"This isn't?" Bolan asked, grinning.
The surgeon stared at Bolan for a thoughtful moment. He smiled suddenly and said, "Okay, Sergeant, let's get the patient prepped for surgery. Come on, man, move, move, move."
Bolan got to his feet and thrust the sketch at Brantzen. "The patient is ready and waiting, Doctor," he said.
Chapter Six
The balance
Once a jumping-off spot for hopeful prospectors heading into the Death Valley area, Palm Village had until recently evolved uneventfully into a typical desert-edge trade center serving a sparse agricultural area. Removed from major highway routes and largely untouched by 20th-century progress during the first half of the century, the quiet village had found new life in the desert-land boom of the fifties and sixties. An invasion by promoters and developers had threatened to convert the tranquil community into a second Palm Springs until conservative city fathers invoked legislative powers to cool the pace of progress. As a result, Palm Village was moving calmly along the path of controlled development, retaining much of its original charm while swelling gently into a quiet residential community of retired folk and health-seekers.
The original village square, referred to as "Lodetown," had stoutly resisted all civilizing inroads of the 20th century. It was composed mainly of oldtime saloons and beerhalls which were frequented by farmhands and cowboys from the surrounding area, and was the chief source of Palm Village's crime statistics, most of the trouble developing on Saturday nights and limited to "drunk and disorderlies" and an occasional fistfight. Lodetown boasted a quite stable population of prostitutes, each of them well known by local authorities. All were arrested each Sunday morning, fined $21.20, and released. This was an effective arrangement, considered entirely fair by the girls involved, satisfactory to the demands of law and order, and consistent with the city fathers' concept of "logic and reason." Besides, the weekly fines easily covered the entire expense of policing Lodetown.
Robert (Genghis) Conn was still lean and hard at the age of 52. A tall man with a deeply lined, weathered face, he looked like a Gary Cooper version of the Western marshal. Actually, Conn was chief of the city's small police force and had been a law-enforcement officer since the end of World War II. He had attended the police academy at Los Angeles and had served briefly with the L.A. police, then as an Orange County deputy until recalled to military duty for the Korean conflict. He returned from Korea directly into the chief's job at Palm Village, replacing the one-man agency of Town Marshal in one of the initial acts of civic progress.
It had not been a progressive move for Conn himself, however, and none was more aware of this than Conn. The Palm Village job represented a retreat of the once-ambitious lawman, the desert town offering him the peace and tranquility which had suddenly become so important to him. Conn had seen enough blood and violence to last him a lifetime; he wanted no more of it. For almost twenty years now, he had managed to avoid the violent life. He and his wife Dolly had a modest home with no mortgages in the older section of town, and here they planned to live forever. In peace and tranquility.
On that hot desert morning of October 5th, however, "Genghis" Conn realized that his sabbatical had ended. The pace of progress had caught up to Palm Village; violent death had found its way to his peaceful city. Three dead hoods lay in the coroner's vault at the local funeral home, a hapless old farmhand was barely hanging onto life at Memorial Hospital, and now this big-deal L.A. cop was telling him that his quiet little town was harboring, for God's sake, the Executioner.
"Is it always this hot here?" Captain Tim Braddock complained. He passed a hand across his forehead and squinted into the cloudless sky. "How the hell do you stand it?"
"It's only a hundred and two," Conn replied, lying a little. "This is the cool o' the morning. Wait 'til this afternoon." He pushed open the door to the small building which served as a combination city hail, jail, and police station, and waved his two visitors inside.
Braddock nudged Carl Lyons in ahead; the three lawmen stepped into air-conditioned comfort and moved along a narrow hallway past a door marked CITY CLERK and through a swinging door at the rear. The air conditioning ended here, in Conn's office. Desert coolers filled the window openings. A door of opaque glass and imbedded wire mesh, just beyond an I-formation of desks, opened onto the cell block.
"This the jail?" Lyons asked.
"That's it," Conn replied, jerking a thumb toward the dreary hole beyond the door. "Rarely has any guests . . . 'cept on Saturday nights, and then, God, you can't stand the smell of the place. I pour a gallon of pine oil on that floor every Monday morning and just let it set all day."
His visitors had seated themselves; Lyons on a tattered leather couch at the wall, Braddock perching on the edge of a desk. Conn eased into a chair at the center desk, pushed his hat back off his forehead, and said, "What makes you think I got the Executioner in my town, Captain?"
Braddock replied, "Call it a hunch. How many officers on your force, Chief?"
"Twelve," Conn said, his voice a bored monotone. "Besides myself. Run three rotating watch sections, with a light nightwatch." He smiled tiredly. "Everybody works on Saturday night, all night long. We only have two cars, only one of them is fit to be on the highway. Every once in a while, we double up the watches and give ourselves a decent stretch at home." He grunted and reached for a cigar. "You interested in knowing how much I pay my patrolmen?" Receiving no response other than an embarrassed drop of eyes, he went on: "Myself, I put in a 20-hour day, every day, 'cept once in a while I run Dolly and me into L.A. for a night to ourselves. We get gigglin, drunk, see all the floorshows, and have ourselves a ball with the swingers." The Chief stared at his cigar during a thoughtful pause, then added, "So you think Mack Bolan's responsible for the carrion over at the coroner's."
Braddock shifted his weight uncomfortably and said, "We put out a full poop sheet on Bolan more than a week ago. We were hoping to get the full cooperation from the outlying communities. If you'd just sounded a Hardcase alert last night when the shooting occurred, Genghis, we'd be some valuable hours closer to Bolan right now."
Conn ignored the lightly scolding tone of Braddock's message. "Last night happened to be one of my nights in L.A.," he explained. "As for this Hardcase alert, my night watch just didn't see the thing that way." He bit the end off the cigar, then laid it down and chewed on the plug in his mouth. "Besides we don't have clear jurisdiction. Happened outside of town, you know. 'Bout two miles outside."
Braddock tossed a hopeless glance at his young sergeant, sighed, and said, "Let me bring a squad in here, Genghis."
Following a short silence, Conn replied, "Okay. On provisions."
"What provisions?"
"You don't bust my town. Meaning, you don't disturb the balance we got here. Law enforcement in this town is strictly my business. You want Bolan . . . okay, you come in and get him, if you can. But you don't bust my town in the process, and you don't bother any of our citizens."
"Of course," the Captain grunted. "That goes without saying."
"And you march every one of your men in here and let my people get a good look at 'em"
Braddock nodded assent.
"No marked cars, and no uniforms, and you work it quiet . . . damn quiet."
Braddock sighed and glanced at Lyons. "I just hope we can," he said.
Conn spat the plug of cigar into his hand and raised inquiring eyes to the Los Angeles cop. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that wherever we find Bolan, we're likely to find a covey of Mafia triggermen right close by."