"I want a link between Dutton and Parelli," said Bolan.
Owens swallowed hard, his attention riveted on the Beretta's muzzle.
Bolan could hear the sounds of the commotion diminishing downstairs.
It would not be long before someone showed up here.
"I don't know nothing," Owens insisted frantically. "The senator's at some fund-raising dinner tonight, why don't you ask him?"
"I plan to," growled Bolan, "but I want Parelli most of all. Where is he, Randy?"
Owens shook his head. "I'd tell you if I knew, you must know that. You've got to believe me! I'd tell you!"
Bolan believed him. Grudgingly. He had needed to confront this guy with what he knew about abused children and a senator who drove a Porsche and who was protected by Mafia gunmen.
But something in the Executioner's gut told him that Owens was speaking the truth... as far as he knew it.
Owens had seemed like the surest bet Bolan could play, but, Bolan believed the guy facing the 93-R, and that made this bet a bad one.
He lowered the Beretta.
"Take my advice, Owens. Stay away from Denise Parelli. There's going to be more blood spilled in this town before the night's over and it could be yours if you get in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Owens swallowed audibly.
"What about the drugs you hand out on the set?"
"Hell, they do that in Hollywood, guy. All those actors are on some kind of shit!"
"I don't like you, Owens, but I don't blow people away just because they make me want to puke. I'm giving you a chance. Do like I told you. Get out of Chicago."
Bolan backed toward the door, then a sixth sense warned that someone was coming at him from behind.
He eased off on the Beretta's trigger at the last instant when he saw that the person standing there was unarmed.
The tall, redhaired Amazon had her hands on shapely leotard-encased hips and stood there openly glaring at him.
"We've got a score to settle, you big son of a bitch," she snarled, low and threatening. "Just you and me."
Great, thought Bolan.
"Put up the gun," she snarled. "You won't need it. I told everybody to stay downstairs until after I got finished with you. I don't like getting pushed around."
Owens blubbered from behind the desk.
"Sheba, don't be stupid! This is Mack frigging Bolan! Get some help up here. Now!"
"Take it easy, Randy boy," Sheba soothed. "We won't need any help. Not unless this guy feels like shooting a woman, and I've got old ice eyes here figured as a tough guy gentleman of the old school." She looked at Bolan and the Beretta without flinching. "Right, big guy?"
Bolan lifted the Beretta and lined the sights on Sheba's heart.
He said nothing.
He didn't have to.
The look in his eyes told her.
Sheba paled and dived backward out of the doorway, out of his line of fire.
"Get him!" she shrieked.
That had been the woman's plan, Bolan realized in that instant: get him to lower his weapon, then call in the boys she had waiting with guns in the hallway.
Bolan heard pounding footsteps in the hall.
He shot a glance over his shoulder.
Owens seemed to be glued in the chair behind the desk, his features twisted with apprehension and mounting panic.
Beyond Owens was a window and, outside the window, Bolan saw a metal fire escape.
He swung around in time to see a .45-carrying goon pop his face around the doorway. He squeezed off a silenced round that drilled the guy in the shoulder and made him drop the pistol.
Two long strides put Bolan across the living quarters of Sheba's office.
He leaped onto the desk, and in one smooth motion he followed through, vaulting over a whimpering Owens. Bolan lowered his shoulder and dived through the window behind the desk, shattering the glass, landing unhurt on the fire escape beyond.
In the rapidly gathering twilight, he saw flashing police lights racing from downtown.
The cops were on their way, drawn by the shooting.
It was a night of hide, seek and kill.
He leathered the Beretta and bounded down the steps of the fire escape as shots began whining through the broken window after him.
He touched only three or four of the treaders in the first flight, then grabbed the railing and swung himself around in a tight turn when he reached the landing.
Men poked their heads out through the window and fired down after him, projectiles ricocheting wildly from the metal stairs, throwing sparks into the night as bullets whanged off metal.
At the next landing, Bolan leaped over the railing, then dropped the remaining few feet to the alley.
He jogged toward the lights of Rush Street.
Someone emerged to block his way.
Sheba.
Even in gloom of lights from the street, her red hair shone like fire.
"I want you, big man," she snarled.
Then the amazon came at him in a lightning-fast martial arts assault.
A lot of weight lifters were no good in a fight, Bolan knew, but this woman had done more than just pump iron, obviously training herself in the martial arts, combining speed and agility with her strength.
Sheba was a tornado of punches and kicks.
Bolan, moving with speed and skill of his own, blocked one punch but another connected. He took a blow on his left forearm, then quickly stepped in closer before she could do anything about it. He brought a swift uppercut almost from the ground.
The haymaker slammed into Sheba's jaw, knocking her backward, the impact lifting her several inches off the ground before she came crashing down to sprawl on her back in the alley.
She didn't move.
He hesitated just long enough to make sure that Sheba was still breathing.
She was.
A bullet whined close past his left ear from above.
Sheba's men descended the fire escape noisily, guns in their hands.
Bolan drew the AutoMag and fired three times. The sense-numbing reports echoed in the confines of the alley, three heavy slugs snuffing out three threats.
Two men up there in the darkness plowed backward, slowing down the others. A third goon pirouetted and toppled over the edge of the fire escape's handrail. The dead man landed at the end of the alley with a sickening thud.
That would slow any other pursuers long enough for Bolan to make the street.
No one in the milling crowd in front of the building made any attempt to stop the big man who strode from that alley, holstering Big Thunder under the overcoat.
No one followed him as he hurried away.
Bolan didn't blame them for not wanting to get involved.
A block away he slowed to a walk, having put hundreds of pedestrians between himself and Jimmy Kidd's.
A few minutes later, several police cars came to a squealing stop in front of the club.
On their way, they passed a Datsun cruising out of the Rush Street district at a sedate speed.
They were on the lookout for somebody driving like a bat out of hell; that would be the guy who had caused all this trouble.
None of those cops wasted a glance at that Datsun, or at the Executioner behind the steering wheel.
And Bolan steered on to play his next bet on this blood-soaked kill hunt.
It was time to pay a call on a bought politician named Dutton.
Bolan would track down the elusive presence of the Boss, the man the Executioner had originally come all this way to kill.
A time bomb was ticking in Chicago.
And its name was Bolan.
10
The banquet was almost over by the time Bolan arrived.
He had changed into a two-piece suit of subdued blue and a sky-blue shirt and red tie, complete with a phony, laminated press tag from one of the suburban weeklies, courtesy of his Stony Man Farm connections. He had left the AutoMag behind for this probe into high society, but the Beretta rested in his shoulder holster as usual.
Now, as the desserts were polished off in the hall full of long tables, tv news crews with their video cameras moved closer to the raised stage at the front of the huge ballroom.