Violent Streets (10 page)

For Assistant Commissioner Roger Smalley, it had been a day dominated by telephones. First, the wake-up call from Jack Fawcett had promised to ruin the day entirely, and then the second interruption from Fran Traynor, had sent his ulcers into angry, growling protest.

The telephone had even conspired to vex him in its silence, refusing to connect him with Benny Copa when he needed the goddamned hoodlum most.

Only the last call, again from Jack Fawcett, had promised relief from a day fraught with potential disasters. Maybe, just maybe, the pieces were starting to fall into place.

Smalley could proceed with his plan now, full speed ahead. And the added embellishment promised by Fawcett would tie the whole thing up into one bright, shiny package.

An early Christmas present, sure. Why not?

But the damned telephone was ringing again!

Smalley punched a button to answer the ulterior office line, and his secretary's sultry voice issued from the speaker at his elbow.

"I'm sorry, Commissioner, but there's a Mr. La Mancha on line one, calling from the Justice Department."

La Mancha.

Smalley went cold for an instant, his hands clenched into fists on the desk top. Then he forced himself to relax, inch by inch.

"Thank you, Vicky," he said, pleased to find his voice in perfect control. "Put him on, please."

There was a click, and a moment of dead air followed by a humming sound, then Smalley sensed another presence on the line.

"Assistant Commissioner Smalley here," he said jovially. "Can I help you?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

It was a deep voice, firm and strong. Knowing, somehow. You could read a million things into that suggestive intonation. Smalley fought to keep his imagination from running away with him. How much could the damned guy know, after all?

"Is there something St. Paul can do for the department?" Smalley asked.

La Mancha's answering tone was curt.

"Forget the department, guy. I just had a chat with Thomas Gilman about his family problem."

Smalley stiffened in his chair, fighting the involuntary tremor in his limbs. He forced his voice to remain strong and even.

"What? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about Thomas Gilman. I believe you know him — and his son — very well."

Smalley felt as if his world was about to collapse around his ringing ears. He gulped a deep breath and held it for an instant, letting it out slowly as he fought to marshal his thoughts, to control the painful rumbling in his gut.

"I'd like to know who I'm talking to," he said at last. "If you're not with Justice..."

La Mancha cut him off again.

"Spell it with a small
J.
And the who doesn't matter, compared to the what."

Smalley was growing more and more confused.

"Well, then..."

"We're talking about murder, Commissioner, times five. And the one who got away."

Smalley tried to put the man off, stalling for time.

"It sounds like you want our homicide division, Mr. La Mancha. I could give you the number."

"I've already spoken to homicide," the caller told him simply. "My next call goes to the media."

"What?"

It was as if an invisible fist was clenched around Smalley's vocal cords, and he cursed his own lack of control.

The stranger's answer chilled him to the bone.

"I have a tape here with me that the city editors should be interested in," he said.

Smalley's mind was filled with a crush of conflicting, near-hysterical thoughts and fears. A tape? From Gilman? Had the yellow son of a bitch broken down and spilled his guts to a G-man, for God's sake?

No, La Mancha had already indicated he wasn't with the department. Okay. A blackmailer could be handled, paid off in more ways than one.

"Perhaps, uh, if you filled me in on the details..."

Before Smalley could finish the sentence, he heard the hissing sound of a tape in motion, and over all the sound of two familiar voices.

One voice belonged to his caller, the man named La Mancha.

The other belonged to Thomas Gilman.

"
. . . broke down under questioning and... he confessed... to rape and murder."

"You got a phone call."

Silence. Smalley could picture Gilman's head bobbing in assent.

"From a lieutenant named Fawcett?" "Who? No, I don't recognize the name. I was called by Assistant Commiss..."

Mercifully, the tape ended, cut off in mid-syllable.

Roger Smalley sat dumbly in his chair, feeling numb, shaken to the very fiber of his being. For an instant he almost panicked at the thought of those recorded words coming over an open line, but he calmed himself. No one could tap his phone without his learning about it in short order. He was the Assistant Police Commissioner, for Christ's sake!

The voice of the man called La Mancha was back on the line, demanding Smalley's attention, calling him out of himself.

"Heard enough, Commissioner?"

There was, surprisingly, no mocking tone in the words. The man seemed almost... well, almost sad, somehow.

Smalley's answering voice was low, taut.

"What is it that you want?"

La Mancha's answer came back at him without hesitation.

"Toni Blancanales, safe and sound."

And that was all.

Smalley risked everything on another stall.

"What makes you think..."

He never got it out. La Mancha's voice was a razor slicing across his words, terminating them in mid-sentence.

"I also had a talk with Benny Copa. He was cooperative to the last." Smalley's mind flashed back to his unanswered phone call of some time earlier. He guessed that Benny C. wouldn't be answering any more calls for a while — if ever.

"I see." It was all the commissioner could manage at the moment.

"Here's the deal," La Mancha said briskly, not waiting for any questions. "Deliver the lady in good working order, and I'll give you an hour's head start before I start making calls."

Smalley saw red for an instant, his hands clenched into tight fists before him. He imagined the smell of something burning in his nostrils.

"You can't be serious!" he snapped, when he recovered himself enough to speak.

"Is that your answer?" La Mancha asked.

"What?"

Smalley was suddenly confused, his anger blunted, thrown off stride by the simple question.

La Mancha's voice came back at him, this time with a note of resignation in it.

"Goodbye, Commissioner."

Suddenly desperate, Smalley clutched at the desktop speaker with palsied hands, as if to forcibly stop the other man from hanging up.

"Wait, dammit!" he blurted. Then he felt, tickling the back of his mind, the germ of an idea. "All right," he said reluctantly, "you've got a deal."

"Where and when?"

And suddenly Smalley knew the answer. Hell, he knew
all
the answers.

"You know Phalen Park?" he asked slowly, fighting to keep the new excitement out of his voice.

"I'll find it," La Mancha told him.

"Okay. Meet me on West Shore Drive, let's say in an hour."

There was no immediate answer, and Smalley assumed the guy was thinking it over.

"Safe and sound, Commissioner," La Mancha said at last. "Otherwise, all bets are off."

"How do I know I can trust you?" Smalley countered.

"What choice do you have?" the stranger asked simply.

Roger Smalley had no ready answer for that one, but it didn't matter, because the line was already dead, an obnoxious dial tone filling the room until he hit the speaker switch and silenced it.

The assistant commissioner sat quietly, thinking and cursing to himself, laying the last of his battle plans that warm morning. This La Mancha, whoever the hell he was, appeared to have him by the balls, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling.

Well, let the bastard think that way. Just let him.

Roger Smalley wasn't done yet. Not by a long shot. And Mr. Smart-ass La Mancha would wind up wearing his own balls for a bow tie before the afternoon was out.

You could take that to the bank.

La Mancha had gained the early advantage in their conversation via the element of surprise, but the shoe was on the other foot now. When the guy kept their appointment in the park, he would meet with asurprise arranged by Assistant Police Commissioner Roger Smalley, no less. A fatal surprise.

Smalley lifted the telephone receiver, thought better of it, then cradled it again.

No, it wasn't likely that his phones were tapped, or his office bugged, but he hadn't survived this long on the force with the wise guys on one side and the headhunters from Internal Affairs on the other by being careless.

It might be a sign of paranoia, but what the hell. These were paranoid times he lived in, after all. A grin crossed Smalley's face as he thought of a psychedelic poster that had seen brief popularity in the head shops a number of years earlier: "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!"

And amen to that.

Well, "they" could be surprised right alongside Mr. La Mancha.

Smalley rose from his desk and made ready to leave the office. He had plans to finalize and a surprise party to orchestrate. When it was over, he just might come back and take his attractive secretary out to lunch.

In an hour he would be home free. Free and clear.

The automobile bearing Fran Traynor, blindfolded, to her unknown destination slid smoothly to a stop. Throughout the ride, of which she remembered very little, she had been primarily conscious of the throbbing pain in her skull where Smalley had struck her, and of the moist, threatening palm that rested heavily on her right thigh.

But now the car had stopped, and the hot hand was withdrawn. She felt cool air upon her face as the doors opened on both sides, and the seat lurched as her unseen companions exited. Immediately, a hand was groping for her, fingertips trailing deliberately across the curve of one breast before locking onto her arm in a painful grip. Fran tried to pull away from that imprisoning hand, but there was nowhere to go, no place to hide.

She let herself be pulled from the car and led along a concrete drive, then over grass to another walkway.

"This way, babe," a male voice prodded from her left. "Watch your step."

She felt gingerly ahead of her with one foot, locating steps and taking them carefully, one at a time. She both heard and felt a door open in front of her, and then she was propelled through it, into the cool interior of a building. From the sounds and smells of the place, and the carpeting beneath her feet, she knew she was inside a house.

There were hands on both her arms now, guiding her left and right through what felt like a maze of corridors. Fran was becoming disoriented, cursing silently to herself as she realized that in her present condition, a simple living room filled with furniture could be made to feel like a winding labyrinth.

She recognized the feeling of a corridor, and had begun to count her paces when the guiding hands suddenly brought her up short, turning her sharply to the left. Keys rattled in a lock, and another door was opened for her, another hand shoving her inside.

Behind her head, blunt fingers tugged at the knot of her blindfold, and suddenly it came free, whisking across her face and disappearing behind her.

"Sit tight, doll," the leering voice said. "Maybe we can have some laughs later."

Fran half turned toward that voice, but the plain wooden door was already snapping closed, keys grating in the lock outside.

She stood there for a long moment, blinking her eyes to regain her full sense of sight. The room was dimly lit by a bare bulb overhead and was apparently without windows or other access to the world outside.

"Fran? Is that you?"

The lady cop whirled around, shocked by the sound of a familiar female voice close behind her. She was surprised to see the face of Toni Blancanales regarding her from a corner of the room.

The girl crossed quickly to her, taking one of Fran's cold hands in both of hers.

"Toni!" the lady cop blurted. "What are you doing here?"

Toni was red-eyed from crying, her face pale, hair disheveled.

"Some men came to my apartment," she began haltingly. "They had guns, and... and..."

The girl broke off, trembling slightly, and Fran slid a comforting arm around her slender shoulders, leading her back to the small couch that was the room's only furniture.

"Did they hurt you?" Fran asked, dreading the answer.

Toni looked up at her through tear-filled eyes, reading the implicit meaning of the officer's words.

"No, not the way you mean," she said, watching the relief flood into Fran's face. "They roughed me up a little. I fought them."

Fran looked closer now, and yes, she could make out a purple bruise along the curve of Toni's left cheek.

"Good," she said through gritted teeth.

"What's this all about, Fran?"

Fran Traynor hardly knew where to begin.

"It's a long story," she said at last, "and I don't have all of it yet. It's hard to believe."

"We're in danger, Fran," Toni said somberly. "I can feel it."

The lady cop nodded grimly. "I think we can expect the worst. If we get a chance to run, I say we take it."

Toni Blancanales seemed less frightened and shaky now that she was no longer alone.

"I have an idea why I'm here, Fran," she said softly. "But how did they get you? Why?"

Fran took a deep breath, and began relating the story of the morning's events, up through the disastrous meeting with Assistant Commissioner Smalley outside Calvary Cemetery. She left nothing out. For an instant she thought Toni brightened at the mention of the big fed, La Mancha, but the moment passed instantly, and Fran wrote it off as imagination resulting from stress.

"It was Smalley running interference all along," she said, summing up. "Probably with Jack Fawcett. I owe you one hell of an apology for being so blind, Toni."

Toni took her hand, no longer cold, and squeezed it tightly.

"Don't be silly," she said. "It isn't your fault at all. We're in this together."

And so they were.

The two women sat quietly together for several moments, discussing tentative escape plans in hushed tones, rejecting each in turn as too risky or too impractical. The interior of the room, as Fran had first thought, was windowless, with only the single door for entrance and exit. Aside from the moth-eaten sofa, the bare bulb overhead, and a few dated magazines scattered in one corner, the room and its adjoining bathroom had been expertly stripped of anything that might be converted for use as a weapon.

They were alone and unarmed, yes, and apparently defenseless.

While they were talking, a telephone jangled somewhere, several rooms away by the sound, and was quickly answered. Moments later, the women fell silent as heavy footsteps approached along the corridor outside.

The door swung inward to admit a hulking man in dark suit and sunglasses, a black .45 automatic held casually in his massive right hand. Behind him, other bodies blocked out the light from the corridor.

When the gunman spoke, Fran instantly recognized the voice of the gorilla who had fondled her thigh in the car.

"Time to go for a ride, ladies," he said, leering, and pausing for a wink at Fran. "Looks like we won't have time for laughs after all."

Fran took a look at the barrel of the .45, then glanced at Toni and back again at the gunman's eyes, invisible behind his shades.

And suddenly she wondered if there was any time left at all.

Mack Bolan pulled his sedan up beside Pol Blancanales's car in the shopping center parking lot. Pol left his car quickly and climbed in on the passenger side of Bolan's.

The Executioner saw in his old friend's face the same tautness, the same reckless, uncaring anger that he had seen so often on other faces on the eve of battle.

"Let's roll, buddy," the Politician snapped, rubbing his hands nervously together.

Bolan's voice was low, cautious as he answered.

"Easy, Pol. We can't afford to blunder in and mess things up for Toni."

Pol thought about that for a moment, then nodded grimly.

"You're right. As usual."

"What can you tell me about Phalen Park?" the Executioner asked his friend, putting the car in motion as he spoke.

Pol was quiet, thinking. Then he began speaking in the tone of a lecturer.

"It's on the north side of town," he began. "Part of it runs over into Maplewood there. It's got a lake... Phalen Lake, naturally. I guess the park gets its name from the lake, or vice versa."

"What about the terrain?" Bolan prodded.

Pol shrugged.

"Most of the southern half is a golf course, I think. North of the line and all along the water you've got trees and things. You know... a park."

Bolan could sympathize with Pol's obvious impatience, sure, but grim experience had taught him that a knowledge of apparent trivia could decide the outcome of a battle. And a battle could very well decide the outcome of a war, damned right.

Bolan was trying to visualize the layout of the park when Pol's voice intruded.

"Listen, what's the action, Sarge? How do we get Toni back in one piece?"

"Well, Smalley chose the meeting place," Bolan said at last, "and given his track record, we've got to anticipate a suck play. We go in ready for anything and see what develops. Play the ear."

"I still can't believe it," Pol said, sounding slightly shell-shocked. "The goddamned commissioner."

His voice was heavy with a mixture of anger and disgust.

"It happens," Bolan told him softly. "We can let someone else sort out the details when Toni's safe and sound."

Pol's answer was a snarl coming at him through clenched teeth.

"If he's hurt her, Mack... I swear, if anyone's hurt her again..."

He bit the sentence off, leaving it unfinished.

"Easy, Pol. Don't borrow grief."

Blancanales shook his head grimly.

"I've had it, that's all. If she's not all right... just don't try to get in my way, buddy."

Bolan was disturbed by his friend's anger, even though he understood it perfectly. The Executioner had always lived by a set of simple, self-imposed rules. And one of those, carved in granite, was that he would never — repeat, never — fire upon a cop.

Good, bad, or indifferent, no matter how venal or vicious a particular officer might prove to be upon examination, all of them were — or at least once had been — soldiers on the same side of the endless war against rampaging Animal Men. The cops stood for something, yeah, and Bolan hated the thought of drawing a bead on that symbol of law and order.

Still, he told himself, there was Toni... and Pol. If they were entering a trap, and Toni was injured or worse, how would he himself react?

Would he have the strength to stay his wrath and let slower justice take its winding course?

Would he try to hold back the angry, grieving man at his side?

And how far do you go to protect a tarnished soldier of the same side when he's proven guilty of murder, and worse? Do you turn a weapon on your friend to save a traitor?

Mack Bolan cursed silently to himself, knowing there was no way in the world to answer any of these crucial questions in advance.

They crossed St. Paul in good time, heading northeast on East Seventh to Arcade Avenue, then north to the intersection of Maryland Avenue. That took them west to meet West Shore Drive at the foot of Phalen Park, and there Bolan slid his rental car to a halt beneath acopse of roadside trees.

He checked his watch and found that they were slightly more than five minutes ahead of Roger Smalley's timetable.

So much the better. They would have time to lay some tentative plans.

Bolan reached into the back seat and pulled forward his flight bag filled with clanking armament.

"Let's suit up," he said simply, his eyes locking briefly with Pol's.

Blancanales nodded agreement, reaching into the flight bag to check through the arms sequestered there, selecting a portable assortment of lethal hardware for himself.

"Even when you travel light, you come prepared," he said to Bolan, forcing a grin that he obviously didn't feel.

Bolan answered with a cold smile of his own.

"Name of the game, buddy."

And as they sorted out their arms and ammunition, Mack Bolan began to speak rapidly, outlining a plan of action with alternate contingencies, knowing all the while that the lives of Toni, Pol, and himself were resting on his words.

They would, all of them, be tested in fire soon enough.