Bolan’s rented Chevy sat six feet away from the motel room. The two Mafia lookouts were hunched over beside the door as though they were sleeping. Nino knew they would never wake up. He lowered the chief into the passenger seat and closed the door.

Bolan waved Nino back inside the room and followed him.

“Now, tough guy. Off with your clothes, too. Then join the others on the bed.”

Bolan grabbed the bundle of clothing, closed the door, stepped into the Chevy and drove to the front of the motel. He stopped to call the police from a phone booth, watching the motel-room door as he dialed. As soon as he had them on the line, Nino stepped out of the motel room and ran full tilt down the alley.

The Executioner told the police a girl had been killed in the motel by Mafia hoodlums. He gave the address, hung up and deposited the garments at the side of the booth. Then he drove off. Half a mile away he pulled over to the curb. Slowly Bolan brought the groggy cop back to his senses.

Chief Jansen shook his head, his vision fuzzy, his mouth tasting foul.

“What the hell?” He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear them. He looked at Bolan. “Who are you?”

“A friend, Chief Jansen. Just relax — you’re safe now.”

“Safe? Where are we?”

“In my car on the street. I just pulled you out of a motel.”

“Motel? I went out for a cup of coffee with one of my sergeants. He said he owed me a store-bought cup and he had a problem he wanted to talk about privately.”

“And then he slipped you some knockout drops. Look at the blood on your hands and your clothes.”

“Oh, Christ! Mine? Where did it come from?”

Bolan made sure the chief was totally back in the current time zone, then explained the whole thing to him.

“Damn! I fell for it. Now I don’t know who to trust! We’ve got to get some units over to that motel!” he exclaimed, still a cop.

“I reported it. The place should be swarming with cops by now.”

The chief nodded. “You didn’t tell me why somebody tried to get blackmail evidence on me in that motel. Are you sure the girl was dead?”

Bolan took out the pictures. One of them had blood splatters on the back.

The policeman’s eyes widened in astonishment. “They were setting me up. What for?”

“Certain groups in town want to take over the police department. They have already blackmailed two assistant chiefs. You were the next target. That officer who was shot this morning was probably murdered by one or more of his fellow officers.”

“No! Captain Davis was with him. One of our best men.”

“Are you sure? Check out Davis’s bank account. He’s taking two thousand a week in payoff money from the Mafia.”

Chief Jansen stared at his bloody hands.

“You’re sure of this?”

“Yeah. You won’t have to dig far into Davis to find out he’s as dirty as hell.”

The chief opened the ashtray on the car and burned the pictures of himself. He saved the other shots of the body and nodded at Bolan.

“I still don’t know who you are, but it looks like I owe my whole career to you. Another ten minutes and they would have had me so tightly tied up I never would have gotten out. How do you fit into this?”

“Just trying to be helpful.” Bolan turned on the car radio to an all-news station and kept the sound low.

“Where can I drop you off, chief?”

“Take me to the side door of the downtown station. I have some clothes there.”

Bolan heard something and turned up the volume on the radio.

“And Baltimore police said it was one of the most grisly killings they have seen in a long time. The body of the woman lay faceup on the bed. The bedspread was soaked with blood, and the nude bodies of two men, both shot, lay sprawled on the bed. Two more men, sitting against the steps outside the room, had also been shot dead. Police have blocked off the area and are talking to all witnesses.

“One man in the motel room next door said he saw one young man running naked down the alley about ten minutes before police arrived. A car that had been parked in front of the room was seen leaving the area, but no one could say who was in the car, or what the license number had been.

“In other news...”

Bolan shut it off.

“You didn’t say anything about the four dead men.”

“Right, I didn’t. Let’s leave it at that. When you identify them you’ll find them all to be Mafia soldiers connected to Carlo Nazarione, who claims he has no organized-crime affiliations.”

“At least we know better than that.” The cop shrugged. “Hell, I won’t push to find out who you are. I’ll never be able to thank you for what you did for me today. Now, one ride downtown, then I want to get showered and dressed and back out to that motel.”

As Bolan let the chief off fifteen minutes later, the cop stared at him a moment. “Have we met somewhere before? Something about your face seems familiar.”

“Thanks. I used to do some modeling — a lot of those rugged outdoor-type print ads. I did a lot for one cigarette company.”

The chief nodded. “Yeah, that was probably it.” But as the car swung away and the cop hurried through the private entrance into the police department’s top-brass area, he knew he had not seen the man’s face in an ad. It was on a Wanted poster. And the guy wore the same black suit. It would come back to him. Damn, he wished he could remember.

He went down the short hall to the chiefs’ men’s room with its lockers and showers. He undressed before anyone else came in, stuffed the bloody clothes into a plastic bag and then showered off the blood. He had never seen so much blood in a shower before. Wrong. That bathtub suicide when the drain plugged.

Half an hour later the chief was dressed and heading for the motel in the passenger side of an unmarked car. When he and his driver arrived he took command of the investigation. As he pushed through the crowd behind the police tape he remembered who the man was who had saved him — Mack Bolan, the Executioner, the one who was at war with the Mafia and wanted by the FBI and in dozens of states!

After Mack Bolan dropped off Assistant Chief Jansen, he stopped at a phone booth that had a directory in it and found the address of a small printing firm. He located one close by but passed it up when he saw a one-man operation down the street.

Inside, the place had the musty, slightly alkaline odor of paper stock mixed with the acid tang of the printer’s inks.

A short, bald, middle-aged man with half glasses came from behind a rotary press that was hissing with every turn.

“Morning!” he said, smiling. “What can I do for you today?”

“I need a business card. On the front I want a name and a phone number, and on the back the nearest thing we can find that resembles a five-dollar gold piece.”

“Easy. And you need it in five minutes.”

“No, that’s the easy part. I don’t want it for two hours.”

“Should be a snap. Cost you as much as five hundred of them would.”

“I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

“Good, that’s what five hundred costs.”

Bolan wrote out the name and the number, and the little man pawed through one box after another. He turned, holding a piece of plastic that had something engraved on it.

“Found something I can use. I’ll set the type and burn a plate and we should be in business.”

“Brown ink on the front and gold ink on the back, right?”

“Cost you another thirteen dollars for cleanup on the press, if you want a good job.”

Bolan gave him a fifty-dollar bill and a twenty, and said he would be back.

His next stop was a phone booth, where he consulted a list of numbers that Nino had given him. He found the Baltimore godfather’s number at the top of the list. He had to go through three men before he got the Baltimore capo on the phone. Bolan had heard Augie Bonestra from Brooklyn testify on TV a few months back. Now he imitated his voice.