Bolan grinned at them.
"Health inspection. Just go on about your business, guys."
The man with the meat cleaver stepped into Bolan's path.
"Don't give me that bullshit. There's no damn health inspection in the middle of the goddamn night. Now what are you doing back here?"
"Taking a shortcut," Bolan growled, dropping the pretense of good cheer. "Out of my way, pal."
The man's face flushed.
"You're the guy we heard about, the thief everyone's after." He glanced at one of his buddies.
"Call security, Al. I'll hold this guy until they get here."
He hefted the wicked-looking chopper meaningfully, glaring at Bolan.
"If that's what you want."
He turned the shrug into a punch, sliding the blow in over the cleaver before its wielder even knew what was going on.
The guy fell backward, the cleaver flying from his hand, and he slid several feet on the highly polished kitchen floor when he landed.
The other men retreated with all the speed of two souls who would rather be anywhere else in the world at that precise moment, letting Bolan know they had no intention of blocking his escape.
He headed for the outside door, not knowing what he would find on the other side. He pushed on through, out into the cold, dark shadows, knowing that those left behind in the kitchen would already be howling for the security men in the stairwell and in the lobby and elsewhere. There was no time to lose.
Two big dumpsters sat a few feet away, but Bolan saw nothing else in the narrow alley.
He glanced both ways.
The streets at each end of the alley were busy with traffic.
A car turned into the alley and came racing toward him.
He lifted the Beretta, ready to fire over the glare of the headlights, aiming for the windshield and the spot where the driver would be.
Before he could fire, the car practically stood on its nose as the driver applied the brakes, the screeching of rubber on pavement intensified by the confines of the alley.
The driver's door popped open and a voice he knew called out to him.
13
"Get in! Hurry!" a woman's voice urged from inside the Camaro.
Lana Garner had turned up again, just as Bolan had thought she would.
He ran to the driver's side of the car.
"Move over," he rasped.
In the shadows of the alley, he could not see her face but he had the feeling for a second that she was going to protest, then she climbed over the center console, letting him slide in behind the steering wheel.
He slammed the door, dropped the gearshift lever into drive and stomped on the accelerator.
The Camaro catapulted down the alley, picking up speed as Bolan swerved around the dumpsters.
He palmed the wheel into the turn at the end of the alley, shooting into a small gap between cars.
An irate driver honked on the street somewhere behind him.
Glancing at the woman, he saw in the glow from the instrument panel that her face was taut, expressionless.
"How did you know where to find me?"
"I didn't. I wasn't looking for you. I was just there in that hotel and spotted you, then security people started chasing you. I went back to my car and cruised around the hotel, looking for you."
He grinned at her spunk.
"That's easy. Senator Dutton. Nice to see you again, Lana."
"Nice to see you, too. You saved my hide earlier tonight. I'm glad I could return the favor."
Traffic had thinned out somewhat while Bolan was in the hotel, but the taxicabs changing lanes erratically and pedestrians everywhere made clear navigating impossible.
He steered the Camaro east, onto the Eisenhower Expressway, for a place to drive aimlessly for a while and talk.
"It's time to level with me, Lana. Just who are you and what's your connection with Dutton and all the rest of this? I know your name and that you plant homing devices in senators' cars. I do know your real name, don't I?"
The young woman took a deep breath.
"And I know yours, Mack Bolan. Your fame precedes you. When you were in the hotel tonight, did you see a man named Wallace, Floyd Wallace?"
Bolan nodded.
"I saw him. He was sitting at the podium with Dutton. Is he mixed up in this?"
On the face of it the possibility seemed farfetched to Bolan. He remembered the mild-looking Wallace.
"He's involved somehow," Lana said slowly, staring straight ahead through the windshield at the city lights as she spoke. "I'm just not sure Wallace ties in with the rest of it... or even what the rest of it is, if you want to know the whole truth."
"I want to know nothing but," Bolan told her.
"Until four months ago, I worked for Floyd Wallace," said Lana Garner. "I was the manager of one of his day-care centers."
Bolan's eyes narrowed. He rolled down his window several inches, letting the cold night air blow into the car. It felt good.
"What happened four months ago?"
She hesitated before answering.
"Three of the children at the center... disappeared," she finally went on. "It was terrible, having to face those heartbroken parents and tell them that their kids were just... gone."
"Wait a minute," he cut in. "What happened, exactly?"
She seemed to be staring into the past, upon that day again, as she spoke.
"The children were having their naps. I was watching them. We were a little shorthanded then, so I was the only one there. The phone in the office rang. I went to answer it. It was Mr. Wallace, and when I told him I was by myself, he told me to go back and watch the kids, that he would call again later. I went back into the other room, where the children were, and... and three of them were gone. Two little boys and a little girl."
Her voice broke, racked with emotion.
"It was horrible. I woke up the other children, but of course they didn't know anything. Whoever it was who came in there and got those kids, they knew what they were doing. And the worst part is I'm sure that wasn't the first time. I'm positive they'd done it before I came there!"
A coldness grew inside Bolan that had nothing to do with the icy night.
"What happened then?"
"I called the police, but then... they seemed to think that I had something to do with it.
"Mr. Wallace showed up and he was suspicious, too. He pretended to be sympathetic but he said that under the circumstances he'd have to let me go. He said he couldn't keep me on or all the other parents would pull their children out of the center. He was probably right about that. There was news coverage of the disappearances and my picture was on TV and in the papers."
She began to cry quietly to herself.
Bolan could not afford himself the luxury of comforting her, not when there were demons driving him and precious time lost by the second.
"What makes you think that other kids have disappeared from Wallace's facilities, besides the professionalism of that one job?"
Lana brushed her eyes with a finger.
"You've got to understand, I couldn't just leave things like they were. I've been working in the child-care field for years. The police lost interest in me soon enough, and that was virtually the end of it. So when I saw that the authorities weren't going to do anything, I started investigating on my own."
Bolan kept quiet, knowing it would be better to let her work her way through the story on her own.
"I started with Mr. Wallace. I don't know why exactly, but I just felt that something was wrong with his operation.
"I went down to the Hall of Records and started trying to trace the deeds on his properties. I found out that Mr. Wallace doesn't really own them."
Bolan raised an eyebrow. "Who does?"
"Some corporation I'd never heard of. A post office box operation called Tri-State, Inc. I did some more digging and came up with some interesting information on them. The corporation has more than a few underworld connections. It's just a front, in my opinion, for the Mafia.