Blood risk (10 page)

    Tucker leaned forward and said, almost in Norton's ear, "The glass isn't bulletproof, is it?"

    "Plexiglass," Norton said. "It'll deflect a pistol shot pretty well, even if we were close enough for them to use handguns. Even when it cracks under rifle fire, it can throw the slug away first."

    Tucker remained forward in his seat, bracing himself against the back of Norton's seat, staring down through the tilted nose window. "I think we have enough front-to-back shots. Let's try cruising it from end to end."

    Norton obliged, brought the copter around in a whine of engine noise, coasted the length of the mansion while Willis busily used his camera.

    Baglio himself had come out of the house and stood in front of the pillared promenade in the circular driveway, looking up at the copter. Right now he would be wondering whether they knew that Bachman was in the house or whether this was only routine police harassment. He would be wondering, too, how he could get Bachman out of the mansion under their noses if they should land with a search warrant. Tucker hoped that, when Norton took them away from here without landing, Baglio didn't panic and have Bachman killed and buried. It would be so easy for him to have the driver tucked away in a grave beneath the pine trees upslope of the house. Of course, Bachman might already be dead. He might have talked and been put to sleep without the proper honors.

    Tucker said, "Can you take her down and parallel the house so Willis can get some ground shots of all four sides?"

    "Sure," Norton said.

    He leveled the machine and, when they were behind the mansion, took it down within five feet of the lawn while the photographer took his shots through the side window. When they came around in front of the house, where Baglio and his two men were standing, the hoods danced quickly back out of the way of the chopping blades that were still much too high to reach them but which must have looked sobering anyway. They were too busy, then, to notice the copter's occupants.

    "Now up," Tucker said. "Let's get some shots of the house in perspective, the entire lawn and the perimeter of the forest."

    When that was done, Norton said, "Next?"

    "That's it," Tucker said. "Let's get back to home base."

    By the time they landed on the grassy floor of the forest clearing nearly two miles from Baglio's mansion, Willis had packed away all of his gear and was ready to go. The moment the chattering rotors began to stutter down into silence, he pushed open his door and jumped out, reached back inside and dragged his two cases of equipment after him.

    "Wait a moment," Norton said as Tucker pushed Willis's seat forward and made to follow the photographer.

    "Yeah?"

    Norton said, "Obviously, you're going in there. Since you told me to be ready for four passengers-and since I've only heard about three of you so far-it seems likely you're going in to get back a man of yours."

    Tucker said nothing.

    Norton continued: "Wouldn't they be expecting something like this-the copter and all?"

    "No," Tucker said. "They're expecting small-time tactics, if they're expecting anything at all. They're very secure up there, or think they are. Besides, I'm sure they were altogether misled by the police insignia on the copter."

    "That's another thing," Norton said. "Wouldn't they think it's pretty odd to be harassed like this? Wouldn't they be making regular payoffs to eliminate just this kind of hassle?"

    "Not to state police," Tucker said. "There are rotten apples in every police force, and they probably do carry a couple of the state boys on their payroll, but they can't buy off one of the toughest and best forces in the country. The price would be too high."

    Norton said, "Okay. I wasn't being nosey. I just wanted to know what to expect the next time I have to take this crate in there. If they're going to have me figured out and be waiting for me, then I want to know about it." He stretched again, arched his back and pressed upward against his seat belt.

    "They won't be expecting you," Tucker said. "A flat guarantee."

    "I'll be here when you need me."

    Tucker jumped out, took the two briefcases that Norton handed to him, one with less than five thousand cash packed into it, the other containing the guns. He also handed down a soft khaki tote bag with a heavy load in the bottom, special equipment that Tucker had asked him to supply when he had originally called him from the department-store phone that morning. Tucker carried the briefcases in one hand, since they were both slim, the tote bag in the other, led Willis back into the woods and, fifteen minutes later, to the red Corvette where Jimmy Shirillo was still feigning sleep.

    By a quarter of ten they were in the city again. Merle Bachman had been in Baglio's hands slightly over thirty-six hours.

    

    

    In the dream he lay upon a soft bed, the covers drawn away from him, a feather pillow propping his head up. The room was almost completely dark, though swaths of soft blue light striped the thick carpeting and made odd shadows on the walls; the source of the light, though he looked for it, was not apparent. Elise Ramsey appeared on the far side of the room, held for a moment in a band of blue light, like a specimen in a collection, on display, then stepped forward into shadow. She was nude, striding toward him with the confidence of a lioness. She came out of shadow into light again, cupping her heavy breasts in her hands, making him an offering, one that he was instantly willing to accept. She stepped into shadow again, reappeared in light, all slickly moving, sinuous curves. He would have been aroused to full ability in another moment-except that he saw the incredible hand rising up behind her, the hand that she was clearly unaware of and which, even had he warned her, was moving too fast for her to avoid. It was large enough to cup Elise in its palm, a giant's hand that faded away into the darkness of the ceiling just beyond the thick wrist. The fingers were spread to encircle her, the flesh gray and cold and rigid in appearance. It was an iron fist, and it would crush her in another moment. What made the dream metamorphose into a nightmare was not the fact that she would be squashed like an insect, or even the understanding that the hand would come after Tucker when it was finished with the girl, but the certainty that the hand did not belong to Baglio this time. This time, the iron hand was his father's. Shadow and blue light, bare breasts, stiffened nipples and the convulsing grasp of iron digits…

    "Hey!"

    Tucker blinked.

    "You all right?" Pete Harris asked, shaking his shoulder gently but insistently. "You okay, friend?"

    "Yeah," Tucker said, not opening his eyes.

    "You sure?"

    "I'm sure."

    Tucker sat up and rubbed his eyes, massaged the back of his neck and tried to decide what had crawled into his mouth and died during his nap in Harris's hotel bed. He flicked his tongue around and didn't find any corpse, decided that he must have swallowed it and that he would have to scrub his teeth well to get rid of the last traces of its demise.

    "Jimmy's here," Harris said. "He's got everything you told him to bring back."

    Tucker looked up, saw Shirillo across the bed, sitting in a chair by the standard-model hotel writing desk. Several paper bags with store names on them rested on the floor near his feet. "What kind of job did your uncle do on the photographs?"

    "Great," Shirillo said. "Wait till you see them."

    "Have them ready for me," Tucker said. He got up and went into the bathroom, closed the door behind him. He felt like hell, stiff and weary, though he had been asleep for only an hour and a half. He looked at his watch. One o'clock in the morning. Make it a two-hour nap. Still and all, he should not feel as bad as this. He splashed water in his face, dried off, found Harris's toothpaste and squeezed a worm of it onto his index finger, then scrubbed his teeth without benefit of a genuine brush. It didn't do much good for the tartar that had built up since this morning, but it freshened his breath and made him feel somewhat more human than he had when he woke up.

    Back in the main room, he found that they had positioned the three chairs at the writing desk and had a stack of 8 x 10 glossies lying there for his inspection. He took the middle chair which they had left for him and picked up the stack of pictures, went through them carefully, selected a dozen and gave the rest to Shirillo. The boy put them in a plain brown envelope and put the envelope out of their way.

    "We'll be ready to go in half an hour," Tucker told them, "if you pay attention the whole way through."

    "You have it all figured out?" Harris asked.

    "Not all of it," Tucker said, aware of Harris's streak of stubbornness. The big man had gone along with everything Tucker ordered up to now, but he would have his limits. It was best to make him think he played an equal role in at least part of the planning. "I'll want your comments and suggestions so we can hammer out the fine points."

    "What if Bachman's dead?" Harris asked.

    "Then we're wasting our time, but we don't lose anything."

    "We could get killed," Harris said.

    "Look at the photographs, please," Tucker said. "They cost me nearly three hundred dollars."

    Harris shrugged and settled back in his chair, quiet. He looked at the photographs, listened to what Tucker had to say, looked as though he wanted to put his Thompson together and caress it for a while, began to make a few suggestions and finally regained his nerve. He was getting old, with twenty-five years in the business; no one blamed him for being a little more on edge than his colleagues. They'd be the same way in two more decades, if they lived that long.

    

    On the drive out of the city, Shirillo behind the wheel of a stolen Buick that Tucker had picked up only a few blocks from the hotel, Harris in back with his Thompson across his lap, Tucker hungrily devoured two Hershey chocolate bars and watched the occasional headlights of other cars blur by them. He had not eaten since breakfast, but the candy stopped his stomach growling and steadied his hands, which had become slightly palsied. The food did not, however, do anything about the shakes that had hold of his insides, and he resisted an urge to hug himself for warmth.

    Eventually, they pulled off onto the familiar picnic area three quarters of a mile beyond Baglio's private road and stopped behind another car.

    "It's empty," Shirillo said.

    Harris had leaned forward, and he said, "Couple of kids parking."

    Shirillo grinned and shook his head. "If it was that, the windows would be all steamed."

    "What do we do?" Harris asked.

    Wishing he had another Hershey bar, Tucker said, "We sit here and wait, that's all."

    "What if nobody shows up, my friend?"

    "We'll see," Tucker said.

    A minute later two tall, well-dressed black men walked out of the woods behind the picnic area, making casually for the parked car, one of them still zipping up his fly.

    "The call of nature," Shirillo said. "You'd think the state could afford a few comfort stations along a highway like this."

    The black men gave the Buick only a cursory glance, not at all afraid of whom they might encounter in a lonely spot like this, got into their own car, started up and drove away.

    "Okay,' Tucker said, getting out of the car.

    Harris rolled down his window and called to Tucker, "Maybe we ought to hide it better than we planned-in case there's anyone else with a bad bladder problem."

    "You're right," Tucker said.

    Using a flashlight, Tucker inspected the edge of the woods, found a place between the trees where the Buick could squeeze through, motioned to Shirillo. The kid drove the big car into the woods, following Tucker as he cautiously picked out a route that led deeper and deeper into the underbrush. Fifteen minutes later he signaled Shirillo to stop. They were more than a hundred yards from the last picnic table, two hundred from the road, screened by several clumps of thickly grown mountain laurel.

    Getting out of the car, Harris said, "Anybody who's prude enough to walk all this way from the road just to take a piss deserves to be shot in the head."

    Shirillo and Tucker quickly unloaded all the gear from the Buick and put it on the car roof where everyone could get at it. Quickly they undressed and changed into the clothes which Shirillo had purchased earlier in the evening according to the sizes they had given him. Each man wore his own black socks and shoes, dark jeans that fitted loosely enough to be comfortable in almost any circumstance, midnight-blue shirt and dark windbreaker with large pockets and a hood that could be pulled over the head. Each man drew up his hood and fastened it beneath his chin, tied the drawstrings in a double knot to keep them from loosening.

    Harris said, "You sure have rotten taste, Jimmy."

    "Oh?"

    "What's the alligator patch on the windbreakers?"

    Shirillo reached down and fingered the embroidered alligator on his left breast. "I couldn't find any wind-breakers without them," he said.

    "I feel like a kid," Harris said.

    Tucker said, "Relax. It could have been worse than an alligator. It might have been a kitten or a canary or something."

    "They had kittens," Shirillo said. "But I ruled those out. They also had elephants and tigers, and I couldn't make up my mind between those and the alligators. If you don't like the alligators, Pete, we'll wait here while you exchange your jacket for another one."

    "Maybe I'd have liked the tiger," Harris said reflectively, letting the idea roll around in his mind while he spoke.

    Tucker said, "What's wrong with elephants?"