The woman was about fifty, and she knew Bolan all right, but she was not made of Theresa's stuff. She began screaming in breathless yelps — he had to go over and slap her a couple of times to shut her up.

"Where's your husband?" he again demanded.

"I don't know!" she yelled back. "Isn't he here?"

Frustation swept the bed-tray away and it hit the floor with a crash and a splattering of coffee, then he pulled the covers away from her and dragged her out of the bed. She wore a heavy nightgown and a short bedjacket and she was a pretty goodsized gal, thick through the chest like an opera singer with hips to match. She'd been a beauty once, though, and traces of it still lingered there behind the misshapen flesh.

He pulled her terrified face close to his and snarled into it. "All I want is Freddie. Now you tell me damn quick where to find him."

No, she was no Theresa or Valentina. There was guilt in that face, knowledge of evil and a complicit acceptance of it, and Bolan had seen her kind before also. Somehow he just could not see Maria and Theresa as buddies, and he wondered just how much of that idea had been Sam Chianti's own.

"H-he left about a h-half hour ago," she was chattering. "I don't know where, Holy Mother I don't know."

Yeah, Holy Mother, take care of her murderous jackal of a psychotic husband so he could continue to rape the world for Maria's fancy houses and animal comforts. Bolan had to wonder, could she really know what went into the upkeep of an empire like Gambella's?

The woman must have read Bolan's thoughts. "Now listen, mister," she told him in a voice that was struggling hard for control. "You have it all wrong about Fred. Why don't you just leave him alone? You're the one causing all the trouble. Fred is a good man, and he only does what he has to do to protect his business. Any man would do that. Any man will fight to protect his investments."

Maybe she didn'tknow. Maybe she'd insulated herself from the reality in much the same manner as Chianti had described his own adjustments. Growling Outrage told her, "Okay, lady, you asked for it. I'm going to show you one of this good man's latest investments."

He dragged her out of there and down the curving mahogany, and she was protesting and pleading all the way in a choked garbling of words. Bolan just couldn't feel sorry for her, all the sorrow had been wrung out of him in a confrontation with one of her husband's turkeys.

She gasped and hyperventilated as Bolan pushed her past the fallen man in the downstairs hall, and she nearly came all the way unglued when she had to step over the bloodied Andy-eggs-juice cocktail on the kitchen floor.

Bolan steered her out the door and she cried, "I can't go out like this!"

He ignored her protest, pulled her over to the VW, opened the side doors, and made her crawl inside. Then he dragged her back to where the mutilated girl lay, and gently he unwrapped the shroud of cheesecloth, and as Maria Gambella became confronted with a reality without insulation she came apart then and there. She fought Bolan for the doorway, shrieking and scratching and clawing her way out of there, and she went out in a tumble, squawking as she hit the ground.

Bolan jumped out behind her, pulled her to her feet, then helped her inside the house. He put her in a chair in the dining room and brought her some water. She ignored the offer, staring at the floor with a frozen face and panting raggedly with her exertions.

Quietly, Bolan told her, "That's the kind of business your husband promotes, Mrs. Gambella. And I want to talk to him about it. Now you tell me where he is."

"You go straight to hell," she panted.

"You tell me, or I'm going to carry that pathetic side of meat into this house, and I'm going to put her in your bed, and I'm going to tie you in there with her."

The woman's eyes rolled toward her forehead and the blood drained from her face. In a choked voice, she said, "All right, smart guy. I hope you do find him, and that will be the end of you. But I don't know where he went, and you can believe that or not. He just said he had a date with some girls, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he did. He's a man, my husband. A red, manl"

Utter Disgust told her, "He sure is, Mrs. Gambella."

But there was more than disgust in that tortured mind, there was a sudden shivering fear that Maria Gambella had told him quite a bit more about her husband's plan of the day than she'd realized.

He told her, "You better call the fire department."

"Why should I call the… ?"

"Because I'm going to burn down your lousy palace, Mrs. Gambella."

Bolan went back through the kitchen, and the woman came scurrying after him.

"What are you talking about?" she yelled.

He went on to the VW and she hopped anxiously about just outside the house, loudly wanting to know what he'd meant by that remark as he reached into the bus and hauled out the bag of incendiaries.

He delayed long enough to kneel beside one of the fallen yardmen and strip off his overcoat. He threw it at Gambella's Queen and ordered her to put it on, then he picked up his bag and went back inside the house. He scattered the incendiaries in appropriate places, and when he returned to the carport the woman was gone. He climbed into the VW, backed around, and got out of there.

A cluster of curious people were on the sidewalk staring toward the house, attracted probably by the earlier rattling of gunfire. It had been a quick hit, all considered, but he had overplayed his timetable by several minutes and as Bolan knew the cops would be along any time now he wasted no further time in clearing the area.

As he made the turn off of 155th Street, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw flames leaping into the sky and he smiled grimly over small compensations and turned his mind toward the larger ones.

First, though, he had to stop by an East Side highrise to try his hand at reading some Manhattan Indian signs. He shivered, wondering again about the identity of the girls Freddie Gambella had gone off so early in the morning to "date."

You'd better not, Freddie, he was thinking. He would follow that guy all the way to hell, and if he found him there he would gladly stay to personally supervise the eternal torment of that monster.

Yeah, Freddie Gambella was a monstrosity, just like that burning joint of his back there. So was his old lady, and so was anybody and everybody who made a living from the Gambella "business enterprises."

"You'd just better not, Freddie," Bolan murmured aloud. The Executioner was some kind of a monstrosity himself.

Chapter Fourteen

Options

It was getting onto mid-morning. The streets were in fair condition and the big city was humming into the day as though the storm had never come. Bolan had been driving aimlessly allowing his mind to settle back into sanity. He had a dead girl on his hands, and he had several large-size problems to be considered on behalf of the living. He knew that he had to concentrateon the living, and just now that meant Paula and Rachel.

Bolan's only hope was that the two girls had made it out of that apartment and to a safe place before Gambella learned of their existence. It was a frail hope. There was no doubt whatever Evie had told everything Gambella had wanted her to tell, and she had probably told it very early into the night of her torment.

It had taken the kid a long time to die, that much had been quite obvious. Bolan never ceased to marvel at how long a healthy body could sustain brutal assaults upon non-vital functions and go on living. Death had unquestionably come to Evie Clifford as a slow advance into massive shock, brought on by continued torment and a gradual loss of blood. The monsters had known their business, and they'd kept her alive and aware for one hell of a long time.