Bolan growled, "Shut up," and showed him the Beretta Belle.

The guy turned pale and pressed his hands flat against the top of the desk. "What th' hell is this?" he asked in a hushed voice.

The notes on McCormick were jotted neatly over six and one half pages of the Stein notes, detailing six years of his close association with known Mafia figures in and out of Chicago, and revealing various details of his treachery to the State of Illinois. He had intervened in scores of criminal cases involving the Chicago syndicate, either buying-off or "clouting" judges and jurists who were not already owned outright by the mob, and often with this influence extending clear into the state supreme court. He had been on the present job for only the past fifteen months, and now functioned chiefly as an informant for his Mafia connections in matters related to their legal wellbeing.

The guy was not a cop, nor an elected official, nor anything other than what the notes indicated. He was a political hack, a paid fink, bagman and clouter for the syndicate — and certainly, in Bolan's mind, he had no more going for him than any fulltime Mafioso.

McCormick was breaking out in sweat above the brows and a film was forming over his eyes as he stared up the mouth of the Beretta. He whispered, "I don't know what this is all about. I've done nothing. Is this a contract job? Money? If it's a money job, I'll double the contract, I'll triple it. I'll give you everything I've got."

Bolan's free hand had restored the notebook to its place in the briefcase, and the hand emerged with a marksman's medal. He tossed it on the desk.

It hit the guy's outstretched hand and his eyes focused there, and he gurgled, "Oh God no!"

Bolan told him, "You've already given everything you had, McCormick. And it's not enough, not nearly enough."

"I'm not Mafia! What does that book say, that I'm Mafia? I'm not, God believe it, I'm not!"

"Maybe you're worse," Bolan told him, remembering Leo Stein's little lecture about the vehicle. "It's people like you, McCormick, that make it all work for them."

"I'm nobody, I'm just a tiny cog in a great big machine, Bolan. Hell, it's not just crime, it's politics, bigpolitics. There's a thousand like me, hell maybe ten thousand." The guy was talking for his life, and Bolan didn't even want his life, but he did nothing to discourage the talk.

"Maybe eighty thousand," Bolan said, still remembering.

"I wouldn't be surprised. It's not little people like me, Bolan. It's the machine, the damned machine. You think I have any influence in this town? Me?" The guy laughed bitterly. "I've been in the circles for a long time, sure. I know a lot of people, in the courts and in the police establishment, sure — but do you think I could work anything on my own? They'd laugh me out of town. It's not me, Bolan. It's the system, it's the God-damnedsystem. A guy can't live around here outside the system; not and make a go of anything."

Bolan knew all about the system. And he knew how easy it was for straight people to get sucked into that mess, and turned into dirt, and remolded like so much clay into the image the system needed.

He told the frightened man, "I don't especially want your life, McCormick. I want your office. I want you."

"Just give me the chance, you'll see how fast I get out."

"And never come back. You tell it to all your buddies in the system. Tell them that Bolan will be around for a long time, and that he'll be looking into that system regularly."

McConnick was still looking into the Beretta, but there was hope in the eyes now; he was beginning to breathe normally and to settle himself down. He said, "I can't believe that you walked past a thousand cops just totell me that."

Bolan replied, "You're right, I didn't. Pick up the phone, McCormick. Call your boss in Springfield. I mean your official boss. And I expect you to be very convincing. You've just stumbled onto some solid information. All the celebrities of the Chicago underworld are meeting at Giovanni's at this very moment. They might be talking up a street war. And you have a solid make that Bolan will be crashing this party. And wouldn't it be a neat feat for the state prosecutor if he could very quietly coordinate an army of state and local cops into that little bash out there. That's the idea — now you show me how well you can present it."

McConnick was already placing the call. His hand was shaking but the voice was steady as he told Bolan, "Don't worry, I'm an expert at this stuff, or should I remind you of that?"

Bolan could almost like the guy, even realizing what he was, but realizing also that there were many shades of gray between black and white. He listened critically to the excited two-way conversation, nodded his approval when it was all done, then he tied and gagged the guy and locked him in a closet of the anteroom. That done, Bolan got out of there.

He rounded the corner of the corridor then resumed his affected limping, leisurely making his way back into the swirling chaos that was normal routine for a big city police station — on through scared and snarling suspects, and weeping and angry wives and mothers and sisters.

With a careful disinterest, he pushed on past harried cops and cold-eyed lawyers and cloutmen and fixers of every ilk, through confused complainants and indignant witnesses, on beyond the drunks and the junkies and the frightened kids and the lost souls, on beyond the reporters and the social workers and the photographers, past rattling teletypes and shrilling telephones and back into the frigid but welcome sanity of the wild jungle outside.

And during that trip Bolan quit wondering why sometimes a cop or a lawyer or a judge went sour, or hard, or just plain bad; he had to wonder, instead, how any of them ever kept from it.

He had to wonder, also, if any of this war was really worth it. Was anything actually worth fighting for?

So what if, by some magic and with one mighty thrust of the sword, he should succeed in putting the Mafia down, once and for all, everywhere at once. Wouldn't others arise to replace them, wouldn't the clouters and the grafters and the pushers and the rotten core everywhere simply reassert itself? Wouldn't the shit machine simply reassemble itself?

Hell, he couldn't start thinking like that, he told himself. Doubt must not be allowed to creep in at a time like this. He made his way back to the war-wagon, inspected the heavy-weafher tires and double checked the chains, then he stepped inside and changed back into his combat gear.

A very hot war awaited him.

Sure, there was more to life than just taking all you could milk out of it. With so many sucking leeches hanging on, life would sooner or later run out of the good milk, leaving nothing but the bitter for everybody.

Yeah, Bolan had his reason for existence. Sometimes a guy simply felt a hand on his shoulder, and he knew that he was being turned around to look at something rotten, something sucking all the good out of life and leaving nothing but bitterness in its place. According to Stein's notes, more than two-hundred-mil]ion bucks a year were being sucked out of the Chicago ghettoes by the system, and not a damn cent was finding its way back in.

So bigtime crime created — indirectly — smalltime crimes, juvenile delinquents, broken homes, junkies, and human misery of every description.

This was Bolan's message from Central, as finally broken down and assimilated.

And yeah, that hand was still on his shoulder. Someone had to stop sucking and start putting back in. Sometimes a guy had to be willing to stop and look around him, and maybe volunteer for a transfusion to life.

The Executioner smiled grimly and eased his war-machine onto the icy street.

It was not a war-wagon, he was thinking.