Norton was there, behind a scarred desk that looked ready to collapse, leaning way back in a rickety spring- backed chair, his booted feet propped on the stained, notation-cluttered blotter. He was a big man, five inches taller and sixty pounds heavier than Tucker. His face was broad and flat, since his nose had been squashed and his cheeks scarred during his tour in Vietnam. He'd never told Tucker how or why that had happened, or even if the two injuries were from the same source. Perhaps, with unlimited resources and several major operations, a very good plastic surgeon could have rebuilt that ruined nose so it would look as good as new, though no improvement in his appearance would have been noticeable until something was done with the white scars on both cheeks. Looking at him, Tucker had the eerie feeling that some enormous cat had sneaked up behind Norton, dug its claws into his face and shredded the flesh backward in one powerful jerk. Despite the disfiguration, he was not a particularly ugly man-just damned mean-looking.
When he spoke, however, your impression of him shifted like the colored glass in the bottom of a kaleidoscope. The voice was soft, the tone even, the words measured and warm. His was the voice of a man who had seen too much and gone through more than his share of agony, the voice of a man who never wanted to have to kill or hurt anything again. 'A beer?' he asked.
'This time of day?'
'It's after noon,' Norton observed, taking his feet off the desk and rising. He moved smoothly, gracefully. From an old refrigerator in the corner of the room he got two chilled beers, opened them and put them on the desk without offering any glasses.
Tucker sat down in the client's chair, both briefcases beside him.
Norton did not give either of the satchels a glance. He knew that if they were any of his business, Tucker would tell him so. Vietnam had not only made him a gentle man but an extraordinarily wary one as well.
'Ballantine's India Pale Ale,' Norton said, lifting his own bottle. 'I've tried everything, and this is the only one that makes me happy.' He drank a third of his beer in one long swallow that set his Adam's apple bobbing like a dinghy in a typhoon.
Tucker sipped his beer, agreed with the judgment and said, 'I need a chauffeur.'
'So you said on the phone.'
'You have the copter ready?'
'It only took a few minutes.'
'Efficiency.'
'My trademark.'
Tucker swallowed some beer, sighed, put the bottle down, lifted the lighter of the two briefcases, unsnapped the latches and opened the top. He said, 'All you have to know to set your price is the destination. Pittsburgh. And the length of time I'll need you-perhaps it'll be as late as tomorrow noon before we get back here. Maybe it'll be some time tonight. Your own complicity involves nothing more than the alteration of the markings on the copter. It's damn unlikely that the FAA will find out about that, and, besides, you're accustomed to risking as much.'
'Quite accustomed,' Norton agreed. 'But you forget that, according to the law, I'll be aiding and abetting you with whatever you have in mind. Understand me, Mike, I don't want to know what that is. I just want to point out that I'll be liable for criminal charges.'
'This operation isn't directed against anyone the law would rush to defend,' Tucker said.
Norton raised his eyebrows, picked up his beer and took another third of it in one swallow.
'That's the last factor you have to consider. We're going up against a man named Baglio, against his entire machine.'
'Organized?'
'Let's call him an entrepreneur.'
'Successful?'
'Very.'
Norton considered the angles for a moment, scratching unconsciously at the three long white marks on his right cheek. 'Three thousand sound all right to you?'
Tucker paid without any argument, closed his briefcase again. It was a fair enough price for everything that he was going to ask of Norton and his machine.
The big man put the money in the lockbox in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet behind his desk, locked both the box and the drawer, pocketed the keys and came back to his desk.
'Someone could carry the whole cabinet away,' Tucker said.
'It's bolted to the floor.'
They drank the remainder of their beer in silence, and when they were finished Norton said, 'You ready?'
'Yes.'
They left the office and walked to the third berth in the same building, where a gray helicopter sat on a wheeled towing platform. It was the same four-seater quadra-prop that Norton had used twice before when Tucker had required his services, though its own markings had been expertly masked with colored tape. New numbers, also formed with tape, decorated the proper plates on the nose and both sides. The Pennsylvania state seal, with its two rearing horses, was firmly attached to both doors of the craft; below the seal, in white letters, were the words pennsylvania state police. It all looked very genuine. It should have, since the insignia were exact copies of those in use by the authorities, rendered by a friend of Norton's who worked in an ad agency during the day and moonlighted however he could. He had drawn Norton nine sets of state seals so far, though Tucker had not had the opportunity, thus far, to operate in so many different colonies. Norton had other customers.
'Good?' Norton asked.
'Fine,' Tucker said.
A golf cart was already hooked up to the platform on which the copter stood, and Norton hopped into this. He started it and drove slowly outside. Out of the hangar, he stopped, detached the cart from the platform, drove it back inside and parked it. They boarded the helicopter.
'You've got a change of clothes?' Tucker asked.
'I packed as soon as you called.'
'Good.'
'Even before I went out to doctor the copter.'
'Fine.'
A few minutes later, they drifted onto the cracked macadam runway. Both Tucker and Norton sat in the forward seats; behind them was a pair of seats that folded down to form a large cargo area. Most of Paulnik Air's freight work was handled with one of the two twin-engine Apaches that they maintained, though the dense, built-up New York area often required a helicopter to land where there was no runway. Besides, the copter was the most lucrative of the three Paulnik craft, thanks to Tucker and to others like him.
As they lifted into the early-afternoon sky, Tucker wondered where Simonsen would be hiding. Simonsen professed to know absolutely nothing about Norton's willingness to bend the law for a buck. He handled none of the illegitimate work, though Norton knew his partner always stood at a window and watched proceedings such as these, as if he secretly envied what he supposed was a glamorous mission. He would be down there now, watching and a little jealous, a little frightened.
Then the airfield and the hangars were out of sight as they banked west toward the city.
The time was 2:12 as the copter, laden with auxiliary fuel tanks, began the longest leg of the journey.
Tucker wondered if Baglio had had an opportunity to question Merle Bachman. The driver had been in the mansion more than a full day. If he was not badly injured, that was plenty of time for Baglio to break him, enough time for Bachman to spill everything he knew about Tucker and the others.
Norton had said something which Tucker, lost in the reverie, had not heard.
'What?' Tucker asked.
'I said, 'The pollution sure is nice today, isn't it?' '
Norton waved one burly arm at the vista of yellow-white mist that rose up from all quarters of the city, meshed high overhead and roiled like a ball of snakes, smoke snakes. He indicated the awful scenery much as a legitimate guide might gesture grandly at the undeniable splendor of Niagara Falls.
'Beautiful.'
'It'll make a grand sunset.'
