stranger’s draw was smooth and fast, his pistol aimed at Bolan’s forehead even as the ALFA centered on his chest.
“And now, what you would call the punch line, I believe,” he said. “You are under arrest.”
3
Baltimore, Maryland
Two days earlier
The sixth victim, another working girl, had been discovered floating in the Chesapeake off Locust Point, near Fort Henry. As with the five preceding kills, her throat was slashed back to the spine, a case of near decapitation after a savage beating and a list of signature indignities well recognized by homicide investigators. FBI agents were working on the case, inspiring all the usual resentment from embarrassed local cops. The newspapers and smiling TV anchors babbled on about a “Ripper” in their midst, a stalker who had psych profilers baffled.
The truth, as usual, was rather different.
At Baltimore P.D., they knew that all six victims were employed—read owned—by Luscious Luther Johnson. Thirty-six years old, imprisoned twice for pandering and living off the proceeds of prostitution, Johnson was an aging dog who’d never managed to learn any new tricks on the street or in the joint. He liked controlling women, playing God in lives blighted by sexual abuse and drugs. He liked the money, too, of course, but that was secondary to the kick he got from reigning over female serfs.
Before his second prison term, Luther had disciplined unruly girls with belt lashings, a wire coat hanger sometimes, but nothing permanent. Something had changed inside him while he served his time at Roxbury Correctional, perhaps a hardening of attitude precipitated by the fact that two of Luther’s “bitches” had been brave enough to testify against him at his trial. One of them left the state thereafter, while the other kept working the streets around Patterson Park as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Big mistake.
Divine Jones had been first in the series, succeeded by others who balked at the offer to join Johnson’s stable or held back too much of the cash they’d received from their johns. No disrespect of any sort was tolerated.
Police had questioned Luther at least a dozen times so far. But knowing he was probably involved and proving it were very different things. A team from Vice had worked on putting Johnson back in stir for pimping, using Maryland’s three-strikes law to send him up for life, but Luscious Luther wasn’t quite as careless as he’d been in the past. He kept no records of illicit business, paid his taxes on a chain of coin-op laundries and had generally kept his nose clean in the public eye.
Bolan had been passing through “Charm City”—also known to some as “Mobtown”—with no plans to hang around beyond a night’s rest at a local Motel 6, when he heard about the case on CNN. He’d made a couple calls, stayed over for an extra night of observation on the scene and saw a chance to do some good.
Like any other pimp who has a thriving urban racket, Johnson paid his dues. He tithed religiously to the Peruzzi family, which Bolan thought might rate a visit at some future date, along with bagmen from the Baltimore P.D. and City Hall. None would protect him if the Feds collected evidence to try him as a six-time psycho killer, but until that evidence appeared Johnson was golden.
And he wasn’t hard to find.
His second night in Baltimore, Bolan had followed Johnson on the pimp’s rounds, collecting cash from go-betweens, glad-handing people who appeared to be his friends, drinking at half a dozen bars where songs with indecipherable lyrics threatened long-term hearing loss. Bolan was on him when he spent an hour with his number-one old lady at her place, waiting for Johnson in the shadows when the man emerged.
From that point on, Johnson’s night of celebration went downhill. His bluster vanished with a glimpse of Bolan’s cold eyes and a close look at the sleek Beretta in his fist. Disarmed and cuffed with plastic zip ties, Johnson had directed Bolan to a small apartment that he called his bank. Inside it, with his hands freed to accommodate the combination lock on a wall safe beside a small desk, he’d given up roughly a quarter-million dollars gleaned from others’ suffering and degradation, smiling all the while.
“I jus’ keep that aroun’ for incidentals, yo. Man like you’self know how it is.”
“You’re right,” Bolan replied. “I do.”
“So, we good here, o’ what?”
“Almost. About the women…”
“Riiight. You want a lady now? I’d say you can afford a fine one.”
“The six women that you killed.”
“Whoa, man! You trippin’ now. Pigs axed me all about that, and I done been cleared, awight?”
“Well,” Bolan said, “there’s cleared, and then there’s cleared.”
“Man, what you tryin’ to say?” Johnson asked, trying to prolong the conversation as he quickly reached into an open drawer of the desk and pulled out a small gun.
But Bolan was faster with his response, letting the Beretta speak for him, with one sharp word that brooked no contradiction. Johnson hit the deep shag carpet with a look of dazed surprise in all three eyes, shivered a little, then lay still.
Bolan secured his loot, all hundred-dollar bills, in a valise he borrowed from the late and unlamented pimp, locked the pad behind him and was on his way downstairs when the soft vibration of his cell phone took him by surprise. No more than half a dozen people in the world had Bolan’s number. He had never fallen prey to random telemarketers.
A quick check on the screen showed him that it was Hal Brognola calling from his office at the Justice Building in D.C., well past the normal span of business hours.
“Go,” Bolan said without preamble.
“How soon can you be here?” Brognola asked. “Well, let’s say Arlington.”
“I’m forty miles away,” Bolan said, “give or take.”
“I’ll see you there,” the big Fed said. “ASAP.”
BROGNOLA DIDN’T HAVE TO specify which “there” he had in mind. They’d met on previous occasions at Arlington National Cemetery, and while that facility closed to the public from 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., there was an all-night restaurant on Marshall Drive, near the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, that served as backup outside of visiting hours. Bolan found Brognola’s Buick Regal CXL already waiting in the parking lot when he rolled in, his second-oldest living friend ensconced with coffee at a corner booth.
“You made good time,” Brognola said in greeting.
“It wasn’t all that far,” Bolan replied, taking his seat across from the man.
A red-haired waitress came and took their breakfast order, filled a coffee cup for Bolan, then retreated.
“So, what’s the squeal?” Bolan asked, when they were alone.
“It may upset your appetite,” Brognola said.
“Try me.”
“Okay. What do you know
