California Hit (4 page)

Cynthey was giving Bolen a dewey-eyed look.

He sighed and said, "Both of you keep clear. And if you like Mary Ching, then don't breathe a word linking me to her. It could mean her life. Right?"

He got up and went out, slinging the machine-pistol over his shoulder and blending into the darkness of the hallway to await a meeting with "allies."

The two girls came out a few minutes later and hurried down the stairs. They did not see Bolan and they were arguing about something in angry whispers.

Panda Bare and Cynthia.

Bolan grinned sadly and shook his head.

Yeah. San Francisco was some kind of town.

As he waited in the darkness, he decided that maybe the old city was over-infested with too many diverging ideas of "honesty."

Maybe the golden city could use a bit of romantic deceit, some good, old, common jungle courtship.

He waited there in the dark, took the matter under advisement, and promised himself that he would get to the heart of San Francisco... or die trying.

Yeah, he could sure die trying.

There were three of them plus the girl, and Bolan waited until all were framed in the light from the open doorway before he made his move.

He came up from the rear with the stuttergun at the ready, and commanded, "Freeze! Hands on the head while I get a look at you!"

There was no argument.

He patted them clean, removing hardware and sending them inside one by one. The girl turned over her tiny weapon without a murmur and went in with a half-smile on her face.

The look of these men, two of them anyway, recalled in Bolan's mind the buried memories of Korea — and those memories were not so pleasant.

There was something about the Chinese that stood them apart from other Asians, especially as fighting men. There was a hardness of the mind there which was reflected in the face, in the way the head rode atop those shoulders — and there was an inherent ferocity of the spirit which Bolan had found in no other Asian nationals.

Yeah, these were fighting men.

The incessant wars of a thousand centuries were burned into their genes.

Bolan had learned to respect them in Korea... and he respected them now.

The third man had moved on beyond that — from warrior to wise man. He dressed as most San Franciscans do — in an all-seasons suit and a light topcoat, and he wouldn't have drawn a second look from the average tourist.

Those who looked twice, though, would discover a man of quiet but tough dignity, and they would look into the eyes that had seen everything to see and learned to accept nothing at face value.

He was an old man — quite old — but he seemed to be in excellent command of mind and body. And there was no doubt that he was also in command of the other two men, the young warriors. They were little more than bodyguards, Bolan decided.

He removed the clip from the automatic weapon and thrust it into his belt, then he dropped the gun to the floor with the others. It was a peace gesture, even though his other weapon was very much in evidence and ready to leap.

"I am Daniel Wo Fan," the old man told him.

Bolan nodded and said, "I am Mack Bolan."

The old boy didn't waste time on preliminaries. He eased onto a chair and told Bolan, "Your enemy is my enemy."

The Executioner said, "Then you have a lot of enemies."

Wo Fan smiled a fragile smile. "You are rapidly reducing their numbers, I am told. We will help you all we can."

"You'll help me best by standing clear," Bolan told him. "Allies get in my way, and I don't like to walk on their backs."

The statement was not given as an insult, nor was it received as one.

"There is more evil in San Francisco, Mr. Bolan, than one man alone can possibly hope to overcome. It goes beyond your Cosa Nostra. It embraces not only you and me, but your children and mine and their children after them. It rides the breast of the global seas and glides upon the atmospheres of all the continents, both east and west, north and south."

The old man gave his head that slow mandarin shake of authority. "A warrior without allies will not survive the day in San Francisco, Mr. Bolan. We do not need you. You need us."

And suddenly Bolan knew who Wo Fan was. He was the Chinese equivalent of a Capo — the big daddy, probably, of the San Francisco tongs. There was a difference, though, and Bolan was trying to pull the thing together in his mind.

The early tongs, or Chinese secret societies, had been as influential in their spheres as the Mafia had become in the Occidental world of today. In San Francisco, especially, they'd been the boys with the lotteries, the opium, the prostitution and even actual slavery, the murder shops, and all the other varieties of underground activity in the Chinese community.

Now — if Bolan's intel was on the right track — now Chinatown's vice lords were aligned with the larger mob, the Mafia, and the leadership of the tongs had passed into more respectable hands. The secret societies of the Chinese had turned their energies into the constructive side of commerce and politics, and a fresh new wind had been blowing across the Chinese-American landscapes.

A little flag sprang up in the Executioner's mind, a flag buried there in Las Vegas by his friend Carl Lyons, the undercover cop from L.A.

"Red China," Lyons had said.

"What?"

"Yeah. How's that for a mob combination? And the trade, we hear, is lively?"

"In what?"

"In everything. It's developing into the largest invisible market in the world."

And now Wo Fan was sitting here talking about the evil that rides the seas and hovers above all the continents.

A chill trickled along Bolan's spine, and he told the old one, "I live by the hour, one of them at a time. Every new day I see is an unexpected victory. Whether I live another day or drown in my own blood an hour from now is not the greatest worry of my life. Thanks for your offer, but I have to fight my war my way."

It was a long speech, for Bolan.

Wo Fan seemed to understand that the young soldier was simply trying to get the cards out cold for all to see. He smiled and said, "As you wish."

He went out then, and the bodyguards scooped up their weapons and followed without a glance at Bolan.

Mary Ching hurried out behind them, remained briefly in the hallway, then came back into the apartment and closed the door with a bang.

She was angry, and she was making no effort to conceal the fact.

Bolan told her, "No disrespect intended. Tell him that, when you see him again."

He had retrieved the machine-pistol. He snapped in the clip and moved toward the door.

She cried, "You just hold it right there!"

Bolan turned to her with a tight grin. A bland product of the inscrutable East she was definitely not. She was a good old American girl, as educated and sassy and assertive as any. Bolan liked her. He said, "I've held too long already. Uh, your girl friends crashed out when I crashed in."

"What girl friends?"

"San Francisco's gift to the sexually underprivileged. Panda Bare and Cynthia."

Her face reflected a sudden worry. "Oh! I didn't know they were here."

"Yeah, well, take a word from a guy who knows. Move out of this place for a few days. Little girls like to tell big secrets, and you're liable to have a lot of angry visitors before the day is done. I mean it, these guys play very rough games, and I don't think you'd like to be it."

She bit her lip and said, "I know."

He had his hand on the doorknob.

Breathlessly, she said, "Please don't go."

"Thanks for all," he told her, and opened the door.

The guy out there was as surprised as Bolan. He'd been tiptoeing along the hall toward Mary Ching's door, and he froze there in the sudden light, balancing on one foot, the eyes flaring in quick consternation.

Bolan didn't know the guy, but he knew the mold he'd been peeled from, and there was no possibility of a mistaken identification.

The torpedo went for his gun, the hand blurring in Bolan's vision as it swept inside the flapping coat.

Bolan's mind sliced into one of those flashing command decisions. He went for the silenced Beretta Belle instead of the burpgun, and there was no unnecessary cloth to get in the way.

The Belle leapt clear and tracked-on spitting, reflexively sending her first greeting smashing into the gunhand of the opponent and splattering it, then climbing for the heart and the head — and the Mafioso went down gurgling with three Parabellum hi-shock expanders displacing several cubic inches of vital matter.

Bolan stepped over the crumpled remains and ran to the stairwell, listening with quivering attention for the audible signs of another one. Where there was one of these, there were usually two.

Mary Ching lurched through the doorway and stood with her hands to her face, staring down at the dead man.

Bolan made a lunge back along the hall, shoved the girl inside, hissed, "Stay put!" — then quietly closed the door, making his way through the darkness, down the stairs, and across the small vestibule to the street.

The second man was standing directly across the way, barely visible and leaning nonchalantly against a store front.

It looked like a routine stake-out — or maybe simply an outside watch for what was supposed to be an easy inside hit.

Bolan stepped into the open and called over, "Hey!"

The guy jerked upright and almost turned himself around trying to slap some leather. The Belle sent a single silent sizzler across the pointblank range, and the Mafioso continued turning into a corkscrew to the sidewalk.

Bolan was there before the corpse could untangle itself. He hefted the dead weight onto a shoulder and carried it along the street to the alleyway, several doors down.

A convenient trash barrel behind a gift shop made the perfect repository. The Executioner left his mess there, then returned quickly to Mary Ching's.

She had disregarded his instructions, and had wrapped the bloodied corpse in a heavy" blanket and dragged it inside the apartment.

Bolan found her kneeling over the dead hood, going through his pockets.

She looked up with a frown and, in a faint voice, told Bolan, "I think I know this man. He — it's hard to say for sure, with his head all — like that — but I believe I've seen him at the club. He works for Franco Laurentis."

Bolan muttered, "Crazy Franco."

"That's the one. They called this man Ralph the Pretender. He was one of those cold, silent ones that stand around, see all, and say nothing."

Bolan pulled the girl to her feet and led her to the couch. She was sort of shook up. He guided her down, lit a cigarette, glared at her silently for a moment, then he told her, "Okay, it's time for a talk. What is Crazy Franco's interest in Mary Ching?"

She said, "I... I believe the interest is in Mr. Wo Fan. Obviously he was followed here."

"Then why didn't the tail stick with him? Why hang around here?"

"I don't know why."

"Maybe Ralph the Pretender came with Wo Fan, not behind him. Maybe he hung around outside until the boss left and sent him on up."

"That's ridiculous!"

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"It just is. Besides, I..."

"You what?"

"Nothing," she said sullenly. "You can leave now."

"Not yet. What were you doing at the China Gardens tonight?"

"I work there."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She dropped her eyes. "Well... actually I work for Mr. Wo Fan. We've had the China Gardens under surveillance. For some time."

"Why?"

"They — well you know what they do there."

"Sure. But why should Wo Fan care?"

"He cares about many things."

"Such as."

The dark eyes blazed defiantly. "Such as the dangerous way our government has started leaning toward an accommodation of mainland China."

"Try again," Bolan told her. "That's no reason to be watching Joe Fasco's operation. Is it?"

"There's more reason than you might think," she declared angrily. "The American underworld has been dealing with Red China for some time. Things have been bad enough around here, even with the official embargo on mainland cargoes. What do you think it's going to be like when the legitimate trade routes are opened?"

"I don't know," Bolan admitted. "Educate me."

"There isn't time for a cram course on political science and social economics." Her eyes flashed to the bundle on the floor. "What are we going to do about this dead man?"

Bolan said, "I'll worry about that. What is Wo Fan's immediate problem?"

"All the problems are immediate," she replied coldly. "At the moment, he is trying to assure the survival of the legitimate Chinese business community."

"And things are looking grim?"

The girl was beginning to thaw again. The hint of smile returned to her voice as she told him, "That's about the softest way of putting it."

It was time to twang her again.

He asked, "What were you doing at the China Gardens an hour after the doors closed this morning?"

"I was gathering intelligence."

"Uh huh. Of what nature?"

She glared at him for a moment, then she shrugged and said, "What's the difference? It's all in the fire now."

He said, "Give, dammit!"

"I was tracking a shipment."

"A shipment of what?"

"Counterfeit art treasures. Ming period, supposedly. They are arriving sometime this week."

Bolan did not necessarily believe her, but he went along. "By what route?"

She smiled wryly. "That's what I was about to discover when you blew the place up, Mr. Bolan. Why all the sudden interest? I was getting the idea that..."

"I'm trying to protect your lovely hide, lady. A hired assassin was standing just outside your door a couple of minutes ago. So listen to me now and think carefully before you answer. Can you think of any reason why Franco Laurentis would send a hit man to your door?"

"I... I guess not."

"When I first spotted you this morning, you were in a hell of a hurry. Almost as though someone was chasing you. Was there?"

She shook her head. "No. I'm sure I hadn't been seen. I was... just..."

"So you've convinced yourself that these two goons were tailing Wo Fan?"

"Yes I... what two goons?"

"There was another one waiting across the street," he explained.

"Did you?.."

He nodded. "Clean."

The girl sighed tremulously and showed him a pair of eyes that had taken in one bloody sight too many. She bit her lip and said, "Well I don't know what to think. I'm just about ready to say to hell with the whole thing."

He squeezed her shoulder and told her, "I guess it's too late for that." He pulled her off of the couch and gently nudged her toward the door. "Come on."

"Come on where?"

"We'll think about that on the way. Right now I just want you out of here and a hell of a long ways clear."

"Does that mean that you're going to go on protecting my hide?"

He growled, "For the moment, yeah."

There was also the matter of Ralph the Pretender. Bolan wrapped the remains tightly in the blanket and draped the package over his shoulder.