Detroit Deathwatch

Vincenti yelled, 'Hey, fuck this, fuck this!' He took an angry stride toward the girl then underwent one of those characteristic transformations, smiling and gallantly helping the girl to her feet. He brushed her fanny with a solicitous hand, then slapped it and told her, 'There's Johns all over the joint, honey. You didn't need to come way up here. I hope you didn't intend to pee in one of Papa Sal's drawers.'

Charley Fever fidgeted uneasily and said, 'Sal, we need to move.' He shot a troubled glance toward Tony Quaso. 'Bring your broad, Tony. We'll talk about this later.' He moved behind the desk and sprung the door to the concealed stairway, then made a little gesture to the boss. 'Sal?'

Vincenti was staring at a small flashlight that lay on the floor, partially under his desk. A handkerchief had been wrapped about the lens and secured there with a rubber band.

'Yeah, bring your broad,' he told Tony Quaso, an eyebrow raised in another characteristic expression that meant that Crazy Sal Vincenti was thinking into a problem. 'We'll take her with us. Part way with us, anyway.'

Tony Quaso got the meaning immediately, as did the other men. The girl had been snooping at the boss's desk. And now she was to be initiated into the secret of the subway to Lake St. Clair. No way. Tony's broad was going to get dumped in Lake St. Clair — a long ways from shore.

The whole thing was painfully embarrassing for a second-string riser like Anthony Thomas Quaso. He growled, 'I'll take care of it, Sal.' He grabbed the blonde and shoved her into the lineup behind Pete DiLani. The girl went unprotestingly, contrite, head bowed. Quaso fell in behind her, and Charley Fever brought up the rear.

A faint light from below dimly illuminated the shaft. Vincenti halted about halfway down to call back, 'What's that light, Charley?'

'Probably the battery lantern. The other guys must have left it on. Should be okay, Sal.'

'Just the same, I don't want no more surprises. Get over to the side there, Pete. Let the guy with the broad go first.'

Quaso sighed over that 'the guy' putdown. He nudged the girl with his knee, and the two of them squeezed past the capi to head the procession.

Vincenti pulled DiLani on past, then followed by several steps. Charley Fever remained at the rear, just behind his boss.

'It's okay, Sal,' he said quietly.

'Sure,' Vincenti replied.

They hit the basement level and proceeded to the east side in that same order, the girl in front and guided from behind by Tony Quaso.

A lantern affixed to the far wall was throwing out a thin flood of light, the beam ending in a spot on the floor about halfway across.

Just as Charley Fever moved out of the stairwell shaft, something dark and quick blurred across the lighted zone, at the head of the procession.

The blonde went hurtling off into the darkness in a plunge to the side, obviously propelled by a hard shove.

A pencil of flame leapt out to merge with the beam of the lantern and something terrible happened to Tony Quaso's head. It seemed to just burst open and fling all kinds of shit into the air.

Pete DiLani was reacting in an off-balance backward dive, digging for his pocket as he went, and he caught the same sort of problem in the throat. Charley Fever actually saw a flattened chunk of metal the size of a quarter erupt from DiLani's mouth, carrying with it teeth and bone and gums in a gushing spray like red vomit.

Sal Vincenti was whirling about and firing both of his pistols into the floor as he spun. He got it high in the back, near the shoulder, and this time Charley Fever heard the little whooshing sound that could only be a very effective silencer that didn't seem to be having much effect on firepower. Remembering it later (he would carry that memory to his grave), this professional gunman knew that those soft-nosed whistlers were blowing out of there under some hellish kind of muzzle velocity — very unusual for silenced weapons.

At that very moment, though, Charley Fever's mind was pitched into more urgent considerations. Without even thinking about what he was doing, he was flinging himself into a suicidal roll along that cement floor, trying to get his own bulk between those whistling missiles and the fallen body of Sal Vincenti.

He got off one shot from the Colt, firing instinctively, while realizing through some division of consciousness that he could not even see anything to shoot at. Then something like a sledgehammer hit the meaty part of his upper arm. He didn't feel a thing beyond that initial jolt, just numbness and sudden warmth. But that arm was dead from the shoulder down, and a weakness was spreading all over him. The Colt flew, and skittered across the floor.

Numbly, almost blindly, he came to his knees and got an arm under Sal. The old man was conscious, his eyes open, scared, pleading, 'Help me — help me, Charley.'

A shadow moved up and fell across the lantern beam.

Charley Fever muttered, 'It's okay, Sal.'

Then he looked up, maybe even defiantly — he couldn't remember, later, exactly what his emotions were at the moment. But it was, yeah, that fuckin' guy. He was dressed in a black outfit like frogmen wear, skintight, rubbery-looking. He was dull black all over, even his face and hands, and even his damned gun was black — an automatic with the damnedest looking silencer Charley Fever had ever seen. The guy had these damned belts strung all over him and loaded down with battlefield stuff — he must have been carrying a hundred pounds of hardware. But it didn't seem to be bothering him. Tall guy, very tall, powerful-looking and sleek like a damned black panther, broad at the shoulders, tapering.

The worst was the goddamn eyes. They were straight from hell.

Charley Fever told the Executioner, in a voice so calm he surprised himself, 'I'm taking Sal upstairs.'

'So go,' the big guy said. Like the eyes, so the voice.

Somehow Charley got the stricken capo onto his good shoulder and staggered away with him to the stairwell, expecting all the while to catch another sledgehammer somewhere, maybe in the head like poor Tony.

He was halfway up the stairs before he clearly realized that no more sledgehammers had come, and he could not figure that out.

Why hadn't the guy blasted him again?

Why did he do that? So go! Then just let him walk away like that? Why did the guy do it?

It was a question that seemed to have no answer, at least not from anywhere in the past experiences of Crazy Sal's good third arm. But it would bother him, for quite some time.

Mack Bolan himself would have been hard pressed to come up with the answer, at that moment.

Nor was he even pondering the question.

He was busy helping a blonde young lady with blazing eyes readjust her shaken dignity and professional composure.

'Damn you, Mack Bolan!' she cried, biting back the tears that were threatening to overcome what was left of her status as a liberated female. 'Do you know how long I've been working on — I was this close, this close, to getting to the bottom of this place!'

He quietly informed her, 'I was up there, Toby. Top of the steps. I heard it. The only thing you were close to was the bottom of the lake.'

'Well, damn it anyway, just damn it!' she fumed.

And, yeah, it was a very small underworld. The blonde spitfire was Toby Ranger, his swinging little buddy from the Vegas war... and certainly the sexiest 'fed' to ever hide a badge.

6 Crossed