"Don't worry, you'll get your stuff. With or without Winters. But listen — what's the name — DiCavoli? — listen, DiCavoli, this is no dime-store radio, you know. We're into defense security violation when we start messing around with this kind of gear."
Schwarz's ears perked up at that. His work at the telephone was finished. He moved toward the other men and joined the conversation. "That's right, Harry. It's not dime-store stuff."
Blancanales quickly picked up the play. "A radio's a radio," he sniffed. "What's such a big deal?"
Thornton coldly returned Schwarz's gaze as he replied to the other "Mafioso." "An L-band feeder horn is a hell of a big deal when you start stealing them from the military."
"Well we gotta know," Blancanales pushed on. "Are you going to deliver or aren't you?"
"Of course I'm going to deliver! But, my God, you don't just muscle your way into — "
"It's heavy stuff, Harry," Schwarz helpfully butted in. He was probing, now — feeling his way. At the same time, he was establishing a sympathetic relationship with the harried millionaire who'd lingered too long near the tar pit. "You can't pick up a feeder horn at the supermarket, y'know. This stuff is heavy, I mean heavy. What is it, Max — about six hundred megs?"
Thornton inclined his head in a deliberate nod. He was giving Schwarz a respectful examination now, wondering, pondering the enigma of a Tijuana pimp who spoke with an understanding of sophisticated communications gear.
Schwarz was "explaining" to Blancanales/DiCavoli. "Y'see, these data links, you pencil-beam into a dish antenna up in the L-band, around six hundred megacycles. It's like a beam of light, only you don't see it. You don't get no side lobes off the pulse envelopes, so there ain't much danger of the FCC or somebody latching onto you. Right, Max?"
Thornton again nodded his head. "It's foolproof," he murmured.
"And the stuff is hard to come by," Schwarz went on explaining. "You don't just walk up and ask a government contractor to make you one. You'd have the FCC all over your ass the second you tried to put it on the air — and in no time you'd have feds swarming all over your operation. What Max is saying is simply this: we gotta be patient while he carves one out of a contract. Right, Max?"
Thornton quietly replied, "Yes. Just like the last one."
"I guess I wasn't in on that one," Blancanales declared innocently.
"Just who are you people?" Thornton asked, his voice barely audible.
"We came with the man," Blancanales replied, dropping the street accent.
"What man?" Thornton asked wearily.
"Bolan," Schwarz said, soberly studying their victim.
The guy walked jerkily back to his desk and sat down. He poured several fingers of Haig & Haig into his glass and belted it, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
"I've been there and back," he declared quietly.
"But I sure talked myself into this one, didn't I?"
"Keep trying," Blancanales suggested. "Maybe you'll talk your way out of something."
"You're in deep shit, Max," Schwarz said gently.
The guy was trapped, and he knew it. He studied his empty glass for a moment, then raised resigned eyes to Gadgets Schwarz. "I was born in shit," he murmured.
"So now you got a chance to wipe yourself," Schwarz told him. "How about it?"
"Full redemption, huh?"
"We can't promise that."
"All right," the self-made millionaire muttered. "Pass the toilet paper."
14
Tar
Bolan's interrogation of Marsha Thornton was revealing very little in the nature of direct intelligence, but she was filling in quite a bit of background insight into the San Diego situation.
"Max is quite a bit older than I am, you know," she told Bolan in that curious turned-off voice. "I wouldn't mind that. I mean, I guess I love him. He's a perfect husband ... in every way but one. Gives me everything I want. Except himself. He… can't. So I have to go find that somewhere else."
"And Max just turns his head, eh."
"Yes. He understands. He just asks that I be … discreet. I guess I've caused him a lot of embarrassment, just the same."
"It figures," Bolan told her.
"Yes. Well, you'd have to know my husband to understand how gross all this could be for him. I mean, a man like him. Well... I have no apologies to make to anyone, except to Max I guess, and he won't let me. He simply understands. I've had a hunger ever since my boobs started budding, Mr. Bolan. I can't turn it off. Don't get the wrong idea. I'm no nympho. But when I'm hungry, I'm hungry."
Bolan murmured, "I can understand that." He was getting a bit of an itch, himself.
"You probably think I'm a nympho," she said, deadpanning a sidewise gaze in his direction. He got very few direct looks from this one. "It's okay, you may as well think it. Everybody else does. I've been in analysis. My analyst says I am definitely not a nympho."
Bolan said, "Okay."
"I hated those hoods. They just kept hanging around Max. Oh, they never came through the front door ... don't worry. But they were always around, always popping up, always underfoot. We'd go out to dinner, and there they'd be. We'd go to a club, and there they'd be." She sighed, a long painful effort. "I guess I figured they may as well be in the bedroom, too. Instant manpower."
Bolan told her, "You don't have to get into this if you'd rather not. I had the Winters telephone tapped. I heard your conversation with Lisa this morning."
That revelation drew not so much as a blink of the eyes. "Lisa's a good kid. We're about the same age, you know. Body age, not soul age. God, my soul must be a million years old."
Bolan could almost believe it.
"I guess, really, I was trying to punish Max by balling his underworld pals. I guess I was getting back at him."
"Humiliating him," Bolan suggested.
"That's what my analyst says. He calls it soiling myself in my husband's own dirt pile. Oh ... it's humiliated him, all right. But as soon as I realized it, I broke it off. You know, I cut out." The deadened eyes traveled to the dog. "That's when I got Thunder. Those hoods wouldn't take no as an answer, not from me. They'd just walk in and grab me by the ass, throw me a quick one, and walk out laughing. Boy. Talk about humiliation. Well, that was six months ago. Lisa was taking lessons at this kennels out on Cabrillo Highway, learning to handle the dogs. I decided to take the training with her, and I ended up with old Thunder here."
She surprised Bolan with a girlish giggle. "Today was the first time I ever ordered him to attack and wow, did you see him getting with it!"
He growled, "Yeah, I saw it."
"I'm really glad he didn't hurt you. You're a nice man, so far I guess. But I had to have Thunder, see. I found out those hoods were passing me around between them, giggling and snickering about me, and I'm sure it all got back to Max. His nympho wife."
The girl shivered and suddenly stood up. She was still clad only in the micro-bikini, bottom only, nothing else. She crossed her arms over the bare chest and walked out onto the sun deck. Thunder trotted along after her.
Bolan drifted out there, also. He stood behind her and gazed over her head at the impossibly blue Pacific with its foaming leading edges rolling onto the beach just below them.
It all seemed, suddenly, totally unreal.