A voice answered from the top of the stairs.
'He hangs out at a club called the Tattle Tail,' Kelly Crawford told Bolan. 'That's T-A-I-L.' She gave him the address. He committed it to memory. 'A joint,' she added, not moving from the head of those stairs. 'A rough place.'
Kelly had cleaned up her act. A shower had buffed her blond beauty to a fine glow. Even her wet hair did not detract from her fresh good looks. She was clad in a floor-length robe that clung to her figure.
'I'll take my chances,' growled Bolan. 'Thanks, Kelly.'
'I'm sorry,' she said quietly, not making eye contact with Bolan or her father. 'I've been an immature, stupid fool. I'm sorry.'
'You're home now,' said the general. 'That's the important thing. Rest up. We'll talk about it in the morning.'
'I'm home because of this man,' said Kelly. She looked at Bolan for the first time. 'Who are you, mister?'
'The name is Phoenix,' Bolan told her. 'Kelly, do you have any other ideas where Grover will hole up if the club doesn't pan out?'
'If Grover isn't at the Tattle Tail, someone there will know where to find him,' she assured Bolan. 'It's his turf. He used to take me there so all his pimp friends could see his fine white bitch.'
'Please, Kelly — ' began her father.
'I was a fool, and I've got to admit it aloud to both of you or it won't mean anything at all,' said Kelly. 'I was slumming with some real slime, wasn't I, Mr. Phoenix?'
'The slimiest,' Bolan acknowledged. 'And one of them is still out there. Grover will need a doctor, but he won't go to a hospital. He's holed up someplace right now where he thinks he's safe. That's the edge I need. He won't be moving. I will. And I've got to start moving right now. Good night, both of you. And thanks.'
'Thank you,' said Kelly to the Executioner. 'I thought I loved a man who cared about me. But all he did was use me. I guess he was using me all along. Thank you for saving my life and making me see that.' Then she looked at her father and her voice quavered. 'I'm sorry, daddy. I really am.'
Then she turned and padded off down the upstairs hallway.
Bolan and General Crawford stepped out onto the front porch.
'My thanks too, Mack. It's good to see you again.'' Crawford saw only the Lancia in the driveway. 'Take the Lancia, you'll be needing some wheels. Good luck. God bless you.'
The two warriors shook hands, then embraced warmly like the brothers they were.
Bolan climbed into the Lancia and roared away from there, angling back toward the Roosevelt Bridge and D.C.
He would get rid of the Lancia at the first car-rental agency he came to. Then he would phone the general to pick it up.
He was driving a car registered to General Crawford.
That would make it easy for someone to identify.
Someone in the know, the general had said.
Who?
Farnsworth?
Could General Crawford be involved?
Bolan felt a flash of angry guilt at that last thought.
He pulled up at a pay phone by a closed service station. He dialed a number that was routed from a scrambler station in B.C. through a computerized reroute via Miami, Flagstaff and Missoula, Montana, before buzzing the switchboard at Stony Man Farm's central control.
April answered.
'Stony Man.'
'It's me, mother hen.'
Bolan could feel the woman of his heart smiling at him over the line.
'Striker, it's good to hear from you. How's it going?'
'Swinging. I could fill a book. What's the situation there?'
'Some very bad news, some not so bad. Konzaki is dead. He never came out of the coma.'
Bolan felt something cold run down his spine.
'Now it's personal,' was all he said.
'Maybe you should be back here,' said April. 'It's past midnight. If there is going to be an assault on the Farm tonight, shouldn't you be here?'
'I'm twenty minutes away,' said Bolan. 'You're just lonesome.'
April chuckled, and the intimate sound of it made the warrior wish for one instant that he and this woman were together and none of this was happening.
'I'm lonesome for you, Captain Hellfire. Men, we've got plenty of. Phoenix Force arrived an hour ago.'
'What about the communications repair?'
'That's the not so very bad news,' said April. 'The Bear is out there now. The parts just arrived.'
'Still no word from Able Team?'
'Still no word. I take it you have no intention of returning here until and if you're needed?'
'There's a hot time in the old town tonight,' Bolan told her. 'I've got some more cage-rattling to do. Konzaki's soul won't rest until it's done. Neither will mine.'
'Hal has been calling. He wants you to contact him.'
'I'll bet he does. Tell him the trail's too hot right now for talk.'
'Is there anything I can do?'
'Run a tracer on Grover Jones, a.k.a. Damu Abdul Ali. Recent dishonorable discharge from the Army.'
'Will do. Anything else?'
'Uh, yeah. See what you can come up with on General James Crawford.'
'The general? But, Mack — '
'Someone close to us is striking at us tonight,' Bolan explained. 'My only course is not to trust anyone.'
'You can trust my love, guy,' April said softly. 'I'll get what you need.'
'Stay hard, lady,' said Bolan.
He broke the connection.
The low cloud cover draped a humid blanket across Washington, as if trying to suffocate it.
Bolan returned to his vehicle and headed into the nighttime city, into the belly of the monster.
13
The Tattle Tail was in the heart of D.C.'s black section.
It had been a long time since the open racial hostilities of the late sixties and early seventies, but faces along the sidewalks and tenement steps turned hostile, cautious, at the sight of a white.
Bolan had shed Big Thunder, packing the mini-howitzer away for the time being in its leather beneath the front seat of the rental car when he parked the vehicle half a block away.
He wore the Beretta 93-R shoulder-bolstered beneath his jacket.
The inner-city pavement was crowded because of the warm spell, even though it was well past 1:00 a.m.
The street was alive.
Bright colors and the latest fashions paraded by to the throaty roar of powerful exhausts and the calls of young men to foxy ladies.
The tall man with peculiarly icy eyes ignored the stares and entered the bar that was advertised by a lone Pabst sign in the window.
The joint was busy with an after-hours crowd. The walls, hidden somewhere beyond a swirling haze of
