The Bone Yard by Don Pendleton Page A

granddaughter? That the one?"
    "Abe Bernstein?" Small alarms were going off in the back of Bolan's mind, insistent but still ill-defined. The name meant something to him, but....
    "You have to know him, man," the comic said. "The Father of Las Vegas. Word is, he built everything that Meyer and Bugsy missed."
    And it was coming back to Bolan, sure. He had dismissed the name and face, consigned it to the small "inactive" file reserved for mobsters who retired because of age or illness, but he called the reference back now, ran it through the terminals of memory.
    Abe Bernstein was originally from Detroit, where he had helped to found the famous Purple Gang around the time America was entering World War I. He got a jump on Prohibition, staking out a territory on the river just across from Canada and turning bootleg liquor into liquid gold, defending his investment with a formidable army.
    A year before Repeal he smelled the winds of change and made the shift from booze to big-time gambling, staking out preserves around Kentucky, Florida and Southern California that saw him through the Great Depression.
    When the Mafia started flexing muscle in the thirties, easing out or killing off the old-line Jewish gangsters, Bernstein traveled west, giving ground reluctantly before the Sicilian juggernaut. Along the way he pioneered in legal gaming, setting up his first small clubs in Reno, moving south when Bugsy Siegel struck the mother lode along Las Vegas Boulevard in 1947.
    The Gold Rush Hotel-Casino was his first investment in Las Vegas — one of many that included real estate and industry, construction, politics and cattle ranching. Bernstein funneled thousands — some said millions — into local charity and was rewarded with a host of plaques and honors for his labors, testifying to his latter-day respectability. In time, his sanctuary was invaded once again by mafiosi, and this time there was nowhere to run. As the new wave gradually replaced the old, Abe Bernstein was reduced to something of a puppet, going through the motions of administering that which he once owned outright. Among the Justice Strike Force leaders there was little doubt who held the puppet's strings — and they were long ones, stretching east to Brooklyn and Manhattan.
    "I didn't know Abe had a family," Bolan said at last.
    The comic frowned.
    "A daughter," he responded. "Out of wife number three or four... I don't remember. The daughter's gone now, but there was one child... the granddaughter." Anders hesitated and a chuckle crept into his voice, almost reluctantly. "If she's your Lucy... well, they've got a sense of humor, anyhow."
    "What's funny?" Bolan asked.
    "Well, Old Jack Goldblume, down there at the Beacon... hell, he used to work for Bernstein at the Gold Rush. Handled all the joint's PR back in the old days, before he got religion and went into the civic conscience business full time." Another hesitation and Anders was no longer laughing. "Kind of makes you feel like it's all in the family, eh?"
    Bolan barely heard him. He was already thinking through the riddle, trying jumbled pieces, rejecting each in turn and moving on to something new.
    Jack Goldblume used to work for Bernstein at the Gold Rush. Now he ran the Daily Beacon, and they were, presumably, still friends.
    Now Bernstein's granddaughter — if she was his granddaughter — worked for Goldblume. As a plant?
    A favor for old times' sake? And Lucy Bernstein, acting under Goldblume's orders, was preparing to expose the very Mafia that owned her grandfather. Why?
    Bolan knew that to receive the necessary answers, he would have to ask the proper questions. And of several potential sources, he planned to start with one who owed him something. Like her life.

10
    Bolan found the large apartment complex on the first pass. It was off the main drag two blocks over to the south of West Sahara where he had dropped Lucy Bernstein the night before. A quick call to her number listed in the telephone