"When do we go in?" Shirillo asked. "Tonight?"
"Tomorrow night, I think."
Harris said, "You're both nuts! Bachman will have spilled it all by then, anyway."
"Maybe not," Tucker said. "From the way the doctor was pushing Baglio, I'd guess Bachman's in a bad way right now. He's probably coked to the hairline and will be until tomorrow morning. Even if he comes out of it then, he won't be a good subject for interrogation. Especially not for Baglio's type of interrogation. What good is it to threaten a man with torture when he's already in too much pain to think straight?"
"And if he isn't as racked up as you think?" Harris asked. "What if we go in there and find out Bachman's talked, that he's dead and ready for planting in the woods?"
"Then we're no further behind than if we walk away now. Either way, Baglio will be after us then."
"Tucker's right," Jimmy Shirillo said.
Harris shook his burly head, some color back in his face now. "I just don't know. I'm used to operating on common sense. If a man takes a fall, you let him. That's his business; we all take the same risk."
"With the cops, yes," Tucker said. "If Bachman was being held by the cops, I'd walk off." That was not entirely true, for there was still the money they hadn't gotten, the failure he had to erase from the record. "I know he wouldn't name any of us. But these aren't cops, Pete. With these boys, you have to throw out the old rules and adapt to the circumstances."
Harris looked at the house, still dubious. "How can we do it?"
"I'm working out a few angles right now," Tucker said, tapping the side of his head. "But I don't want to lay them out until I've thought everything through." He got up and brushed off his clothes. "Right now, we've got to get off this damn mountain before they shift the search away from the interior and back toward the macadam road."
"Down at the highway, do we just hitchhike back to the city, friend?" Harris asked. "With a shotgun and a Thompson in hand?"
"We can still use Shirillo's Corvette, as planned, though it'll have to seat three of us instead of two. It's parked in the picnic area three quarters of a mile from Baglio's lane. Shirillo can drive east, take the first exit, get on coming west again, take another exit after passing us, get on coming east again and pick us up at a prearranged spot along the berm."
"That'll be fast enough," Shirillo said. "The exits are still pretty close together this near the city."
"Let's hope you're right, friend," Harris said.
Tucker was bothered by a sudden emergence of the "friend" tag on Harris's speech. The big man was not new to this business, and his nervousness was far more dangerous than that of the inexperienced apprentice, since its roots went deeper. Tucker knew that, when he was disturbed, the odd means of address punctuated a lot of Harris's conversation. That he should be this upset already, before much of anything had happened, was not a good sign. "Let's move ass, then," Tucker said. "I've got a hell of a lot of arrangements to make."
The suitcase in which Harris carried the machine gun in its less conspicuous, fragmented form was in Shirillo's Corvette. If the job had gone well, Shirillo and Harris would have left the stolen Dodge for the sportscar and driven back to the city in that, while Tucker would have used the big car and disposed of it on some quiet residential street where it might not be noticed for a couple of days. Now, jammed in the tiny, low-slung machine, Shirillo and Harris in the seats, Tucker sitting sideways in the shallow storage compartment behind them, they suffered Harris's elbows as he broke the large weapon down and fitted the pieces into the Styrofoam cups that were firmly glued to the bottom of the suitcase. He took three times longer than usual to complete the chore, but at least he was calmed by it. When he was done he smiled at Tucker, patted the suitcase and said, "It's a beautiful tool, isn't it?"
"Beautiful," Tucker agreed. "I see why you never got married and had children."
Harris didn't catch the sarcasm but took that as a compliment for the gun.
They dropped Harris in front of his hotel after he promised to stay low and keep to his room starting tomorrow morning when Tucker might be expected to phone.
"I still don't see how we can get in there," he said.
"I'll work it out," Tucker said.
Harris closed the door and walked off, carrying the suitcase full of submachine gun as if it were only underwear and shirts.
When Tucker got out of the Corvette in front of his Chatham Center hotel feeling as if he had been folded into someone's pocket, he left the shotgun with Shirillo, told him to wait for a telephone call and sent him home. He went upstairs to his room, showered, dressed, packed his single suitcase and checked out. He called the airport from the lobby, reserved a place on the earliest flight to New York, got a cab and left the city.
At 4:36 that afternoon he landed at Kennedy, not at all happy to be home again, since it was a temporary failure that had driven him back.
In the main airport lounge, which was static-filled by hundreds of chattering travelers, he took his suitcase into a telephone booth and drew the door shut. He dialed the office number of his family's banker on the off chance that the man might still be at work. President of the bank, he was still at his desk. Tucker licked dry lips, cleared his throat, wondered if there was any other way to handle this, decided there was not and identified himself, though not with the Tucker name.
"Michael! What can I do for you?" Mr. Mellio asked. He was warm, sincere, concerned. Bullshit. In truth, he was an icy bastard and completely in the old man's tow. When he hung up in a couple of minutes, he would immediately dial Tucker's father and report, verbatim, what had been said. When you were a depositor of the position of the old man, bankers broke their professional codes and extended you certain extra services.
"How long will you be in your office this afternoon, Mr. Mellio?"
"I was just preparing to leave."
"How early can you be there in the morning?"
"A quarter past eight?"
"Will you see me then?" Tucker asked.
"What did you have in mind, Michael?"
"I'd like to borrow against my inheritance." The statement was simple enough, though it was difficult to make. His father would be pleased to hear Mellio's report; Tucker's financial need, his first in more than three years, would make the old man's whole day.
"Borrow?" Mellio asked, a banker who seemed never to have heard of such a thing. "Michael, need I remind you that by signing one small paper you may pick up your accrued allowances from the trust and-"
"You needn't remind me," Tucker said sharply. "May I see you at a quarter past eight in the morning for a loan?"
"Of course," Mellio said. "I'll leave word with the guards to admit you then."
"Thank you, Mr. Mellio," Tucker said. He hung up. His forehead was dotted with perspiration, though he felt cold clear through. He wiped his face with a paper tissue, then opened the booth door, stepped out, picked up his suitcase and went outside to catch a taxi.
The doorman at Tucker's building-Park Avenue in the eighties; he had a nine-room apartment complete with his own sauna; his father wondered most about his ability to maintain that-greeted him with a smile and his name, turned him over to the hallman inside, who inquired after the success of his business trip.
"Well enough," Tucker said, though the words tasted bitter.
He knew as soon as he entered his tenth-floor apartment that Elise was home, because the stereo system was carrying Rimski-Korsakov as interpreted by Ormandy's Philadelphia Orchestra, her favorite composer by her favorite orchestra. He controlled an urge to go looking for her and attended to important details first. At the wall safe in the living-room closet he put away the billfold that contained the Tucker papers, took out his own wallet and slipped that into his pocket. He closed the safe again and spun the dial. Then he went looking for Elise.