He looked at his watch as he walked along the rutted, unused track, was surprised to see that despite all that had happened this morning it was still only a few minutes past eleven o'clock. A great deal could be done yet today-if they were lucky enough to find their way off the mountain unobserved.
Ten minutes after they abandoned the Mustang, the woods began to thin out around them. The trees were smaller, farther apart, the underbrush thicker. Tucker gave all of his attention to the landscape now; the planning could wait until later. The woods seemed deserted except for them, but Baglio might have men stationed along the perimeter. Whether they had a chance or not was all dependent on how many gunmen he kept in the mansion on the day of a cash transfer.
Spread out side by side now, rather than strung out in one line, they slowly approached the edge of the trees, circumspect, increasingly certain that they were alone. At the edge of the forest, still in the darkness beneath the pines, they stopped and looked down the long manicured slope of a contoured hillside. The mansion rested at the bottom, a white flare in the middle of all that green grass.
Sprawled on the ground at the edge of the woods, the three men watched the activity down at the Baglio mansion. On the long flagstone promenade that fronted the great house, two gunmen had taken up positions, one at either end, leaning against white wooden pillars from which they could survey the circular drive and both the east and west lawns. Tucker imagined that, in the back of the house which he could not see from here, other hoods had also settled in for the duration. Otherwise, the picture was serene, the windows of the house taking the bright sunlight and casting it back in doubled brilliance, a willow tree lazily waving whiplike branches, a bird crying somewhere close by.
Tucker put down the binoculars and said, "The white Thunderbird parked in the driveway has MD plates."
"A doctor for Bachman?" Shirillo asked.
"Most likely."
Harris said, "Then they got him out of the wreck, you think?"
Tucker nodded. "And they aren't likely to send him to the local hospital, where someone might wonder how and where he got so banged up."
"How bad do you think Bachman is?" Shirillo asked.
"It has got to be more than a bruise or two."
Harris seemed to be remembering the Chevy angled up onto the mangled Cadillac, and he grimaced sourly. "Why didn't they just kill him? Why go to the trouble of bringing a doctor in for him? This Baglio doesn't sound like any humanitarian, from what I've heard."
Tucker brushed away a determined ant that had crept onto his coat sleeve, and he said, "Bachman must either be unconscious or in too much pain to talk coherently. Baglio sent for the doctor to help get Bachman back in shape so he can ask him a few pointed questions."
"About the job," Harris said.
"Yes," Tucker said. "About the job, about us."
"Bachman won't say anything."
"Bullshit," Shirillo said.
Harris looked at the boy, his square face reddening again. He said, "I've worked with Merle Bachman half a dozen times before, and I can vouch for him."
"If the police had him, I wouldn't be the least bit worried," Shirillo said. "I'm sure he's able to withstand any number of late-night question-and-answer sessions in the squad room with those boys, but I also know that no one is going to make it through much of Baglio's questioning. They'll sew him back together from the wreck, ask him a few questions, and break every bone in his body, one at a time, until he spills. They aren't as limited in their choice of techniques as the police are."
Tucker picked up the glasses again, trained them on the front doors which opened on the promenade, followed two men as they came out of the house and walked toward the white Thunderbird. One was in a business suit and carried a black satchel, obviously the physician. The other man was tall, dark and distinguished, with full sideburns and a mane of gray-white hair. Twenty pounds too thick around the middle but otherwise in good condition, he might have been a Congressman or successful oilman. He had to be Baglio, and Shirillo confirmed that he was.
"What's going on, friend?" Harris asked.
Tucker said, "They're arguing, but not heatedly. I'd guess the doctor wants Bachman moved to a hospital, while Baglio disagrees. Right now he's probably telling the doc that he pays these exorbitant medical fees to be able to disregard his advice whenever it's convenient."
A moment later the doctor got into the Thunderbird and drove away, with Baglio waving at him in a friendly fashion. A third person came out of the house then and stood beside Baglio: the rangy blonde who'd been driving the Cadillac which had cut off Bachman's escape route. She wore shorts and a halter, and everything about her was zaftig, so ripe she would already have begun to decline by the age of thirty, when many women were reaching the fullest bloom. Right now, though, at twenty-two or twenty-three she was perfect, and she knew it; that was clear in the way she carried herself, the conscious provocative tilt to her hips when she stood beside Baglio. Tucker watched her as, with her arm around the old man, she went back into the mansion.
"You know the girl?" he asked Shirillo. "The one driving the Cadillac?"
"No, but she's probably the latest in Baglio's string of women."
"Lives in?"
"His women usually do."
Tucker watched the house, though no one moved down there and the guards had slumped back into attitudes of boredom. "Is there any way we can find out for certain how many people are in that place at night, besides Baglio and this woman?"
Shirillo considered that for a moment and said, "I guess I could ask around, carefully, but I'm already sure that there's going to be at least four bodyguards. Outside of that, I just don't know."
"Why does it matter?" Harris asked.
Tucker brushed the ant off his sleeve again, flicked it gently away with his fingernail. "We're going to have to go into that house and get Bachman away from them."
"Are you crazy?" Harris's face, for once, was not even pink but the color of a mild yellow cheese. All the lines showed in it now, and he looked as old and tired as he was. He reached out and touched the Thompson lying in the grass beside him, but that did not do any good this time.
"Name me an alternative."
Harris said, "We split and go quiet for a while."
"That's good," Tucker said, a bit sarcastically. "That would be fine if these were the cops out looking for us. Cops have so damn much to do, they can't keep after you for long; no leads for a couple of months, and they put you in the back files and go on to something else. But these people, Pete, have the time and the resources. Baglio looks and sounds like the kind of man who could hold a grudge and nurture it. He's going to pump Bachman for our names, for Felton's name. He'll lean on Felton until he gets a mail-drop address for each of us. Then he just has to wait for us to pick up the mail."