19
Bagged
"Lee!"
"Yeah."
"A slow roller, coming west. Wait ... yeah. Can't make the occupant but ... it's a loner. The car looks … whup! Hang on! That's our bogey!"
"Okay, sit tight! Hold station!"
"Right! Passing me now. Still can't make — but that's it, that's our car!"
"Okay. I have him in sight. What's he doing?"
"Holding at the intersection. Can't make up his mind. Maybe he's sniffed us."
"Sit tight! Harvey's passing the word to roving leader. Just sit, damn it!"
"We're sitting. There he goes! Coming at you!"
"I have him. Start your move."
"We're moving, man!"
"Slowly, slowly — hold it! He's stopped again!"
"Damn damn damn!"
"Casing it. Might decide to go on around. Hold where you are."
"Get the rovers over here, damn it!"
"They're moving. So's our man, now. Okay, come on around. Seal his behind!"
"Sealed! How soon will rover be here?"
"They're on the shore drive and hotting it! Keep that plug in! Okay … okay … yeah. This is it! Killed his lights. There he goes! Pulled right into the damned driveway! I've lost him! How's your angle?"
"No good. Trees blocking."
"We're moving in on foot. Passing radio to you. Guard channel delta sub one. Keep rovers advised!"
"Right! Watch yourselves!"
It was a large room, a combination for sleeping and working. Double French doors opened onto a small balcony overlooking the front. A small sitting area near there. Gleaming mahogany desk at one wall, king-sized bed against the other. Dressing table, walk-in wardrobe — behind there a large bath, door open, lights on.
The wall behind the desk was ornamented with numerous framed photographs, each depicting the master of the manse in an intimate setting with some "great man."
Cassiopea with the vice-president, autographed "to Cass, with warmest appreciation."
Cassiopea with a familar European statesman, autographed "to my dear friend Cass, without whom we would be diminished."
Cassiopea with a robed and bearded Arab chieftain, annotated illegibly in a spidery Eastern scrawl.
Cassiopea with a veteran Hollywood superstar, inscribed simply "to Cass Baby."
And on and on.
Cass Baby was standing at the French doors, peering cautiously through a crack in the heavy draperies.
The guy must have been dressed by some movie director, all the way to smoking jacket and briar-wood pipe with a fancily curved stem. Manicured nails reflected the light from the lone lamp in use — a small desk affair — hair dark and glossy, streaked handsomely, meticulously brushed and shaped.
A neat stack of papers and a telephone were the sole adornments of the desk.
Bolan held a marksman's medal at shoulder height and allowed it to fall to the gleaming surface of the desk. It hit with a small clatter.
The guy whirled around, annoyance covering the face for a split second before being shoved aside by fear and wonder.
Darting dark eyes flashed to the metallic object on the desk — flared, then swung rapidly from side to side seeking reassurance — settling finally on the tall man with the icy gaze.
The handsome head cocked and the terrified man crowed: "Bruce! Harry!"
"Save it," Bolan suggested coldly. "Bruce and Harry are sleeping off a double Excedrin headache. It's just you and me, Cass Baby."
The guy's mouth opened and closed. He swayed to the desk and sat on the corner, slumping across it. Perspiration began to appear on the forehead and upper lip. He was transfixed by the medal of death.
"I know what that is," he declared in a shaky voice.
"Then you know who I am."
Cassiopea nodded his head as though it were too heavy to be moved. He said, in a voice gaining control, "Yes. I know you. But I cannot understand why you are here. What can I possibly do for you?"
"You could die for me, Cass Baby."
The guy was a smoothy, and he was getting his second wind. He came right back at Bolan without blinking. "That makes no sense whatever. I've been following your, uh, crusade with great interest. I understand your motivations. Sympathize with them. And let me assure you, Bolan, I have no part in them."
Bolan hit him — flat of the hand — a haymaker from the knees, connecting that handsomely chiseled jawline with a splat that echoed around the room. Cassiopea spun off the desk to land on hands and knees, against the wall.
Bolan went to the windows and looked down. Toby was just pulling into the drive.
Cass Baby was hauling himself upright, both hands groping at the desk, shaking his head as though trying to clear it of bothersome foreign matter.
Bolan allowed him to get to the desk drawer and open it before springing the Belle. She chugged once and spat destruction into the wood of the drawer.
Cassiopea flung himself away from there, bounced off the wall once again, then made a lurching run for the open door.
The Beretta sighed twice more. A pair of streakers won the footrace, punching the door with a fast and loud one-two, slamming it shut in Cass Baby's face.
He turned about in full wilt, defeated now by his own trembling legs, crumbling to a kneeling position, arms raised in terrified supplication. "God's sake, man! Why are you playing with me?"
The guy wanted logic in a world of lunacy.
"It's your game, guy," the ice man told him. "Just tell me when you're through playing."
It was the moment of final truth for Bobby Cassiopea. Pulsing into that climactic heartbeat — gazing, perhaps for the first time, into what Bolan called the "cosmic sprawl" — a man knows when the masquerade is ended, the posturing and swaggering is done, the party is over. With Death gazing upon him, every man sees the end of dreams. All of the maybes and might-have-beens have run out of time, and the man sits alone with precisely what he has become, no more and no less, the savings account of the soul at full maturity.
And Bobby Cassiopea's soul was, obviously, sweating blood.
He was bagged, and he knew it.
20
Bought
Toby swung the car into the drive and glided to the portico with power off, fluffing out her hair and damning herself almost immediately. She should have hesitated for a few precious seconds out there at the edge of the drive, playing for every second of indecision and wonderment that could possibly be worked on those watchers out there.
She heard the mechanical action of a car door and then feet moving swiftly along the pavement, and she damned herself again.
They were closing on foot.
A minute and forty seconds. That was all she had given him!
The difference between life and death was often a matter of a split second!
Good God, what had she done?
She leapt from the car and ran to the center of the small lawn, wild thoughts tearing at her.
The slap slap of cautiously hurrying shoe leather galvanized her and sent her mind leaping. They were advancing along the drive.
She tripped over something on the lawn, bent to peer at it through the darkness, and knew immediately what she had to do. She snatched the thing up and hurled it toward the street with all her might.
It was a piece of a broken lawn ornament, a cement dish or something, shaped like a discus. The heavy object hit the pavement with a crash and skittered loudly on, veritably thundering through the quietness of that tense moment.
The footfalls ceased abruptly and a startled voice quietly called, "What the hell!"
"On the street!" another man barked in a hoarse whisper.
Heavy bodies floundered into dense shrubs.
Toby ran back to the vehicle, dived in, started the engine, floored the gas pedal, and jammed the gearshift into driving range. The car roared from beneath the portico as though shot from a catapult, door open and swinging shut with a crash as momentum overtook it.