The solid oak door was marked GOLDEN WEST DIVERSITIES, INC. and the suite of offices on the other side of it were strictly gilt-edged, redolent with the sweet smell of success.

Among the diversified interests of Maxwell Thornton was petroleum, real estate, electronics, agriculture, and transportation. He had also been very active in politics, as a behind-the-scenes power in local, state, and national campaigns.

Blancanales had donned a pale blue nylon suit with coordinated accessories — the collar of the shirt with exaggerated dimensions, the tie immaculately knotted, powder-blue hat low over the eyes — altogether a splendiferous image, and altogether the perfect picture of a Mafioso in full dress.

Schwarz wore old-fashioned pleated slacks, sport shirt with loose tie, checkered sports coat, no hat. He looked like a cross between a Tijuana pimp and an Agua Caliente racetrack tout.

Both images had been meticulously contrived.

The receptionist stared at them for a moment, then announced, "I'm sorry, Mr. Thornton is in conference."

"You'd better get him outta there, honey," Blancanales growled in his best Brooklynese.

Schwarz had spun the woman's appointments book around and was studying it.

Blancanales nudged the flustered receptionist again with, "Hop, now!— go tell the man we're here."

"I-I'll see if he's back in his office," the girl replied, thoroughly intimidated now. She depressed a button on her desk intercom and said, "Mr. Thornton — two gentlemen to see you. It appears urgent. They — I think you should."

A tired voice sighed back, "Do the gentlemen have names, Janie?"

Schwarz brushed the receptionist's hand aside and held the intercom button himself as he replied, "Yeh, but you wouldn't want 'em shouted around this joint, Thornton."

"Come on in," was the quick response. The girl showed them the way. Blancanales patted her shoulder as he brushed past her and into the private office of Maxwell Thornton.

The entire outside wall was glass, and there was a fair-sized balcony beyond that with potted trees and other growing things. The city was spread out there for inspection in a most impressive view.

The man sat at a kidney-shaped desk with probably fifty to sixty square feet of surface on top which supported nothing except a telephone, an intercom box, and an open fifth of Haig & Haig. The guy was drinking the Scotch from a water glass, undiluted.

He didn't look the part of millionaire, civic light, city father. He looked like a guy who'd just stepped down from a hot bulldozer to hurry into a hand-tailored suit which still somehow didn't quite fit. A tall man, lanky, sort of gangly and rawboned, well past fifty.

The voice fit the rest of him as he waved his visitors to chairs and told them, "Well, I guess the shit has hit the fan, hasn't it?"

Schwarz picked up the bottle of Scotch and sat down. Blancanales remained standing. He said, "Bolan's in town."

Thornton sighed, sipped at his drink, then said, "I know it."

"Gettin' loaded ain't gonna help."

"Get fucked," Thornton growled. "Bennie send you? What's he want me to do, lead a vigilante army?"

"Bennie don't send us," Schwarz informed him.

The gray steel eyes came up in a quick flash. "New York? You're from New York?"

Blancanales jerked his head in a nod and ambled to the window.

"Who are you?"

Schwarz replied. "The boss is Harry DiCavoli. I'm Jack Santo. You're in trouble, Thornton."

The millionaire grunted and said, "I was born in trouble. I suppose you heard about Howlie Winters."

"We heard," Blancanales spoke up, from the window. "We wanta talk to you about that, Thornton."

"You people squeezed him too damn hard!" the man declared angrily. "I told you he wouldn't hold still for that."

"You told me nothing," Blancanales/DiCavoli replied.

"I told Bennie, and I urged him to relay the advice to New York. Look ... Winters was a square. A guy like that will dabble in the shit pile, but he won't take a bath in it. I told you this whole thing was too much for him to swill."

"I guess you better speak for yourself, man," Blancanales said.

"What do you mean? Look...." The guy was getting hotter by the minute. He pushed back his chair and lifted himself to his full height, and it was an impressive one. He was waving his arms as he spoke. "I had to swim in shit to get where I am. I'll never deny that, except in a court of law. I've had the course, buddy. I've been there and back, several times. You goddam ghetto street-corner lawyers didn't invent the game, and you don't play it very well. The only edge you've got is that you play it rougher than most. Well, get fucked, will you please? I've had it up to the throat with you, all of you."

Blancanales muttered, "You want me to go back East and tell 'em that?"

The guy had moved away from the desk. He was standing spread-legged, coat gaping open, hands thrust into hip pockets, glowering at the man at the window. His eyes dropped, slowly, and his voice was dying away as he replied, "No ... I guess I don't want you to do that."

"That's just what we come to find out."

"I can take the heat, if that's what's worrying you."

Schwarz had risen from his chair and edged his backside onto the desk. With Thornton engrossed in the confrontation with eastern authority, he was quietly and swiftly taking the telephone apart.

"That ain't all," Blancanales was saying. "We been waiting long enough for this deal. Now with Winters out of the picture, we have to wonder...."

"Don't worry, you'll get your stuff. With or without Winters. But listen — what's the name — DiCavoli? — listen, DiCavoli, this is no dime-store radio, you know. We're into defense security violation when we start messing around with this kind of gear."

Schwarz's ears perked up at that. His work at the telephone was finished. He moved toward the other men and joined the conversation. "That's right, Harry. It's not dime-store stuff."

Blancanales quickly picked up the play. "A radio's a radio," he sniffed. "What's such a big deal?"

Thornton coldly returned Schwarz's gaze as he replied to the other "Mafioso." "An L-band feeder horn is a hell of a big deal when you start stealing them from the military."

"Well we gotta know," Blancanales pushed on. "Are you going to deliver or aren't you?"

"Of course I'm going to deliver! But, my God, you don't just muscle your way into — "

"It's heavy stuff, Harry," Schwarz helpfully butted in. He was probing, now — feeling his way. At the same time, he was establishing a sympathetic relationship with the harried millionaire who'd lingered too long near the tar pit. "You can't pick up a feeder horn at the supermarket, y'know. This stuff is heavy, I mean heavy. What is it, Max — about six hundred megs?"

Thornton inclined his head in a deliberate nod. He was giving Schwarz a respectful examination now, wondering, pondering the enigma of a Tijuana pimp who spoke with an understanding of sophisticated communications gear.

Schwarz was "explaining" to Blancanales/DiCavoli. "Y'see, these data links, you pencil-beam into a dish antenna up in the L-band, around six hundred megacycles. It's like a beam of light, only you don't see it. You don't get no side lobes off the pulse envelopes, so there ain't much danger of the FCC or somebody latching onto you. Right, Max?"

Thornton again nodded his head. "It's foolproof," he murmured.

"And the stuff is hard to come by," Schwarz went on explaining. "You don't just walk up and ask a government contractor to make you one. You'd have the FCC all over your ass the second you tried to put it on the air — and in no time you'd have feds swarming all over your operation. What Max is saying is simply this: we gotta be patient while he carves one out of a contract. Right, Max?"