we're in the house, they're still down there, below us. Any time now they might go off duty or step inside for a cup of coffee, and when they do it's over.' The last couple of words came out of his throat like juice squeezed through a fine-web strainer.
'On the other hand,' Tucker said, 'we might get finished before they know anything at all.'
'Unlikely,' Harris said. He revised that opinion: 'Impossible.'
Tucker said, 'Just the same, our best chance is to be quick, to get this done and call in the copter. Let's go see Mr. Baglio.'
They turned off the lights in the Halversons' room and closed the door, went quickly to the main stairs, where Tucker stopped and turned to Harris. 'Stay here with the Thompson. You're in a good position to guard the stairs- even the back stairs if anyone enters the corridor from those.'
'Give me a walkie-talkie?'
'You won't need one,' Tucker said. 'Not if there's trouble. We'll hear the Thompson chatter no matter where we are.'
'Okay,' Harris said.
He stepped back into the shadows. For such a big man he was able to conceal himself well, was all but invisible.
Quickly, then, Tucker and Shirillo split up and explored all of the remaining rooms except the one in which — according to Keesey-Baglio and Miss Loraine were sleeping. Finding nothing worthwhile in any of those rooms- certainly not a sign of Merle Bachman-they met before the last door, tried the knob, twisted it, pushed the door inward and flicked on the beam of the flashlight.
For a long moment Tucker thought that the bedroom was uninhabited and that Keesey had been lying to them again, for everything there remained in sepulchral silence. Then the mound of jumbled bedclothes, cut across with an intricate lacework of shadows, convulsed and was flung outward from the huge bed as the woman reacted to the light, rolled, bounced onto her feet, her face taut, not unlike a groggy fighter coming out of a delirium with the sudden realization that he's on the verge of unconsciousness and may lose the match.
'What the hell's this?' she asked.
She was wearing a floor-length flannel nightgown, rumpled and worn and obviously comfortable. It was a sign that her relationship with Baglio was more than a temporary one. If she'd merely been a bed partner, she'd have slept nude or in a frilly bikini outfit calculated to make a man like Baglio keep her around awhile longer. The flannel nightgown was a symbol of her independence and her security within the Baglio household. She didn't need to advertise her sexuality. She was confident that Baglio was always aware of it and that something more than that was what made her interesting to him.
Her hands were out at her sides, as if she were trying to gauge her position and the chance she had of running past them.
'No chance at all,' Tucker said.
Shirillo said, 'Watch Baglio!'
The strongman had gotten out of bed on the far side and was reaching into the top drawer of the night stand. As he came up with a small, heavy pistol, Tucker placed a shot in the general direction of his hand. He didn't care if he ruined Baglio's golf grip for life; but as it happened, he didn't hit flesh. The silenced shot snapped off the pistol case. Baglio cried out and dropped the gun.
The woman was still unconvinced and took a couple of steps toward the door. When Tucker put two more bullets in the floor a foot in front of her, she stopped cold, having more fully assessed the situation, and she satisfied herself with glaring at him.
Even in the yellow flannel she was a spectacularly lovely woman, and she reminded him of Elise Ramsey. The resemblance wasn't really one of looks or measurements; but Miss Loraine had Elise's way of standing, her attitude of self-control, an air of confidence and competence that was undeniably attractive. It was this about her which had temporarily mesmerized him so that he hadn't noticed Baglio going for the gun.
On the other side of the bed, Baglio, dressed in only a pair of blue shorts, was rubbing his numbed hand. He said, 'You could have hit me, you idiot.' He sounded like a schoolteacher reprimanding a thoughtless and irresponsible child.
'No chance,' Tucker said. 'I'm an excellent shot.' He did not know if Baglio would believe that anyone could have planned to hit the gun in that dark room, with that much space between them, with a silenced pistol, but he didn't think it would hurt to puff himself. 'Don't get the idea I'm shy about putting one through your hand if you reach for anything else.'
'I don't know what you're after,' Baglio said, unaffected by Tucker's bravura. 'But you've made a mistake breaking into my house. Have you any idea who I am?' A real schoolteacher.
'The famous Rossario Baglio,' Tucker said. 'Now, come along with us.'
Baglio was responding to the situation with admirable aplomb, not at all frightened by the hooded, greasepainted specters carrying silenced pistols and not the least humiliated at being caught in his shorts. He'd already figured out who they were, in a general sense, and knew the threat they posed wasn't mortal. And he had less to be ashamed of about his body than most men fifteen years his junior: from his wide shoulders to his loose- skinned but relatively flat stomach he was in good shape; evidently he made use of the swimming pool, sauna and gymnasium in the basement. Too, the Loraine woman would give him a strong motivation for staying fit. It was also the woman, Tucker decided, who helped Baglio meet the situation with so much cool: a man hated to be made a fool of in front of a woman he'd been bedding.
Baglio said, 'Come along with you-where?'
'Across the hall.'
'As soon as I dress,' Baglio said, starting for the closet. He carried himself well, his back straight, head high. If he had had time to drag a comb through his silvery hair, he would almost have been presentable enough for a stint on nationwide television-perhaps as a Presidential candidate.
'No time for that,' Tucker said.
In the study across the hall, Shirillo pulled out two sturdy straight-backed chairs and placed them side by side in the middle of the room, indicated them with the barrel of his Luger and stood out of the way as the couple sat down.
'You still haven't explained yourselves,' Baglio said. He continued to be the schoolteacher: lips tight, eyes grim, nostrils flared a bit in indignation. He was going to give them detention minutes if they didn't shape up damn soon.
'We're looking for a friend,' Tucker said.
'I don't understand.'
Miss Loraine laughed slightly, though Tucker couldn't tell whether the laugh was directed at him or Baglio. Or at herself.
'He was in the car Tuesday morning,' Tucker said. 'The driver.'
Miss Loraine looked up and smiled, not nastily, not as a friend either but as if in remembered pleasure of that collision, as if the excitement still lingered and still touched all the right pleasure centers in the brain.
'I'm sorry you came this far for so little,' Baglio said.
'Oh?'
'Yes. The driver's dead.'
Tucker smiled. 'Of old age?'
Baglio said, 'He was banged up pretty badly.' His voice had a note, almost, of indifference. 'He died yesterday.'
'The body?'
'Buried.'
'Where?'
'I've a whole graveyard here,' Baglio said. His diction was excellent. Either he had gone to the best schools as a boy or he had hired private tutors in his middle age. The last was far more likely than the first. He seemed to take pride in his word choices, his conscious wit, his clear pronunciation, much in the same way a college boy might. 'The pine trees are the markers, suitably engraved.' He looked at the woman and grinned winningly, elicited a chuckle from her.
