fatigue?
He was thusly talking himself out of an impulse to drag the briefcase into his lap and inspect that passport.
They were standing just off the runway now, and the engines were revving up. The door to the flight cabin opened and the stewardess for Bolan's section reappeared. A man in uniform showed himself momentarily in the open doorway, glanced at the passenger identified as Gil Martin and smiled, then closed the door. The stewardess was buckling herself into a seat. She, too, turned and sent a smile toward Martin. If the subject of the curious interest took notice, he did not respond.
Bolan again fell to wondering about the man, then he subconsciously resolved the passport conflict by suddenly opening his briefcase and transferring the passport to the breast pocket of his coat, where it belonged anyway.
Then they were on the takeoff run. Dulles was becoming a blur beyond the window, the nose lifted, and Bolan was being gently pressed into the seat cushions.
For a few hours, okay, he could relax now. The police had allowed the plane to depart. Bolan wondered how much he owed that to the last-minute arrival of Gil Martin, an obvious celebrity who would fit rather well the general Bolan description. He could visualize the exchange between tower and pilot: the police were looking for a tall man, about thirty, dark, clean-shaven, a hard looking bastard with cold brown eyes. He might have boarded the Paris flight at the last moment. Yes, we got a guy like that but, ha ha, it's just old Gil Martin, you know, the celebrity.
The tensions were leaving. Bolan was grateful for the false facial hair which so altered his appearance; doubly grateful that young men's fashions had gone to hair — there was nothing unusual or even notable about face hair these days. The muttonchop sideburns and sweeping moustache gave Bolan an almost soft anonymity. So okay, relax now and conserve the energy, replenish the brain, cool down the vital juices, take it easy. In Paris, he would very likely need everything he could get going, false hair notwithstanding.
Out of his fog of introspection he became aware again of the girl beside him. She was talking compulsively to the passenger in the window seat, apparently fighting takeoff anxieties. '... and they say the Right Bank has become so commercial, so brassy, I'd love to find a little hotel on the Left Bank, perhaps in the Sorbonne district. Don't you think that would be charming? And inexpensive, too. They say it's so colorful and interesting, the artists and students and all live there, on the Left Bank I mean, but then on second thought I don't know, I mean it might not be safe for...'
Bolan grinned, closed his eyes, and let it all go. He would take care of Paris when Paris presented itself. But only for a little while. A war at home awaited him, commanded him. Maybe he could work in a brief R&R in gay Paris before returning to the front.
The Executioner would soon discover, however, that the entire world was his front. There was to be no R&R for Mack Bolan in gay Paris.
Quick Tony Lavagni sat at a desk in the rear of a shop in Washington's ghetto, counting the day's bag from the most lucrative numbers operation south of Harlem. Wilson Brown, an immense black man and Lavagni's central controller, stood nonchalantly at Quick Tony's elbow, chewing on a dead cigar and watching the count with miss- nothing eyes. Brown was in his early thirties, and the mark of many personal wars, mostly lost ones, was ground into his dusky features; only the eyes showed an aliveness, a quick awareness and responsiveness, perhaps an intelligent wariness mixed with an acceptance of a black man's destiny. Lavagni was in his forties, not appreciably lighter in color than his controller, an emotional man of quick temper, violent tendencies, and a reputation with a knife. It was this latter consideration that had given him the label of 'Quick Tony.'
Near the front door lolled two of Brown's runners, talking in bored whispers and shooting occasional dark looks toward the men at the desk. Another white man sat in a chair tilted against the wall, trying to read a racing form in the dim light reaching him from the desk lamp.
Lavagni completed the count, consulted the bank sheet, and drawled, 'You're fifty short, Wils.'
'Naw,' the black man replied, bending low over Lavagni's shoulder to peer at the figures. 'It's there in the side money.'
'Oh yeah, I see. You laid off to Georgetown. How come so much lay off, Wils?'
'I told you, we could get flattened if...' Brown's explanation was interrupted by a muted ringing of the telephone. He scooped it up and grunted into the mouthpiece, chewed the cigar furiously for a moment as he listened to the message, then said, 'Okay, then you better try to spread another fifty across the worst numbers. You know what, okay?'
'Another fifty?' Lavagni fumed as the black man hung up the phone.
'You'll be glad tomorrow,' Brown assured him. 'It's just one of those days, Tony. It's heavy on all the possibles. We're even having trouble placing lay-offs.'
The Italian growled something unintelligible and began placing the money in a heavy paper bag.
Brown raised his eyebrows in surprise. 'You takin' the whole bank, Tony?'
'Damn right,' Lavagni growled. 'You send a boy over tomorrow with a voucher, I'll give him the pay-off purse.'
'Suddenly Wils Brown ain't to be trusted?' the big man asked in a thickening voice.
'Hey, don't start that — you know me better than to start that, Wils. It's this Bolan. He's been spotted around town, I told you that. I ain't taking no chances on him busting up my banks.'
'I thought you were skinnin' that cat, man.'
'Yeah, well, certain people are taking care of that detail right now. So don't...' Lavagni was interrupted by another ringing of the phone.
Brown reached for it and Lavagni went on toward the door, then he heard the black man saying, 'Yeah he's here, just a minute.'
Lavagni turned back with a questioning look. Brown was extending the instrument toward him. 'It's your chief rodman. He sounds like his eyes might be rolling.'
Lavagni strode back to the desk and snatched the telephone. 'Yeah?' he said quietly. His face fell immediately as the receiver rattled with some breathless report, then he deposited the paper bag on the desk and reached for a handkerchief. 'No, hell no, keep away from those cops!' he barked, dabbing at his forehead with the handkerchief. 'After they leave, you go through there with a sieve. You make damn sure he's not hiding in a john or something. Then you get a rundown on every plane that left out of there during that time, and you get copies of the passenger lists... shit I don't care how you get 'em, just get 'em!' He deposited the phone with a crash and growled, 'That bastard!'
'Bolan got away again,' Brown decided in flat tones.
'That bastard!' Lavagni repeated.
'I can get 'im.'
'Huh?'
'I can get Bolan for you.'
'Shit!' Lavagni sneered. 'You and what cock-a-doodle army? We got the whole goddam country swarmin' for that guy, and you say...'
'I can kill him with a kiss.'
'Hey, I ain't in no mood for... what the hell you mean? You mean the Judas kiss?'
'Something like that,' Brown replied quietly. 'I did duty with the guy. I know him. I waded rice paddies with him and jungle-skunked 'im for about three months once. Yeah, I could...'
'Then why didn't you say so before?' Lavagni asked coldly, watching the black man through half-slitted eyes.
Brown shrugged. 'I'm not no Mar — I'm not one of you, man, I just work here. And I didn't figure I'd get no popularity medals for knowing Bolan.'
'Well that's a hell of a goddam attitude!' Lavagni shouted. 'Now how'm I supposed to know what the hell you been up to, huh Wils? How'm I supposed to know what you'n that bastard Bolan've been cooking up, huh?'
The two black men near the door were moving nervously toward the disturbance. Brown shot them a quick glance and said, 'It's okay.' To Lavagni, he said, 'Just use your head, that's all. This ain't no confession, you know.
