"He"d kill her."
"Maybe she"s too dumb to know that."
"She"s not. She knows the risks, and she knows how to handle herself. We can trust her; we have to."
"Not necessarily," Harris said. He looked ugly. Maybe his wound was hurting him again-or maybe it had nothing to do with that look.
Tucker said, "We can"t kill her, if that"s what you mean."
"Why not?"
"I made a deal with her."
"So?"
Tucker said, "Is that the way you"d have me do business? Remember, I"ve made a deal with you, too. If I can give my word to her, then kill her, what"s to keep me from working the same thing with you?" Before Harris could answer, he said, "No, we can"t do business that way. Besides, killing her would make the whole caper too hot. Baglio can cover up the death of one of his gunmen easily enough. But that woman"s got a family somewhere, a life outside of the organization, and her death would probably mean the police getting into the act sooner or later."
Harris wiped at his face. His gloved hand came away black, and some of his disguise was gone. "I hope you"re right about her," he said.
"I am. And cheer up. Now you can retire, like you want."
Tucker went back to the hidden room, leaving Harris and Shirillo to guard the stairs, and unstrapped Merle Bachman, helped him out of the bed, tried to get him to stand on his own feet. As Bachman had warned with a shake of his head, that proved impossible. Evidently he hadn"t been permitted on his feet during the last couple of days, hadn"t eaten anything in all that time-couldn"t have because of his ruined mouth-and had only drunk what he was forced to drink to keep from dehydrating. His weakened condition, magnified by the pain killers that the doctor had prescribed, had turned his legs to rubber which bent and twisted under him. Finally, though, Tucker got him to the end of the corridor under the attic door and left him with Shirillo.
Five minutes after that he"d transferred all three of the money-stuffed suitcases to the same spot. "Anything happening here?" he asked Shirillo.
"No. They"re too quiet down there."
Before Tucker could respond, Miss Loraine came up behind him and said, "I"m ready."
She was wearing white levis and a dark-blue sweater, all of it cut to fit like second skin, both functional and sensual. Tucker remembered how she"d looked the day of the robbery in the miniskirt and tight sweater, and he wondered why, with that canny head of hers, she still was so careful to keep her s.e.x honed as a bargaining tool.
As if reading his mind, she said, "It always pays to be prepared for anything."
"It does," he agreed. He looked at his watch: 7:02.
It was full daylight outside.
He"d told Norton that the operation would be concluded by dawn at the very latest. Paul would be chewing his nails and wondering how much longer he should hold on. Tucker hoped he"d wait another ten minutes, until they could put a call through on the walkie-talkie. No, he wasn"t just hoping for that-he knew Norton would wait. He would wait. He was sure of it. d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n.
He slipped a new clip into his Luger, pocketed the depleted clip and relieved Shirillo of his watch over the pear stairs.
"Get the suitcases up first," he said.
The kid nodded, picked up the largest piece of luggage and struggled with it to the top of the metal steps, muscled it overhead and slid it onto the attic floor. He didn"t have the physique for heavy work, but he wasn"t complaining. By the time he"d taken the second case from Miss Loraine and worked it through the trap door overhead, his face glistened, his black makeup streaked. When he shoved the third bag into place above, he leaned into the steps and let out a long wheeze of exhaustion.
"Want me to get Bachman up?" Tucker asked.
"No. I will."
The time was 7:10.
Norton would be waiting.
Shirillo examined Bachman, helped the battered man to his feet, found an acceptable hold on him and went sideways up the narrow collapsible steps. Near the top he had to let go of his burden. Bachman gripped the top steps, his weakened hands clumsy with the splinted and bandaged fingers. Shirillo scrambled quickly into the attic, turned, reached down, took Bachman by the wrist and, with a little help from Merle himself, got him through the trap door and into the upper chamber.
"Ready up here," Shirillo called down.
"Good work."
"Just plenty of motivation," Shirillo said, grinning.
7:14.
"Move," Tucker told the woman.
She went up the ladder fast, took Jimmy"s hand and was gathered into the overhead room.
7:15.
Harris looked up the hall, saw that most of the work was done, nodded in response to Tucker"s hand signal.
We"re going to make it, Tucker thought. He"d done it. He"d made a botched job into a success; he"d persevered.
Turning, he started up the steps-but got no farther than the third rung as the window shattered beside him and two closely s.p.a.ced slugs struck him hard on the left side.
He fell and struck his head on the last rung of the metal ladder before he rolled up against the corridor wall. Strangely, the moment he"d been hit, he thought: Iron Hand, recalling the nightmare. Then he was too numbed from the shock of being wounded to think of anything. When pain began to replace the paralysis, seconds later, he thought the man at the bottom of the back steps had shot him, but then he realized, as he sat up in the middle of all that broken gla.s.s, that the shots had come from outside the house.
The shots were a signal to the man downstairs to try to come up now that their attention was diverted. Harris was prepared for that strategy, and he let out a long chatter of machine-gun fire down the main stairwell.
Shirillo came off the attic steps fast, drawing another shot from outside as he moved quickly past the window. "How is it?"
"The nerves are still mostly deadened from the impact, but it"s starting to hurt pretty badly. I got it twice, I think, close together. d.a.m.n hard punch."
"Rifle," Shirillo said. "The garage roof connects with this end of the house. I saw him standing out there when I went by the window just now." As he spoke he removed the shattered walkie-talkie from Tucker"s arm and threw it into the middle of the hallway. "I was going to tell you that you"d overprepared by bringing two of these, since we never needed to use them between us. Now I"m glad I kept my mouth shut."
"The d.a.m.n thing didn"t take both shots, did it?"
"No," Shirillo said. "There"s blood." He probed the wound with a finger until Tucker was sweating with pain. "You only stopped one bullet," he said. "It pa.s.sed through the back of your arm and out the top of your shoulder, right through the meaty part, then out again. At least, by the way your jacket"s all ripped up, I"d say that"s how it is. But I wouldn"t want to swear to it until we have you in the copter and can get your clothes off. There"s a good bit of blood."
Tucker winced at the pain, which, having held off for several minutes, now throbbed relentlessly, and he said, "It"s easy enough to come down that ladder fast. But going up again is another thing altogether. He"ll have enough time to pick us off like painted targets."
"Clearly true," Shirillo said. Even now he did not appear to be shaken. Tucker thought he could see in the kid"s manner, however, his own kind of bottled-up terror below a facade of calm maintained at only the greatest expenditure of nervous energy.
Tucker said, "Now don"t shout for him, but get Pete. Walk down there and ask him to come up here. I think, as long as there"s one man on the garage roof, there isn"t anyone else down there to come up the steps. Not unless they untied Keesey, which I seriously doubt."
"Be right back," Shirillo said.
He returned with Harris, who listened to Tucker explain the situation, which he had figured out on his own anyway. He a.s.sured them that he could use the rapid-firing Thompson to clear the garage roof while running little risk of getting hit himself.
"Just be d.a.m.ned careful," Tucker said. "You deserve your share after making it this far."
"Don"t worry your a.s.s, friend," Harris said, grinning. He got up and flattened himself against the wall next to the shattered window. He let a long minute pa.s.s, as if one unknown moment were better than another, then suddenly whirled around, facing the open window, the Thompson up before him, chattering away at the rifleman. No one screamed, but a moment later Harris turned to them and said, "He"s finished. But one thing: it wasn"t one of the gunmen. It was Keesey."
"The cook?"
"The cook."
"s.h.i.t," Tucker said. "Then there"s still one of them downstairs, and he knows you"re no longer guarding the stairs."
He got to his feet despite the thumping invisible stick that seemed to be trying to drive him down again. The pain in his arm lanced outward, crossed his entire back, over to his other shoulder, down to his kidneys.
"You make the stairs yourself?" Harris asked.
"I can. But Jimmy has to go first."
Shirillo began to protest, realized he was the one carrying the last walkie-talkie, nodded and scrambled upward into the attic.
"Follow me closely," Tucker said.
"Don"t worry about that, friend."
Tucker gripped the stair railing with his good hand and climbed toward the square of darkness overhead which framed Jimmy Shirillo"s anxious face. He felt as if he were with some Swedish mountaineering "team, but he finally made it, with the kid"s help.
"Move a.s.s!" he called down to Harris.
The big man started up the steps.
Tucker looked at his watch.
7:28.
Norton would be waiting. He would.
After Harris drew up the attic steps, made certain the bottom plate was closed firmly over the trap opening and threw the bolt back to keep it that way, Jimmy Shirillo got out his walkie-talkie and, following Tucker"s instructions, attempted to call up Paul Norton, the copter pilot.
The open frequency hummed distantly, an eerie sound in the warm confines of the attic.
Shirillo repeated the call signal.
"Why doesn"t he answer?" the woman asked.
Tucker felt the future seeping away from him. He began to think of Elise, of the peace and quiet of the Park Avenue apartment.
Abruptly, Norton"s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie, strange and yet familiar, acknowledging the summons.
"Thank G.o.d!" Harris said, his voice weak.
"How long will it take him to get here?" Miss Loraine wanted to know. She was sitting between the two largest suitcases, one arm draped over each of them, as if she were daring Tucker, or any of them, to leave her behind.
Tucker said, "Less than five minutes."
She laughed and said, "h.e.l.l, then we"re home free." Despite her good humor, she hung onto the pair of suitcases.
"Hold the celebrations," Tucker said.
"You okay?" Shirillo asked.
"Fine," Tucker said. In reality, he felt as if he"d been dragged several miles from the back of a horse, aching in every muscle, exhausted, the pain in his arm spreading out until it was no longer localized but hard and hot throughout his body. To get his mind off the pain, he considered their situation and decided what must be done next. "You better go find the door that leads onto the roof," he told Shirillo. "According to those photographs your uncle took, it"s down at the other end of the house."
Shirillo nodded, got up, hunched down somewhat to keep from cracking his head against the bare rafters and went down that way to have a look around. In a couple of moments he located the overhead door, worked it loose of its pinnings, shoved it out of the way and called back to the others.
"Let"s go," Tucker said.
He felt as if he were always telling someone to move, in one way or another. It would be good to get home again, to pay back the ten-thousand-dollar loan and to relax, to take a couple of months off before seriously considering any proposals that were forwarded to him by c.l.i.tus Felton out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Maybe if he could set up a few good deals on some of his artwork he could take as much as half a year off, and he"d hardly have to move at all.
Pete Harris helped Merle Bachman the length of the low-ceilinged attic, while Tucker was able to make it on his own. He had a strong urge to grip his wounded arm and to stop the rapidly vibrating pain that made his bones sing, but he knew that would only make the pain worse. He let his arm hang at his side, and he tried not to think about anything but getting out of there.
The woman carried the smallest suitcase, while Harris went back to fetch the last two after depositing Merle Bachman under the door to the mansion roof.
Tucker stood over Bachman, swaying, needing to sit, refusing to allow himself that much. They were close, too close to stop being alert and prepared.
In the distance the sound of a helicopter rattled through the still morning air.
"Got to hurry," Tucker said.
It had occurred to him that the gunman downstairs would hear the copter and might go outside where he could, at such close range, make an attempt to kill the pilot.
Shirillo was the first onto the roof, making the move with little trouble, and, with Harris a.s.sisting him from below, managed to get Merle Bachman outside just as Norton brought the chopper in low over the house. The girl went next, looking back only once at the three bags full of money, and she did not require any aid. Tucker followed her, his shoulder blazing with pain as he b.u.mped it on the beveled rim of the trap door, requiring Shirillo"s help to make the last part of the trip. Pete Harris handed out the suitcases one at a time, almost as if they were filled with nitroglycerin, then followed them.
The time was 7:38.
"Fantastic!" the girl said, looking up at the chopper.