The address Griff had given Bolan was in a warehouse in that no-man's-land, deserted after dark except for the very lowest scum, near the teeming black ghetto of Chicago's South Side.
The neighborhood was rundown, with little traffic on the streets. Trash blew in the gutters as Bolan strode along the cracked sidewalk.
If Griff was telling the truth, there was trash in the warehouse up ahead, too.
A pornographer Bolan should not have let off so easy once before.
Or a trap. A police trap or, if Griff was a bad cop, maybe another Mob trap. Yeah, it could be that, Bolan knew.
He eyeballed the warehouse and its immediate environs carefully from a deep-shadowed doorway across the empty, dark street.
It was a towering structure, appearing as uninhabited as the rest of this vicinity at this hour.
A trap?
Maybe, but Bolan did not think so, not this time, and he would not have turned back anyway.
He wanted Parelli dead too damn bad...
The windows of the warehouse were boarded up and so was the big sliding door near the loading dock.
Bolan left the shadows of his position, moving rapidly, AutoMag in hand, across the street to the side wall of the warehouse.
A streetlight at the far end of the block cast a dirty circle of illumination down at the next corner that did not reach this far. There were several economy cars... and a Lancia that had to be Owens's, he thought... parked there.
He gained the wall of the warehouse and paused another moment, his combat senses flaring, his internal radar probing the night around him for danger.
Sounds of the city carried faintly to him from somewhere else, distant rumbles of an elevated train uptown in the Loop, of a siren heading somewhere, not in this direction. The barely discernible noises of the night were muffled by this warehouse district as if that were another world where people dared to congregate, not like this sleazy, night-blanketed neighborhood of desolation and danger.
He wore his blacksuit, blending with the wall of the building. He moved along it, looking for a way in.
There was a smaller door next to the big one, but Bolan did not try it to find out if it was unlocked. Even if it was, he did not want to make his entrance that way.
He turned down an alley that ran alongside the warehouse. He headed for the rear of the building.
There were high windows along this side of the building, but they were well out of his reach.
On the rear wall of the building, he found a smaller window, this one only eight feet or so off the ground.
Behind the warehouse was a vacant lot, and on the other side of that he saw the rear walls of other warehouses.
He had the night to himself, or seemed to.
With a quick little spring, he grabbed the narrow sill of the window and chinned himself up level with it.
The glass was smudged and dirty, but by squinting he could make out the general outlines of a bathroom inside.
No one was in the bathroom, at least not unless they were crouching directly beneath the window out of his line of vision.
He tried shoving the window up, but it had been nailed shut.
No surprise there.
He supported himself easily with one hand gripping the sill and the toes of his boots pressed against the warehouse wall. With the other hand, he slapped the AutoMag against the window, several short, sharp raps with the butt, dislodging the filthy panes of glass. He was then able to break the two pieces of wood that formed a cross in the center of the window.
There was some noise, but not much.
He doubted that it could have been heard even more than a foot beyond the bathroom door, and he was gambling there was no one that close on the other side.
He releathered the AutoMag, then hoisted himself up and through the little opening. His wide shoulders made for a tight fit, but he pushed himself on through and dropped lightly into the close confines and the terrible stench of this bathroom.
When he was standing on the peeling linoleum floor, he again drew the AutoMag, went to the door and put his ear to it.
From somewhere in the warehouse, the sound of soft music came to his ears.
Outside the building he had not been able to hear a thing.
The place was probably soundproofed, which made sense if it was indeed Randy Owens's studio for making porno movies, as Griff had claimed.
Bolan reached down with his left hand and turned the doorknob, easing the door open slowly.
Nearly impenetrable gloom gathered thickly on the other side of that door.
The building had an unpleasant, rotting smell that wasn't much better than the pigsty stench of the bathroom.
He made sure there was no one in the immediate vicinity of the bathroom, then slipped through the doorway, closing it behind him.
The place was not as vacant as it had appeared from outside.
In fact, it was packed with equipment and large sections of plasterboard that Bolan identified as parts of movie sets that had been disassembled and stored back here.
It was hard to tell too much in the gloom, but it looked like almost any kind of set could be put together from the pieces stored here: a bedroom, of course, but also exterior backdrops and sets for other rooms like a phony office or a living room, some of the sets already assembled.
Bolan flitted from shadow to shadow through the collection of studio mock-ups.
He was drawn by the music and lights emanating from one of the sets at the front of this ground-level section of the warehouse.
As he neared it, he saw that the main piece of furniture on this otherwise almost empty set was a massive water bed.
The set was lit by two big banks of klieg lights that cast bright, glaring illumination down upon the scene.
On the water bed romped a man and two women, all three of them totally naked.
They were trying to look as if they were enjoying themselves, but instead they just looked sweaty and tired.
Off to one side was a cameraman, perched behind his camera.
Next to him stood Randy Owens, who occasionally called out commands to his actors, usually telling them to move a certain way so that the camera angle wouldn't be blocked.
The setting stank of poor ventilation, stale sweat and sex.
The music came from a small stereo unit just out of camera range. Obviously, it was playing just to set the mood. The soundtrack for the film would be dubbed in later.
The soundtrack wasn't very important in this kind of movie, anyway.
Randy Owens looked not too much the worse for wear after being kneed in the crotch by Denise Parelli and knocked on the head by Mack Bolan a few hours ago. He looked haggard but with all his attention focused on his cast cavorting on the water bed as he directed them.
What interested Bolan the most were the four men standing with Owens.
Three of them were strictly Mafia soldiers, big and brawny but none too bright, watching the action on the water bed, their coarse faces intent, their attention seemingly absorbed by the fanciful contortions of grinding flesh.
The fourth guy was watching with a more objective eye.
An accountant's eye.
Griff had called it, all right. Parelli's Mob had more than a finger in the distribution setup for Owens's porn films, and more than likely the sandy-haired man in sunglasses and expensive suit was here to keep check on Owens's operation and protect the family investment.
Bolan was here to pump Owens for a direct lead to Parelli, but it looked as if he would have to wade through some slime first.
"All right, all right," Owens called out tiredly to the three on the water bed. "That's enough of this shit for now. Thanks for those academy-award performances," he added sarcastically.
The naked man on the water bed, a muscled hunk with a stupid face, swung his legs off and stood up, seemingly oblivious of his nude state, disgust evident on his face.
"You think it's easy getting turned on with these harpies, you're welcome to try, Owens," he whined.
Both young women bounced angrily off the bed after him.
"Harpies?" one of them shrieked.
"Your problem is you don't know what to do with a real woman, you goddamned faggot!"
The hunk took a step toward her, his hand coming up as if he intended to slap her, but he stopped abruptly and glanced at the three goons standing with Owens and the other man.
"Smart thinking, Rudy," Owens said wearily. "I could replace you a lot easier than I could Tess and Babs here."
"You slobs just don't understand the creative process," the hunk muttered.
He stalked over to a chair and snagged one of the robes that was draped over it, shrugging into the garment.
The two actresses crossed over to Owens.
The one who had spoken before put her hand on Owens's arm.
"Can't you do something, Randy? It's bad enough that we have to work with that creep, but then you let these goons come in here and ogle us!"
She gestured at the three hardmen, all of whom were still leering.
Owens flicked a glance at the man in the sunglasses and looked embarrassed, the fact that two nude young women stood right in front of him obviously disturbing him less than what one of them was saying.
"Uh, look, Tess, I'll straighten it all out, okay? Just don't get yourself in an uproar, huh?"
The girl sniffed in derision and turned away to get her own robe, the other actress accompanying her.
As the two women walked away, one of the thugs muttered something lewd.
"That's enough of that," the accountant in the sunglasses snapped. "Owens, I want to talk to you in your office."
"Sure thing, Mr. Carson," Owens replied a little too quickly.
Rudy, Tess and Babs had gone off to some makeshift dressing rooms fashioned by arranging the pieces of sets to give a little privacy.
The three goons stayed where they were, no doubt hoping to catch another glimpse of the actresses' bodies.
Owens and the man called Carson crossed to a small, glassed-in office tucked into a front corner of the ground floor of the warehouse.
Unknown to them, they had a shadow.
Bolan navigated soundlessly after them through the cluttered warehouse, keeping pace behind the stacked set backdrops, carefully avoiding obstacles that could cause noise.
He held his position a moment longer, then peered into the office.
He watched as Owens and Carson shut the door behind them.
Carson went to a desk and sat down.
Owens made no objection to the Mafia money man taking what had to be Owens's accustomed place.
The office was blocked from view of the movie set where the three hoods had remained behind.
Bolan was not close enough yet to hear what they were saying inside that cubicle.
It looked as if Carson was doing most of the talking, leaning back in Owens's chair, giving the filmmaker a good, heated dressing-down about something.
Owens stood in front of the desk, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, making an occasional, hesitant reply but not saying much.
Bolan glided around what was supposed to be the wall of a bedroom and stepped over a pile of woundup cables only a few feet from the office.
The office, small as it was, was luxuriously appointed, especially compared to the rest of the dingy warehouse studio. The carpet and the upholstery of the chair behind the desk were plush, and there was a well-stocked wet bar on the wall to one side.
Owens might cut a few corners in his moviemaking costs but he evidently liked his own comforts, thought Bolan.
Comforts that were, at the moment, maybe in danger of being taken away from him.
"Protect our investment, Owens," Bolan heard Carson saying, confirming Bolan's earlier guess that the man was some sort of accountant. "We cannot afford to have these constant, continual delays. The distribution arm must have new product."
"You know how actors are," Owens replied haltingly, his voice muffled by the glass. "You've got to baby them, coddle them along."
"I don't care what you do or how you do it, just as long as you turn out plenty of product." Carson reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small plastic bag containing white powder. He tossed it onto the desktop. "There. That ought to keep them happy for a while."
Owens reached out and picked up the bag, tossing it lightly into the air and catching it.
"This will be a big help, all right." He grinned. "Tell Mr. Parelli I said thanks."
"Mr. Parelli isn't interested in gratitude. Just results. See that you deliver."
Bolan had heard enough.
Results, the man had said.
The Executioner was ready to deliver.
He stepped up to the door of that office, ready to ease in and confront Owens and the accountant.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" a female voice squealed behind him.
Bolan spun and saw one of the actresses, the one called Babs, standing there in a robe that barely came to her thighs.
She look shocked and surprised, ready to whirl and run.
She did just that with a high-pitched scream thrown in for good measure when she saw the big blacksuited guy holding the huge AutoMag.
Bolan bit back a curse. He had been so intent on the exchange between Owens and Carson that he had not heard the young woman's approach.
Now it was too late.
He stepped away from the office and whirled, assuming a shooter's crouch as he faced the movie set.
The three goons came running into view from the other side of stacked backdrops, their pistols drawn, rushing to see what had started the lady screaming and running back toward the dressing rooms.
Bolan materialized out of the shadows, the AutoMag extended in front of him like a hand cannon.
A foot-long tongue of flame licked the air as Big Thunder roared.
The three hoods had come running side by side and the first round caught the one on Bolan's left, in the middle of the face. His head seemed to disappear off his neck. The body took a few more steps, then his feet went out from under him and he sprawled to the ground, his weapon skittering away into the gloom.
Bolan tracked to the right with the .44 and triggered a rapid double-punch.
The two slugs found their mark, slamming into the remaining hardguys.
Bolan spun back toward the office.
Owens and Carson had been somewhat slower to react to the commotion than the three goons, who were trained for such things, but by this time they had recovered their wits.
They came running out of the office, Carson in the lead holding a small Colt revolver.
Owens just ran.
The accountant skidded to a stop as he saw Bolan turning to face him. Carson jerked his small revolver up and fired.
Bolan heard the slug zip past his ear. He stroked Big Thunder's trigger, holding the muzzle down against the recoil.
The crack of Carson's shot was lost in the roar of the AutoMag, a head shot that all but took the money man's head apart, splattering a gory mess across the glass wall of the office a few feet behind him.
Carson's body slammed back and he fell, joining his three men in death on the dirty floor.
Bolan's eyes searched the shadows around him for Owens. He heard running footsteps echoing from the back of the building.
One of the actresses shouted from that direction.
"Hey, wait a minute! Take us with you, goddamn it! Wait a minute!"
A door slammed somewhere in the rear of the studio.
Bolan raced in the direction of the noise. He heard a car door slam and an engine crank to life. He bit off a curse. He could not let Owens escape!
"Hold it!"
Bolan stopped, Big Thunder ready in his fist.
A figure materialized out of the shadows and Bolan recognized him as the man who had been operating the camera. The guy held a pistol trained on Bolan. Bolan noticed that the gun was the one that the first goon had dropped when Bolan blew him away. The cameraman's hand was shaking as he pointed the weapon at the Executioner.
"Put it down," the soldier ordered sharply. "My quarrel's not with you."
"Not with me? Hell, the way you're shooting up the place, what does it matter who your quarrel's with?" the cameraman said. "I just want out of here!"
"Then put the gun down and go," Bolan told the guy.
"So you can shoot me in the back? No thanks!"
The warrior looked at the young man for several seconds, then slid the AutoMag back into its holster.
His quarrel tonight was not with a flunky who was guilty of no more than operating a camera.
"Take off," he growled. "You won't get a better offer."
The cameraman studied Bolan for a moment, gulped nervously, then bent and gingerly placed the pistol on the floor. Then he turned and bolted for the nearest exit.
Bolan followed, alert for any traps that might be waiting for him.
Nothing happened until he almost reached a narrow door in the rear corner of the building.
Then a woman bumped into him.
It was Tess. She gave a choked, panicky cry, pummeling his chest with her small fists.
"Let me go, let me go!" she wailed.
Bolan gave her a firm but gentle shove that sent her staggering away from him.
"I don't have you," he pointed out. "Where's Randy?"
She had donned a silk wrap that fell open with the push. She jerked it tightly about her, clasping the see-through material closed and folding her arms across her chest.
"He ran out on us, the rotten son of a bitch!" she raged. "He said if we were ever raided, he'd stick with us, that dirty lying bastard!"
"Did he actually leave, or is he still here somewhere?"
"I saw him drive off. He had his car parked out there behind some garbage cans. A good place for slime like him to park, if you ask me."
"Where are your friends, Babs and Rudy?"
The brunette threw a glance over her shoulder.
"Scared to come out of the dressing room. They're hiding under the bed. Hey, you're not a cop at all, are you?" She stepped back, her apprehension mounting.
"I came for Owens, not you," he assured her.
That did not convince her. She started trembling.
"Oh, mister... please... we heard the shooting but we haven't seen anything. I haven't seen you, okay? Please let us go..."
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said firmly. "Where would Owens be likely to go?"
Tess swallowed and hugged herself.
Here in the back of the warehouse, away from the hot lights, there was a chill in the air.
"He... he hangs out at a bar on Rush Street," she told him. "A place called Jimmy Kidd's. Right next to a massage parlor called Sheba's. They're both part of the same operation."
"Why would Owens go there?"
"He'd feel safe there if he was scared and on the run. Jimmy and Sheba would see to that. And he sure looked scared when he hauled ass on his way out of here. Ran right past me!"
"Jimmy and Sheba. They own the setup?"
A nod of the dark head.
"They run the place. I think Randy's real boss is that Mr. Parelli."
Bolan took a step closer to her at that statement.
She flinched but stayed where she was, clutching the wrap to her throat.
"What do you know about Parelli?"
"He's been here," Tess answered in a strained voice. "I don't know if I should talk about him..."
"Tess, have they ever filmed kid porn here?"
She forgot her fear and her eyes flashed angrily at him.
"Look here, whatever the hell your name is, I do this sort of thing for the cameras once in a while when I'm short on the rent, okay? I'm not a pervert."
"Do you know of any films like that being shot here?"
She cooled down a little.
"I... never heard about it. I wouldn't have worked for those creeps if I had. They were weird enough as it was!"
Bolan quickly assimilated the things the woman told him.
Tess could be lying about Owens's leaving the warehouse. He could still be hiding out somewhere in the building, if not on this floor then on one of those above. He just as quickly rejected those thoughts. The woman's manner and the sounds he'd heard of a car starting up just after Owens had fled, made him decide Tess was speaking the truth about the porno director having fled.
Bolan started past Tess, toward the outside metal door. "Take your friends and go," he advised her on his way out.
She hurried away in search of her friends, Babs and Rudy.
Bolan looked around, taking in the surroundings.
A few incendiary grenades would do the trick and send Parelli's warehouse up like kindling, but to do that Bolan would have to wait and make sure that the three actors were safely away, and he could not afford to waste the time.
He still had an appointment with Randy Owens at a bar called Jimmy Kidd's, next to a massage parlor called Sheba's.
Bolan pushed through the doorway, into the bitter cold.
Outside, the night was waiting.