"No, nonot on his terms; my terms, Charlie. We fight on the same terms, seeonly I got a hell of a lot more experience. And a lot more class."
"Class will tell, won't it? You know, Zeno, at this moment you are looking and thinking and talking Just exactly like the small-time hood you really are."
"Get outta here, you bastard you!" Varone snarled. His hand tightened around the glass, the knuckles whitening with tension.
"You're sure that's what you want?"
"I'm sure."
"All right, gladly," replied the other in a pleasant voice, and Charlie Rickert, full-time cop and part-time Maffiano, went quietly to the door and got out of there.
"Hey, I'm ready for some R and R," Andromede announced. He dropped to the floor In front of the couch and flaked out, face down, his forehead resting on an unflung arm.
"He got rich in one day and he's bitching," Fontenelli observed, winking at Blancanales.
"But oh, my nerves," Andromede said in a muffled voice.
Blancanales was delicately applying a burn ointment to a reddened area of Fontenelli's shoulder. "Don't find many men with hair on their shoulders," he muttered, then added, "It's not a bad burn, Chopper. Could a been a lot worse, considering."
Fontenelli merely grunted.
"Hell, it's three o'clock," Andromede announced. "Let's get some sacktime."
"We're gonna hit 'em, and hit 'em, and keep on hittin' 'em," Fontenelli declared, in a fair imitation of Bolan's voice, "until Flower Child starts crying for some sacktime."
"Up your butt, brother," Andromede replied quietly.
Bolan entered from the kitchen, carrying a sandwich and coffee. "How's the shoulder look, Politician?" he asked.
"More pain than damage," Blancanales assured him.
"But not enough pain to straighten his brain," Andromede added. He rose to a kneeling position and rocked back on his haunches, staring expectantly at Bolan.
Bolan was positioning a TV tray in front of a chair. He sat down, pulled the tray closer, and sampled the coffee. "We got lucky," he said simply.
Fontenelli flexed his massive shoulders and directed a veiled gaze at Bolan. "The sarge pulled leather on me tonight," he announced casually.
Deadeye Washington, seated in a large recliner across the room, chuckled and said, "And you're able to talk about it? I guess you did get lucky, then."
"Yeah." Fontenelli was still staring at Bolan. "I think everybody oughta knowhe also pulled me outta one hell of a bad spot. He was free and clear, and he came back to get me out. I'll never forget that, Sarge."
Bolan swallowed a chunk of sandwich and nodded his head. "I'd like to think you'd do the same for me, Chopper."
A grin slowly spread across Fontenelli's dark face. "Sorry I got out of line. It won't happen again."
Bolan winked at him, then turned his attention to Gadgets Schwarz. "Did you get Varone's office doctored up okay?" he asked him.
Schwarz stared solemnly back at Bolan. "Sure. That jazzed-up joint was a natural. Never saw such an overdecorated layout. He's rigged good. And I got a twelve-hour recorder with a voice-impulse starter up on the roof of the next building. Bloodbrother was assisting, so he knows where it is. We can slip up there twice a day and change the tapes, and that gives us a twenty-four-hour automatic surveillance on the place."
"Great." Bolan washed down the last of the sandwich with a swallow of coffee. He glanced at his watch. "I'd like to have that first tape before ten this morning. Take Bloodbrother to cover you. Oh, and since Giordano is out of the picture now, maybe you better figure some way to get your gadgets out of his place before someone discovers them. No sense tipping our hand before we just have to."
"I already did that."
Bolan's eyebrows raised.
These things are too damn hard to come by. I don't leave them laying around in a dead drop."
"My nerves," Andromede said. "I wouldn't have your job between a nympho's tits."
Schwarz smiled. "I enjoy it," he murmured.
Bolan was staring at Fontenelli. "That cop," he mused.
"What cop?" Schwarz asked.
"I was, uh, thinking out loud, I guess," Bolan replied. "Chopper and I had a little encounter with a plainclothes cop out at Tri-Coast tonight."
"Yeah, we heard about it," Andromede said.
That cop was bad newsplenty bad news, I'm afraid. Did, uh, any of you get a good look at the cops we boxed off the freeway this afternoon?"
The men exchanged glances. None volunteered a reply. "I did," Bolan said, after a moment of silence. "They were right alongside me for a few seconds there, you know. And I had 'em in my rear view for damn near a full minute."
Another short silence followed. Bolan seemed to be lost in thought. Presently, Zitka said, "So?"
"Well, so the cop who was breathing on Chopper and me at Tri-Coast tonight was also in that tail car on the freeway this afternoon."
"What does that prove?" Zitka wanted to know.
"Well now, lookcops are like troops. I mean, a guy in Dog Company is not likely to be found over in a Charlie Company firefight. A cop who's on a routine stakeout over at Giordano's at three in the afternoon isn't likely to be found on a routine investigation out at the edge of Burbank at midnight that same night. They just don't play that way."
"Unless the guy is in some elite squad," Zitka muttered thoughtfully.
"Exactly. And the police response was quick. Damn quick. They were all over that place in no time at all."
"Like they'd been just sitting and waiting for someplace to run to, eh?" Blancanales observed.
Bolan showed him a faint smile. "Yeah. And this cop called me by name."
"Hell, he called me Bolan, too," Fontenelli remarked.
"Makes it even a worse case," Bolan replied. "It wasn't a matter of personal recognition. It was a case of expectation. He went there expecting to find me."
"Hell, you're a celebrity," Harrington piped up, grinning.
"Goes deeper than that, Guns," Bolan replied. "It looks as though the police have set up some sort of special unit. A unit that is directed squarely against us."
"Screw "em," Fontenelli sneered. They haven't showed me anything yet."
"We don't get off that easy, Chopper," Bolan said thoughtfully. "It pays to know your opposition. If those people are gearing up to bring us down, then we damn sure have to do some gearing of our own. I don't like it. All of you know what can be accomplished with just a little bit of close-order organization. We've been successful so far because we've been playing it to a cadence count. Now if the cops are playing that same game, then I'd say we'd better come up with a counterpoint."
"The sarge is right," Andromede said. "We need some intelligence. Who's our intelligence officer?" His gaze fell squarely upon Gadgets Schwarz.
Schwarz merely smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
A momentary silence followed; then Loudelk said, "I've tried everything else. I guess I could try infiltrating copsville."
Bolan smiled wanly. "We'd better look at the idea pretty close. Could be a suicide mission."
"It'd be just like sending Deadeye to Montgomery," Zitka growled, "to infiltrate the triple K."
Deadeye snickered and rolled his eyes.