, 'Oh, God!' . . . then he gently let Brantzen's head down and walked jerkily into the other room. Braddock's eyes were open and he had rolled onto his back. Bolan knelt over him, opened the coat, and found the wound. The big cop had caught it in the gut. 'You okay?' Bolan asked him.
'No,' Braddock wheezed.
'How long ago, Braddock?'
'Five minutes . . . maybe ten.'
'Hang on, I'll get an ambulance,' Bolan told him. He went quickly out the door, through the lobby, and into Brantzen's surgical chamber. There he found compresses and hurried back with them to the fallen policeman. Bolan peeled away the clothing and applied the compresses to the wound.
'I'll bet you make it,' he told Braddock.
The Captain merely stared at him, obviously in too much pain for conversation.
'I hope you do,' Bolan added. He returned to the lobby, phoned for an ambulance, and made a hasty exit. Moments later, the powerful Mercedes was screaming around the curves of the high road to Palm Springs. Bolan thought he knew where he could intercept a torture-murderer. He was, in fact betting his very life on it.
Chapter Nineteen
The hit
The six men were squeezed into the speeding car, Willie Walker in the front seat with a veteran triggerman named Bonelli and a younger wheelman who was called Tommy Edsel because of his one-time membership in a club of Edsel automobile enthusiasts. Screwy Lou Pena, all expansive smiles and high humor, took up nearly half of the rear seat, Wedged in with him were one Mario Capistrano, who had been recently released from the Federal Reformatory at Lompoc, and Harold the Greaser Schiaperelli, a 59-year-old Italian-born contract specialist who had been deported three times but had never spent a night behind bars.
Willie Walker freed an arm and leaned over the backrest, saying, 'Lemme take a look at that picture, huh Lou?'
