Save the Children (8 page)

"Or maybe you just don't mind seeing vigilantes like me take on pornographers like Owens."

The glint in Griff's eyes told Bolan he was probably right. "Yeah, you might say that."

"Does Owens make kid porn?"

Griff tensed at the very thought.

"If I thought he did, I'd probably break some laws myself."

"And you won't tell me what you were doing at Parelli's house tonight?"

The cop's jaw set evenly. "Not now or ever. That's something else. Your days are numbered, Bolan. You'd better move fast."

The door into the den opened behind Bolan.

He moved around, hand going under his coat, fingers resting lightly on the grip of the Beretta, though he made the movement look casual enough, knowing that the newcomer was most likely Griff's wife.

He was right.

Kathleen Griff came into the den and smiled at the two men.

"My goodness, hasn't he even offered you a drink yet, Captain Blanski?" she asked Bolan.

"Well, I am on duty, ma'am," he answered with forced lightness.

"Then you can't join us for dinner? It should be ready soon."

Bolan shook his head. "I'm afraid not. In fact, I have to be getting back to work." He turned and extended a hand to Griff. "Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Detective."

Griff hesitated, looked as if he might shake the Executioner's hand, then he stayed where he was, not accepting the proffered hand.

"Sure."

"Maybe I'll be seeing you later."

"Yeah," said Detective Sergeant Griff uneasily to Mack Bolan, "I imagine you will."

Bolan nodded good-night to Mrs. Griff, assured her that he could let himself out and left the couple in the den.

He walked out of the house quickly but did not hurry enough to attract any undue attention.

He did not want to hang around long enough for Griff to change his mind and try to arrest him.

He did not want any more trouble with the cop than was necessary, at least not right now.

Griff would have the license number and description of Bolan's car by now, and Bolan figured he would call it in within minutes.

It wouldn't do any good. It was a rental car and Bolan would abandon it within blocks and hoof it to an elevated station about a quarter of a mile away. He would be well on his way before an APB could be put out on the car.

Bolan was not sure what to make of Detective Sergeant Griff, but one thing was certain.

The cop had some sort of connection with Parelli...

Bolan was not about to forget the way Parelli's mobster sentries had not paid any attention to the cop's car when Griff had parked outside the walled Parelli estate not too long ago tonight. And that meant Bolan would more than likely cross Griff's path again, probably before this night was over.

For now, Randy Owens's porn-movie operation was next on Bolan's hit list.

Another unknown equation, a senator named Dutton, needed some serious looking into, sure, but Bolan realized that Owens's link to the Parellis, even if it was just banging a mafioso's mother, could be the lead he was looking for to tear the evil in this town apart before another cold day dawned.

It was time for the Executioner to raise some more hell.

The address Griff had given Bolan was in a warehouse in that no-man's-land, deserted after dark except for the very lowest scum, near the teeming black ghetto of Chicago's South Side.

The neighborhood was rundown, with little traffic on the streets. Trash blew in the gutters as Bolan strode along the cracked sidewalk.

If Griff was telling the truth, there was trash in the warehouse up ahead, too.

A pornographer Bolan should not have let off so easy once before.

Or a trap. A police trap or, if Griff was a bad cop, maybe another Mob trap. Yeah, it could be that, Bolan knew.

He eyeballed the warehouse and its immediate environs carefully from a deep-shadowed doorway across the empty, dark street.

It was a towering structure, appearing as uninhabited as the rest of this vicinity at this hour.

A trap?

Maybe, but Bolan did not think so, not this time, and he would not have turned back anyway.

He wanted Parelli dead too damn bad...

The windows of the warehouse were boarded up and so was the big sliding door near the loading dock.

Bolan left the shadows of his position, moving rapidly, AutoMag in hand, across the street to the side wall of the warehouse.

A streetlight at the far end of the block cast a dirty circle of illumination down at the next corner that did not reach this far. There were several economy cars... and a Lancia that had to be Owens's, he thought... parked there.

He gained the wall of the warehouse and paused another moment, his combat senses flaring, his internal radar probing the night around him for danger.

Sounds of the city carried faintly to him from somewhere else, distant rumbles of an elevated train uptown in the Loop, of a siren heading somewhere, not in this direction. The barely discernible noises of the night were muffled by this warehouse district as if that were another world where people dared to congregate, not like this sleazy, night-blanketed neighborhood of desolation and danger.

He wore his blacksuit, blending with the wall of the building. He moved along it, looking for a way in.

There was a smaller door next to the big one, but Bolan did not try it to find out if it was unlocked. Even if it was, he did not want to make his entrance that way.

He turned down an alley that ran alongside the warehouse. He headed for the rear of the building.

There were high windows along this side of the building, but they were well out of his reach.

On the rear wall of the building, he found a smaller window, this one only eight feet or so off the ground.

Behind the warehouse was a vacant lot, and on the other side of that he saw the rear walls of other warehouses.

He had the night to himself, or seemed to.

With a quick little spring, he grabbed the narrow sill of the window and chinned himself up level with it.

The glass was smudged and dirty, but by squinting he could make out the general outlines of a bathroom inside.

No one was in the bathroom, at least not unless they were crouching directly beneath the window out of his line of vision.

He tried shoving the window up, but it had been nailed shut.

No surprise there.

He supported himself easily with one hand gripping the sill and the toes of his boots pressed against the warehouse wall. With the other hand, he slapped the AutoMag against the window, several short, sharp raps with the butt, dislodging the filthy panes of glass. He was then able to break the two pieces of wood that formed a cross in the center of the window.

There was some noise, but not much.

He doubted that it could have been heard even more than a foot beyond the bathroom door, and he was gambling there was no one that close on the other side.

He releathered the AutoMag, then hoisted himself up and through the little opening. His wide shoulders made for a tight fit, but he pushed himself on through and dropped lightly into the close confines and the terrible stench of this bathroom.

When he was standing on the peeling linoleum floor, he again drew the AutoMag, went to the door and put his ear to it.

From somewhere in the warehouse, the sound of soft music came to his ears.

Outside the building he had not been able to hear a thing.

The place was probably soundproofed, which made sense if it was indeed Randy Owens's studio for making porno movies, as Griff had claimed.

Bolan reached down with his left hand and turned the doorknob, easing the door open slowly.

Nearly impenetrable gloom gathered thickly on the other side of that door.

The building had an unpleasant, rotting smell that wasn't much better than the pigsty stench of the bathroom.

He made sure there was no one in the immediate vicinity of the bathroom, then slipped through the doorway, closing it behind him.

The place was not as vacant as it had appeared from outside.

In fact, it was packed with equipment and large sections of plasterboard that Bolan identified as parts of movie sets that had been disassembled and stored back here.

It was hard to tell too much in the gloom, but it looked like almost any kind of set could be put together from the pieces stored here: a bedroom, of course, but also exterior backdrops and sets for other rooms like a phony office or a living room, some of the sets already assembled.

Bolan flitted from shadow to shadow through the collection of studio mock-ups.

He was drawn by the music and lights emanating from one of the sets at the front of this ground-level section of the warehouse.

As he neared it, he saw that the main piece of furniture on this otherwise almost empty set was a massive water bed.

The set was lit by two big banks of klieg lights that cast bright, glaring illumination down upon the scene.

On the water bed romped a man and two women, all three of them totally naked.

They were trying to look as if they were enjoying themselves, but instead they just looked sweaty and tired.

Off to one side was a cameraman, perched behind his camera.

Next to him stood Randy Owens, who occasionally called out commands to his actors, usually telling them to move a certain way so that the camera angle wouldn't be blocked.

The setting stank of poor ventilation, stale sweat and sex.

The music came from a small stereo unit just out of camera range. Obviously, it was playing just to set the mood. The soundtrack for the film would be dubbed in later.

The soundtrack wasn't very important in this kind of movie, anyway.

Randy Owens looked not too much the worse for wear after being kneed in the crotch by Denise Parelli and knocked on the head by Mack Bolan a few hours ago. He looked haggard but with all his attention focused on his cast cavorting on the water bed as he directed them.

What interested Bolan the most were the four men standing with Owens.

Three of them were strictly Mafia soldiers, big and brawny but none too bright, watching the action on the water bed, their coarse faces intent, their attention seemingly absorbed by the fanciful contortions of grinding flesh.

The fourth guy was watching with a more objective eye.

An accountant's eye.

Griff had called it, all right. Parelli's Mob had more than a finger in the distribution setup for Owens's porn films, and more than likely the sandy-haired man in sunglasses and expensive suit was here to keep check on Owens's operation and protect the family investment.

Bolan was here to pump Owens for a direct lead to Parelli, but it looked as if he would have to wade through some slime first.

"All right, all right," Owens called out tiredly to the three on the water bed. "That's enough of this shit for now. Thanks for those academy-award performances," he added sarcastically.

The naked man on the water bed, a muscled hunk with a stupid face, swung his legs off and stood up, seemingly oblivious of his nude state, disgust evident on his face.

"You think it's easy getting turned on with these harpies, you're welcome to try, Owens," he whined.

Both young women bounced angrily off the bed after him.

"Harpies?" one of them shrieked.

"Your problem is you don't know what to do with a real woman, you goddamned faggot!"

The hunk took a step toward her, his hand coming up as if he intended to slap her, but he stopped abruptly and glanced at the three goons standing with Owens and the other man.

"Smart thinking, Rudy," Owens said wearily. "I could replace you a lot easier than I could Tess and Babs here."

"You slobs just don't understand the creative process," the hunk muttered.

He stalked over to a chair and snagged one of the robes that was draped over it, shrugging into the garment.

The two actresses crossed over to Owens.

The one who had spoken before put her hand on Owens's arm.

"Can't you do something, Randy? It's bad enough that we have to work with that creep, but then you let these goons come in here and ogle us!"

She gestured at the three hardmen, all of whom were still leering.

Owens flicked a glance at the man in the sunglasses and looked embarrassed, the fact that two nude young women stood right in front of him obviously disturbing him less than what one of them was saying.

"Uh, look, Tess, I'll straighten it all out, okay? Just don't get yourself in an uproar, huh?"

The girl sniffed in derision and turned away to get her own robe, the other actress accompanying her.

As the two women walked away, one of the thugs muttered something lewd.

"That's enough of that," the accountant in the sunglasses snapped. "Owens, I want to talk to you in your office."

"Sure thing, Mr. Carson," Owens replied a little too quickly.

Rudy, Tess and Babs had gone off to some makeshift dressing rooms fashioned by arranging the pieces of sets to give a little privacy.

The three goons stayed where they were, no doubt hoping to catch another glimpse of the actresses' bodies.

Owens and the man called Carson crossed to a small, glassed-in office tucked into a front corner of the ground floor of the warehouse.

Unknown to them, they had a shadow.

Bolan navigated soundlessly after them through the cluttered warehouse, keeping pace behind the stacked set backdrops, carefully avoiding obstacles that could cause noise.

He held his position a moment longer, then peered into the office.

He watched as Owens and Carson shut the door behind them.

Carson went to a desk and sat down.

Owens made no objection to the Mafia money man taking what had to be Owens's accustomed place.

The office was blocked from view of the movie set where the three hoods had remained behind.

Bolan was not close enough yet to hear what they were saying inside that cubicle.

It looked as if Carson was doing most of the talking, leaning back in Owens's chair, giving the filmmaker a good, heated dressing-down about something.

Owens stood in front of the desk, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, making an occasional, hesitant reply but not saying much.

Bolan glided around what was supposed to be the wall of a bedroom and stepped over a pile of woundup cables only a few feet from the office.

The office, small as it was, was luxuriously appointed, especially compared to the rest of the dingy warehouse studio. The carpet and the upholstery of the chair behind the desk were plush, and there was a well-stocked wet bar on the wall to one side.

Owens might cut a few corners in his moviemaking costs but he evidently liked his own comforts, thought Bolan.

Comforts that were, at the moment, maybe in danger of being taken away from him.

"Protect our investment, Owens," Bolan heard Carson saying, confirming Bolan's earlier guess that the man was some sort of accountant. "We cannot afford to have these constant, continual delays. The distribution arm must have new product."

"You know how actors are," Owens replied haltingly, his voice muffled by the glass. "You've got to baby them, coddle them along."

"I don't care what you do or how you do it, just as long as you turn out plenty of product." Carson reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small plastic bag containing white powder. He tossed it onto the desktop. "There. That ought to keep them happy for a while."

Owens reached out and picked up the bag, tossing it lightly into the air and catching it.

"This will be a big help, all right." He grinned. "Tell Mr. Parelli I said thanks."

"Mr. Parelli isn't interested in gratitude. Just results. See that you deliver."

Bolan had heard enough.

Results, the man had said.

The Executioner was ready to deliver.

He stepped up to the door of that office, ready to ease in and confront Owens and the accountant.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" a female voice squealed behind him.

Bolan spun and saw one of the actresses, the one called Babs, standing there in a robe that barely came to her thighs.

She look shocked and surprised, ready to whirl and run.

She did just that with a high-pitched scream thrown in for good measure when she saw the big blacksuited guy holding the huge AutoMag.

Bolan bit back a curse. He had been so intent on the exchange between Owens and Carson that he had not heard the young woman's approach.

Now it was too late.

He stepped away from the office and whirled, assuming a shooter's crouch as he faced the movie set.

The three goons came running into view from the other side of stacked backdrops, their pistols drawn, rushing to see what had started the lady screaming and running back toward the dressing rooms.

Bolan materialized out of the shadows, the AutoMag extended in front of him like a hand cannon.

A foot-long tongue of flame licked the air as Big Thunder roared.

The three hoods had come running side by side and the first round caught the one on Bolan's left, in the middle of the face. His head seemed to disappear off his neck. The body took a few more steps, then his feet went out from under him and he sprawled to the ground, his weapon skittering away into the gloom.