While I was talking the toughness came back to his face. "It was too big a pile for anybody to hide for long. You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know that."

"No buildings are available to warehouse it either."

"So?"

"The cave was the perfect answer. It would have worked." His lips parted in a tight smile. "I understand you and your secretary looked at the cave at Harris' place too."

"Nice spy system you have."

"What did you think about it?"

"Empty, what else? A great spot for a bootlegger. Hasn't got any bats either. How do you keep them out of your mushroom farm?"

"Could be the activity. Could be the cyanide they clean the beds with."

The conversation was going noplace, so out of the blue I asked Ponti, "How did you think you were going to get away with it?"

His shrug was eloquent. "While the transfer was being made, I was not a part of it. So far I've never been inside a prison. I don't want to go now. Had Dooley not screwed me, this would have been the move of the century." He suddenly gazed at me curiously. "Have you ever wondered why the government never tried to deport me?"

I didn't say a word. He knew the answer.

"I am a citizen. The day my mother got off the ship from Sicily I was born. She had me on a table on Ellis Island; I was given a birth certificate by a doctor who was inspecting all the immigrants. That is why I could not be deported."

"That's too bad, Lorenzo. Deportation could have saved your life."

"I think anybody who could be called my enemy is a long time dead. The new dons take, er, suggestions from me. It seems that they are short on experience. There is no more commissione, the way it was. I think you know . . . business goes on as usual. With the way the world is going, business will probably increase."

I felt my skin crawl at the calm way he said it.

"If this incredible amount of money just . . . disappears . . . how much will it bother you?"

He shrugged, a gently eloquent shrug you almost had to believe. "It would be a loss. Not something that couldn't be recouped, of course. This time it would be quicker to acc.u.mulate."

"What makes you think so?"

He said, "This world, Mr. Hammer. Look at it. Every city is full of violence, every country on the brink of war. The people are so wrapped up in troubles that they turn to anything we want to supply them with to keep their minds from unwinding. You know that. The government has to run its own sting operation to keep its members in line. The police and politicians go down the drain when corruption pays them ten times what their employers do. You read about it in the papers all the time. This is nothing new to you, is it?"

I shook my head. He was right on the mark.

"All this has just put me to a lot of trouble, that's all."

"Not everybody is going to think like that, Lorenzo. No matter what you say there's a lot of money somewhere. There are a lot of hotheads who will do anything to get at it. You're not dealing with great intelligences, and you d.a.m.n well know that too. It was you and your kind that set this thing in motion and it's not going to just cool down and go back to business as usual."

"Mike," he said to me coldly, "you are the loose cannon in this affair. Dooley told you something that got you involved and you will be as much of a target as me. But you don't own an army to cover your back like I do."

For a moment I didn't answer him, then said, "n.o.body can get to you, don?"

He liked the way I used his t.i.tle and smiled indulgently. "No," he told me. "You can see how careful I am. My men are well taken care of. That business at the docks should have shown you that."

"Who instigated it, Don Ponti?"

A sense of sad annoyance crossed his face. "It does not matter now, Mr. Hammer. Death eliminates many enemies. It also takes a lot of talent out of circulation. Sometimes you lose somebody close to you, but that is business, the business of life. It cannot be mourned as if it is the end of all things."

The years had bored into the don deeper than I had thought. They had dried up the incredible reservoir of controlled rage that could direct violence to achieve his own ends. At one time nothing would have shown in his mannerisms, no emotional expression would have crossed his face. His eyes could tell you that you were going to die easy or hard, sooner or later. They could tell you that you were going to die now too. One look at his guys could have your business burned or your family wiped out. Anything to bring you into submission.

Right now his eyes just had a hard, used look. They weren't too sure anymore.

I said, "What do you want from me, Lorenzo?"

Those eyes of his drilled right into me again. They were still hard, but the steel wasn't there any longer.

"Right now you're just useless, Hammer. If you really knew anything you would have been right on top of it. I think you know what I'm going to do. You're going to be covered by pros of my own. Anything you come up with, they'll know about."

"Your guys are garbage heads, Don Ponti."

"I didn't say 'my guys', Hammer. I said, 'pros of my own.' You should know what money can buy."

There are times when the talking has stopped and you get out while you still have a chance. This was one of them. I made a phone call to Velda. I didn't even say so long. I just nodded to Don Lorenzo Ponti and got up. He followed me to the door, opened it and did something with his eyes to the guys standing there. Whatever pa.s.sed between them was understood and they just watched while I got into my car.

One of them made a mistake and I heard a pump automatic shotgun jack a sh.e.l.l into the chamber.

There was a turnaround area designed to fit one radius of a normal vehicle and I swung into it gently. I had made almost the full circle that led to the single road back to civilization when my headlights picked up the almost imperceptible shift of their shoulders and I knew that the don had changed his mind. I was more of a threat than he had a.s.sumed. He was still that deadly animal from the old days, eaten up with the white heat of hate, fed by the craving of ambition, and I was going out in one great broadside of armament right into the driver's door and window and I'd wind up being compressed right inside my car to a bale-sized piece of metal destined for the smelters of some foreign country.

But I hit the gas pedal and twisted the wheel so that I went right into that group of killers and saw Patterson fly off the hood and the one with the shotgun let a blast off into the night sky that was almost as loud as his shriek and out of the corner of my eyes saw the big door slam behind the don as my wheels went over something that cursed and yelled, then I cranked the wheel back, picked up the ruts in the driveway and headed out.

Luckily, I saw the lights through the trees, cut my own, and pulled to one side where the brush shielded me. The big car that was roaring up toward the house never stopped because the driver never saw me, and as soon as he was past I got out into the cleared area and drove back to the highway. There should have been more of the don's men along the way, but whoever drove that big car must have picked them up.

It was a new scene now. There wouldn't be any more peaceful days, or empty time to plan the next move. As far as Ponti was concerned, I wasn't somebody to follow, but a mad dog to be hunted and shot dead, any way, any how, and the sooner the better.

10.

I GOT BACK TO THE MOTEL in time to catch Velda tossing our gear into her rental car and slid to a stop beside her. The sharp lines of anxiety on her face turned to instant joy and she dropped a piece of luggage and threw her arms around my neck before I was all the way out of the car.

Pulling her off me wasn't easy. "What's going on, kitten? You all right?"

"Oh, Mike, yes, I'm all right. But you didn't call on time like you said you would and I phoned the state troopers. They should be at Ponti's place right now!" She read my eyes and felt my fingers tighten on her arms. "What happened?"

I told her.

"Did you kill anybody?"

"I didn't stay around to look, but I'll tell you this: I tried to get as many as I could. They were going to gun me down. You call Pat?"

"Yes. He was going to get the troopers up here on the phone. This is a no publicity deal and he's got Homer Watson to back him up." She paused, squinted at me and added, "Will that do any good?"

"Maybe. We're not in Pat's jurisdiction, but Homer has that federal edge."

"Now what?"

"We move. We need a safer place than this. I don't even want Homer tracking us down. Tomorrow we take your car back and we stick with mine. There must be a half million other Ford sedans like this out on the road so it won't be easily noticed."

"Just get it washed and n.o.body will know it's yours," she told me.

A sleepy night clerk checked us out and went back to bed. It took a half hour to locate a raunchy little motel complex whose Vacancy light was still on. Another sleepy guy got off his couch to let me sign in, took my money in advance and handed me a key. On the way out I saw him flip the vacancy light off even though only three other cars were parked outside the rooms.

I backed up to the door in case we needed a fast get-away. We only took in what we were going to need, pulled the curtains shut and turned on the bathroom light with the door partially closed to leave only a soft glow. In the thirty minutes between motels I had made pretty sure n.o.body had been on our tail. Traffic was almost at zero and I had made a one-eighty-degree turn after I pa.s.sed the motel, approaching it from a different direction in case I did have a tail. For five minutes I had sat in the dark, lights off, outside the office building, waiting and watching. When I was sure I was clear, I went inside.

We both cleaned up, then got fully dressed except for our shoes, finally easing back into the twin beds. If anything happened and we did have to make a fast move, we'd be ready for it.

Velda said softly, "I feel like a fireman waiting for the alarm to go off."

"Quiet," I told her.

"Don't I get a kiss good night?"

I held back a laugh and slid out of bed. There was enough light so I could see her eyes glisten. "Just a plain old kiss, doll. Nothing fancy, hear?"

"Are you talking about me or you?" she teased.

I kissed her. It wasn't a plain old good night kiss at all. It almost erupted into something else, but I pushed her away and got back in my own bed. In the darkness I heard her chuckle.

The TV news out of Albany ran the story of the bloodletting on Don Lorenzo Ponti's country estate. There were four seriously injured New York hoodlums transported to the local hospital. None were dead, but their injuries were critical.

Inside the main house, the body of the head of the New York Mafia family lay slumped on the floor, shot dead by three bullets to the back of the head, a typical gangland type of elimination. The only thing wrong was that one too many slugs were fired. The caliber of the bullets wasn't announced, but from the general description of the body damage, it wasn't done with high-powered .22's.

Across the room was the body of Leonard Patterson with a broken leg and severe upper torso injuries, but the cause of death was from a .38 automatic still in the dead hand of the don. No other persons were on the estate when the police arrived. Interrogations would take place when the medical authorities allowed it, probably in several days.

Finally, the stuff had hit the fan.

There was a breakdown of what had happened, and according to the reporter there was an impending fight between Patterson and Ponti, but the don had shot before Patterson could get his own gun out of his belt. The third party who had killed the don was not identified, but there were fresh tire tracks around the building that could be identified and plaster casts were being made by the police. The state troopers had been alerted to the situation by a phone call from an unidentified woman. Since their response other police agencies had been brought to the scene to continue the investigation.

Velda asked, "How long do we have before they latch on to us?"

"When they dust that room, my prints will be there," I said. "I left some identifiable tire tracks in the soft ground, that's for sure, so that will put me right on top of things. There's no telling what those slobs that I ran down will say. Maybe they'll talk, maybe not."

"Times are tough, huh?" I looked at her. She didn't even sound worried.

"One thing is, I didn't ice Ponti or Patterson. Whoever was in that car that roared up while I was on the way out is the logical suspect."

"Have you got any good guesses?"

I went over and turned the channels on TV. Nothing like this had hit the area since prohibition so every station was carrying a report of the situation. A couple were even playing a local angle of having the residents keep a lookout for new faces in the area and calling in any odd occurrences they may have noticed.

"This isn't local," I said disgustedly. "They're dealing with a d.a.m.ned rich organization that can buy anything it wants."

"Except it's not so big right now, is it, Mike?"

"Right," I agreed. "It's money that makes this old world go around, so we're back to the eighty-nine billion bucks again. You know . . . there are a lot of countries that could run a credible war with that kind of funding."

"And that leaves us with a problem, doesn't it?"

"Like what?"

"Like where do we go from here?"

The TV was too loud, so I turned it off. I wiped my hand across my face, but everything stayed blurred.

"Want a new thought?" Velda asked me.

"d.a.m.n right."

"Let's get married. At least then I could never testify against you."

"I didn't do anything to testify against, doll."

"We stayed together in a motel room."

"Nothing happened."

"A jury would never believe that," she said.

"Doesn't matter," I told her. "We didn't cross any state lines."

I got that pensive look again, so I mussed up her hair, my fingers running through the long silkiness of it. I could almost close my eyes and feel the color of it. I let my fingertips run down her neck, ma.s.saging her gently, and she turned her head with her eyes closed and if she had been a cat she would have purred. Then I felt the color of her hair again and you can't feel color. You have to see it. But I felt it.

I said, "Come on, let's not waste time."

Morning traffic was light and we took our place in the stream of workers heading for the New York Thruway. Once we turned onto it we were buried amidst the semitrailers and general commuters heading south.

At the Albany off-ramp I swung right, aiming for a mid-city building I had been to before. Parking was still available and I grabbed a spot and shut the engine off. Velda hadn't said a word for the past half hour, letting her eyes scan the sides of the roads for police cars. Now she looked at the building I had parked near and got out when I did, a strange expression tightening her face.

Without saying a word, I hooked my hand under her arm and led her toward those big, official-looking doors where well-dressed, determined-looking people were going in. Just as we reached them two uniformed cops came out, barely glanced at us and kept on going. Anybody going into the courthouse didn't seem suspicious.

Except for Velda. She didn't know what was going on until we reached the proper door where marriage licenses were issued, then her hand squeezed my arm so tightly I was glad she didn't have it on my neck. We were the only ones in the room where we got our instructions on the blood testing and the address of the nearest facility to do the job, took the booklet on the counter that discussed the solemnity and requirements of a good marriage, thanked the clerk and told her we'd be back.

As far as Velda was concerned, the deed was almost as good as done. We would probably have to wait a few days for the blood tests to be completed, but somehow she was going to make sure that situation was expedited to its utmost. An hour later we had gone through the ritual, then she spent fifteen minutes talking to someone in the doctor's office. When she came out she was all smiles, a satisfied look spread across that beautiful face like a kid who had just pulled off a successful raid on the cookie jar.

"It will be ready at four-thirty," she announced. You'd think she had just won the Super Bowl single-handed. "The license bureau closes at five. Now can we eat lunch?"

Time wasn't measured by a watch anymore. The gentle burning of the hole in my side told me that I had slipped up on the medication schedule again. I took my pills with my Danish pastry while Velda dug into a big plate of bacon and eggs. Several times she glanced at me nervously, knowing what was happening, and once asked if I were all right.