Blood risk (14 page)

    Shirillo completed the job in less than five minutes and joined Harris and Tucker where they waited in the corridor. He said, "Do we still go upstairs?"

    "Why not?"

    "If Bachman isn't there-"

    "He's there. I'm sure he is," Tucker said. "That little sonofabitch Keesey was lying."

    Shirillo said, "You sure?"

    Tucker's smile was broad, visible even in that dim light. "Don't you think Keesey's capable of trying to mislead us?"

    "Truthfully, no."

    "Why? Because he's fat and he blushes easily?" Tucker shook his head, looked Shirillo up and down. "In that case, I'd say you're too thin and too young to be worth a damn on a job like this. But here you are, and you're holding up your end well enough."

    "Okay," Shirillo said. "Then Bachman's upstairs. That's a good sign, isn't it? It must mean he hasn't talked yet."

    "Maybe."

    Harris said, "Friends, we're wasting time."

    "Too right," Tucker said. "Let's go up and say hello to Mr. Baglio."

    

    

    They climbed to the second floor by way of the back stairs and came out in the wing where Deffer and the Halversons had their quarters. Tucker listened to the stilled corridor, squinted at the deep shadows that lay the length of it, then motioned for Harris and Shirillo to take the door on the left, where, according to Keesey, the maid and the handyman would be sleeping, while he went to the first door on the right and leaned against it, listening. He couldn't hear even the slightest sound behind it. If Henry Deffer had been alerted by their muffled voices in Keesey's room just below his own, he was playing it very cool indeed. Tucker slowly twisted the knob as far around as it would go and eased the bedroom door inward. As if that were a signal, Harris and Shirillo went into the Halversons' room across the hall, flicked on the light there and, briefly, backlighted Tucker until he could locate the switch just inside the door of Deffer's room.

    In the sudden burst of bright light the old man sat up as if he'd been given a jolt of electricity, slid quickly to the edge of the bed, jammed his white feet into a tattered pair of slippers and started to stand up.

    "Sit down," Tucker said.

    Deffer looked like a plucked turkey, his scrawny neck bright red, the stubble of his beard like the pinfeathers that the plucker had missed. He scowled at Tucker and smacked his lips as if he were considering pecking out his adversary's eyes.

    "Sit down and be quiet," Tucker said again.

    Deffer looked longingly at the top dresser drawer only three steps away. He raised his arms like wings, let them drop to his sides when he realized he couldn't fly, caught himself staring, looked away from the dresser and back at Tucker again. "Punk," he said. He evidently liked the sound of it. He wrinkled up his gray face and said it again: "Punk!" Satisfied that he hadn't been completely cowed, he sat down on the bed as directed.

    Tucker went to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer, lifted out a Marley.38 that lay on top of two piles of neatly folded underwear. It was a beautiful gun, well cared for, and it was also fully loaded.

    "That's mine!" the chauffeur snapped.

    Tucker turned to face him and raised the barrel of the Lüger to his lips, like a long finger, to signal the need for silence. In a thin whisper he said, "Be quiet, or I'll have to kill you with it."

    Deffer tried not to look upset.

    Tucker unloaded the Marley, admiring the craftsmanship and design even now when the situation would seem to rule out consideration of anything but the job. He put the empty gun and the bullets in the unused pocket of his windbreaker, zipped the pocket shut.

    "You don't got a chance-punk," Deffer said.

    Smiling falsely, Tucker stepped up to the chauffeur and put the cold end of the silenced barrel against Deffer's forehead. He said, "I asked you to whisper."

    Deffer scowled. His teeth were in a glass of water on the night stand, smiling at Tucker like a fragment of the Cheshire cat. Without his dentures he looked older than before. "What do you want?" he asked in a whisper.

    "Why don't you relax, just stretch out there on the bed," Tucker directed.

    " 'Cause I don't feel like it," the turkey said, fluffing his wings again, smacking his lips.

    "That wasn't a question," Tucker said wearily, motioning with the barrel of the Lüger.

    Deffer stretched out on his back.

    Tucker got a chair and dragged it to the bed, sat down. He felt less nervous sitting down, because he couldn't feel the weakness in his legs that way. He said, "I'm going to ask questions, and you're going to provide answers. If you lie to me, I'll make sure you don't get a chance to collect your pension from the organization."

    Deffer said nothing at all. He simply glared at Tucker with malevolent red-rimmed eyes, lying as stiff and straight as if he were on a plank bed.

    Tucker said, "Where's Baglio keeping the man who wrecked the Chevrolet Tuesday morning?"

    Deffer's eyes brightened. Clearly he had not connected this affair with the events of Tuesday morning. That was all Tucker had to see to understand why Baglio, a much younger man, was in the driver's seat figuratively, while Deffer was there literally.

    The chauffeur cleared his throat and smiled broadly. He said, "You can't get away with this. You punks. Nice bunch of punks. There's guards all over this place."

    "You're lying," Tucker said.

    "See if I am."

    "I've already talked to Keesey. Two guards. One gagged and tied downstairs, the other knocked out by a bullet wound."

    "Dead?" the turkey asked, his grin fading.

    "Not yet." Tucker asked about Bachman again.

    "They moved him," Deffer said.

    He had lost all expression in his wizened, gray face. He only looked old and tired now. But that wasn't genuine; it was a poker face, and there was no way to tell what all it concealed. Deffer might not be exceptionally bright, but he had a lot of guts for an old man and a canniness that was not going to be easy to break down.

    "Killed him?" Tucker asked.

    Deffer looked at the silenced Lüger with more respect than he had shown to this point, though that might be as much pretense as was his expression of weariness. He said, "No."

    "Where'd they take him?"

    "Don't know."

    "Bullshit. You're the chauffeur."

    "They didn't move him by car."

    "How?"

    "Ambulance."

    "That's a lie. The last thing that Baglio wants is a public record of that man's injuries. The police come nosing around a hospital, our man might find it to his advantage to spill the beans about Tuesday's caper. Baglio doesn't want anyone to know about those biweekly shipments of cash."

    "It was a private ambulance," the turkey squawked. He looked, just a little, as if he were beginning to be afraid, a patently manufactured fear.

    "What's that got to do with anything?"

    "They didn't necessarily take him to a hospital."

    "Where, then?"

    "I don't know."

    "The whole story's a lie," Harris said. He had entered the room without Tucker hearing him, and he stood beside Tucker's chair, the machine gun pointed directly at Deffer.

    Deffer swallowed hard. Maybe he really did respect something as heavy as the Thompson. It was impossible to be certain.

    "You questioned the Halversons?" Tucker asked.

    "Not yet." Harris jabbed the gun toward Deffer. "But, friend, this old crock would lie to God and the angels. A whole life working for the organization, for Baglio? He'd have long ago forgot what truth is."

    "I think you're right," Tucker said. "Our man's still in the house-or dead."

    "I want to talk to you about that possibility," Harris said. He was still red-faced, still sweating.

    "In a minute," Tucker said. "First, I have to make Grandpa secure."

    "Takes much less than a minute," Harris said. He stepped forward, shifting his grip on the Thompson, and slammed the heavy metal hip rest of the gun into the underside of Deffer's chin. The old man gagged, flopped once and lay still. A light foam of blood frosted his wrinkled lips, and a spreading bruise the color of grape juice seeped out from his chin, sent stains down his thin neck.

    "That wasn't necessary," Tucker said.

    "He didn't have any teeth to lose, friend," Harris said. He was using the "friend" much too often, further on the edge than he had ever been before.

    "I was going to tie and gag him."

    Harris looked at the old man, prodded him with the barrel of the machine gun and said, "He's only unconscious. He'll stay completely out of the way and this saved us time."

    Tucker got out of his chair and felt the quivering weakness behind his knees again. "You said you wanted to talk."

    "I do," Harris said. He crossed to the window, looked out, turned, sidestepped and leaned against the wall. Still in a whisper, he said, "What if Bachman talked? What if they killed him?"

    "Then we get out of here and go to ground for a while, until they've given up on us."

    Harris shook his head violently. "No. I can't afford that. I've got nothing to show for this job, and I needed the cash. I have another idea altogether."

    Tucker knew what it was, but he asked anyway.

    "If they got it out of Bachman, got anything at all out of him, we'll have to kill Baglio, maybe Deffer-maybe the guard downstairs."

    "What about the girl, Miss Loraine?"

    Harris looked genuinely perplexed. "What about her?"

    "Baglio's sleeping with her," Tucker explained patiently. "He's a fifty-year-old man, and she isn't half that. She's one hell of a looker, the kind of chick who sometimes engenders gratitude in a man that old. It's possible that he could think of her as more than just another lay-that he might be telling her more about his affairs than he should. Other men have been known to make fools of themselves in the same manner."

    Harris thought about it a moment, his deep-set eyes sinking even deeper. He said, "I don't like it-but we kill her too if we have to."

    "The Halversons?"

    "They wouldn't know anything," Harris said confidently. "A man like Baglio wouldn't be blabbing his business to the maid and butler."

    "Handyman."

    "Whatever."

    Tucker shook his head sadly and went to the bed, took Deffer's pulse and checked his breathing. He began to tear the pillowcase apart to make strips of binding. He said, "Pete, you're in a bad way. I recommend retirement as soon as possible."

    "You do, huh?"

    Tucker nodded, not bothering to look at him, hoping to avoid a show of temper that way. He began to tie Deffer's ankles together. "If you kill Baglio and the others, this becomes a police affair. This greasepaint doesn't make us invisible. It would have been enough to thwart any search that Baglio might be able to mount; but the police, when they get the descriptions from the Halversons and from Keesey, are going to be able to match those to your photograph where it appears in about a million' mug books. That's a small chance of discovery, admittedly, but large enough to worry about. You want to kill everyone in the house, then, even the maid and the handyman?"

    Harris softly cleared his throat and stood away from the wall, though he couldn't think of anything to say. He had made a fool of himself in front of Tucker. He couldn't afford that.

    Tucker flopped Deffer onto his stomach, got his hands behind him and tied them in place, rolled him onto his back again. Even if the old man's throat permitted him to speak in more than a whisper when he regained consciousness, there did not seem to be any need to gag him. By the time he came to, everyone in the house would already know the place had been breached.

    "Still…" Harris said at last, trying to break the silence.

    "Even if you kill everyone in the house," Tucker interrupted, "how do you know Baglio hasn't communicated what Bachman told him to others, maybe to that dandified accountant, Chaka? If he did, all your killing's for nothing."

    "A flaw in your reasoning," Harris said. "This is already a police affair. The guard you shot makes it that."

    "Bullshit, and you know it," Tucker said. "Baglio will get his own doctor to fix his boy up."

    Harris knew that, but he still wouldn't let go of it. "I can't afford to go to ground for a year, dammit."

    Because he had to get Harris off the subject, Tucker said, "Maybe by the time we leave here you'll have a bankroll to last you for a year or even longer."

    "How?"

    "Wait," Tucker said, because he had no real answer.

    They left Deffer's room, turning off the lights and closing the door behind them.

    Jimmy Shirillo was waiting with the Halversons. He was standing just inside their door, while they were sitting up against the brass headboard of their bed, bound and gagged, their hands tied to the brass bars behind them. She was thin and somewhat pretty, though with the sagging look about the eyes that indicated a woman wearied and almost beaten by life. Her husband, a tall, thin, sallow-faced man with bushy eyebrows and ears that looked as if they had been grafted from a hound, had been weathered even worse by the years, servile and eager to please. And terrified.

    "Questions?" Shirillo asked.

    Tucker looked at the Halversons again and saw exactly what Keesey had meant. "No questions. If they even know what Baglio is, I'd be amazed. I have a feeling our man could have been kept in this house for the last month without these two ever being aware of it,"