Detroit Deathwatch

'Your goof, Simon. Not theirs. Now it's too late. I don't deal for dead girls, guy.'

'Well, wait! Wait now! Which girl was it?'

Bolan produced a glossy photo of Georgette and held it above the guy's bulging eyes. Simon wilted a bit more as he breathed, 'That one.'

'That one.'

'Well, I don't think she's dead,' the guy said, choking around the acute curve of his distorted throatline. 'Lets talk — hey, look. Let's discuss this like reasonable men. I want to help you. I can't help you if I'm dead.'

Bolan seemed to consider that for a second, then he eased off and told Simon, 'You've bought ten seconds' worth of reasonableness.'

'What can I do in ten seconds?'

'Five, now.'

The guy's eyes rolled in their sockets, and he screamed, 'They found out about her!'

'Found out what?'

'She's a cop! What the hell, I had nothing to do with that! I just supply them.'

'Too bad,' the iceman replied, and the Belle bore back in.

The guy screamed, loud and frantically, 'She's not dead!' Spittle was trickling down his chin, and a vein in his neck was pulsing much too rapidly.

Bolan eased off again, as much for his own sake as anything else. The guy could die without any help at all at this point, and that was not the name of Bolan's game.

He told Simon, 'Okay, you bought another ten seconds.'

'God, Jesus — thanks, thanks. I'm leveling with you, Mr. Bolan. I want to help you.'

Bolan was not, of course, overly certain of that. A dying man would say most anything, if he feared death enough. He stepped back a pace and sheathed the Beretta. The guy was in a half faint, wobbling in his chair, eyes swinging dully from side to side. The head found its natural level, and the guy stole a quick glance at the men on the floor. Horrified eyes jerked back quickly, skittered away from Bolan, came to rest on his own hands, which were now splayed out across the top of the desk, knuckles white with desperation.

'I want the girl, Simon,' Bolan said calmly. 'And you've got no seconds, guy, none at all left now.'

In a voice hoarsened from violent emotion, Simon said to the Executioner: 'I'll show you all I have to show. I have to get on my feet. And I'll show you.'

Bolan pulled the guy out of the chair and steadied him against the side of the desk. There was no compassion for this man, this dealer in human degradation. He would squash a thousand guys like this one without a tremor if that would save one girl one hour of the fate dealt to them by these cannibals.

All of that loathing and disgust was hanging there in plain view as Bolan told the soul merchant, 'So show me.'

Toby was fidgeting and peering anxiously at the entrance to Simon's Grotto when Bolan emerged from a doorway farther along the wharf and returned briskly to the car.

He slid in beside her and said, 'Let's go.'

She put the car in motion as she asked him, 'How'd you get way down there?'

'These guys love tunnels,' was all he said.

They cleared the neighborhood and were circling toward the throughwav before the girl prodded him with a quiet, 'Well?'

'I got what I came for,' he told her. 'Let's get back to the plane.' He saw the agitation in her eyes and added, 'Hang onto hope, Toby. Our gal could still be alive. Call your friend from the airport. Tell him he's been watching the wrong point. They move the stuff through Simon's floor and along an old storm drain. Drop it into small boats that can get under the wharf. The drop point is about two-hundred yards west of Simon's. They move the girls the same way. Rendezvous with a larger craft out beyond the harbor. Incoming stuff takes the same route in reverse.'

She nodded impatiently. 'I'll pass the word. But what about Georgette?'

'That's the part you don't pass along,' he replied. 'Not until I say different. Timing is all important now. I don't want any police movements upsetting that.'

'Georgette, damn it.'

'You're going to have to trust me, Toby. More than I trust you. When — '

'That's a hell of a thing to say!' she protested.

'Maybe so,' Bolan growled. 'But that's the way it has to be. You can hope, but not too loudly. Beyond that, you just have to trust that I'm doing what needs doing, and go along quietly.'

She fumed, 'Well that's the damnedest, most outrageous …'

It was a bad shot, sure, but a relative cruelty. Toby had too much of her own ass into the problem. If Bolan told her everything he'd learned and begun to suspect about the current status and possible fate of Georgette Chableu, then he chances were pretty good that Toby would lose professional cool and charge off in a disastrous direction. She did not need that extra burden, and Bolan did not intend to impose it upon her, regardless of what she might be thinking at the moment.

'Trust me,' he said quietly.

Her hands whitened on the steering wheel, and that determined little jaw took on a harsher set, but she told him, 'Okay, Captain Granite. But you'd better be as good as I think you are.'

He hoped he was.

They drove through several minutes of silence, then Toby asked him, 'Did you leave anyone alive back there?'

'Are you,' he replied coldly, 'kidding?'

He began hauling packets of red-stained currency from his coat pockets as he gruffly reported, 'I made it look like a heist. And there's no one to tell any other tale.'

'Captain Perfect,' she breathed, through clenched teeth.

Yeah.

Bolan hoped so.

He was returning to Detroit to resume the death watch. That new 'angle of attack' had presented itself. And it was no coincidence whatever that Georgette Chableu, dead or alive, lay directly across that path.

11 Baited

The police conference at Detroit Central had been brief and to the point. An inspector out of the DPD chief's office was designated as 'skipper' — or, chief administrative officer — of the joint police effort. This was Jason Garvey, a shrewd and capable man who had once held an associate professor's chair in police administration.

An organized crime specialist from the attorney general's office in Lansing was named as executive officer. Representatives from every police district and jurisdiction in the area fleshed out the 'strategy board' — a sort of planning commission for the unified strike force.

A 'contingencies unit' was formed under Lieutenant John Holzer of Grosse Pointe. Federal and Canadian representatives were present in advisory-liaison capacities. Two 'observers' from the state house also attended the conference.

Special communications nets were established and 'regional reaction' plans set into motion.

The deputy superintendent for DPD dropped in for a quick off-the-cuff pep talk — reminding those present of the 'tense law enforcement situation' in the tricounty area and sounding a sober warning of the possible