"Who'd you have to hit to get this?" she asked him.
"Sublet, one week," he told her. "No questions asked, just lots of money."
She inspected the place with a personal interest, looking for further clues to the man, realizing almost at once that she would find none. The warrior lived here, not the man.
Next-to-invisible threads on doors and windows revealed his preoccupation with security against undetected callers.
He traveled light.
A single change of clothing was all the closet held. The bathroom boasted toothbrush and toothpaste, razor, comb, bar of soap, and towel.
He had gone directly to the studio kitchen and was making coffee.
She watched him for a moment, then asked, "Are you inviting me to stay? Or did I miss something?"
Without looking up from his task, he told her, "I'm suggesting that you do."
"Why?"
He said, "I goofed. Allowed Charley Fever to walk away with a light hit. He'll be wondering about you. And me. Might put something together." He looked up then, fixing her with a sober gaze. "That is, unless you'd rather chuck your cover and put on your badge. Even then, he could decide to put you on contract. These guys are edgy."
She bit her lip and thought about that.
"I'll stay," she decided. "Flip you for the first shower."
"I was hoping we could have a cooperative venture," he said, showing her the first genuine smile of the night.
She edged a hip against a wall and folded her arms across her chest, very soberly. Her eyes studied the floor as she replied, "Just what did you have in mind?"
"Forget it. I thought we were both pros, that's all."
"Yes?"
He turned back to the coffee and said, "Sorry. Forget it."
"Captain Bluff," she said, half angrily.
"Go to hell," he said.
"If you're going to start it, you should finish it."
"You're the cop. You finish it."
She tossed her head and moved away from the wall, arms remaining folded over the chest. "What kind of pros are we?"
Bolan lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the coffeepot. "I said, forget it."
She could not. "If that was a cheap shot, Mack, I'm terribly disappointed in you."
"No shot at all," he muttered.
"Okay. I'm a pro. A whore with a badge. Is that what you meant? I've been playing bedsy with Tony the Louse Quaso for the past month. If you expect me to apologize for that, forget it, just you forget it."
He told her quietly, "Toby, I've killed more men this week than you've screwed in a lifetime. And I don't have a badge. I'm not throwing stones your way."
She said, miserably, "Damn it. Just damn it."
He watched her through a moment of silence, then dropped his cigarette in the sink and ran water on it. "Look," he said, finally, "I felt a sudden desire to scrub your back. Okay? Person to person, man to woman, and to hell with everything else for a little while. What I said about professionals had nothing to do with whoring and killing. I simply meant that people like you and me lead a special sort of existence. There's no time or opportunity for all the cute romancing, for waltzing around the floor 'til dawn, gazing deeply into each other's eyes. We live on an entirely different level. We have to love on that level, or not at all. That's what I meant, and that's all I meant."
"Did you say love?"
"Yeah," he growled. "Remember what that is?"
"I do," she replied solemnly. "Do you love me?"
"Tonight, Toby, I could love Dracula's mother. No, uh, comparison intended."
She giggled. "Okay, Captain Pro. Flip you for the first back scrub."
"You're on," he said.
And then she was being lifted off her feet, clasped in strong arms, carried to the doorway of a very special reality.
Emergency coexistence, that was it ... for mutual survival. And personal … wow, was it personal!
Captain Virile could and would wash away the revolting stage stains of Tony the Louse.
Mack Bolan was for real.
9
Diverted
He awoke with the dawn, knowing that it could be his last, aware and thankful that he was here for this one.
The woman beside him was now a very special leaf in his growing book of life. He had known her in various guises, liked and respected her in each. Now he knew her in her essences, having gained that knowledge in the only way possible.
Do you love me?
Of course, he loved her. He'd loved all of them, each of them being unique in her own special way, yet all of them one and the same in that larger identity: essential woman. The story of Adam and Eve could be pure fable, but the guy who thought it up must have lived the story first.
It is not good that the man should be alone.
I will make him a helpmeet for him.
"Helpmeet." That meant partner. Sure, the guy had known what it was to be alone. And he'd known, surely, that very special quality of woman that truly was a helpmeet for all those challenged devils on whom had been placed the onus of life and survival on a hostile planet.
Bolan knew — survival meant more than a quick gun and fast reflexes. Every man alive faced the same challenge that was Bolan's — faced it according to the dictates and the needs of each of life's situations.
Life was no accident, hell. Much bigger than that, life was some sort of special cosmic magic that gave meaning to that infinity of non-life filling the blackness of space.
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief…
Sure, all of them, each of them, every man had his challenge, his own unique road to survival, his own special … what? Special what?
Cosmic magic, maybe. What were we surviving? Every man died sooner or later. So ... surviving what?
Surviving the onus, maybe — those special conditions that fell into a man's bag of life to bedevil him, goad him, stir him up, move him out onto the road to somewhere.
That was it. The guy had to survive the challenge. Which simply meant that he had to meet it. Yeah, with every damn thing he had. No ducking allowed, no dodging. Head on, eye to eye and toe toe, fight like hell and end up there if that's what it takes — but beat the damn challenge.
And, yeah, for that, a man needed a partner.
But Bolan had learned that women had need of "helpmeets" also. Not just the Toby Rangers, but all of the desperately challenged creatures everywhere. Women had special challenges.
A man needs a woman, and a woman needs her man.
Sure. Guys wrote songs about it. Other guys had written entire psychiatric journals on the subject. What it all boiled down to was person to person — and beyond, man to woman.
No man could stand truly alone. Once in a while there had to be another human being to whom he could turn, and with whom hopefully he could merge for a while, to recharge the belief that survival was worthwhile, to see beyond himself into that cosmic sprawl of uncommon magic. Nowhere else had Bolan observed the magic of the cosmos in such clear and striking reference as in the eyes of a good woman in honest passion. All of it was there, all of the magic, and Bolan knew that it was good. In that glimpse he knew that life was worthwhile, that the challenge was necessary, and that survival was the whole goal.
A message, maybe, through a helpmeet, from the guy who started it all?
Well, maybe. All Bolan knew for sure was that he felt better for the experience. And it wasn't just that moment of bliss that made human sex such an ennobling exercise. It went a hell of a lot deeper than that.
He pulled his woman over atop him and playfully slapped that delightful highrise bottom. "Hey, cop," he growled.