was hoarse with fear. 'Let's get the hell out of here. Bachman isn't here. There's nothing here we want.'
'Bachman's here,' Tucker corrected him.
'Yeah?'
'Definitely.'
'I don't see him,' Harris said, grinning. The grin was malicious, and it threatened a further breakdown, one that would permit him to disregard Tucker's orders and call his own shots.
Harris was no longer trustworthy. Tucker did not let him see that he'd reached that conclusion, and he said, 'Bachman's in a concealed room.' He took two large steps to the back wall and rapped on the plaster with his knuckles. 'Doesn't it seem odd there's all this wall space and no rooms behind it?'
Harris blinked at the long expanse of unmarred plaster, looked right and left at the nearest doors. 'I thought those two rooms accounted for it.'
'You've been in the one in the short wing. The one adjacent to this empty space in the long wing is about the same size. There's something in between them.'
Harris squinted, thought about it. He would have preferred to get out of there; he didn't want to have to think about anything besides running, hiding, staying alive. However, he said, 'Okay. How do we get him?'
'I think it's through a closet in one of the two adjacent rooms, but I haven't found the door yet.'
'Make it fast,' Harris said.
He turned back to the stairwell, waiting for something to happen, for something to shoot at.
'Hold the fort,' Tucker said, turning back toward the room from which the stuttering Thompson had called him.
The walls of the closet were featureless plaster, too smooth to contain a secret doorway. He got down on his hands and knees and gave the quarter round a careful inspection to see if any of it was loose or movable. None of it was. Satisfied that the entrance was in the other room in the long wing, he went to raid a second closet.
Passing Harris and the woman, he said, 'We'll have him out in a couple of minutes.'
'Wait,' Miss Loraine said.
He almost didn't hear her. When she called again he turned and said, 'Yeah?'
'I want to talk to you.'
'No time,' Tucker said.
'I want to make a deal.' She spoke softly, but her voice carried well. 'I can help you.'
'Too late for that.'
'No, it isn't.'
'Sorry.'
'I could save you half an hour finding Bachman.'
He said. 'I doubt that. The entrance to that hidden space has to be in the closet in that room. I'll have it worked out in?' He suddenly realized that she'd used Bachman's name, that both he and Harris had given it to her. What the hell. Was he losing his edge? He said, 'Christ!'
She walked toward him and held out her hand as if to take his. 'You can buy Bachman, and my silence, if you want to.'
'It'd be easier for Bachman to change his name,' he said.
'Untrue. Besides, Ross would find him sometime.'
That was right enough. But he said, 'Buy your silence? With what?'
'Money.'
'We haven't any.' He sounded angry and bitter, but he couldn't help it. He'd had to keep up his renowned facade too long already.
'You will if you deal with me,' the girl said. She dropped the offered hand, waiting. She looked even more like Elise now, a secret smile of self-satisfaction tinting her lovely face.
Tucker said, 'What's the deal?'
She pursed her lips, licked them. She said, 'Okay, you're going to find this Bachman on your own, I see that. You're going to make a fool out of Ross like no one's ever done before. He won't want me around once I've seen him humiliated, so I haven't any reason to stick around here. The deal is-I get twenty percent of whatever's in those three suitcases, plus a free ride out of here.'
Tucker blinked, felt his legs grow momentarily weaker, then smiled. 'I'll be damned,' he said. 'The Tuesday shipment?'
'That's it.'
'The cash?'
'Yes.'
'I didn't think it'd be here yet.'
'It wasn't sent out a second time, for reasons I'll explain if you'll deal.'
He shook his head ruefully. 'Now that I know it's here, why do I need to deal at all?'
'Because you could waste hours hunting for it. There are a thousand places in a house this size that three suitcases could be hidden. And from the way you've been acting, you can't spend much more time in here-you've got someone coming to pick you up.'
He admired her despite the fact that she'd started out on the other side of the fence. When she saw that the circumstances had gotten beyond her control, she maneuvered to increase the range of her power. He could see why Baglio had respected her. The old man's only mistake was in not respecting her even more than he had. He was also pleased with her demands. They were eminently reasonable if she could supply what she boasted.
'Okay,' he said.
'Deal?'
'Deal.'
She frowned and said, 'It's not as easy as that, though. We'll have to talk some more.'
'Talk,' he said. He reached into his pocket and took out the roll of Life Savers, popped one into his mouth.
'Not here.'
'Where?'
'In the room you're on your way to.'
Tucker looked at his watch: 6:06. He didn't feel much like finishing the operation in broad daylight, though it appeared as if they were going to have to do just that. He said, 'We can't take long bargaining. It's getting damn late.'
'I'll need two minutes,' she said.
'Come on, then.'
She stepped over the corpse on the corridor floor, her pretty bare toes squishing in the damp carpet, went with Tucker to the guard's bedroom. Behind them, Harris fared another burst down the main stairwell.
In the bedroom she sat down on the corner of the mattress and tucked her long legs under her, now very demure and innocent in the flannel gown. She said, 'How do you expect to get out of here?'
He hesitated, then said, 'A helicopter.'
She made a face. 'I'm serious.'
'So am I.'
She said, 'I don't want to make a deal if you're really a bunch of clowns who didn't think this thing through.'
He explained, in detail but as rapidly as possible, about Norton and the helicopter with the state-police markings.
'I'm impressed,' she said.
'Now,' he said, 'impress me. Do you know what happens to people who upset Ross Baglio?'
'I know.'
'But you're willing to risk it?'
'A girl has to provide for herself,' she said. She sounded like an earnest, homely high-school freshman deciding to take the sensible secretarial program to prepare to meet the bills four years hence. She was delightful.
