Detroit Deathwatch

what she had to do. She snatched the thing up and hurled it toward the street with all her might.

It was a piece of a broken lawn ornament, a cement dish or something, shaped like a discus. The heavy object hit the pavement with a crash and skittered loudly on, veritably thundering through the quietness of that tense moment.

The footfalls ceased abruptly and a startled voice quietly called, 'What the hell!'

'On the street!' another man barked in a hoarse whisper.

Heavy bodies floundered into dense shrubs.

Toby ran back to the vehicle, dived in, started the engine, floored the gas pedal, and jammed the gearshift into driving range. The car roared from beneath the portico as though shot from a catapult, door open and swinging shut with a crash as momentum overtook it.

Headlamps flared, showing her the way in a tire-screaming swerve. She momentarily lost pavement and spun into soft turf, fishtailed, leapt back with another loud shriek from protesting rubber, hit the end of the drive at full pedal — swerving again, fishtailing down the street and struggling for stability.

At the rear edge of pulsating consciousness came the ba-loom of a shotgun and then another mixed with the rapid-fire banging of a pistol. The window behind her disintegrated, and something like an icepick punching through a tin can was playing upon the rear of the car.

Headlamps flared to the rear as a vehicle roared into pursuit.

She was moving strongly and eating pavement at a flat 80 mph as the first intersection north leapt into her probing headlights and something very ominous swept across her line of sight. It was a procession of vehicles, moving fast, wheeling through that intersection and coming her way.

And, in the lead, was a heavy armored riot car, beacon twirling, hunching into a fast slowdown and crabbing slowly, slowly, directly across her line of travel.

'Dumb!' she screamed at the night. 'Dumb dumb dumb!'

But she'd given the man his two minutes. And, perhaps, considerably more than that.

'Damn it, just damn it!'

At that very moment a greatly disturbed Mack Bolan was dragging an even more disturbed 'playboy of the western financial world' down the stairs and out the rear of the house — dragging him by the tail of his fancy silk smoking jacket, flat on his butt and wailing to an audience under the stars.

Bolan had heard the commotion out front, of course — and he knew, he knew. The greater sounds of the night were now swirling about the entire neighborhood — and they could have but one reading.

He curled both hands into the silk at Cass Baby's throat and shook him like a panther would shake his catch. The normally icy tones were heated with the rage of hopeless frustration as he told the quivering blubber before him, 'The cost has gone too high, guy. For a miserable slaver — a pimp at the court of kings, you lousy ...'

'Gods sake, get it over with!' Cassiopea screamed.

'So Sal gave her a punishment to fit the crime, eh?' Bolan raged on. 'I'm giving you the same, guy!'

He ripped the pants off the guy and flung him to the grass flat on his back, pinning him there with a foot on the throat while he sprang the wicked stiletto.

The guy gurgled, 'What? What? No, God, no — not that!'

'What's wrong, Eunuch Baby? Doesn't the punishment fit?'

'My God, I don't think she's dead! I'm sure she's not! Just look where I told you. God, don't do this!'

Bolan buried the stilletto into the ground between the guy's quivering legs. 'Next time,' he promised, 'your stinking sperm will be spilling. If you've lied to me, guy … this is your last chance to fix it.'

'I swear! Swear!'

Bolan left Cass Baby there, half-swooning and stewing in his own bitter juices.

It was no fun baiting a guy that way. Necessary, sure, but not fun. Necessary because the truth had suddenly become so damned important. And Bolan's own rage at the unhappy turn of events out front made the baiting only about half sham. And he was at least 99% certain that he'd squeezed the bleeding truth from the guy.

But that 'victory' was not so sweet. Not at all sweet. As Toby had said, during those last moments when they were together, the goal may not be worthy of the cost of the search.

A bag of bones did not a victory make.

And a snappy lady fed who just damn it had to think for herself had obviously decided to pay the supreme price.

If she had ... damn it, if she had ...

Yeah. Men could cry, too.

21 Sold

Holzer had been en route home for a quick cleanup, a bite of chow, maybe even a brief nap, when he intercepted the contact alert from Strike 8.

It had been a damned long day, with strain enough during the past eight hours alone to wring a guy dry.

He had been up with this case for almost twenty hours — but the flash from Grosse Pointe Woods was like a magic wand waved above his head.

He felt as giddy as a teen-ager chasing a fire truck when he sighted the task force beating it along the shore drive — downright exultant when he saw them take the turn up Vernier.

This was his territory, by damn — he knew a better and quicker way that should put him on the scene a couple of ticks ahead of the pack.

He flashed on past the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club and took a death-defying turn onto Hawthorne, letting out his siren and running with lady luck in a balls-out sprint to Matter, then screaming north into the stretch for Yorktown Parkway.

Straightening into the parkway, he killed the screamer and went it on beacon alone. He damn near creamed a putt-putting Volkswagen at the first intersection, immediately thereafter shakily deciding to sacrifice a bit of speed in the interest of survival. Sure as hell he wanted to at least be there for the wrap-up of this case.

As he would later recall, that slowdown was primarily responsible for the weird things that followed.

Holzer was approaching the scene on a westerly course. The destroyer force should have been pounding northward from Vernier on a right-angle course to his. But, obviously, they had made a circle-around for some tactical reason, and now he could see them swinging onto the parkway just ahead to run westerly along his same approach ... and leading him by a good two hundred yards.

So Holzer swung south, then west again, fuming over being beat out in his own backyard and damned if he would run up their tails.

Another spine-tingling turn and he was now running northward, approaching the scene on the path that had apparently been rejected by the roving detail.

He did not have their tac channel on his radio and therefore could not understand the play.

All he could do now was lose the race.

But he heard the double ba-loom of a riot gun and other firing far ahead, and he was close enough to see that plunging vehicle careening into the trap — and now he understood the maneuvers of the Tac Force — damn it — just a flash too late, he understood them.

Another vehicle had been parked broadside in the street just beyond the intersection. It was now wheeling about in hot pursuit of the fleeing vehicle.

Holzer could not brake his charge from ninety to zip in the time required to avoid running up on the chase