'Plexiglass,' Norton said. 'It'll deflect a pistol shot pretty well, even if we were close enough for them to use handguns. Even when it cracks under rifle fire, it can throw the slug away first.'
Tucker remained forward in his seat, bracing himself against the back of Norton's seat, staring down through the tilted nose window. 'I think we have enough front-to-back shots. Let's try cruising it from end to end.'
Norton obliged, brought the copter around in a whine of engine noise, coasted the length of the mansion while Willis busily used his camera.
Baglio himself had come out of the house and stood in front of the pillared promenade in the circular driveway, looking up at the copter. Right now he would be wondering whether they knew that Bachman was in the house or whether this was only routine police harassment. He would be wondering, too, how he could get Bachman out of the mansion under their noses if they should land with a search warrant. Tucker hoped that, when Norton took them away from here without landing, Baglio didn't panic and have Bachman killed and buried. It would be so easy for him to have the driver tucked away in a grave beneath the pine trees upslope of the house. Of course, Bachman might already be dead. He might have talked and been put to sleep without the proper honors.
Tucker said, 'Can you take her down and parallel the house so Willis can get some ground shots of all four sides?'
'Sure,' Norton said.
He leveled the machine and, when they were behind the mansion, took it down within five feet of the lawn while the photographer took his shots through the side window. When they came around in front of the house, where Baglio and his two men were standing, the hoods danced quickly back out of the way of the chopping blades that were still much too high to reach them but which must have looked sobering anyway. They were too busy, then, to notice the copter's occupants.
'Now up,' Tucker said. 'Let's get some shots of the house in perspective, the entire lawn and the perimeter of the forest.'
When that was done, Norton said, 'Next?'
'That's it,' Tucker said. 'Let's get back to home base.'
By the time they landed on the grassy floor of the forest clearing nearly two miles from Baglio's mansion, Willis had packed away all of his gear and was ready to go. The moment the chattering rotors began to stutter down into silence, he pushed open his door and jumped out, reached back inside and dragged his two cases of equipment after him.
'Wait a moment,' Norton said as Tucker pushed Willis's seat forward and made to follow the photographer.
'Yeah?'
Norton said, 'Obviously, you're going in there. Since you told me to be ready for four passengers-and since I've only heard about three of you so far-it seems likely you're going in to get back a man of yours.'
Tucker said nothing.
Norton continued: 'Wouldn't they be expecting something like this-the copter and all?'
'No,' Tucker said. 'They're expecting small-time tactics, if they're expecting anything at all. They're very secure up there, or think they are. Besides, I'm sure they were altogether misled by the police insignia on the copter.'
'That's another thing,' Norton said. 'Wouldn't they think it's pretty odd to be harassed like this? Wouldn't they be making regular payoffs to eliminate just this kind of hassle?'
'Not to state police,' Tucker said. 'There are rotten apples in every police force, and they probably do carry a couple of the state boys on their payroll, but they can't buy off one of the toughest and best forces in the country. The price would be too high.'
Norton said, 'Okay. I wasn't being nosey. I just wanted to know what to expect the next time I have to take this crate in there. If they're going to have me figured out and be waiting for me, then I want to know about it.' He stretched again, arched his back and pressed upward against his seat belt.
'They won't be expecting you,' Tucker said. 'A flat guarantee.'
'I'll be here when you need me.'
Tucker jumped out, took the two briefcases that Norton handed to him, one with less than five thousand cash packed into it, the other containing the guns. He also handed down a soft khaki tote bag with a heavy load in the bottom, special equipment that Tucker had asked him to supply when he had originally called him from the department-store phone that morning. Tucker carried the briefcases in one hand, since they were both slim, the tote bag in the other, led Willis back into the woods and, fifteen minutes later, to the red Corvette where Jimmy Shirillo was still feigning sleep.
By a quarter of ten they were in the city again. Merle Bachman had been in Baglio's hands slightly over thirty-six hours.
In the dream he lay upon a soft bed, the covers drawn away from him, a feather pillow propping his head up. The room was almost completely dark, though swaths of soft blue light striped the thick carpeting and made odd shadows on the walls; the source of the light, though he looked for it, was not apparent. Elise Ramsey appeared on the far side of the room, held for a moment in a band of blue light, like a specimen in a collection, on display, then stepped forward into shadow. She was nude, striding toward him with the confidence of a lioness. She came out of shadow into light again, cupping her heavy breasts in her hands, making him an offering, one that he was instantly willing to accept. She stepped into shadow again, reappeared in light, all slickly moving, sinuous curves. He would have been aroused to full ability in another moment-except that he saw the incredible hand rising up behind her, the hand that she was clearly unaware of and which, even had he warned her, was moving too fast for her to avoid. It was large enough to cup Elise in its palm, a giant's hand that faded away into the darkness of the ceiling just beyond the thick wrist. The fingers were spread to encircle her, the flesh gray and cold and rigid in appearance. It was an iron fist, and it would crush her in another moment. What made the dream metamorphose into a nightmare was not the fact that she would be squashed like an insect, or even the understanding that the hand would come after Tucker when it was finished with the girl, but the certainty that the hand did not belong to Baglio this time. This time, the iron hand was his father's. Shadow and blue light, bare breasts, stiffened nipples and the convulsing grasp of iron digits
'Hey!'
Tucker blinked.
'You all right?' Pete Harris asked, shaking his shoulder gently but insistently. 'You okay, friend?'
'Yeah,' Tucker said, not opening his eyes.
'You sure?'
'I'm sure.'
Tucker sat up and rubbed his eyes, massaged the back of his neck and tried to decide what had crawled into his mouth and died during his nap in Harris's hotel bed. He flicked his tongue around and didn't find any corpse, decided that he must have swallowed it and that he would have to scrub his teeth well to get rid of the last traces of its demise.
'Jimmy's here,' Harris said. 'He's got everything you told him to bring back.'
Tucker looked up, saw Shirillo across the bed, sitting in a chair by the standard-model hotel writing desk. Several paper bags with store names on them rested on the floor near his feet. 'What kind of job did your uncle do on the photographs?'
'Great,' Shirillo said. 'Wait till you see them.'
'Have them ready for me,' Tucker said. He got up and went into the bathroom, closed the door behind him. He felt like hell, stiff and weary, though he had been asleep for only an hour and a half. He looked at his watch. One o'clock in the morning. Make it a two-hour nap. Still and all, he should not feel as bad as this. He splashed water in his face, dried off, found Harris's toothpaste and squeezed a worm of it onto his index finger, then scrubbed his teeth without benefit of a genuine brush. It didn't do much good for the tartar that had built up since this morning, but it freshened his breath and made him feel somewhat more human than he had when he woke up.
Back in the main room, he found that they had positioned the three chairs at the writing desk and had a stack of 8 x 10 glossies lying there for his inspection. He took the middle chair which they had left for him and picked up the stack of pictures, went through them carefully, selected a dozen and gave the rest to Shirillo. The boy put them in a plain brown envelope and put the envelope out of their way.
