Tucker looked at Shirillo, saw the kid was just stepping onto the ladder with the second suitcase in hand.
"Move!"
Shirillo couldn't make the ladder operate any faster than it was doing now, and he couldn't very well climb it while carrying the luggage, but Tucker couldn't repress the shout. His calm facade was cracking, his carefully cultured composure slipping away. It had been one hell of an operation, and it mustn't go bad now because of one gorilla with a rifle, one punk out to impress the boss with his bravery.
The man behind the concrete planter stood up long enough to aim and take a shot at Tucker.
The bullet tore across the shingle two feet on Tucker's right, spraying chips of tarry fabric.
He loosened a chatter of machine-gun fire, chipping the cement all to hell.
Shirillo picked up the third suitcase and started up the ladder again, jerked as the man behind the planter got him in the thigh.
Son of a bitch, Tucker thought. His weariness and dizziness flopped over and were anger on the other side, anger enough to bring him into sharp, fast movement. He pulled hard on the Thompson's trigger and was rewarded with the sight of the gunman stepping frantically backward out of the way of a line of dancing bullets.
The man turned and ran, the rifle on the lawn where he'd dropped it, darting this way and that, seeking the shelter of shrubbery.
You dumb bastard, Tucker thought. I could have killed you, and what percentage would have been in that?
Everyone seemed anxious to die, as if they couldn't wait for it, like this man and the man he'd wounded on the promenade earlier in the evening. And like Baglio, ready to take a beating rather than tell where Bachman was. Of course, in this business you took a blood risk, because you worked with dangerous men at dangerous times. But a risk should be reasonable, the chances of success greater than the chances for failure. Otherwise you were no better than a fool.
"Hey!" Shirillo called down, breaking Tucker's reverie. He'd gotten the last suitcase into the chopper and had followed close behind it.
Strapping the Thompson around his chest, Tucker got to his feet, almost fell, almost lost it all right there, grabbed desperately for the rope ladder, caught it, jerked as the device began to draw up into the hovering aircraft.
A blood risk: he'd taken it, and he'd won.
Harris leaned out of the open door, reaching for him, grinning broadly. He said, "Been waiting for you," and he took Tucker's hands to pull him the rest of the way. Tucker noted that Harris hadn't added "friend."
Dr. Walter Andrion was a tall, slim, white-haired gentleman who wore tailored suits and fifty-dollar shirts, drove a new Cadillac and traveled in the fastest social circles. He was married to Evanne Andrion, a black-haired, blue-eyed lovely thirty years his junior, a young lady with incredibly expensive tastes. When Junior called him, he dropped everything and came out to the airfield right away, carrying two heavy bags instead of one, for he had long ago learned that he should meet any such call as fully prepared as he could be. This was not orthodox medicine by any means. He worked fast and was clean, bored out wounds, flushed away clotted blood and dirt, stitched the men up as well as they could have been in a hospital. He didn't speak, and no one spoke to him as he worked. He had made it abundantly clear to Tucker three years ago that he did not want to have to hear anything about the origins of such wounds and that he wanted these sessions to be terminated as rapidly as possible. When he was done, he insisted on taking Merle Bachman back to his clinic for a couple of weeks' rest and recuperation, enough time to have his entire mouth rebuilt as well. He accepted two thousand dollars from Tucker in fifties and hundreds, tucked this into an already fat wallet, helped Bachman into his Cadillac and drove away.
"We'll take the doctor's fees from the suitcases," Tucker said. "Before we decide on a split."
Everyone was in agreement on that, except Miss Loraine, who didn't like it but didn't argue either.
While Simonsen, Paul Norton's partner in the airfreight business, was conveniently out having supper, they opened the three suitcases in Norton's office and counted the money, which they found totaled $341,890. Estimating Bachman's additional medical bills at more than four thousand dollars, they settled on splitting $335,000.
Which wasn't bad, either.
Miss Loraine looked at her $67,000, frowned and said "I thought it was going to be a lot more than this."
"It'll keep you," Tucker said.
"Not for long."
"A girl of your talents? You'll build it into a fortune before the year is out."
"Does anyone have something I can put this in?" she asked.
Norton said, "Paper bag do?"
She took the brown paper bag from him and tucked her cash away inside it, not having bothered to respond to Tucker.
Harris said, "I want to know what you're going to do, what your plans are."
"That's my business," she said.
"It's all of our business," Harris said.
She looked around, saw them watching her, set her lips tighter and said, "Will each of you tell me what you intend to do when we split?"
"Of course not," Harris said. "You're the intruder. You're the one we've got to be sure about."
Paul Norton, sitting behind his dilapidated desk, tilted back in his chair and drinking a bottle of India Pale Ale, had thus far maintained a low profile. Now, however, he said, "You could stay here with me for a while, Miss."
She looked at him, her face unreadable, her eyes cold, and she said, "I don't even know you."
Norton blushed, his face reddening except for the white scars on his cheeks, and he said, "Well, I sure didn't mean there were any conditions on the offer, if that's what you mean. I've got a nice apartment here on the field with two bedrooms, and the guest room has its own private bath, real snug. You wouldn't have to see me at all for days if you didn't want to."
Tucker said, "I thought you never wanted to know anything about my business or the people I deal with."
"I don't," Norton said, raising both hands, his big palms flat, and pushing them off. "I wouldn't listen to her even if she tried to tell me, and I'd throw her out the first time she got in a talkative mood. I'm just trying to help her, that's it, that's all."
She stared hard at the pilot, obviously on the verge of turning him down, then seemed to catch a glimpse of the shyness behind his tough-man front, knew that he hadn't anything in mind but helping her. She said, "Well, I guess that'd be all right. I need to go to ground for a while and think."
"It still doesn't answer my question," Harris said impatiently. "What will you do when you leave here?"
The woman turned, her face tight, anger boiling up.
Before she could say anything Norton said, "Well, Mr. Harris, that's a long way off, don't you think? She'll need time to consider that. You can't expect an answer this instant."
Pete looked at the pilot and knew there would be no arguing with him. He shrugged and said, "The hell with it. I'm going to use my split to buy into a little business, and I'm retiring. What do I care what she does?" He turned and walked out of the office.
It was 5:29 p.m. on Thursday.
At 9:04 that same evening, his arm in a sling, carrying a small, cheap suitcase and slightly whoozy from pain killers, Tucker entered his tenth-floor Park Avenue apartment. He was dressed in a new black suit which didn't exactly fit him, in a new shirt, new tie, new shoes. Despite his wounds he was feeling well.
He went directly to the closet, opened it, stepped inside, opened the small wall safe. He tossed his Tucker credentials inside and took out his real papers, pocketed those. He opened the cheap suitcase and lifted out a large number of money bricks, depositing them one at a time in the safe. When that was done, he closed the safe, spun the dial, shut the suitcase and shelved that.