Baglio was responding to the situation with admirable aplomb, not at all frightened by the hooded, greasepainted specters carrying silenced pistols and not the least humiliated at being caught in his shorts. He'd already figured out who they were, in a general sense, and knew the threat they posed wasn't mortal. And he had less to be ashamed of about his body than most men fifteen years his junior: from his wide shoulders to his loose-skinned but relatively flat stomach he was in good shape; evidently he made use of the swimming pool, sauna and gymnasium in the basement. Too, the Loraine woman would give him a strong motivation for staying fit. It was also the woman, Tucker decided, who helped Baglio meet the situation with so much cooclass="underline" a man hated to be made a fool of in front of a woman he'd been bedding.
Baglio said, "Come along with you-where?"
"Across the hall."
"As soon as I dress," Baglio said, starting for the closet. He carried himself well, his back straight, head high. If he had had time to drag a comb through his silvery hair, he would almost have been presentable enough for a stint on nationwide television-perhaps as a Presidential candidate.
"No time for that," Tucker said.
In the study across the hall, Shirillo pulled out two sturdy straight-backed chairs and placed them side by side in the middle of the room, indicated them with the barrel of his Lüger and stood out of the way as the couple sat down.
"You still haven't explained yourselves," Baglio said. He continued to be the schoolteacher: lips tight, eyes grim, nostrils flared a bit in indignation. He was going to give them detention minutes if they didn't shape up damn soon.
"We're looking for a friend," Tucker said.
"I don't understand."
Miss Loraine laughed slightly, though Tucker couldn't tell whether the laugh was directed at him or Baglio. Or at herself.
"He was in the car Tuesday morning," Tucker said. "The driver."
Miss Loraine looked up and smiled, not nastily, not as a friend either but as if in remembered pleasure of that collision, as if the excitement still lingered and still touched all the right pleasure centers in the brain.
"I'm sorry you came this far for so little," Baglio said.
"Oh?"
"Yes. The driver's dead."
Tucker smiled. "Of old age?"
Baglio said, "He was banged up pretty badly." His voice had a note, almost, of indifference. "He died yesterday."
"The body?"
"Buried."
"Where?"
"I've a whole graveyard here," Baglio said. His diction was excellent. Either he had gone to the best schools as a boy or he had hired private tutors in his middle age. The last was far more likely than the first. He seemed to take pride in his word choices, his conscious wit, his clear pronunciation, much in the same way a college boy might. "The pine trees are the markers, suitably engraved." He looked at the woman and grinned winningly, elicited a chuckle from her.
Though he forced himself to react emotionally, Tucker's next move was guided solely by intellect. It was clear that neither Baglio nor the woman expected any harm to come to them and that neither of them would make a good subject for interrogation so long as he was comforted by this assumption. Grunting, then, Tucker leaned in and raked the barrel of the Lüger across Baglio's face, using the sight point, gouging him from temple to chin. Blood popped up in a bright line.
"It's time to stop playing games to impress the lady," Tucker said. "It's time to come to grips with your decidedly disadvantageous position." He wondered if Baglio understood, by his choice of words and tone, that Tucker was mimicking him.
Baglio touched his bleeding face, stared at his carmined fingers in disbelief. A long minute later he looked at Tucker, the humor in his face metamorphosed into hatred. "You've just bought yourself one of those pine-marked graves," he said. His voice had not deteriorated. Schoolmaster meting out punishment to the bad boy.
Distasteful as he found this, Tucker swung the Lüger again and scored a red ribbon on Baglio's undamaged cheek.
The strongman started out of his chair, head lowered like a bull ready to ram, yelped and crumpled backward as Shirillo delivered another brutal blow from behind with his own pistol on Baglio's right shoulder. He clutched at the bruised and spasming muscles, hunched forward as if he might be sick. Gradually he'd begun to look his age.
The girl looked older too.
She licked her lips and shifted her gaze around the room as if she thought she'd see something that would unexpectedly turn the tables. That fantasy lasted a brief moment, because she realized, as she must have done often before, that her best weapon was herself-her body and her wits. She looked up, aware of Tucker's eyes on her, and without being obvious about it she shifted inside her tentish yellow gown to mold it at strategic points to her. An offering. But poisoned.
He smiled at her, for he had the vague idea that he might need her cooperation later, then turned back to Baglio. "We were talking about a friend of mine."
"Go to hell," Baglio said.
Shirillo, unbidden, stepped forward and, judging the position of Baglio's kidneys through the slatted back of the chair, jammed the barrel of his Lüger hard into the man's left side. Ordinarily this sort of tactic was beyond him. Now, he kept thinking of his father. And his brother. The shoe shop. His brother's limp.
Baglio grunted, sucked breath, reared up, then crumpled under Shirillo's second, swift chop to his shoulder. He fell off the chair, to the floor.
"My friend?" Tucker asked.
Baglio got his hands under himself and, feigning more weakness than he felt, started up, shifted toward Tucker's feet. That was a stupid move for a man in his situation, the first indication that he'd been frightened and that he was acting on a gut level. Tucker back-stepped and kicked him alongside the head. When he went down this time he stayed down, unconscious.
"Get a glass of water," Tucker told Shirillo.
The kid went after it.
Miss Loraine smiled at Tucker.
He smiled back.
Neither spoke.
Shirillo returned with the water, but before he could throw it in Baglio's face Tucker said, "No vendetta, kid. We can't afford it." He had remembered Shirillo's monologue when they'd first met several weeks ago, remembered the worn-out father and the brother who'd been badly beaten.
"I'm finished," Shirillo said. "I thought at first I wanted to kill him. But I've decided I don't want to pay him back in his own coin; I don't want to be like he is."
"Good," Tucker said. "Think he'll recognize you?"
"No. He saw me once for five minutes, a year and a half ago."
"Wake him, then."
Shirillo tossed the water into the bruised and bloody face, went around behind the two chairs again.
Baglio blinked, looked up.
"We were talking about my friend," Tucker said.
Baglio's lips were swollen, but that could not account for the change in his voice. Behind the slurred words there was a different tone, no more haughtiness, the tone of a man suddenly brought down from a high place and made to see his own mortality. "I told you, he's dead."
"Why does your cook tell a different story?"
"I wouldn't know."
"And Deffer?"
Baglio looked up. The hate was still in his eyes, though it had been veiled now, as if he knew it would be dangerous to show any sort of resolve. "What did they say?"
"An ambulance came and took him away."
"It did. To a grave in the woods."
"Bullshit."
"Again on the shoulder?" Shirillo asked from behind Baglio. "Or another kidney punch?"
"Wait," Tucker said, smiling. He apologized pleasantly to Baglio for his partner's overeager attitude. He said, "I'm sure our friend's in this house. Otherwise everyone's story would match. Otherwise-a lot of things. Now, where is he?"