'We'll be ready to go in half an hour,' Tucker told them, 'if you pay attention the whole way through.'
'You have it all figured out?' Harris asked.
'Not all of it,' Tucker said, aware of Harris's streak of stubbornness. The big man had gone along with everything Tucker ordered up to now, but he would have his limits. It was best to make him think he played an equal role in at least part of the planning. 'I'll want your comments and suggestions so we can hammer out the fine points.'
'What if Bachman's dead?' Harris asked.
'Then we're wasting our time, but we don't lose anything.'
'We could get killed,' Harris said.
'Look at the photographs, please,' Tucker said. 'They cost me nearly three hundred dollars.'
Harris shrugged and settled back in his chair, quiet. He looked at the photographs, listened to what Tucker had to say, looked as though he wanted to put his Thompson together and caress it for a while, began to make a few suggestions and finally regained his nerve. He was getting old, with twenty-five years in the business; no one blamed him for being a little more on edge than his colleagues. They'd be the same way in two more decades, if they lived that long.
On the drive out of the city, Shirillo behind the wheel of a stolen Buick that Tucker had picked up only a few blocks from the hotel, Harris in back with his Thompson across his lap, Tucker hungrily devoured two Hershey chocolate bars and watched the occasional headlights of other cars blur by them. He had not eaten since breakfast, but the candy stopped his stomach growling and steadied his hands, which had become slightly palsied. The food did not, however, do anything about the shakes that had hold of his insides, and he resisted an urge to hug himself for warmth.
Eventually, they pulled off onto the familiar picnic area three quarters of a mile beyond Baglio's private road and stopped behind another car.
'It's empty,' Shirillo said.
Harris had leaned forward, and he said, 'Couple of kids parking.'
Shirillo grinned and shook his head. 'If it was that, the windows would be all steamed.'
'What do we do?' Harris asked.
Wishing he had another Hershey bar, Tucker said, 'We sit here and wait, that's all.'
'What if nobody shows up, my friend?'
'We'll see,' Tucker said.
A minute later two tall, well-dressed black men walked out of the woods behind the picnic area, making casually for the parked car, one of them still zipping up his fly.
'The call of nature,' Shirillo said. 'You'd think the state could afford a few comfort stations along a highway like this.'
The black men gave the Buick only a cursory glance, not at all afraid of whom they might encounter in a lonely spot like this, got into their own car, started up and drove away.
'Okay,' Tucker said, getting out of the car.
Harris rolled down his window and called to Tucker, 'Maybe we ought to hide it better than we planned-in case there's anyone else with a bad bladder problem.'
'You're right,' Tucker said.
Using a flashlight, Tucker inspected the edge of the woods, found a place between the trees where the Buick could squeeze through, motioned to Shirillo. The kid drove the big car into the woods, following Tucker as he cautiously picked out a route that led deeper and deeper into the underbrush. Fifteen minutes later he signaled Shirillo to stop. They were more than a hundred yards from the last picnic table, two hundred from the road, screened by several clumps of thickly grown mountain laurel.
Getting out of the car, Harris said, 'Anybody who's prude enough to walk all this way from the road just to take a piss deserves to be shot in the head.'
Shirillo and Tucker quickly unloaded all the gear from the Buick and put it on the car roof where everyone could get at it. Quickly they undressed and changed into the clothes which Shirillo had purchased earlier in the evening according to the sizes they had given him. Each man wore his own black socks and shoes, dark jeans that fitted loosely enough to be comfortable in almost any circumstance, midnight-blue shirt and dark windbreaker with large pockets and a hood that could be pulled over the head. Each man drew up his hood and fastened it beneath his chin, tied the drawstrings in a double knot to keep them from loosening.
Harris said, 'You sure have rotten taste, Jimmy.'
'Oh?'
'What's the alligator patch on the windbreakers?'
Shirillo reached down and fingered the embroidered alligator on his left breast. 'I couldn't find any windbreakers without them,' he said.
'I feel like a kid,' Harris said.
Tucker said, 'Relax. It could have been worse than an alligator. It might have been a kitten or a canary or something.'
'They had kittens,' Shirillo said. 'But I ruled those out. They also had elephants and tigers, and I couldn't make up my mind between those and the alligators. If you don't like the alligators, Pete, we'll wait here while you exchange your jacket for another one.'
'Maybe I'd have liked the tiger,' Harris said reflectively, letting the idea roll around in his mind while he spoke.
Tucker said, 'What's wrong with elephants?'
'Oh, elephants,' Harris said. 'Well, elephants always look a little stupid, don't you think? They certainly aren't ferocious; they don't instill fear in anyone. Baglio saw me coming in an elephant-decorated windbreaker, he might think I was the local Good Humor man or someone selling diaper service, something like that. Besides, I've been a lifelong Democrat, and elephants aren't my insignia.'
'You vote?' Shirillo asked, surprised.
'Sure, I vote.'
Both Shirillo and Tucker laughed.
Harris looked perplexed, rubbed at the alligator on his chest and said, 'What's wrong with that?'
'It just seems strange,' Tucker explained, 'that a wanted criminal is a registered voter.'
'I'm not wanted yet,' Harris said. 'I was wanted twice before, but I served less than two years both times. I'm a clean citizen now. I feel it's my duty to vote in every election.' He looked at them, at what he could see of them in the dark. 'Don't you two vote?'
'No,' Shirillo said. 'I've only been eligible a few years, and I just never got around to it. I don't see what good it does.'
'You?' Harris asked Tucker.
Tucker said, 'Politics never interested me. I know people who spend half their lives worrying about how everything's going to hell in a basket-and it all goes to hell in a basket anyway. I figure I'll survive no matter what nincompoop the public puts in office next.'
'That's just terrible,' Harris said, clearly taken aback at their unpatriotic sloth. 'It's a good thing neither one of you has any kids. You'd be the kind of parents who'd set rotten examples.'
Tucker and Shirillo laughed again.
'Come on,' Tucker said, prying the lid off a small can of greasepaint, 'Let me blacken your face.'
'What for?' Harris asked.
'For one thing,' Tucker said, 'it'll make it harder for anyone to see you in the dark. More important, with a hood over your hair and black paint covering your face, it's going to be difficult for Baglio or any of them to make a positive identification of you later. Change a man's facial color, and you alter him almost as thoroughly as if he'd donned a mask. And in the close work we'll be doing tonight, a mask wouldn't be good; it would just get in the way. The greasepaint will conceal you and give you the optimum in mobility, the use of your eyes.'
Grunting unhappily, Harris submitted to this indignity, all the while fingering the outline of the raised green alligator on his breast.
Ten minutes later they had all been black-faced, the paint put aside with the clothes they had taken off.
'Now?' Harris asked, plainly expecting yet another indignity.
