She might get paid off, but not in a week or two. It would take a year! She could never stand the humiliation.
"After I use the bathroom I'm dressing and going home," she announced. "You're a disgusting pig!"
"You shitty little slut. Nobody calls me names."
"I'm not a slut!"
"What is this, a church picnic? You sell your ass for your bread, girly."
"You've got no right..." Charlotte ran for the bathroom, and stared at her image in the mirror.
When she came out she was crying.
I'm sorry, Leen. I'm so sorry!
She opened the sliding-glass door that led to the balcony.
The man looked up at her.
She stared back for a moment, then rushed forward and dived over the railing.
3
The Executioner stared at the rain. He brushed the water from his eyes and checked the number on the modest house in the Laurelhurst section of town.
Nice houses, old but well built, with good lawns. He walked up from the sidewalk and rang the bell.
Also Capezio should have known better than to answer the door himself. But he was young and still learning.
"Yeah?" he said, standing in the doorway.
Bolan grabbed his shirt, jerked him onto the dimly lit porch and pushed the muzzle of the Beretta 93-R against his temple. "Tell your wife you have to go next door and help your neighbor for a few minutes."
Capezio's eyes widened. He called the message to his wife, and Bolan closed the door.
"Who the hell are you?"
"You don't want to know, Also. We're going to your office."
Bolan pushed him toward the Thunderbird.
At the car Bolan frisked Capezio thoroughly, then shoved him across the seat to the passenger side. He got in behind the wheel.
As he drove, Bolan tossed Capezio a marksman's medal. The Mafia lieutenant examined it.
"So, you were in the Army. So what?"
"Just thought you'd enjoy thinking about it."
The Executioner drove three miles to Northeast Sandy, along it for a few blocks, then down an alley. He parked at the rear of the Eagleton Loan Company.
"Into the office, Also."
Capezio shook his head. "We never keep much cash here. Two or three thousand, tops."
"Every little bit helps, Also. Now open up."
They entered an office divided into a dozen cubicles, with a desk and a chair in each.
"So what games do we play now?" asked Capezio.
"I want names and addresses for all your loansharking offices like this one, and I want names and hangouts for each of your street sharks — like Leo the Fish used to be."
"Whaddya mean, 'used to be"?"
"Leo and I had a meeting tonight in his favorite bar."
"You snuffed Leo?"
"A case of lead poisoning. Now get the records for me fast, or you join him."
The mafioso dug through a desk drawer until he found what he was looking for. He handed it to Bolan. It was a computer printout. Bolan examined it and put it in his pocket. Then he demanded a list of all the cathouses Capezio operated for the Canzonaris.
Another neat computer printout went into the Executioner's pocket. Suddenly Capezio made a rash move. He whirled, grabbed a weapon from the desk and lifted it to fire. Two rounds whispered from the Beretta, pulping Capezio's heart and snuffing out his life.
A locked file cabinet was marked Loan Records. Bolan put half a cube of C-4 plastic explosive on the front of it and another on a locked file labeled diskettes. He inserted timer detonators into the soft explosive and set them for three minutes.
He was a block away when the bombs went off.
So much for the loan and call-girl headquarters.
Heading downtown, Bolan stopped at a drugstore and made two photocopies of the loan-shark and whorehouse lists and put them in an envelope he bought and wrote a name on the outside.
He drove across the Morrison Street Bridge and stopped at the Portland Central Police Station. He handed the envelope to the first uniformed cop he saw.
"Could you see that Lieutenant Dunbar gets this right away? He's waiting for it."
The cop nodded and continued into the building.
Bolan stopped at a restaurant and ordered coffee. Lists of targets to be eliminated were now a standard practice in Bolan's flaming war against injustice and terror.
His actions against the KGB, murderers of his lover, April Rose, had been guided by a list he had seized of enemy agents working in America and the free world. Bolan made the KGB pay by working his way down that list. Now he had other kill lists to join the one that was central to the thrust of the Executioner's fight. Now he brooded on the escalation of his war, and on those who would be immediately affected by it.
Fred Dunbar. Sergeant Fred Dunbar. They had worked together in Nam for almost a year. Dunbar had been strong on the search-and-destroy missions.
He tried line crossing once and almost got himself killed. Bolan and his penetration team Able found the remains of Dunbar's squad and carried them out of there.
Now Dunbar was a lieutenant in Vice in Portland, and a fine cop. Bolan checked his watch and saw that it had been a half hour since Lieutenant Dunbar should have received the goods. He went in a phone booth and called his old friend.
"Lieutenant Dunbar, Vice," the voice answered.
"I hear you do good work, Dunbar. Did you get my envelope?"
"Yes. Who is this?"
"Think you can do any good with those names and addresses? One sheet shows the Mafia-run loansharking operations. The other contains all of the Mob's cathouses. You probably know about most of them, but I thought I'd bring your records up to date."
"Who is this? The voice sounds familiar."
"Put it together, soldier. I'll be in contact. Stay hard." Bolan hung up.
4
Charleen sat in her comfortable living room in an east-side condo.
She was an exact copy of her sister, Charlotte Albers. She was watching a show on television, but every minute or two she glanced at the telephone on an end table. Her husband, Ed, sat across the room, reading a paperback and watching the good bits on the tube.
"Charlotte's in some kind of big money trouble," she had told her husband when he got home. They'd decided they had to let Lot try to work it out.
If everything else failed they would take a signature loan at the bank to save her from the loan sharks.
Charleen could never recall Lot being so frightened as when they had talked. Lot did not cry much; she was tough, assertive and independent. But lately she had a string of bad luck.
Charleen walked to the kitchen, then wandered into the bedroom, where she hung up some clothes. She returned to the living room and dropped into a chair.
The chiming mantel clock struck eleven.
They watched the local news, then Johnny Carson.
"Lot should have called by now," Charleen said.
Ed looked up. "We'll hear. We can't live her life for her."
"I know, that's what scares me." Charleen saw Carson doing his monologue, but didn't hear the words.
First policeman on the scene had to push people back from the grisly mess on top of the Datsun in the parking lot.
"Keep back, move it back, all the way now. This isn't a sideshow."
Another squad car pulled in, and then two more, and the police used tape to mark off the area.
Officer Quincy Smith lifted the tape for the coroner to pass. He walked with the small man in the black suit up to the bloodstained white Datsun.
The roof of the car had caved in. The black girl had been beautiful, still was. She was naked. The back of her head was crushed, but her face was perfect. He looked up and saw a dozen small balconies she could have come from. Detectives would be working those dozen rooms as quickly as they could.