More than one war was brewing in San Francisco.
3
An Honest Shot
She had led him through a maze of back streets and alleyways, picking her way surely and silently across the abandoned nightclub belt and into Chinatown.
Bolan had maintained a discreet distance throughout, barely keeping her in sight and varying his track from one side to the other at erratic intervals.
They crossed Grant Avenue and descended deeper into the labyrinthine bowels of the western Chinese section and along a narrow street of storefronts — a mixed business-residential neighborhood of two and three story buildings with most of the residential community occupying space above the business.
It was a fringe district at the edge of the main tourist area, with a sprinkling of gift shops, restaurants, and bars catering to visiting Caucasians jumbled in with fantan parlors, shops, and cafes which obviously serviced the Chinatown residents.
The girl halted between a pair of almost identical restaurants, threw a quick look over her shoulder, and abruptly disappeared through a darkened doorway.
Bolan passed on by to the next street intersection, crossed over, and reversed the route in a careful recon of the neighborhood, prowling the area for several minutes to get the lie of the land and scouting for possible shadows on his backtrack.
He found the China Doll waiting for him in an unlighted foyer, a tiny cubicle which barely accommodated the opening of the door from the street. He had a quick impression of pleased oriental eyes, and then she was moving through the musky darkness of the stairway and along the second-floor hall.
She went to a door at the end and fussed about with a key while Bolan quietly scouted that level, counting doors and mentally overlaying the floor plan on his larger picture of the neighborhood.
The girl had the door cracked open and she was standing outlined in a faint light from the other side, waiting for Bolan to join her. Instead he went on up the stairway to scout the third level, and she was waiting patiently in the same position when he completed his recon and joined her at the doorway.
'Are you always so careful?' she asked him in a voice that was quietly sober and exultantly tense all at once.
He said. 'I try to be. Do you know why?'
She gave her head a quick little jerk and replied, 'Yes, I know who you are. And I am Mary Ching. We are allies, believe that. Will you wait for me here while I bring my friends to talk with you?'
His eyes coldly swept that perfect face and he asked her, 'Why should I?'
'You will be safe here,' she assured him, matching the coldness of his voice. 'And you may find my friends intensely interesting. For intelligence purposes if nothing else.'
'How long do I wait?'
'One hour, no more.'
'Too long,' he told her.
She showed him the tiny automatic and hissed, 'I could have shot you a dozen times if I had hostile intentions. Trust me for one hour.'
He grinned suddenly and said, 'Okay. But look — don't go yelling my name around. It attracts crowds.'
'I know.' She pushed the door full open, smiled and said, 'Welcome to my humble pad. See you soon.'
Bolan growled, 'Yeah,' and the girl whisked herself softly along the hallway and disappeared down the stairway.
And then Bolan walked into the most pleasant surprise of the night.
He closed the door and leaned against it, surveying the 'humble pad' with a quiet appreciation.
It wasn't exactly luxury — it was just damned good taste — and the little flat above the Chinese restaurant was about as appealing to the senses as any place Bolan had been lately.
There was a lot of red and black, soft lights and softer silks and satins, delicate tapestries and fragile little figurines — nothing overdone but all of it beautifully balanced and blended — a place of quiet dignity and beauty.
It was a one-room affair but there was plenty of walking space, even with abundant furnishings and a cozy corner-kitchenette. A closet-sized bath with a folding silk screen for a door completed the accommodations.
Bolan advanced to the center of the room and placed the machine-pistol on a small table... and then he received a second surprise, this one a bit more jolting.
A sectional couch had been split and cornered against the far wall... and each section was occupied by a sleeping girl. Both were Caucasians, blonde, apparently young, and huddled beneath light blankets.
Bolan would have been more comfortable with a discovery of a wide-awake crew of Mafia head- hunters.
His inner debate was resolved at about the second heartbeat and he was spinning about to quit that place when a tousled blonde head lifted itself from a pillow and a pair of cool blue eyes raked him from stem to stern. A pleasantly modulated, but sleepy voice declared, 'Far out.'
Soothingly he said, 'Relax, wrong door, I guess. I'm leaving.'
The voice was wide awake now and teasing as it warned, 'Keep on leaving and I'll start screaming.'
'I thought this was Mary Ching's place,' he explained.
'It is. What are you made up for? That is really far out.'
He said, 'Mary didn't say anything about roommates. I'll wait for her outside.'
'Don't be square.' The girl flung back the blanket and sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. She was wearing nothing but glowing skin, and doing that quite beautifully.
Bolan could have been a life-sized poster, for all the feminine awareness she was according his presence.
'We don't live here,' she told him. 'We're just crashing for the night. So don't leave on our account.'
She shivered and drew the blanket over the bare shoulders.
'Make some tea or something, huh?' she suggested lazily.
Bolan said, 'I guess that's your department.'
She told him, 'Monkeyshit,' in a quietly disgusted voice and lunged across to slap the other girl's upraised behind.
That one whimpered and burrowed deeper into her blanket.
The live one struggled to her feet and crossed to the bathroom, her blanket draped carelessly from the waist and trailing along behind. She left the folding screen ajar and straddled the toilet seat, staring curiously out at Bolan as she noisily disturbed the waters of the porcelain bowl.
He turned away and decided, hell, to make the tea after all. He put a kettle of water on the burner and rummaged through the cupboard, finding and deciding upon a jar of instant coffee.
'No tea, just coffee,' he called in to the blonde.
She was bent over the wash basin, now, splashing water on her face and gasping with the coldness of it. 'Is it organic?' she called back.
Bolan muttered to himself, 'How the hell would I know?'
She strode into the room, sans blanket and patting at her face with a small handtowel.
Bolan, what the hell, looked her over and liked what he was looking at. Any man would. She had those flowing lines and flawless skin that a guy associates with erotic fantasies, large swollen breasts with the pinkest nipples Bolan had seen anywhere, firm and erect as any plastics job could assure — one of those ripple-soft bellies plunging into velvet thighs and belled hips, a swooped rear-deck with the soft overhang visible even from the front.
Sure. She had it all, right where it belonged and in ideal portions.
