Save the Children (15 page)

Sheba needed a drink. Badly.

She sat at her desk in the office on the third floor of the massage parlor.

The place had been cleaned up considerably since Bolan had come blitzing through.

The broken glass had been vacuumed, her lifting weights had been put back in order and the blood had been mopped up.

Her jaw still hurt like hell from the guy's punch, though. She nursed the swelling bruise with a hand towel full of ice cubes.

Whatever else you could say about Mack Bolan, that son of a bitch was no damn gentleman, she thought sourly.

Sheba stood and walked over to a bar on the wall between her office area and the weight room.

There was no liquor; she kept the bar well-stocked with carrot juice, wheat germ and the like. She hadn't developed her body to this point just to ruin it by pouring poison into it, she reminded herself, though a drink right now would taste damn good, she had to admit. The free-for-all with Bolan had given her a case of the jitters she seemed unable to get rid of.

Every time Sheba closed her eyes, all she could see was Mack Bolan blowing Jimmy Kidd's brains out.

She spent a couple of minutes making a health shake, then lifted the glass to her lips and gulped down the concoction. She lowered the glass and ran her tongue over her lips.

Then she looked up and saw Bolan standing in the doorway.

Instinctively, she started to take a step toward the desk and the button that would summon help from Jimmy's downstairs.

The Executioner stood on her doorstep, looking big, immovable and menacing as hell. His hands were empty but the way his right hovered near the front of his jacket, she knew he would fill it with a pistol before she could make one wrong move.

And there was no one she could call for help, she realized. She had made the move out of habit. Jimmy was dead, and the cops had closed up the joint and sent everyone away but her... and one other.

She was not about to let him see how afraid she was.

"What the hell do you want?" she demanded. "You've caused enough trouble around here."

"Where's Randy Owens?" Bolan asked.

She reached up slowly and touched her jaw where Bolan had punched her.

"Go to hell."

"I'm trying to save his life."

"Yeah, sure you are."

"Do you know a man named Floyd Wallace?"

Sheba thought for a moment, then shook her head.

"The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't say I do. Why? And why don't you just go back where you came from, you big bastard?"

"Back where I came from..." Bolan said softly. "I can't do that, Sheba. It's not there anymore."

She didn't know what he meant by that, and she didn't give a damn. She just wanted him out of here.

"Look, I don't know anything about Randy except that he's not here. I don't know where he went. I didn't ask him and he didn't volunteer the information."

"How long ago did he leave?"

"N-not long."

"You're lying, Sheba. When Randy didn't have any place to run, he ran here. He's got even fewer places now. I'd say he's got no place. They're after him, Sheba."

She saw his penetrating gaze studying every inch of the spacious room.

He knows, she told herself in cold panic.

"Who's after him?" she sneered.

"The same ones who'll be after you when they find out you're hiding him," Bolan said. "The Parellis are cleaning house. They murdered Wallace less than an hour ago. Randy is next."

Running footfalls erupted from a curtained closet on the far side of the workout room as Randy Owens charged from where he had been hiding, dashing full tilt for another doorway across the room.

Bolan leaped forward, moving past Sheba like a human cyclone, closing the distance to Randy before Owens could even get a grip on that other doorknob. Bolan's shoulder plowed into Owens's body, knocking him backward. The Executioner grabbed Randy's shoulders and spun him. Owens staggered, then Bolan looped an arm around the director's neck.

Owens struggled against the grip, lashing back ineffectually with his fists, trying at the same time to kick backward.

Bolan increased the pressure on Owens's neck, shutting off blood and oxygen.

Gradually, Owens quit fighting.

"That's good," Bolan growled into his ear. "Now take it easy. I don't want to hurt you."

Bolan eased the pressure a bit, enough for Owens to speak, all the while keeping an eye on Sheba.

Sheba lifted the ice pack back to her swollen jaw and stayed where she was, watching.

Owens fought for breath in Bolan's death grip.

"Wh-what do you want?"

Bolan released the hold, stepping back.

The maneuver threw Owens off balance. He took a couple of steps before he caught himself. Air rattled in his throat as he took deep breaths.

"Why did you come back here?"

Owens lifted a hand and passed it over his face.

"I had to. I had some cash stashed here and the masters of a lot of my films. Look, Bolan, I heard what you said about Wallace. I just want out! I don't want any more trouble."

"You've got it, whether you want it or not," Bolan assured the punk evenly. "Talk to me straight for a change and I might let you walk out of here."

"Yeah, I'll talk," Owens muttered glumly. "I've got to leave town! Parelli'll snuff me if you don't. I wish I didn't know what I do know."

"What do you mean by that?"

Owens laughed shortly, full of fear and panic.

"Look, the public supports what the Parellis and all the other families do, you know that. If there wasn't a market for gambling and prostitution and drugs, the Mob wouldn't be involved. But this thing with kids..."

Owens's voice faltered.

"What about kids?" Bolan snarled.

He fought the urge to grab Owens again and strangle the truth out of him.

"Nobody supports this system except the perverts the Parellis are supplying," Owens blurted. "Even the people who don't mind regular porn films are going to demand some sort of cleanup if this gets out! Carson blurted it out to me by mistake when he was drunk and hanging around the set one night.

"I swear to you, I was never involved in anything that used kids! Hell, there weren't even any kids in bit parts in the movies I've made!"

"What about the children?" Bolan repeated for the last time. "What happens to them?"

Owens took a step backward when he saw something in Bolan's eyes. The wall behind him stopped him.

"Look, all I know is that about four times a year Wallace and the Parellis gather up a bunch of kids and ship them off to God knows where."

The first step on the road to hell, Bolan thought.

"Why didn't you tell me this before, Owens?"

"I... guess I was more scared of Denise and her bunch than I was of you... then," the porn director amended hastily.

Denise, Bolan reflected. Owens was corroborating what Mark Dutton had said about David Parelli's mother being the real boss of the family.

"Did Mrs. Parelli say anything about when the next shipment is scheduled?"

"That's why they're so nervous." Owens nodded, eager to please. "That's why they're trying to cover up the loose ends. They're shipping out a bunch of kids tonight!"

Bolan had half expected this, had sensed it, but that made this new bit of intel no easier to hear.

"Tonight," he repeated bleakly.

"I promise you, that's what Denise said!"

So that was the undercurrent of urgency that had been running through this latest Windy City blitz.

It all fell together, now.

The Parellis would have some central point where they held the kidnapped children until it was time to ship them on their way.

And it was damn likely that Denise Parelli and her son would be holding Lana Garner at the same spot, Bolan thought.

Something as important as this would require that at least one of the Parellis was on hand to supervise the operation, and Lana would have been taken there for questioning.

Mafia questioning meant the worst kinds of physical torture until the victims screamed what they knew and pleaded for death, for release from the untold agonies these human monsters knew how to inflict.

"Do you know where the shipment leaves from?" Bolan rapped.

Owens shook his head vehemently.

"Don't have any idea, but I can tell you who knows."

"Who?"

"Senator Dutton, that's who. He'd know." Owens's voice dripped scorn. "The rotten pervert. Denise told me how the family had been keeping him supplied with young stuff to get him in line."

So the senator had lied about its only happening one time with that girl in Washington.

From the sound of it, squeaky-clean Senator Mark Dutton was a full-time pedophile.

Full-time scum was more like it.

Owens was shaking.

Bolan nodded at him.

"All right," he said. "Get the hell out of here before I change my mind."

Relief replaced the fear on Owens's face.

He scrambled past Bolan, then hurried toward the door and out.

Bolan watched him go, then turned back to the red haired amazon who still wore the black leotard that hugged and showed off her shapely figure.

"There won't be any more trouble here tonight," he said. "But if I were you, Sheba, I'd leave."

"I'm thinking about it harder all the time," Sheba said fervently.

"And don't raise a fuss after I leave."

"You got it," she promised.

He backed away, pausing in the doorway briefly before he turned and left Sheba's office.

For a second, Sheba stayed where she was, staring at the now empty doorway, then she heaved a weary sigh and walked over to the desk. She opened the bottom right drawer and took out a heavy brown bottle.

There were times when a goddamn carrot juice health shake just wouldn't cut it, she thought.

And this was one of those times.

Bolan took the stairs down, and left the building by the alley exit. An explosion shook the pavement under his feet.

He broke into a run and gained the mouth of the alley onto Rush Street, where vehicle and foot traffic had thinned considerably since his visit earlier that night.

Bolan had spotted Randy Owens's Lancia on his approach to the closed-up club and massage parlor, which was how he had known he would find Owens with Sheba.

Right now, the Lancia was a blazing inferno, bright red tongues of flame licking the air, surrounded by a growing circle of people who were lifting their arms to shield themselves from the heat, helpless to get any closer to the barely recognizable pile of twisted, flaming metal.

Bolan could see a shape hunched over where the steering wheel had been. He could guess what had happened.

Sometime between Owens's arrival at the massage parlor and the time he, the Executioner, showed up, Parelli's men had made the scene and planted a bomb, which they wired to Owens's ignition.

The porno director had not been able to outrun the vipers he had bedded down with.

"Justice, Randy," Bolan told the fiery, tangled wreckage across the street.

He left the alley unnoticed and double-timed it back to where he had parked the Camaro.

Running gun battles on the streets and on the river, dead bodies all over the city, Detective Harry Laymon thought, any fool could tell that Bolan was back in town.

Laymon's throat felt dry. More coffee, that was what he needed.

As he and Griff walked back into the squad room set up for the Org Crime unit, he headed directly for the coffee maker.

Griff went to his desk and picked up the phone.

Laymon's eyes narrowed as he watched his partner dial.

The same number as before? he wondered. Something was eating at his partner, and whatever it was, it was starting to bug Laymon full-time, too.

Just what the hell was Griff up to? Laymon wondered one more time. The guy had been on the phone all night and still Laymon did not have a clue as to what it was about, which was unusual since he and Griff had formed something of an off-duty friendship as well, over the years that they had worked together.

They had just returned from the orphanage, where they had been dispatched to investigate the violence there.

They had found a lot of scared children and adults and dead bodies.

Bolan, for sure.

The description given to them by the wounded intern matched.

"He was like a stalking giant," the intern had said, even the pain not enough to mask the awe in his voice. "So it was Bolan, huh? I never believed one man could do all the things they say he's done. Now I believe!"

Griff had not taken an active role in the visit to the orphanage, Laymon remembered, but instead had stood around chewing on his dumb stomach tablets, his face expressionless, as if his mind was distracted by something else entirely. He had been the same on the drive back to headquarters.

Laymon sipped the strong coffee. He decided he could not put up with this any longer.

It was time for a showdown.

He swallowed the rest of the cup's contents, tossed the Styrofoam container into a wastebasket and stalked over to Griff's desk.

Griff hung up the phone as Laymon approached.

This did not surprise Laymon. Griff didn't want him to know whom he was talking to. Laymon's anger grew.

He leaned over Griff's desk and rested his palms on the cluttered surface.

"I think it's time we had a talk, old buddy."

Griff looked up.

"About what?"

"Come on, Les. Something's tearing you apart and I, goddammit, want to know what it is."

Griff shook his head.

"You're all wrong..."

"Don't give me that. You either tell me what's going on in that head of yours, partner, or we're taking a walk down to IAD to find out the hard way!"

That got through.

Griff, his face a taut mask, glared at Laymon.

"You think I've gone bad, is that it? You think I'm dirty?"

"I don't want to think that, Griff," Laymon countered quickly. "You've just been acting so damn weird lately, making these mysterious phone calls, and it's like you're not quite there half the time when I'm talking to you."

"You're supposed to trust your partner," said Griff, the sharpness of accusation and budding resentment in his voice.

"I want to trust you, Les. You're just making it so damn difficult, what with the Bolan thing going down and..."

Griff interrupted by putting his palms on the desk to push himself to his feet, his face only inches from Laymon's.

"It just so happens that I am ready to let you in on it, Harry. Or at least I was until you went all screwy on me."

"Me, screwy? What about you?"

"I had good reason for everything I've been doing. I can explain it."

"So let's hear it. I'm all ears."

Some of the other cops in the squad room were starting to look curiously at the obvious confrontation taking place between the two partners.

Laymon and Griff both pulled back, appearing to relax somewhat, but kept their voices pitched low enough so that no one else in the busy squad room could overhear them.

"You still think I'm on the take, don't you?" Griff grunted. "You jump to too many conclusions, old buddy. Come with me."

"Where to?"

"To the captain's office."

Laymon stared.

"The captain's office?"

"That's right. I've got something to tell him."

Griff turned and stalked away, heading toward the closed door of an office on the other side of the squad room.

Laymon watched him for a moment, then hurried to catch up, more curious than ever, wishing he knew what the hell was going on and knowing he was about to find out.

Griff was knocking on the frosted glass door.

A gruff voice called to them to come in.

Griff cast another look at Laymon, then turned the doorknob and strode into the office.

Laymon followed him.

The harried-looking captain looked up from a desk covered with paper. He frowned, which made him resemble a basset hound.

"What do you guys want? It better be good and it better be Bolan. The commish just finished chewing my ass, again."

"It's Bolan," Griff promised, "and it's the ugliest damn story you ever heard..."

David Parelli stood at the window of the trucking company office, staring into the night.

"That's not very smart, David," his mother admonished mildly from the desk where she sat. "You never know who's going to be lurking out there."

Parelli did not step away from the window.

The brittle cold area outside looked like any other such suburban shipping business, closed at this hour. Tractor trailer trucks and loading equipment were parked here and there in the dim illumination that made more shadows than light, but there was no trace of movement.

"You mean Bolan," Parelli said flatly.

"That's exactly what I mean," Denise said. "He could be out there with a rifle right now, the sights trained on your head. I didn't take so much time and trouble raising you that I want to see your brains splattered all over the wall, David."

Parelli grimaced.

"I don't remember you taking so much time and trouble raising me."

She glared at him and sighed wearily.

The office was uncomfortably cold, she thought. She was glad this would be the last shipment of children for a while. It was a profitable sideline, and she liked to take a personal hand in the running of this operation, as she did in all family business, but the Bolan presence in Chicago had changed everything.

They were alone at the moment, the night man of the truck yard having gone outside to supervise the hooking up of a tractor rig to a long trailer.

A trailer that would soon be loaded with human beings.

For the moment, the living cargo was under guard in the spacious warehouse next to the office building.

There were more guards, around the perimeter of the complex, patrolling barbed wire fence.

She glanced at her watch.

11:45.

They were running right on schedule. The brats would be on their way no later than midnight.

"I'll be glad when this night is over," she heard herself saying to her son's back.

He turned to face her.

"I don't know why. Bolan will still be around."

She picked up her purse and took a cigarette from a solid silver case. She waited pointedly, the cigarette poised in her fingers, for David to come over and light it for her.

"He won't have anything against us on this," she said. "You and I are going to keep a very low profile for a while, David. Bolan never stays in one place for very long. He'll be gone soon."

"Yeah, well, don't forget, Bolan came to town to get me. We've got this town wired, the cops are after him, but... well, I just hope you're right, Ma. We've taken all the precautions possible."

"Wallace is dead, Owens is dead." There was no regret in her voice as she mentioned the porn director's name, "and Dutton knows that he will be, too, if he doesn't keep his mouth shut and keep on going along with us, just like the others we've put in our pocket in Washington."

Parelli lit his mother's cigarette, then one of his own, blowing smoke toward the tiled ceiling.

"We can handle Bolan because we've got the leverage."

"The Garner bitch," Denise agreed. "Yes, I think that could make Bolan see things our way and leave us alone. We'll see, won't we? So far, so good."

The office door swung open and a heavy-jowled man in a baseball cap poked his head inside.

"The truck's ready to go, Mr. Parelli."

"Right," David Parelli snapped. "About goddamn time, too."

"Anything else I can do for you, sir?"

"No, just see that everything gets under way as soon as possible."

The foreman nodded, touched the bill of his cap and left.

Denise wondered if they should have him killed, too.

The man wasn't one of their soldiers; most of the time he was just a legitimate employee of a legitimate business. He did know, though, that the owners of this business sometimes used it for other purposes... purposes that were not so legitimate.

Like tonight.

It was something to think about.

She stood up. She wore an expensive dark blue dress that clung softly to her sleek figure, topped by a fur jacket. Jewelry glittered on her fingers.

She pulled on a pair of white gloves.

"Let's go say farewell to the children, David. I want to talk to Miss Garner again, too."

"She's not going to tell you anything about Bolan," her son said.

Denise Parelli smiled.

"Perhaps she will."

He held the door open for his mother and they left the office, crossing the asphalt area between the office and the warehouse, walking quickly because of the cold, raw wind cutting across the complex.

One of the Parelli soldiers was waiting at the door of the warehouse, Uzi in hand. He opened the door and stepped back with a deferential nod.

Denise swept through first, David right behind her. As the soldier closed the door behind them, Denise paused to let her son take the lead. Here among the men, she had to allow her son at least the pretense of leadership, she reminded herself.

David stalked over to the hardguy in charge of the detail guarding the kids.

"Everything all right in here?" Parelli snapped.

"Yes, sir, no trouble," the head cock replied. He gestured casually with the barrel of the shotgun he held cradled in his arm. "This bunch won't give us no trouble."

About twenty-five small children were huddled in a group along one wall, appearing incapable of giving anyone any trouble. They looked cold, miserable, scared and wholly submissive.

All of them were under ten, most of them about eight or nine years old. They were dressed warmly enough for the chilly warehouse; a sickly child would bring less in the markets they were intended for.

None of them had been abused other than a little slapping around.

A haunted look in their eyes, a look of hopelessness and despair, indicated that they had already given up.

Good, Denise thought. Her customers did not want kids who were strong-willed, who would give trouble when told by adults to do things. Her customers, and their customers, wanted kids who would obey, no matter what the orders were.

"Gus says the truck is ready." David nodded to the hardguy with the shotgun. "I'll tell him to have it back up to the loading dock."

"Whatever you say, Mr. P."

There were a half dozen or so soldiers in the warehouse.

Denise could feel them watching her.

No one questioned her right to be there, but she knew they had to sometimes wonder why David always brought his mother along with him.

There was probably perverse gossip of all sorts among the men about her relationship with her son, she knew.

Let them talk.

After all, when you came right down to it, the gun carriers, the soldiers, were nothing more than cannon fodder...

Bolan fodder was more like it, she told herself... and their opinions and idle speculation were worth less than nothing.

"Where's the woman?" Parelli snarled at the man with the shotgun. "I want to talk to her."

The guy jerked his head toward a small door in the wall opposite where he had lined up the children.

"We've got her tied up in the can."

"Get her out here."

"Right away, Mr. Parelli."

A moment later, one of the soldiers led Lana Garner from the small, smelly rest room.

Holding her right arm so tightly that she winced in pain, the hood led her over to where Denise Parelli and her son stood waiting.

Lana had been treated more roughly than the children, Denise could see at a glance. Her blouse was torn in several places, her right cheek bruised. A small trickle of dried blood encrusted the corner of her mouth.

She stared defiantly at the Parellis.

"I don't care what you do to me, I won't tell you a thing!" she blazed at them.

Denise smiled.

"My dear, what could you possibly know that would be of interest to us? There's only one reason you're still alive and it really has nothing to do with you."

Lana shook her head, more angry than afraid as she stared at the Parellis while the hood maintained his iron grip on her arm.

"You're crazy if you think holding me will stop Mack Bolan. He's going to find you and he's going to kill you!"

David slapped her brutally with an open hand across the mouth, spinning her around. The blow drove her to one knee. She would have fallen to the cement floor if the hardman had not yanked her back to her feet.

"You shut up about Bolan, bitch. That bastard's a dead man if he gets near this place. And there isn't much chance of that, is there? He doesn't have a clue where we are, now does he?"

She opened her mouth to shoot back a hot retort, then paused abruptly, grinning at him savagely.

"Oh, no you don't. You're not going to trick me like that! You just want to find out how much Bolan does know about you. You want to know if he's located this place. Well, you can just wait and find out, you slimebag!"

Denise stepped close to Lana until their faces were only inches apart. Denise lifted her gloved hand and softly stroked the fingertips along Lana's bruised cheek.