"Whatta you got — a sales convention?" The guy snickered. "Or do you just want to die happy."
"Doesn't everybody?" Bolan kept right on smiling as he counted off nine more bills and asked the guy, "What will that get?"
"Any damn thing you want," said laughing boy.
"I want a guy with about a two hundred dollar a day habit."
"Huh?"
"Guy about forty. Never won a beauty contest but not too horrible, I guess, as Johns go. Pretty wealthy. Likes 'em for lunch, likes 'em for dinner, and now and then for a midnight snack. I think you've been servicing the guy. I'm trying to locate him."
The smile hung in there but the spirit didn't. "Hey now wait a minute there. I don't know what you're saying and I don't want any. I get involved in nothing, bud, nothing."
"You'd better get involved in this, bud. My way or trouble's way."
Eyes that had seen everything and every kind of guy were now sizing up the Executioner. "You're not a cop, huh."
"Course not. But I want the guy and I want him tonight." Bolan's smile outdid itself. "Save us all a lot of trouble. Make yourself a thousand bucks in the bargain."
The fat man carefully picked up the money. "I think I know the guy."
"You sent him somebody today. Right?"
"Sure. Every day. With this guy, it's a constantly revolving door. I sent him something an hour ago."
Bolan placed his warbook on the desk and opened it to a clean page. "Put the address there."
The guy did so, in huge block print. Then he asked Bolan, "You know about where that is?"
Bolan glanced at the book and replied, "Not exactly."
"I figured you're not from here. Who is, these days, eh?" He sighed. "It cost my client twenty bucks extra for cab fare. It's across Lake Washington on I-90 East. Take the first offramp to Lake Sammamish. Stop at a gas station out there and ask for directions. It's a wooded area. You get lost easy."
"He get service out there regularly?" Bolan idly wondered.
"Out there? Naw. Once or twice before this, maybe. When this guy needs, he needs. He don't care where he is. You're right — that bit about lunch. I send 'em to his office — isn't that rich. Every man's fantasy — a broad under the desk keeping him alert during the boring daily routine."
"Not every guy can afford to indulge that fantasy," Bolan said.
"This one can. You said two hundred a day? Try three and four, some days."
Everybody loved to gossip.
Bolan said, "That's worse than smack."
"Sure it is. On that much smack, he'd be dead long ago. Frankly, I don't get it. I even asked the girls what the hell he does with 'em. He screws 'em, that's what. Sure, sometimes a half a dozen different girls the same day. I still can't believe it. I wish one of those sex surveyors would come around and survey me. Boy, what I could tell 'em."
"You paying protection?"
"Aw no, no. We keep a low profile, nobody bothers us. No open solicitation, no street walkers. Good girls, clean and all."
"Nobody's tried to muscle you?"
"Aw hell, no. This is a quiet town. Where you from?"
"East," Bolan said. "People like you don't have a chance there. The mob runs it all."
"Oh well, hey, we've got no mob here." The guy was getting nervous. "Don't uh, don't get any ideas, friend. I mean, if you're thinking of some little muscle action on your own. You wouldn't last a day. I said I wasn't paying protection. That doesn't mean I don't have it."
"Relax," Bolan said. "I was just wondering if this superjohn of yours was actually paying or ..."
"Oh hell, he pays. Cash on the line."
Bolan thanked the guy and got out of there.
He did not particularly like the feel of the situation. His mind nibbled briefly at the idea of set-up but discarded it as too unlikely.
As for the Lake Sammamish area, it rang out okay. It fit the situation. Good place for a quiet pad where a guy could get away from it all when the need was there. Margaret Nyeburg, if she'd come entirely clean, did not know of such a place. Which made the ring even cleaner.
Bolan had early-on discarded the thought that Nyeburg may have gone to the island. It was out of his league, totally out of reach. Nyeburg was a face, not a head — and it mattered not at all that his face officially owned the place.
Nyeburg wasn't even made. Bolan's chief interest in the guy lay in the "domino chain" idea. He had to spark a chain reaction somewhere. Nyeburg seemed the likeliest domino in the line.
The guy had wasted no time getting out of sight.
Margaret had said that he'd received this early morning call which "lasted no more than thirty seconds."
Tommy Rotten didn't make that call; the kid couldn't coherently say that much in that space of time — certainly not enough to send Nyeburg in panic to the men in New York, which is immediately what he did — that five minute long distance conference.
A few minutes later, the guy was running out of his house in panic.
So who called and tipped him in the first place, if not the sole survivor of the gunfight?
Someone with clout. Clout enough to influence a police investigation. Clout enough to put the brakes on a Bolan-alert which would put the whole town in arms. Sure.
The mob never moved into virgin territory, not in force, without a bit of advance legal insurance. Somebody in Seattle was greasing the way. Allan Nyeburg probably knew who that somebody was — or, at least, he would know the next man in the chain, the next layer of responsibility. Bolan needed desperately to tip that domino. A heady brew was cooking in this "quiet" town. Something a hell of a lot more important than an island hardsite. Hardsites were never causes— they were effects. And something was brewing that would demand a hardsite — a fantastic damn hardsite — for back-up.
Cosa di tutti Cosi, sure — but how, what? What was the angle?
For the first time since L.A., Bolan felt behind the problem.
L.A. had been a disaster.
Seattle would be, too, unless Bolan could get out front— and damned quick. His combat guts were telling him so. When they talked, Bolan listened. And, at the moment, they were speaking in many tongues.
They, too, were brewing.
At least, now, he had a line on the next domino.
Wooded area, right. Narrow winding trails for roads, hills and dales, trees and water, wildlife. Paradise. A misty night without moon or stars, a chill in the air that soaked to the bone, utter pitch blackness that could give a guy vertigo if he didn't have some reference to reality.
Not paradise, no, not this way.
Bolan's reference was his own feet in wet grass, the chirrup of tree-dwelling insects, a sense of oneness with the night.
Sure, the night was his brother. Bolan should have been an Indian — several hundred years ago. He would lay in tall grass and wait for his brother, the bear, to hit the trail for food or water — then Bolan the Bold would rise up, bone knife in hand, to stalk and liberate the holy spirit from his brother and apologize for returning it to the universe unfulfilled. From that victory would come food for the tribe, a warm robe for the night chill, bones for tools and more weapons — a victory dance with honors from the old men.
But Bolan the Bold was not an Indian.
He did not lay in wait for his brother, the bear.