The Bone Yard Read Online Free PDF Page B

meet those mental expectations, and the end result, as often as not, was a kind of de facto invisibility that served the Executioner well at need. And he needed vital information now. There was only one place he could think of where he might obtain it. If it worked he would be well ahead, perhaps securing the handle that he needed. If it failed...
    A khaki sergeant on the desk examined his ID perfunctorily and signed him in, providing Bolan with a clip-on plastic tag identifying him as Visitor. The officer steered him through a pair of swinging doors that opened on an antiseptic corridor, and Bolan paced off fifty yards of waxed linoleum until he reached the door marked Homicide. A nameplate mounted on the office door identified the Homicide CO as Captain Reese. The man behind the desk inside was fiftyish, with thinning hair above a weathered face. He seemed uncomfortable and out of place inside a modish polyester leisure suit. When he stood up the jacket opened, and Bolan saw the Smith and Wesson Model 59 worn on his left hip, butt forward to accommodate a cross-hand draw. Captain Reese rounded his desk, and Bolan let him eyeball the credentials that identified him as a federal agent.
    "Frank LaMancha, Justice."
    "Sam Reese." There was immediate suspicion in the homicide detective's eyes and voice. "What can I do you for?"
    "I'm with the racketeering task force," Bolan told him, "out of Washington. They sent me out to run a recon, lay some groundwork.""
    "Ah..." His tone was noncommittal.
    Bolan glanced around the office, sizing up the man.
    "The AG seems to think you've got a problem," Bolan said.
    The captain frowned.
    "We've got our finger on it," he replied.
    "Oh? You have fingers on Larry Liguori? Spinoza? Johnny Cats?"
    A ruddy color seeped into the captain's cheeks.
    "I know the names. We keep an eye on all of them." His frown became a scowl. "You're pointing fingers at a bunch of citizens, and damned important ones at that. Their money talks around this town."
    "Who does the listening?" Bolan asked him.
    Reese bristled.
    "Back off, La Motta."
    "That's LaMancha."
    "Whatever. I admit we have a problem but we're working on it. What we don't need in Las Vegas is a pack of hungry federales getting in our way with all that green felt jungle bullshit..."
    Bolan allowed himself a narrow smile.
    "I guess you're working on Minotte, too," he said. "You don't waste any time."
    "I can't afford to."
    Bolan crossed the room to stand before a wall map bristling with multicolored stickpins. A shiny blood-red pin protruded from the near vicinity of the Minotte stud farm.
    "You've got a gang war on your hands," he offered without turning around.
    "Says who?"
    "Says common sense. You think Minotte's Eastern visitors were wise men following a star?"
    "There anything you don't know?"
    "Plenty," Bolan told him frankly. "Like where Seiji Kuwahara and the Yakuza fit in."
    There was a momentary silence, and when Reese responded his tone was less hostile.
    "We're working on it. Kuwahara runs a restaurant on Paradise — the Lotus Garden. We know he's connected, but that's where it ends. No wants or warrants out of Tokyo, nothing."
    "What about the hit team?"
    "Zip, so far. If we turn anything at all I'm betting on illegals."
    "There'll be more where those came from," the Executioner advised him.
    "You telling fortunes now?"
    "Just playing the percentages. Your town is primed to blow wide open."
    "Never happens, fella. No one wants to kill the golden goose."
    "The rules are changing, Captain. There's a wild card in the game. No way of telling where the chips are going to fall this time."
    Reese stiffened, thrusting his jaw out.
    "Whichever way they fall, we'll be there."
    "Picking up the pieces?"
    "Playing by the book, dammit. Chapter and verse."
    "So you start out three innings behind." The captain's face and tone were sour.
    "Tell me something I don't know already." Bolan shifted gears. "I understand the Daily Beacon's working on a series that