"You think they ran a make on you?"

"I know they did. Soon as I got away from there I beat it to a Washington hotline and passed the word to my buddy in the fingerprint bureau. He punched my prints into the computer as Linda Williams, with a bust in Houston for indecent exposure and lewd performance in a public place. The very next day I got the tip from Washington that an official ID request had come in through regular police channels. It's no secret that the mob owns cops everywhere. Well, later when Quaso and I became pals, he just had to get cute and let me know that he knew about my sordid past. I pouted then, until he told me how he found out. He said they'd had some trouble a while back with 'a broad' who'd been playing games with them. Since then, they were taking pains to know who they were playing with."

"He made no bones about his underworld connections?"

"He bragged about it," Toby said. "Shall I tell you how many times I had to sit through The Godfather?"

"He's not bragging now," Bolan said quietly. "So I loused up your direct connection. I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she said. "I already had all I was going to get from Tony the Louse. I think that place out there on Grosse Pointe is holding some secrets, though."

"Is that just instinct? Or do you have something solid?"

"About half and half. One night after Quaso and I had … gone to bed, he got a call from someone in Toronto. It was just monosyllables from our end, but I caught a word or two from Toronto. Something about a special shipment of meat, great stuff, that kind of talk. Quaso wrote something on a pad by the phone. Next morning the pad was clean, but I picked the impressions off the sheet below. It was just two groups of numerals. One was 1492 — fourteen ninety-two — the other was a time, 6:30. Now what does 1492 suggest to you?"

Bolan muttered, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

"Right. And the Sons of Columbus have themselves a dandy little yacht club smack on the Canadian border."

"Okay, it could mean something."

"Sure, it could."

He sighed. "You need help, Toby."

"Is that an offer?"

"Helpmeet."

"What?"

He showed her a sober smile. "The Canuck helped save my skin once."

"I guess it's an offer," she said, giving him a perplexed gaze. "I, uh, I couldn't have asked you, Mack. You've got enough to..."

He said, "I need a new angle of attack, anyway."

"Well..."

"We need to hit directly at the source."

"Toronto?"

He nodded glumly. "You still have a pilot's license?"

"Sure. I'm Toby. Fly me anywhere."

"You'll have to leave your badge at home."

"Oh, sure. I told you, I'm on leave."

"I'm the boss. You do what I say when I say it."

"You're the boss," she agreed soberly. "When do we start?"

"How does five minutes sound?"

She leaned across the table to plant a kiss on his lips, holding her own there in light contact as she told him, "Like music, Captain Quick. Like a fresh new sound from a fresh new place. God loves you, Captain Wonderful."

Bolan wasn't so sure about God, but the message from the helpmeet was very clear.

And, this time, he couldn't decide whether it was good or bad.

Necessary, though, yeah. Cosmic magic, maybe.

The onus, for damned sure.

10

Backtracked

Toby first placed a brief call to Toronto — then she rented a Beechcraft single-engine job, and they flew due north out of Detroit before angling eastward across Lake Huron for the penetration of Canadian airspace.

She was a good pilot and an excellent seat-of-the-pants navigator. They crossed the width of the Ontario boot and reached Toronto without incident, putting down at a small field near the shoreline of Lake Ontario.

A few brief words from Toby cleared a path there and saw them speeding into the city, minutes later, in a rented car.

Bolan did not ask, nor was he told about the "special arrangement" that the girl enjoyed. He suspected that it had to do with Georgette's "someone big with the police establishment." He knew that someone with considerable authority, and probably great concern for the fate of the missing policewoman, was working some magic for them.

They reached the "suspect place" on Toronto Harbour while the day was still young. Following Bolan's instructions, Toby canvassed the neighborhood in two slow passes, then she parked directly at the entrance to Simon's Grotto, a "girls girls girls" joint that apparently catered to the waterfront crowd.

The girl remained with the vehicle while Bolan made a frontal assault on the problem. He wore a dark, neatly tailored suit, nylon turtleneck, and the Beretta Belle.

Simon's was dark, reeking with a thousand identifiable odors, and mostly empty of patrons. A narrow doorway with a chair placed in the opening divided the joint — into day and night, probably.

"Day" was a long bar with greasy wooden stools and a line of small tables along the outside wall.

"Night" was a fair-sized lounge with many tables jammed close together, now with chairs upended atop them. A large stage spanned the far end.

There was a smaller stage in the day room, behind the bar. It held a couple of wicker props and a life-sized poster of a fetching filly called Tootles LaFleur, below which was scrawled the announcement: Luncheon Show.

Yeah. Bolan could see it with his inner eye: luncheon with Tootles — bare bouncing boobs with beer and a cheese sandwich and pretzels to lift a guy briefly from deadening monotony and hopeless mortality. Sure, every man sought his own cosmic magic at the level available.

The guy behind the bar had no magic left whatever. He gave Bolan a disinterested greeting and waddled along the backbar like a walrus on his final march to the sea.

"No lunch 'til eleven," the barman announced from several paces back. "You want beer, we got — "

"Where's the boss?" Bolan growled.

"What?"

He pinned the guy to his tracks with a fierce glare and a voice of sheer ice. "The man, damn it!"

"Oh, he uh ..."

"Don't screw around. It's a long way from Detroit."

"Oh, sure," the walrus said, glad to be relieved of further thought and, therefore, responsibility. "Just through the door there, turn left. Office is behind the stage. You'll find it."

Bolan found it with no difficulty whatever and with no loss of time. He was moving quickly along a narrow hallway when the door presented itself, bearing the neat sign: "Mister Simon. Private."

Bolan presented the door with two hundred pounds moving fast behind a driving foot, and the flimsy thing splintered away in full surrender.

Two guys were seated at a table along the back wall. One was stacking currency, the other was feeding coins into a counting machine — or, that's what they had been doing.

Now they were lunging onto their feet and grabbing for revolvers that were perhaps no more than a heartbeat too far away. The Belle leapt into that void and sealed it there — one heartbeat away — with a pair of rustling little persuaders that had no respect whatever for the privacy of mere flesh and bone.

One of the guys spun into the wall. The other hit the corner of the table and the whole thing went over.

A fortyish guy behind a rickety desk gasped, "My God! My God!"

The guy had no god, and he must have known it right away. Both hands immediately .shot skyward, and he stammered, "No — not armed — wait!"

Bolan went over there and placed the warm muzzle of the Belle at the center of Mister Simon's forehead.

"Take it!" the guy gasped. "Hell, it's yours, I'm giving it to you. Take it!"

The icy Bolan gaze slid disdainfully to the scattered stacks of bloodsoaked currency. "That? I didn't come for that."