Mannlicher had the sack full now. The platinum ring on his left hand, with its circle of fat diamonds, made little gleams and glints in the shine from the low-hanging droplight. The idea of losing that bothered him even more than losing his money; he kept running the fingers of his other hand over the stones.
“The ring,” Deighan said to him. “Take it off.”
“Go to hell.”
“Take it off or I’ll put a third eye in the middle of your forehead. Your choice.”
Mannlicher hesitated, tried to stare him down, didn’t have any better luck at it than the Texan. There was a tense moment; then, because he didn’t want to die over a piece of jewelry, he yanked the ring off, slammed it down hard in the middle of the table.
Deighan said, “Put it in the sack. The wallets and the rest of the stuff too.”
This time Mannlicher didn’t hesitate. He did as he’d been told.
“All right,” Deighan said. “Now get up and go over by the bar. Lie down on the floor on your belly.”
Mannlicher got up slowly, his jaw set and his teeth clenched as if to keep the violence from spewing out like vomit. He lay down on the floor. Deighan gestured at Brandt, said, “You next. Then the rest of you, one at a time.”
When they were all on the floor he moved to the table, caught up the sack. “Stay where you are for ten minutes,” he told them. “You move before that, or call to the guy outside, I’ll blow the place up. I got a grenade in my pocket, the fragmentation kind. Anybody doubt it?”
None of them said anything.
Deighan backed up into the spare bedroom, leaving the door open so he could watch them all the way to the window. He put his head out, saw no sign of the lookout. Still down by the lake somewhere. The whole thing had taken just a few minutes.
He swung out through the window, hurried away in the shadows — but in the opposite direction from the driveway and the road above. On the far side of the cabin there was a path that angled through the pine forest to the north; he found it, followed it at a trot. Enough moonlight penetrated through the branches overhead to let him see where he was going.
He was almost to the lakefront when the commotion started back there: voices, angry and pulsing in the night, Mannlicher’s the loudest of them. They hadn’t waited the full ten minutes, but then he hadn’t expected them to. It didn’t matter. The Shooter’s cabin was invisible from here, cut off by a wooded finger of land a hundred yards wide. And they wouldn’t be looking for him along the water, anyway. They’d be up on the road, combing that area; they’d figure automatically that his transportation was a car.
The hard yellow-and-black gleam of the lake was just ahead, the rushes and fems where he’d tied up the rented Beachcraft inboard. He moved across the sandy strip of beach, waded out to his calves, dropped the loaded flour sack into the boat, then eased the craft free of the rushes before he lifted himself over the gunwale. The engine caught with a quiet rumble the first time he turned the key.
They were still making noise back at the cabin, blundering around like fools, as he eased away into the night.
2
The motel was called the Whispering Pines. It was back off Highway 28 below Crystal Bay, a good half mile from the lake, tucked up in a grove of pines and Douglas fir. Deighan’s cabin was the farthest from the office, detached from its nearest neighbor by thirty feet of open ground.
Inside he sat in darkness except for flickering light from the television. The set was an old one; the picture was riddled with snow and kept jumping every few seconds. But he didn’t care; he wasn’t watching it. Or listening to it: he had the sound turned off. It was on only because he didn’t like waiting in the dark.
It had been after midnight when he came in — too late to make the ritual call to Fran, even though he’d felt a compulsion to do so. She went to bed at eleven-thirty; she didn’t like the phone to ring after that. How could he blame her? When he was home and she was away at Sheila’s or her sister’s, he never wanted it to ring that late either.
It was one-ten now. He was tired, but not too tired. The evening was still in his blood, warming him, like liquor or drugs that hadn’t quite worn off yet. Mannlicher’s face... that was an image he’d never forget. The Shooter’s, too, and Brandt’s, but especially Mannlicher’s.
Outside, a car’s headlamps made a sweep of light across the curtained window as it swung in through the motel courtyard. When it stopped nearby and the lights went out, Deighan thought: It’s about time.
Footsteps made faint crunching sounds on gravel. Soft knock on the door. Soft voice following: “Prince? You in there?”
“Door’s open.”
A wedge of moonlight widened across the floor, not quite reaching to where Deighan sat in the lone chair with the .38 in his hand. The man who stood silhouetted in the opening made a perfect target — just a damned airhead, any way you looked at him.
“Prince?”
“I’m over here. Come on in, shut the door.”
“Why don’t you turn on a light?”
“There’s a switch by the door.”
The man entered, shut the door. There was a click and the ceiling globe came on. Deighan stayed where he was, but reached over with his left hand to turn off the TV.
Bellah stood blinking at him, running his palms along the sides of his expensive cashmere jacket. He said nervously, “For God’s sake, put the gun away. What’s the idea?”
“I’m the cautious type.”
“Well, put it away. I don’t like it.”
Deighan got to his feet, slid the revolver into his belt holster. “How’d it go?”
“Hairy, damned hairy. Mannlicher was like a madman.” Bellah took a handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his forehead. His angular face was pale, shiny-damp. “I didn’t think he’d take it this hard. Christ.”
That’s the trouble with people like you, Deighan thought. You never think. He pinched a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, lit it with the Zippo Fran had given him fifteen years ago. Fifteen years, and it still worked. Like their marriage, even with all the trouble. How long was it now? Twenty-two years in May? Twenty-three?
Bellah said, “He started screaming at D’Allesandro. I thought he was going to choke him.”
“Who? Mannlicher?”
“Yeah. About the window in the spare bedroom.”
“What’d D’Allesandro say?”
“He said he always keeps it locked, you must have jimmied it some way that didn’t leave any traces. Mannlicher didn’t believe him. He thinks D’Allesandro forgot to lock it.”
“Nobody got the idea it was an inside job?”
“No.”
“Okay then. Relax, Mr. Bellah. You’re in the clear.”
Bellah wiped his face again. “Where’s the money?”
“Other side of the bed. On the floor.”
“You count it?”
“No. I figured you’d want to do that.”
Bellah went over there, picked up the flour sack, emptied it on the bed. His eyes were bright and hot as he looked at all the loose green. Then he frowned, gnawed at his lower lip, and poked at Mannlicher’s diamond ring. “What’d you take this for? Mannlicher is more pissed about the ring than anything else. He said his mother gave it to him. It’s worth ten thousand.”
“That’s why I took it,” Deighan said. “Fifteen percent of the cash isn’t a hell of a lot.”
Bellah stiffened. “I set it all up, didn’t I? Why shouldn’t I get the lion’s share?”
“I’m not arguing, Mr. Bellah. We agreed on a price; okay, that’s the way it is. I’m only saying I got a right to a little something extra.”