Harris said, 'Then they got him out of the wreck, you think?'
Tucker nodded. 'And they aren't likely to send him to the local hospital, where someone might wonder how and where he got so banged up.'
'How bad do you think Bachman is?' Shirillo asked.
'It has got to be more than a bruise or two.'
Harris seemed to be remembering the Chevy angled up onto the mangled Cadillac, and he grimaced sourly. 'Why didn't they just kill him? Why go to the trouble of bringing a doctor in for him? This Baglio doesn't sound like any humanitarian, from what I've heard.'
Tucker brushed away a determined ant that had crept onto his coat sleeve, and he said, 'Bachman must either be unconscious or in too much pain to talk coherently. Baglio sent for the doctor to help get Bachman back in shape so he can ask him a few pointed questions.'
'About the job,' Harris said.
'Yes,' Tucker said. 'About the job, about us.'
'Bachman won't say anything.'
'Bullshit,' Shirillo said.
Harris looked at the boy, his square face reddening again. He said, 'I've worked with Merle Bachman half a dozen times before, and I can vouch for him.'
'If the police had him, I wouldn't be the least bit worried,' Shirillo said. 'I'm sure he's able to withstand any number of late-night question-and-answer sessions in the squad room with those boys, but I also know that no one is going to make it through much of Baglio's questioning. They'll sew him back together from the wreck, ask him a few questions, and break every bone in his body, one at a time, until he spills. They aren't as limited in their choice of techniques as the police are.'
Tucker picked up the glasses again, trained them on the front doors which opened on the promenade, followed two men as they came out of the house and walked toward the white Thunderbird. One was in a business suit and carried a black satchel, obviously the physician. The other man was tall, dark and distinguished, with full sideburns and a mane of gray-white hair. Twenty pounds too thick around the middle but otherwise in good condition, he might have been a Congressman or successful oilman. He had to be Baglio, and Shirillo confirmed that he was.
'What's going on, friend?' Harris asked.
Tucker said, 'They're arguing, but not heatedly. I'd guess the doctor wants Bachman moved to a hospital, while Baglio disagrees. Right now he's probably telling the doc that he pays these exorbitant medical fees to be able to disregard his advice whenever it's convenient.'
A moment later the doctor got into the Thunderbird and drove away, with Baglio waving at him in a friendly fashion. A third person came out of the house then and stood beside Baglio: the rangy blonde who'd been driving the Cadillac which had cut off Bachman's escape route. She wore shorts and a halter, and everything about her was zaftig, so ripe she would already have begun to decline by the age of thirty, when many women were reaching the fullest bloom. Right now, though, at twenty-two or twenty-three she was perfect, and she knew it; that was clear in the way she carried herself, the conscious provocative tilt to her hips when she stood beside Baglio. Tucker watched her as, with her arm around the old man, she went back into the mansion.
'You know the girl?' he asked Shirillo. 'The one driving the Cadillac?'
'No, but she's probably the latest in Baglio's string of women.'
'Lives in?'
'His women usually do.'
Tucker watched the house, though no one moved down there and the guards had slumped back into attitudes of boredom. 'Is there any way we can find out for certain how many people are in that place at night, besides Baglio and this woman?'
Shirillo considered that for a moment and said, 'I guess I could ask around, carefully, but I'm already sure that there's going to be at least four bodyguards. Outside of that, I just don't know.'
'Why does it matter?' Harris asked.
Tucker brushed the ant off his sleeve again, flicked it gently away with his fingernail. 'We're going to have to go into that house and get Bachman away from them.'
'Are you crazy?' Harris's face, for once, was not even pink but the color of a mild yellow cheese. All the lines showed in it now, and he looked as old and tired as he was. He reached out and touched the Thompson lying in the grass beside him, but that did not do any good this time.
'Name me an alternative.'
Harris said, 'We split and go quiet for a while.'
'That's good,' Tucker said, a bit sarcastically. 'That would be fine if these were the cops out looking for us. Cops have so damn much to do, they can't keep after you for long; no leads for a couple of months, and they put you in the back files and go on to something else. But these people, Pete, have the time and the resources. Baglio looks and sounds like the kind of man who could hold a grudge and nurture it. He's going to pump Bachman for our names, for Felton's name. He'll lean on Felton until he gets a mail-drop address for each of us. Then he just has to wait for us to pick up the mail.'
'When do we go in?' Shirillo asked. 'Tonight?'
'Tomorrow night, I think.'
Harris said, 'You're both nuts! Bachman will have spilled it all by then, anyway.'
'Maybe not,' Tucker said. 'From the way the doctor was pushing Baglio, I'd guess Bachman's in a bad way right now. He's probably coked to the hairline and will be until tomorrow morning. Even if he comes out of it then, he won't be a good subject for interrogation. Especially not for Baglio's type of interrogation. What good is it to threaten a man with torture when he's already in too much pain to think straight?'
'And if he isn't as racked up as you think?' Harris asked. 'What if we go in there and find out Bachman's talked, that he's dead and ready for planting in the woods?'
'Then we're no further behind than if we walk away now. Either way, Baglio will be after us then.'
'Tucker's right,' Jimmy Shirillo said.
Harris shook his burly head, some color back in his face now. 'I just don't know. I'm used to operating on common sense. If a man takes a fall, you let him. That's his business; we all take the same risk.'
'With the cops, yes,' Tucker said. 'If Bachman was being held by the cops, I'd walk off.' That was not entirely true, for there was still the money they hadn't gotten, the failure he had to erase from the record. 'I know he wouldn't name any of us. But these aren't cops, Pete. With these boys, you have to throw out the old rules and adapt to the circumstances.'
Harris looked at the house, still dubious. 'How can we do it?'
'I'm working out a few angles right now,' Tucker said, tapping the side of his head. 'But I don't want to lay them out until I've thought everything through.' He got up and brushed off his clothes. 'Right now, we've got to get off this damn mountain before they shift the search away from the interior and back toward the macadam road.'
'Down at the highway, do we just hitchhike back to the city, friend?' Harris asked. 'With a shotgun and a Thompson in hand?'
'We can still use Shirillo's Corvette, as planned, though it'll have to seat three of us instead of two. It's parked in the picnic area three quarters of a mile from Baglio's lane. Shirillo can drive east, take the first exit, get on coming west again, take another exit after passing us, get on coming east again and pick us up at a prearranged spot along the berm.'
'That'll be fast enough,' Shirillo said. 'The exits are still pretty close together this near the city.'
'Let's hope you're right, friend,' Harris said.
Tucker was bothered by a sudden emergence of the 'friend' tag on Harris's speech. The big man was not new to this business, and his nervousness was far more dangerous than that of the inexperienced apprentice, since its roots went deeper. Tucker knew that, when he was disturbed, the odd means of address punctuated a lot of Harris's conversation. That he should be this upset already, before much of anything had happened, was not a good sign. 'Let's move ass, then,' Tucker said. 'I've got a hell of a lot of arrangements to make.'
The suitcase in which Harris carried the machine gun in its less conspicuous, fragmented form was in
