Blood risk (11 page)

    "Oh, elephants," Harris said. "Well, elephants always look a little stupid, don't you think? They certainly aren't ferocious; they don't instill fear in anyone. Baglio saw me coming in an elephant-decorated windbreaker, he might think I was the local Good Humor man or someone selling diaper service, something like that. Besides, I've been a lifelong Democrat, and elephants aren't my insignia."

    "You vote?" Shirillo asked, surprised.

    "Sure, I vote."

    Both Shirillo and Tucker laughed.

    Harris looked perplexed, rubbed at the alligator on his chest and said, "What's wrong with that?"

    "It just seems strange," Tucker explained, "that a wanted criminal is a registered voter."

    "I'm not wanted yet," Harris said. "I was wanted twice before, but I served less than two years both times. I'm a clean citizen now. I feel it's my duty to vote in every election." He looked at them, at what he could see of them in the dark. "Don't you two vote?"

    "No," Shirillo said. "I've only been eligible a few years, and I just never got around to it. I don't see what good it does."

    "You?" Harris asked Tucker.

    Tucker said, "Politics never interested me. I know people who spend half their lives worrying about how everything's going to hell in a basket-and it all goes to hell in a basket anyway. I figure I'll survive no matter what nincompoop the public puts in office next."

    "That's just terrible," Harris said, clearly taken aback at their unpatriotic sloth. "It's a good thing neither one of you has any kids. You'd be the kind of parents who'd set rotten examples."

    Tucker and Shirillo laughed again.

    "Come on," Tucker said, prying the lid off a small can of greasepaint, "Let me blacken your face."

    "What for?" Harris asked.

    "For one thing," Tucker said, "it'll make it harder for anyone to see you in the dark. More important, with a hood over your hair and black paint covering your face, it's going to be difficult for Baglio or any of them to make a positive identification of you later. Change a man's facial color, and you alter him almost as thoroughly as if he'd donned a mask. And in the close work we'll be doing tonight, a mask wouldn't be good; it would just get in the way. The greasepaint will conceal you and give you the optimum in mobility, the use of your eyes."

    Grunting unhappily, Harris submitted to this indignity, all the while fingering the outline of the raised green alligator on his breast.

    Ten minutes later they had all been black-faced, the paint put aside with the clothes they had taken off.

    "Now?" Harris asked, plainly expecting yet another indignity.

    "I'll show you the guns," Tucker said.

    "I always use the Thompson," Harris said, lifting it away from the car where he had leaned it.

    "You'll take it along," Tucker agreed. "But you'll use it only if you have to. If at all possible, you'll keep it shoulder-slung and you'll use this." He got out the three Lügers and three silencers, fitted the parts and distributed the weapons. He divided up the clips of ammunition, four each, and supervised the loading.

    "Very nice," Harris said.

    Tucker relaxed as the big man strapped the submachine gun over his shoulder and tested the pistol in his hand. "Keep the ammunition zipped into the right-hand pocket of your windbreaker."

    Harris said, "Holsters?"

    "None," Tucker said.

    "Gun goes in left-hand pocket?"

    "No. Keep the pistol out at all times."

    "Sometimes you need both hands for other things," Harris said.

    "Not tonight, I think. We've got to keep a gun ready. For one thing, getting that damn long silenced barrel out of a holster could be tricky in a pinch. For another, once we're in the house, we could be come upon and shot before we had time to draw. Remember, Baglio keeps at least four armed men in that place, four professionals. And it's their home ground, not ours."

    Shirillo had been unable to learn exactly how many people lived in the Baglio mansion.

    Tucker took out a special belt from which hung a number of tools in thin plastic pouches. He pulled up his windbreaker, buckled the belt around his waist, drew the jacket down again.

    "Shirillo get you that?" Harris asked.

    "Yes."

    "Looks like a nice set."

    "It is," Shirillo said. "I picked each piece myself, spent a couple of weeks honing them where that was necessary, made up the belt and the pouches in my brother's shoe-repair shop."

    Harris scratched his blackened chin, looked at the tips of his fingers, said, "You think we'll have to break in, then?"

    "If all the main doors and unlocked windows look too damn inviting," Tucker said, "we'll make our own entrance."

    Harris nodded.

    "One more thing," Tucker said. He got the khaki tote bag that Paul Norton had given him that afternoon, opened it and took out two compact walkie-talkies. He gave one to Shirillo and took one himself, strapped it to his shoulder and let it hang down against his right biceps. He explained the operation of the radios to Shirillo, insisted that they test them, was finally satisfied that the boy knew what he was doing.

    "I don't get one?" Harris asked.

    "You're already carrying the machine gun," Tucker pointed out. "It may be necessary to split up and be out of each other's sight. I won't, however, have us cut into three separate units. You'll always be with either Jimmy or me, and when we've gone two different ways, we can keep in contact with these. Later on, of course, we'll need them to get in touch with Paul."

    "The copter jockey?" Harris asked.

    "Yes."

    "I'm anxious to meet him."

    "You will before long."

    They gathered up everything that had not been in the Buick when they stole the car-the clothes they had taken off, the attaché case in which the three pistols had lain, the bags the clothes they were now wearing had come in, the black greasepaint, all the sales slips-stuffed everything into the tote bag that the walkie-talkies had been in. The bag was filled to bulging.

    "Back in a jiffy," Tucker said.

    He took a five-minute walk into the woods, much deeper than the car had gone, and, when he felt he was far enough away from the Buick, he heaved the tote bag away into the dark trees. It glanced off a pine trunk, struck something else, landed with a crash in deep greenery and was still. Good enough, then. He went back to the others.

    They took ten minutes to wipe down the Buick, inside and out, until they were sure no one would pick up any prints from it. They had not worried about prints on the stolen Chevy and Dodge that had been wracked up in Baglio's estate the day before, because they knew that Baglio would have those wrecks tucked away and that the police would never have a chance to go over them. This was different, for the Buick would be abandoned here and would eventually be returned to its proper owner. Though Harris's fingerprints were on file, neither Shirillo nor Tucker had been inked into public records yet. Shirillo was too young to have been caught yet; Tucker was simply too careful. Also, Tucker had never been printed in his real identity as the man with the penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, and he most likely never would be; the rich are seldom subjected to that kind of humiliation unless the case against them is as tight as an angry fist, and Tucker intended to be perfectly law-abiding in his real identity. Printed as Tucker, then, his true name and background could be kept a secret, even if he was arrested and had to serve time-although, once out on bail, he could ditch the Tucker name forever and slip back into the Park Avenue world without much worry about being traced and apprehended. As Tucker, however, having his prints on file would severely limit his mobility.

    Tucker shut the last open door of the Buick, using his handkerchief to keep it clean. He put the handkerchief in his pocket and turned to Shirillo. "Time?"

    Shirillo looked at his watch in the pale yellow glow of the flashlight, and he said, "A quarter to three."

    "Plenty of time," Tucker said.

    Around them, the darkness was complete when Shirillo flicked off the light. The thickly criss-crossed boughs of the pines even held back the dim brightness of the stars.

    Tucker said, "Have we forgotten anything?" He knew that they had not, but he wanted to give Pete Harris the feeling that he was helping to guide the operation.

    No one responded.

    Checking the flimsy rubber surgical gloves which they'd all put on when they'd changed clothes, Tucker said, "Let's go, then. We've got a good piece of walking to do, and we can use the flashlight for only about half of it."

    They struck out for Baglio's mansion, while the night closed in around them, and the silenced crickets near the Buick, alone again, took up their chirruping.

    

    

    Their line of march paralleled the main highway, though they remained out of sight of it. In a while they came across Baglio's private macadamed lane. Moving back into the woods again, still guided by the flashlight beam, they followed the twisting lane as it cut inland, and they began to move upward into worn limestone foothills. The trees were thick, as was the brambled underbrush. But deer, smaller animals and the run-off from rainstorms had pressed paths through the weaker vegetation. These natural trails often wandered considerably between two points, but they afforded an easier way than any of the men could have chosen with the jumble of bushes, rocks, gullies and brambles on all sides. To make up for the extra distance they had to cover, they jogged thirty paces for every ten they walked, running as far as they could for three minutes, cutting back to a walk for one, running another three, walking again. Tucker wanted to be within sight of the mansion by three-thirty and inside of it no later than a quarter to four. That still gave them plenty of time before dawn to do everything they would need to do.

    Running through the darkness with the crazily bobbing light picking out the narrow trail ahead of him, Tucker was reminded of the nightmare that he had experienced in Harris's hotel room: the hand descending suddenly out of shadows, moving stealthily through bands of darkness and blue light, stalking the nude Elise.

    He could not shake off the insane conviction that the same hand was behind him now, that it had already disposed of Harris in a most brutal fashion, that it was wrapping around Shirillo at that very moment and would be gripping him in cold iron fingers any time now.

    He ran, then walked, then ran some more, listening to the matching steps of the two men behind him.

    Twice they stopped to rest for exactly two minutes at a stretch, but they did not speak to each other. Drawing breath was all they cared about. They stared at the ground, wiped sweat out of their eyes and, when their time was up, moved on again. Harris's breathing was the most labored, whether from exhaustion alone or from fear as much as weariness Tucker couldn't say. A life of crime wasn't meant for any but young men.

    Fifteen minutes after they had started out, Tucker flicked off the flashlight and slowed their pace considerably. At 3:35 in the morning they came to the perimeter of the forest and the beginning of Baglio's immaculately cared-for lawn.

    In the forest, as they were on the way up from the picnic area where they had changed clothes, a thin layer of ground fog had clung to the bottoms of the trees and twined through the undergrowth like a tangle of wispy rags, now and again obscured the way ahead, cold and wet and clinging. Here in the open the aisles of trees funneled the fog between them, poured it onto the shrub-dotted lawn where it lay like piles and piles of heavy quilts. The lights on the front promenade, under the pillars, were diffused by it, as were the dimmer lights that shone through a few downstairs windows. The result was an eerie wash of yellow light that filled the immediate lawn about the house but illuminated nothing, lay upon the dense shadows but did not disperse them.

    Tucker, Harris and Shirillo lay in the woods at the edge of the mowed grass and studied the stillness of the early-morning scene, not wanting to find any movement up there but more or less resigned to it. Apparently there were no guards prowling the grounds, though one or more of them might be stationed at fixed points from which they could scan the entire lawn. Tucker knew that was a strong possibility, but he pretty much rejected it anyway. Baglio would not be expecting them to return. There was no reason for him to mount an extraordinary guard tonight unless he had been especially impressed with the state-police helicopter during the day. That was possible, Tucker supposed, but not very likely. Baglio's sort did not like policemen much, but they were not as paranoid about them as a lesser criminal-say, a common burglar or mugger-might have been. For Ross Baglio, there were always payoffs that could be made, influence that could be bought; or, failing that, there were always top-notch lawyers, bail bonds and an eventual dismissal of the charges on one ground or another.

    "Probably inside the house this early in the morning, this kind of weather," Harris whispered.

    "Of course," Tucker said.

    "As planned, then?"

    "As planned."

    Harris went first. He crouched so that he was only half his normal height, and he ran toward a line of shrubbery that ringed the inside of the circular driveway and provided a well-concealed vantage point from which they could safely gauge the presence of sentries at any of the front windows. For a moment there was the sound of his receding footsteps, soft, wet hissing as he disturbed the dewy grass. Then there was nothing at all. The fog swallowed him completely.

    "He'll be in place now," Tucker whispered.