Bolan sheathed the AutoMag and knelt beside the dog to rub his throat and massage the quivering ribcage.
Something was coming alive in Marsha Thornton's dead eyes as she watched the tall man with the impassive face stroke the suffering animal. She murmured, "I wouldn't believe that if I hadn't seen it. I was assured that Thunder would protect me from a grizzly bear."
Bolan said, "He would."
His jacket was ripped and he was bleeding slightly from a fang-graze on his hand.
The woman rolled onto her knees and stood up. "Come on up to the house," she suggested. "I'll put something on that cut."
The Doberman was licking the fingers which had defeated him, and Bolan was thinking what a shame it was to misuse a dog this way. Man's oldest friend in the animal world, converted to a living robot, programmed to kill upon command.
The dog and Mack Bolan had a great deal in common — Bolan realized that. He'd pondered the question after a run-in with a couple of German Shepherds during the New York battle. And he'd decided then that there was a difference — subtle but important — between himself and the killer dog.
The dogs killed because they were conditioned to accept a command to do so. In a dog's world it was a sort of a morality to be obedient to his master's desires. Actually, Bolan knew, guard-dogs killed because they had to kill. There was no mental or moral alternative.
Bolan did not have to kill.
He killed because he could— and because, like the dogs, there was no mental or moral alternative.
So, yeah, he had a lot in common with the Doberman — but with a difference. A very important difference.
He pushed the thing from his mind and followed Marsha Thornton to her beach house, the Doberman huffing along at his side.
It seemed that he had made a conquest.
If all went well, he would very soon make another.
While Bolan cultivated the distaff side of the House of Thornton, Schwarz and Blancanales invaded an impressively modern skyscraper in downtown San Diego for a call upon the master himself.
The solid oak door was marked GOLDEN WEST DIVERSITIES, INC. and the suite of offices on the other side of it were strictly gilt-edged, redolent with the sweet smell of success.
Among the diversified interests of Maxwell Thornton was petroleum, real estate, electronics, agriculture, and transportation. He had also been very active in politics, as a behind-the-scenes power in local, state, and national campaigns.
Blancanales had donned a pale blue nylon suit with coordinated accessories — the collar of the shirt with exaggerated dimensions, the tie immaculately knotted, powder-blue hat low over the eyes — altogether a splendiferous image, and altogether the perfect picture of a Mafioso in full dress.
Schwarz wore old-fashioned pleated slacks, sport shirt with loose tie, checkered sports coat, no hat. He looked like a cross between a Tijuana pimp and an Agua Caliente racetrack tout.
Both images had been meticulously contrived.
The receptionist stared at them for a moment, then announced, "I'm sorry, Mr. Thornton is in conference."
"You'd better get him outta there, honey," Blancanales growled in his best Brooklynese.
Schwarz had spun the woman's appointments book around and was studying it.
Blancanales nudged the flustered receptionist again with, "Hop, now!— go tell the man we're here."
"I-I'll see if he's back in his office," the girl replied, thoroughly intimidated now. She depressed a button on her desk intercom and said, "Mr. Thornton — two gentlemen to see you. It appears urgent. They — I think you should."
A tired voice sighed back, "Do the gentlemen have names, Janie?"
Schwarz brushed the receptionist's hand aside and held the intercom button himself as he replied, "Yeh, but you wouldn't want 'em shouted around this joint, Thornton."
"Come on in," was the quick response. The girl showed them the way. Blancanales patted her shoulder as he brushed past her and into the private office of Maxwell Thornton.
The entire outside wall was glass, and there was a fair-sized balcony beyond that with potted trees and other growing things. The city was spread out there for inspection in a most impressive view.
The man sat at a kidney-shaped desk with probably fifty to sixty square feet of surface on top which supported nothing except a telephone, an intercom box, and an open fifth of Haig & Haig. The guy was drinking the Scotch from a water glass, undiluted.
He didn't look the part of millionaire, civic light, city father. He looked like a guy who'd just stepped down from a hot bulldozer to hurry into a hand-tailored suit which still somehow didn't quite fit. A tall man, lanky, sort of gangly and rawboned, well past fifty.
The voice fit the rest of him as he waved his visitors to chairs and told them, "Well, I guess the shit has hit the fan, hasn't it?"
Schwarz picked up the bottle of Scotch and sat down. Blancanales remained standing. He said, "Bolan's in town."
Thornton sighed, sipped at his drink, then said, "I know it."
"Gettin' loaded ain't gonna help."
"Get fucked," Thornton growled. "Bennie send you? What's he want me to do, lead a vigilante army?"
"Bennie don't send us," Schwarz informed him.
The gray steel eyes came up in a quick flash. "New York? You're from New York?"
Blancanales jerked his head in a nod and ambled to the window.
"Who are you?"
Schwarz replied. "The boss is Harry DiCavoli. I'm Jack Santo. You're in trouble, Thornton."
The millionaire grunted and said, "I was born in trouble. I suppose you heard about Howlie Winters."
"We heard," Blancanales spoke up, from the window. "We wanta talk to you about that, Thornton."
"You people squeezed him too damn hard!" the man declared angrily. "I told you he wouldn't hold still for that."
"You told me nothing," Blancanales/DiCavoli replied.
"I told Bennie, and I urged him to relay the advice to New York. Look ... Winters was a square. A guy like that will dabble in the shit pile, but he won't take a bath in it. I told you this whole thing was too much for him to swill."
"I guess you better speak for yourself, man," Blancanales said.
"What do you mean? Look...." The guy was getting hotter by the minute. He pushed back his chair and lifted himself to his full height, and it was an impressive one. He was waving his arms as he spoke. "I had to swim in shit to get where I am. I'll never deny that, except in a court of law. I've had the course, buddy. I've been there and back, several times. You goddam ghetto street-corner lawyers didn't invent the game, and you don't play it very well. The only edge you've got is that you play it rougher than most. Well, get fucked, will you please? I've had it up to the throat with you, all of you."
Blancanales muttered, "You want me to go back East and tell 'em that?"
The guy had moved away from the desk. He was standing spread-legged, coat gaping open, hands thrust into hip pockets, glowering at the man at the window. His eyes dropped, slowly, and his voice was dying away as he replied, "No ... I guess I don't want you to do that."
"That's just what we come to find out."
"I can take the heat, if that's what's worrying you."
Schwarz had risen from his chair and edged his backside onto the desk. With Thornton engrossed in the confrontation with eastern authority, he was quietly and swiftly taking the telephone apart.
"That ain't all," Blancanales was saying. "We been waiting long enough for this deal. Now with Winters out of the picture, we have to wonder...."