Joey smiled. "I admire a cautious man. Incidentally, Emmett called and said you might drop by. Now I have some work to do. I'll look forward to your call."
Johnny left by the door he had entered.
When the second door beyond his office closed, Joey pulled out a desk drawer and adjusted several knobs on a small control panel there. A television screen flipped up on his desk.
He pushed a switch and a videotape began rolling in a Betamax.
Johnny Bolan's likeness appeared on the screen in profile. Joey froze the image and forwarded it to a set of computer memory banks for scanning and matching.
A few moments later the screen changed and the results were shown: NO EXACT IDENT. TWO SIMILAR CLASSIFICATION CHOICES.
The screen then showed a picture of a young television actor whose face resembled Johnny's. A coincidence. Joey hit the delete button and the screen went blank. Then another profile came up. It was the Executioner.
Joey laughed. He studied a split screen of the two profiles, first in line sketches, then with the best photograph they had of the Executioner. There were some similarities, but a dozen or so differences. Again, a coincidence. He hit the CONTINUE button and the computer reported: No EXACT MATCH ON SCREEN IMAGE. NOT A KNOWN FIGURE IN ANY OF THE IDENT BANKS. NOT A FRIENDLY. NOT A COPY WITH ANY LEA MEMBER ON FILE.
Joey touched a button and the screen recessed neatly into his desk. He touched another.
"Yes, Mr. Canzonari?" asked a voice through a small speaker.
"How many tails on the man who just left my office?"
"Two."
"Good. Get a report back to me as soon as you can."
"Yes, Mr. Canzonari."
Johnny sensed he was being followed even before he left the building. He caught a cab, saw a tall man in a brown suit grab the next cab in line. He told the driver to take him to the airport, then asked for the police station instead. When they arrived Johnny said he now wanted to go to his hotel.
The cabby was getting curious.
"Someone's following us," Johnny said.
"Not for long." the cabby replied. He gunned the Chevy down the block, into an alley, around the block and into the alley again. He parked behind a bakery. Five minutes later he eased out the other end of the alley and drove Johnny to the hotel. Johnny gave him a ten-dollar tip.
There was a message in Johnny's box with his key, listing a number to call.
Johnny hurried to a pay phone and dialed. It was the number Charleen Granger had given him to use in an emergency.
Someone answered on the first ring.
"Yes, hello!"
"This is Johnny. I had a message to call this number."
"Thanks. I met you last night when you talked to Charleen about her sister. I'm her husband." There was a catch in his voice.
"Is something wrong?"
"Charleen has been kidnapped. There was a note on the front door. It said not to go to the police or to tell anyone, and I would be notified in six hours about ransom. We don't have any money!"
"Mr. Granger, I'm sorry. It's the same people who hurt Charlotte. Stay there. Wait for their call. I'll talk to a friend and get back to you."
After Johnny hung up, he realized he had no way to contact Mack. A chill darted through him. He had once been involved in a Mafia kidnapping in San Diego, and his lady, Sandy Darlow, had been killed. Who else would want to kidnap Charleen, except the Mafia?
Johnny hurried to his room. As he waited, he paced up and down, staring at the phone, demanding that it ring.
Until it did, he could only worry.
Time and again a terrible scene returned to his mind. It was what he had seen when Sandy Darlow lay on that stainless-steel table in the garage in San Diego.
What he had seen was turkey meat.
10
Bolan powered the Thunderbird from the underground hotel garage and swept out of Portland on Southwest MacAdam Avenue, which turned into Riverside Drive and followed the Willamette River south.
He drove upstream until he came to Lake Oswego, a town as well as a lake about two and a half miles long, developed as a showplace for luxurious waterfront homes with docks.
The Executioner was interested in talking to Tony Pagano. He had never met Tall Tony. His intel indicated that in this posh community Pagano now headed a branch office for the Canzonari family.
It was not nickel-and-dime stuff. Here the trade was for ten to fifty thou. Rich people needed loans more often than the poor, and their credit was usually better. If one of them got in over his head, he went to his old man or his rich girlfriend and tapped them for the cash to prevent a scandal. Loansharking had been here for years.
Regardless of the affluence of the loan shark's victims in a place like Lake Oswego, Bolan had sworn long ago that he would remove every vestige of the Mob's loansharking operations from the face of the earth. The shark's customers might even resent it, but Mack Bolan's juggernaut of justice, out to avenge his and Johnny's family that had been so savagely victimized in the Vietnam war era, could not be stopped. The place must be hit. And the neighborhood had just better watch out for itself.
Bolan stopped at a new office building near the east end of the lake, just off State Street. The Lake Oswego Loan and Trust Company, as the name plaque identified it, was a sleek and modern building with an all-glass front, curves instead of corners, a revolving door and modern sculptures outside and in the lobby. The lawn had been manicured within a blade of its life — every green shoot was properly clipped and trimmed. The big man in the beret and black-rimmed glasses paused inside the front door and shook the rain from his raincoat, which covered the hardware he carried.
He walked to a reception area, sinking halfway to his ankles in red plush carpet, his eyes meeting those of a tall redhead who rose behind her desk and smiled. He stopped in front of her.
"Good afternoon," she said. "How may I help you?"
"I understand Mr. Pagano is in today. I don't have an appointment but it's urgent that I see him."
"That might be difficult." She smiled, lighting her face with a special radiance that seemed to imply she was on his side.
She sat behind the desk and motioned for him to sit. When he did, she punched a series of buttons on a telephone console.
She spoke softly, then turned to Bolan.
"His appointment-secretary wants to know your name and the nature of your business."
"My name is Mack Scott. My business is old friends. I'm like a member of the family. Tell him we have a mutual acquaintance, Freddie Gambella."
She turned back to the phone. When her eyes found him again, a touch of surprise was on her pretty face.
"Marci says you can go right in. Her door is right over there, the second on the left down the main hall."
"Thanks."
"A pleasure, Mr. Scott. Anytime."
Bolan approached the main hall; the carpet below his feet graduated from red to dark blue. He entered the second doorway on the left.
The office was an interior decorator's dream, with subdued lighting, old-master prints in expensive frames on the walls and a typewriter and computer on the secretary's pedestal desk of glass and plastic.
The secretary's blond hair was pulled back in a severe bun. Her dress was sleek and tight, highlighting her subtle curves. She wore a lot of makeup and stared vacantly in his direction. "Mr. Pagano is extremely interested in seeing you. He was a friend of Mr. Gambella, as you know. He's busy on the phone at the moment. Can I get you a drink while you wait?"
"Coffee, please."
She brought him a cup from a fancy vacuum coffeepot. The brew seared his lips. Before it was cool enough to drink, a door swung open and a tall, thin man appeared. His face was little more than skin and bone. Bolan could not remember seeing deeper-set eyes. Small blue veins showed through the tissue-like parchment covering his features as the deadly black eyes swept over Bolan.