Don Pendleton - The Bone Yard

The woman with the answers — some of them at any rate — was waiting for him just beyond the bedroom door.

He had required some privacy for his communication with Brognola, but the time had come to see exactly what she knew.

If anything.

And Tommy Anders knew exactly how to go about it. He was an expert. Wit and charm would do the trick.

"Well, now..." He froze in the open bedroom doorway, instantly forgetting everything he planned to say. He would not need it now.

There was nobody left to say it to.

The woman had slipped out on him while he was on the line to Wonderland.

"Goddammit!"

He had kissed off his one and only chance to tend a hand in Bolan's desert war. His chance was gone, the woman was gone... and only open-ended questions lingered on.

Where had she gone?

And why?

If it was lack of trust in Anders, Lucy's urge to find a haven of her own, they had no problem. But if she had run to grandpa, say, or to Jack Goldblume, telling tales...

She knew who Bolan was; the comic felt it in his gut although no words had passed between them in his presence that would make it firm. He got it from the way she looked at Bolan, listened to him as if she was trying to remember every word for future reference.

She could be trouble, no doubt about it. Even if she went directly to the law or to her Wang terminal with the story, rather than to Grandpa Abe, she could be signing Bolan's death certificate."

"Dammit!" And again, with feeling. "Damn it!"

Tommy Anders did not like the helpless feeling, but he knew that he had played his only ace already.

If Hal Brognola and his troops could not help Bolan, there was nothing that a stand-up comic could accomplish on his own.

The greatest solitary player of them all was out there on the streets already, carrying the fire for all of those who had to stand by watching helplessly. With any luck at all, his martial skills and sheer audacity would be enough.

America's ethnician reached the bar in three long strides and found himself a fifth of rye. He had already called in "sick" for the remainder of the evening and his replacement would be well into the second show by now. As for Tommy Anders, he was settling down to have a drink or two — or ten — and keeping watch along the home front.

He only hoped it would not be a death watch for the Executioner.

"Come on, we haven't got much time," Abe Bernstein said agitatedly. "Let's wrap it up."

The three of them were meeting in his office at the Gold Rush. It was risky, but his two companions were familiar faces in the hotel and casino. They could pass unnoticed in the mounting chaos going on outside his door, and it was safer now to have them visit him in person than to talk their business on the phones, which Frank Spinoza would no doubt be monitoring.

They were relatively safe for the moment, but Abe Bernstein still felt a sense of urgency. He had delegated much of his responsibility in clearing out the Gold Rush to his underlings, but he would have to let himself be seen around the premises or run the risk of bringing down suspicion on himself.

And that, at this precarious stage, could be disastrous.

Across the desk from Bernstein, his companions had the air of generals on the eve of an invasion — confident, but with a sort of tension, an expectancy about them that was thinly veiled. Jack Goldblume, patriarch of the Las Vegas Daily Beacon and a friend for over forty years, was slender, seventy, and looking fit from daily workouts in his private gym. And, Bernstein knew, from private workouts with a sleek succession of young would-be show girls in his bedroom. Decades after they were separated in a widely celebrated falling-out, old Jack was still his good right hand, still handling the press whenever Bernstein needed a kind word-or a gaff delivered to his enemies.

The media would play a crucial role across the next few hours and days as all the pieces fell into their designated slots. Abe Bernstein meant his version of the story to be first out on the wire; whatever followed would be running second best.

On Goldblume's right sat Harry Thorson, bearing strong resemblance to a troll decked out in Western gear, with patterned sequins on his jacket and a snakeskin band encircling his roll-brim Stetson. His face was deeply tanned, like ancient saddle leather, with a paler knife scar staggering from the corner of his right eye to the jowl, now flabby and gone soft with time.

A Texas native, Thorson came to Vegas close behind Abe Bernstein in the forties. Texan lawmen sought his extradition on a range of charges that included homicide, extortion and a host of others. But strategic contributions to the reelection efforts of an understanding governor had kept him safe and sound inside Nevada while the statutes ran and legal deadlines passed unnoticed. The Alamo Casino, down the gulch from Bernstein's Gold Rush, was a living monument to Thorson's gratitude; the understanding governor, retired now, and a host of relatives were permanently on the payroll.

The aging cowboy still had muscle in Las Vegas and up north, around the capital at Carson City.

They would have need of those political connections soon, before the battlesmoke had settled in Las Vegas.

"The PR'S covered, Abe," Jack Goldblume said. "Whichever way it goes..."

"It better only — go one way, Jack," Harry Thorson interjected.

"It'll go," Abe Bernstein told them both. "I've got our people on the job already. When New York checks in, we'll help them feel at home."

"That's some room service," Thorson chortled. "Tuck 'em in and put their ass to sleep. I love it."

Goldblume shifted uneasily in his chair.

"We have to be especially careful," he reminded no one in particular. "I can keep a lid on what goes down inside here — maybe I can keep the lid on — but if anything slops over to the streets..."

"Don't give yourself an ulcer, Jack. Let's take it as it comes." Bernstein turned to Harry Thorson. "What's the word from Carson City?"

Thorson shrugged.

"Whispers, rumbles — you know the route. No one's gonna miss Spinoza or the rest of them, but natcherly they can't come out and say so for the record. If Frankie and his crew should turn up missing — well, I get the feeling that there won't be any posses tearing up the countryside to find 'em."

Thorson's message was not lost on Bernstein.

The law could not assist them, but it would not interfere as long as it could look the other way discreetly.

And Abe Bernstein was the soul of discretion.

"Fair enough," he said. "We'll have to clean it up ourselves, and keep it clean."

"How many guns they bringing?" Harry asked.

Bernstein shrugged distractedly.

"I haven't got a head count yet. Let's figure somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty."

Goldblume whistled softly to himself.

"That's an army," he said.

Bernstein raised a curious eyebrow.

"Getting nervous, Jack?" he asked.

Goldblume turned indignant.

"Hell, no. I just hate to see it come so far and then run out of steam."

"We're ready, Jack. Believe it. You just mind the headlines and stand clear."

"Sure, Abe, I just thought..."

"Don't think, Jack. It'll get you into trouble."

Goldblume looked hurt and Bernstein quickly moved to salve his old friend's wounded feelings.

"Listen, I'll be counting on your series to provide the background for some sudden disappearances. You up for it?"

The newsman nodded, making a show of self-assurance.

"Another day or two, at most — the Sunday supplement, for sure. We'll have it on the stands before Spinoza and the others turn up missing."

"Fine. We'll let the locals give you credit for a cleaner Vegas."

"What about New York? Chicago?" Goldblume asked. "Those boys won't take it lying down."