Shirillo's Corvette. If the job had gone well, Shirillo and Harris would have left the stolen Dodge for the sportscar and driven back to the city in that, while Tucker would have used the big car and disposed of it on some quiet residential street where it might not be noticed for a couple of days. Now, jammed in the tiny, low-slung machine, Shirillo and Harris in the seats, Tucker sitting sideways in the shallow storage compartment behind them, they suffered Harris's elbows as he broke the large weapon down and fitted the pieces into the Styrofoam cups that were firmly glued to the bottom of the suitcase. He took three times longer than usual to complete the chore, but at least he was calmed by it. When he was done he smiled at Tucker, patted the suitcase and said, 'It's a beautiful tool, isn't it?'
'Beautiful,' Tucker agreed. 'I see why you never got married and had children.'
Harris didn't catch the sarcasm but took that as a compliment for the gun.
They dropped Harris in front of his hotel after he promised to stay low and keep to his room starting tomorrow morning when Tucker might be expected to phone.
'I still don't see how we can get in there,' he said.
'I'll work it out,' Tucker said.
Harris closed the door and walked off, carrying the suitcase full of submachine gun as if it were only underwear and shirts.
When Tucker got out of the Corvette in front of his Chatham Center hotel feeling as if he had been folded into someone's pocket, he left the shotgun with Shirillo, told him to wait for a telephone call and sent him home. He went upstairs to his room, showered, dressed, packed his single suitcase and checked out. He called the airport from the lobby, reserved a place on the earliest flight to New York, got a cab and left the city.
At 4:36 that afternoon he landed at Kennedy, not at all happy to be home again, since it was a temporary failure that had driven him back.
In the main airport lounge, which was static-filled by hundreds of chattering travelers, he took his suitcase into a telephone booth and drew the door shut. He dialed the office number of his family's banker on the off chance that the man might still be at work. President of the bank, he was still at his desk. Tucker licked dry lips, cleared his throat, wondered if there was any other way to handle this, decided there was not and identified himself, though not with the Tucker name.
'Michael! What can I do for you?' Mr. Mellio asked. He was warm, sincere, concerned. Bullshit. In truth, he was an icy bastard and completely in the old man's tow. When he hung up in a couple of minutes, he would immediately dial Tucker's father and report, verbatim, what had been said. When you were a depositor of the position of the old man, bankers broke their professional codes and extended you certain extra services.
'How long will you be in your office this afternoon, Mr. Mellio?'
'I was just preparing to leave.'
'How early can you be there in the morning?'
'A quarter past eight?'
'Will you see me then?' Tucker asked.
'What did you have in mind, Michael?'
'I'd like to borrow against my inheritance.' The statement was simple enough, though it was difficult to make. His father would be pleased to hear Mellio's report; Tucker's financial need, his first in more than three years, would make the old man's whole day.
'Borrow?' Mellio asked, a banker who seemed never to have heard of such a thing. 'Michael, need I remind you that by signing one small paper you may pick up your accrued allowances from the trust and-'
'You needn't remind me,' Tucker said sharply. 'May I see you at a quarter past eight in the morning for a loan?'
'Of course,' Mellio said. 'I'll leave word with the guards to admit you then.'
'Thank you, Mr. Mellio,' Tucker said. He hung up. His forehead was dotted with perspiration, though he felt cold clear through. He wiped his face with a paper tissue, then opened the booth door, stepped out, picked up his suitcase and went outside to catch a taxi.
The doorman at Tucker's building-Park Avenue in the eighties; he had a nine-room apartment complete with his own sauna; his father wondered most about his ability to maintain that-greeted him with a smile and his name, turned him over to the hallman inside, who inquired after the success of his business trip.
'Well enough,' Tucker said, though the words tasted bitter.
He knew as soon as he entered his tenth-floor apartment that Elise was home, because the stereo system was carrying Rimski-Korsakov as interpreted by Ormandy's Philadelphia Orchestra, her favorite composer by her favorite orchestra. He controlled an urge to go looking for her and attended to important details first. At the wall safe in the living-room closet he put away the billfold that contained the Tucker papers, took out his own wallet and slipped that into his pocket. He closed the safe again and spun the dial. Then he went looking for Elise.
On his way down the main hall, he stopped before the fragment of an early fifth-century Edo shield which had come into his possession only two months ago but which already seemed an integral part of the apartment. He and Elise had spent hours finding the right place for it and bracing it on the wall, and he had spent even longer examining it in detail, wishing that more than a ragged half of the beaten copper piece had survived. Of course, if the shield had come through the ages intact, it would have been far too valuable for him to afford it. As it was, he had paid close to forty thousand dollars for it and felt that the money was well spent. The oval shield, of well- worked copper trimmed in silver, inlaid with small pieces of hand-carved purest ivory, was the product of a nation of African dreamers who had lived on the east bank of the Niger River, constructing elaborate shields but rarely going to war, and it was exquisitely beautiful.
Besides, the acquisition helped substantiate his cover as a freelance dealer in primitive art objects, a front which satisfied Elise and which his father found hard to crack. He really made little money from his dealing, but his records were a private matter between him and the IRS, and his father's investigators could never be sure what he cleared as an art dealer.
He had paused before the shield as much to absorb some of its innate peace as to admire its beauty; now, having shifted out of the higher gear that his Tucker persona demanded, he felt in a better state of mind to meet Elise.
She was sitting in a black leather chair in the den, a drink on the table beside her, a book open on her lap. Even in a comfortable old quilted housecoat a size too large for her, she radiated sensuality. She was a big girl, with a showgirl's body, an inch shorter than Tucker at five feet eight, with high round breasts, a narrow waist, slim but not boyish hips, and legs that went on forever. To date, however, her breaks in show business had been because of her face, not the body under it. She was a natural blonde with green eyes, a complexion as flawless as good china. Oddly enough, she was in demand for two kinds of television commercials: those that required a sexy, come-hither chickee to peer at the home audience and solicit men for cigars, beer and sportscars-and those that needed a stunning but innocent ingenue to push makeups, soda pop, junior fashions and shampoo. With different makeups and a change in hair styles, and with her not unimpressive acting ability, she could be two different ages and temperaments before a camera, in the same session.
Tucker kissed her, felt it turn into something else as she began to kiss him.
'How'd it go?' she asked when he went to make himself a drink.
'It's not finalized. I've got to go back in the morning.'
'For how long?'
'A couple of days, no more.'
'Was something wrong with the bells?' she asked.
He said, 'It's a question of which century they're from-last half of the fifth or early part of the sixth. I think they're more modern than the seller says they are, and I'm having them evaluated by Heinenken in Chicago. He'll even do a carbon dating on them, if he has to.'
The lies came so easily, though he hated lying to her. He'd told her he was going to Denver to negotiate the sale of a good set of Javanese temple bells, and then he had gone to Pittsburgh to meet Bachman and Harris and Jimmy Shirillo.
In all other aspects, their relationship was an honest one. They both came and went as they pleased, with no phony jealousy between them, no lies or deceptions about whom they might be seeing, where they were going, their plans for the future. She gave him a check every month to pay her portion of the rent and other bills, and when he had not cashed the first two of these she had made him see that, unless they shared responsibilities, they could
