'Until Bolan,' Holzer commented, frowning. 'So what about him?'
'It looks too late. We're setting up checkpoints … but what the hell. The guy was long gone before we even got the report. I don't know about this guy, John. He's not buying our traps.'
Holzer turned away, suppressing a grin.
Maybe it was not such a crazy world, at that. At least
12
Pinned
As number two man in a Massachusetts crime family, Leo Turrin was the highest-placed undercover fed in the race. As if those two hats were not difficult enough to wear together, he was also the best living friend of Mack Bolan, a long-declared enemy of both of Leo Turrin's worlds. His voice, as it traveled across the long-distance telephone connection, was crackling with interest.
'They've got the deathwatch on you, Sarge. You caught me just as I was going out the door. I got orders straight from the commission to get my tail to Detroit with all possible haste. They even chartered me a jet. I'm bringing twenty guns with me. Hell, I don't know how many other fire teams are being sent in from other points. I do know that my plane is stopping at Buffalo to pick up a contingent from there.'
'It figures,' Bolan replied quietly.
'And that's just the dark side of the street,'
Turrin went on. 'The entire tricounty area around Detroit is on alert. Those Detroit cops are very sensitive about crime in their streets. They've had their full share of troubles around there, you know, and they're not taking kindly to the craps game you've got started there, I called Brognola early this morning, soon as I heard about — '
'Where is he? Still in Texas?'
'Naw, but his storm troopers are. Picking up the pieces. Hal's back in Washington. He says about you, Sarge: for Christ's sake, cool it. He's going to have to start loading up with real slugs if you don't take a rest and lay low for a while. Argentina, he says, still looks nice.'
'It always did,' Bolan muttered. 'The war is
'Yeah. Well. Don't blame Hal. He's up to his eyeballs in intrigue of his own. Washington is in disarray, you know that. Lack of public confidence and all that. Someone very high is lighting the fires under your cross, wants you caught or shot without further fucking around. Maybe it's just a diversion, but Hal is really on the hot seat. This goes a lot higher than the justice department, Sarge. I mean, you know, like the whole damned government is toppling — a certain branch of it, anyway. You know what Charlie Wilson had to say about General Motors.'
'What's good is good, yeah.'
'Translate that to Detroit, buddv, because it's all the same ball game anyway. What's good for Detroit is good for the country and vice versa. It seems we have a five star bellringer of an emergency shaping up for this country, and nobody in Washington wants to see a Bolan blitz ripping through the tenderloin of our economy.'
'I'm not after the economy,' Bolan said tiredly.
'Same difference, man. Who the hell do you think is controlling the economy in that area?'
'You don't really believe that, Leo.'
'No, I don't, but there are those who do. There are those who say our system can't survive without illegal manipulation.'
'Like who?'
'Well, like the people who worry about recession and inflation, the rise and fall of the dollar and the stock markets, the balance of power between labor and management, all that. Especially that last. The goddamn mob has a firmer grip on the workers in that town than the goddamn unions have. As rotten as that is, at least it's a grip. The planners are projecting unemployment figures like right out of your blowing mind, and they're saying that the fall of Detroit is going to be the shot heard 'round the world. It's going to be an implosion, with the whole technological world falling in on Detroit. They're saying — '
'Leo, wait. I don't have time for a social study.'
Turrin chuckled.
'And I'm not buying that argument. If you're saying that corrupted shop stewards who push narcotics and operate numbers and vigorish concessions have a grip on the worker — then, yeah, I'll buy that, okay. A grip right around his balls, buddy.'
'I told Hal I'd try,' Turrin said. 'So I tried.'
'Okay. Try something for me. Who's the head whoremaster around this town?'
'That's a hard one to pin,' Turrin replied. 'Tony Quaso wore the name, but ... well, you know ...'
Bolan said, 'Yeah. Give me an educated guess, Leo. Who was he wearing it for?'
'It's tough for old leopards to change their spots.'
'Meaning what?'
'Meaning none of the old heads really change. They try to clean up their image with semilegit interests and all that, but ... well, you know, Sarge. A pimp is a pimp, all the way to his grave.'
'I guess I'm not really looking for a pimp,' Bolan said thoughtfully. 'Who's running the hottest semilegit action out of the area?'
'That would be industrials,' Turrin replied promptly.
'Okay. Lecture me, Professor.'
'You probably know most of the background,' Turrin said. 'Laundry facilities, let's say.'
'Okay. Who's washing the most money, and how?'
'That would be Butch Cassidy.'
'Bobby Cassiopea,' Bolan translated.
'Right. He's franchised by the Combination. Converts their black money into negotiable securities, trades the securities for gilt-edge stocks, municipal bonds, and so forth, pyramids the whole thing into real estate holdings, hospitals, nursing homes — you name it, Butch Cassidy will buy it. A lot of cannibalization goes on. Quick profits, you know, at the expense of company stability. That money finds its way into Swiss accounts and back through into more acquisitions, mergers, another round of cannibalization, then even higher levels of international business swindles.'
'He was the guy behind International Bankers Holding,' Bolan mused.
'That's the guy. Got his tail burned a bit on that one.' Turrin laughed softly. 'Thanks to a certain blitz artist I happen to call friend.'
'Would you,' Bolan mused on, 'connect Cassiopea with an international jet set of party girls?'
'Sure,' Turrin shot right back. 'The guy operates in grand style. Entertains lavishly. Nothing's too good for a prospective pigeon about to be fleeced of his company or his factory or his brokerage house. And that goes double in spades for impressionable government officials or greedy heads of state. As for the girls, it's amazing how pitifully stupid a hardboiled businessman or politico can become over the prospect of some delectably forbidden free ass. Uh, Sarge. My wheelman's getting nervous, and I've run out of time.'
'You gave me what I needed, Leo. Thanks.'
'Wait a sec. You can leave messages for me at the Sheraton-Cadillac.'
'Okay. That your headquarters here?'
'No, my drop. We'll probably be mobbed up somewhere. But I'll check the message desk at the hotel every four hours. Starting about mid-afternoon.'
Bolan said, 'Great. Watch your swinger, Leo.' He hung up and returned to the vehicle, where Toby Ranger waited impatiently.
'Who were you talking to — God?' she groused.
'Closest thing to it I've found on earth,' he replied, smiling.
She stared the engine and asked, 'Where to now?'
'Central precinct,' he said.
