Halloween in June, he thought. It was the wrong time to wear a rubber mask, in this heat and humidity.
On the hilltop Jimmy had crept to the edge of the limestone outcropping, ready to jump into the lane behind the Cadillac the moment the big car had gone by. He fumbled with his goblin's face a moment, felt the dew on it and thought-inexplicably-that the water was blood. Fear. Green fear, pure and simple. Angry with himself, he got the mask in place.
Down at the lay-by, behind the Dodge, Tucker became a scarred old witch with one quick movement of his hand, grimaced at the odor of latex that he now drew with every breath, then looked across the road at the brush above the stone wall. Where was Harris? There. Maintaining good cover for a city boy, blending right in with the weeds. Cradling his Thompson, his face that of a grotesque monster, he seemed twice as big and dangerous as he had ever looked before.
Tucker raised his shotgun and propped the barrel on the fender of the Dodge, cautioning himself to stay loose. His stomach burned; gall stung the back of his throat. Behind the mask he could allow himself a wince, for none of the others would see it.
The roar of the Cadillac's engine was audible now. Tucker wondered if it was moving too fast to stop in time, and he tried to calculate all the possible moves he could make if it slammed into the barricade. Although the shock of the collision would delay Baglio's men's reaction time and ease the strain of getting them firmly under control, there was also the danger of jammed doors. And of fire. Baglio's men could burn-but what about the money, then? The building roar of the car's engine sounded in that moment like flames devouring stacks of crisp dollar bills.
The Cadillac came into sight.
The driver was quick. He hit the brakes, slewed the big chrome machine sideways, then let up so that he could correct a dangerous plunge toward the precipice, brought the car to a jerking halt six feet away from the Chevy's passenger door.
Clouds of blue smoke caught up with the Cadillac and swept past it.
As planned, Pete Harris let go with a burst of machine-gun fire, aimed well above everyone's head, before any of the others could move toward the limousine. The shots glanced around the hillsides like a series of hammer blows on an iron forge bed. The racket was almost certain to be audible the length of the slopes and would draw reinforcements from the mansion. In five minutes the site would be swarming with Baglio's gunmen. Still, this was the quickest, simplest way to let those inside the limousine know that this was serious business, rough business, and that they were hopelessly outgunned.
When the echo died, Tucker was at the driver's window, the stubby shotgun leveled at the old man's neck. A blast from the first barrel alone would shatter the window and fragment the chauffeur's skull before he could complete any dive for the floorboards. The old bastard knew it; he sat where he was, motionless.
The other man in the front seat was Vito Chaka, Baglio's trusted "accountant," forty years old, slim and almost feminine, graying at the temples. He cultivated a tiny mustache that covered a third of his upper lip like a smudge of paint. In the 1930s he would have driven the women wild, Tucker thought. And perhaps he still did, with the help of his position and his bankroll. Chaka looked at him, sizing him up, then nodded and slowly placed both hands on the padded dash in front of him, palms turned up, everything in the open, in recognition of their professionalism.
"Get out!" Tucker said. His voice sounded thick and mean through the slit of the rubber mouth.
The chauffeur and Chaka obeyed at once. When the two muscle types in the back seat hesitated, Jimmy Shirillo tapped on the rear window with the barrel of his pistol. He had climbed onto the trunk of the Caddy without making a sound, and his goblin mask seemed to grin at the gunmen when they jumped in surprise.
Shirillo was feeling good, better than he had anticipated he would feel, less afraid than he had been before things got moving. He was sweating, and the full-head mask made his neck itch; but those were minor troubles.
Thirty seconds later Baglio's men were all lined up along the driver's side of the limousine, their hands flattened on the roof or hood, legs spread wide, leaning forward so they were off balance, heads tucked between shoulderblades, all very neat, very classic. Only Chaka looked sure of himself, dapper even in this humiliating pose.
Bachman quickly opened the rear door on the far side. "Three cases," he said. No trace of his previous anxiety remained in his voice.
Jimmy Shirillo laughed triumphantly.
"Hold the celebrations," Tucker said. "Go help him."
Bachman lifted the heaviest suitcase and walked off toward the Chevy, severely bent by the dragging weight. He wouldn't have been content to pick up one of the smaller cases, of course-for the same reason that he wore high-waisted trousers: he didn't like anyone to think of him as a small man, even though he was a small man.
Jimmy went around and got the last two bags, carried them with little trouble, dropped them into the open trunk of the stolen Chevrolet and slammed the lid while Bachman scurried for the front door.
"Relax," Tucker told the men lined against the car, though none of them had moved.
No one responded.
Bachman started the Chevy, raced the engine once, shifted into reverse, squealed backward, angling the car downhill.
"Easy!" Tucker shouted.
But he didn't need to caution Merle Bachman, for the small man always gauged the situation properly and performed at the optimum safe speed. He was a good driver.
Harris came off the stone wall, grunting, the sound of his heavy breathing magnified by the mask. While Bachman was backing the Chevy, Harris came around to Tucker and said, "Smooth."
Again Tucker said, "Hold the celebrations."
Bachman put the Chevy in gear, touched the gas lightly and started downhill toward the second curve, shimmering curtains of heat rising from the roof and trunk of the car.
"Get the Dodge," Tucker ordered Shirillo.
The boy went after it.
Pete Harris was the only one still watching the Chevy, thinking about all that money in the trunk, thinking about retirement, and he was the first to see that it was going to go sour. "Oh, shit!" he said.
He had not even finished the exclamation when Tucker heard the hot cry of the Chevrolet's brakes and whirled around to see what had gone wrong.
Everything had gone wrong.
Before Bachman had covered little more than half the distance to the bottom curve, a Cadillac had rounded the limestone down there, coming up. It was a match for the Caddy they had just hit, and it was moving too fast, much too fast for these road conditions. The driver pulled the wheel hard to the left and tried to run the bank; that was hopeless, because the shoulder of the road down there turned swiftly into the stone wall that continued unbroken to the top of the rise. A tire blew with the force of a cannon shot. The car jolted, bucked up and down like an enraged animal. Metal whined as a fender was compressed into half the space it had formerly occupied.
Still braking, the Chevrolet wobbled crazily back and forth as Bachman fought to regain control, veered suddenly and purposefully toward the outside.
"He can't get around a car as big as the Caddy!" Harris said.
Bachman tried it anyway. He was still in the middle of a job, still calm and greased, quick and calculating. He realized that he had only one chance of pulling this off successfully, and no matter how infinitesimal that chance was, he took it. The Cadillac had come to a complete halt now, pretty badly crumpled on the one side, and the Chevy plowed into its rear door like a pig nosing in the turf, reared up and caught its front axle on the top of the ruined door, simultaneously sliding to the left toward the three-hundred-foot chasm. The back wheels jolted off the berm and swung over empty air, spinning up clouds of yellow dust. For a second Tucker was sure the Chevy would break loose and fall, but then he saw it would hold, halfway up the other, larger car like a dog mounting a bitch. Bachman had tried it; he'd lost.