Three days went past like a soft dream. I ate, I slept, I watched the weather channel on TV and fell asleep during two movies. Velda whispered around my apartment, keeping things clean and answering the phone. At regular intervals I took what medication she gave me and finally I began to think the doctor had slipped in something to keep me channelled in peaceful paths. There was no company and no noise and on the morning of the fourth day my eyes snapped open to total reality. There was no drug hangover, no pain in my side, and when I touched the bandaged area there was a soreness but nothing more. I was awake, I was alert and I felt great.

Velda had been watching and waiting. I didn't eat in the bed again. I sat up in a chair and had breakfast spread out before me on a small table. The vitamins and the calories were all there, but I wasn't smothered with huge portions. Something had happened to my appet.i.te and the small portions she had doled out were just right.

She had my ring on her finger and I was feeling that being married wouldn't be cutting a hole in my life at all.

That girl was reading my mind again. She deliberately waved the diamond in front of me and smiled. Then she told me to go shave and get cleaned up. Pat had called earlier and would be up to see me in another hour.

Something critical had cropped up.

"This is pure rumor," Pat told me. "It's straight off the streets and not doc.u.mented at all, but I trust the sources."

"Good news?"

"For you, yeah. The Albany mob that broke Ugo out of the jail hospital found out that he iced his father. The capo of that bunch was tight with old Lorenzo, that's why he did the big favor, but when he got word of Ugo pulling the trigger, he hit the roof. There's a contract out on Ugo like you can't believe. The few old-timers who have their organizations in line are lending a hand and there's no way Ugo is going to get out of this."

"Have they located him yet?"

"n.o.body has shown up yet, and his will be one corpse they won't bury under concrete pilings in Jersey. Ugo is going to be a real example."

"He already is, Pat. He's still on the loose."

"The families have tightened the net around New York. They'd sooner have him dead than controlling that money."

"What money, Pat?" I asked him lightly.

"Knock it off, Mike." He got up from his chair and paced the room twice. "His odds are bad. If the police nail him, he goes to prison. He'll be killed there before they could get him in the chair. Keeping him alive for trial will be harder than trying to locate him."

"What kind of a net have you got out?"

Pat glared out the window. "Every escape route is covered. Local police and the feds are searching the Albany area, but he had all the time in the world to break out of there. We heard the capo in the state capital laid ten grand on him and got him a nondescript car with straight plates, so he had transportation."

"You got the plate numbers?"

"No. That was another rumor from a reliable source. We're waiting for that capo to get sore enough to release the information so we can get an APB out on him."

"They don't do it that way, Pat."

"Maybe this time they might." He turned slowly and looked down at me sipping my second cup of coffee. "Mike, they all know about you. I think they hired historical researchers because Dooley, you and me are pieces of gossip coming out of the sides of mob mouths. I've been called in twice by my superiors to give an explanation of all this, but what do I know? If we were dealing with legitimate business it would be different, but mob money is as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp. It's there, but it's not there. It's not in use, but the mob business goes on. n.o.body seems to know a thing, yet everybody knows all those billions are boxed and stored and a crazy is out there starting up even more trouble for the families."

I said, "Get to your point, Pat."

He hooked the chair with his foot and pulled it under him. "I just want you to tell me the truth, Mike. No fancy speculations. Like Jack Webb used to say, 'Just the facts.' "

"Okay, you got it, Pat."

"Is there really that much money stashed somewhere?"

"Dooley intimated that there was."

"That's not an answer, Mike."

"That's all he told me."

Pat took a deep breath, stared up at the ceiling a moment, then said, "Do you know where it is?"

"No."

Pat was a cop and I didn't fool him a bit. "Do you think you know where it is?"

"I've been studying on that, pal."

"What are your conclusions?"

"So far I haven't gotten to that point. At least we know one thing: n.o.body else has recovered it. I a.s.sume you have alerted every warehouse in the state and have contacted all the hunting clubs to pinpoint cave sites in the Adirondack mountain range, right?"

"Among other efforts. The feds are laying out a barrel of loot to run this thing down. If Ugo turns up in their net it will only be coincidental." His fingers drummed on the arm of the chair. "Tell me, Mike, did you ever figure Dooley for this kind of action?"

"Remember when he ambushed that patrol? He made them think he had a full company behind him."

"We were all young then. That was war."

"So is this, Pat, and it's not over yet."

Pat nodded sagely and said, "I'm restricted to the city, Mike, but you're mobile. Someplace in your head you've schemed something up. You have plans and you are about to start working them out. Am I right?"

"You're close."

"Do I come into this or not?"

"Do you want to?"

"No, not really, but I know I will, so clue me in."

I leaned forward and looked at him. I wasn't about to string him along and jeopardize his job and he knew it. We were back on hostile ground facing an armed enemy who had more troops than we did and who could disappear into the civilized bushes of a city without a trace.

I said, "Stick by your phone, Pat. I'll call at the right time."

New York had turned gray again. There was a chill to the wind that blew from the Hudson River and dust devils rose from the sidewalks and blew in your face so you could actually taste what the city was like. It was nasty and indigestible. There was nothing in common with the smell that loped around the soft rises of the mountains. There, you could smell the trees and the green things and windows didn't vibrate from the street noises and exhaust emissions followed the thruway and didn't intrude on the countryside. Acid rain touched the pines on the mountain peaks, but that was a disorder born in industrial cities far from the mellow foliage of the real New York, the part they call the North Country now.

Leaving the city without a tail was no trouble. Just to be sure, I doubled my little tricks and got on the New York Thruway with n.o.body in sight. At the restaurant area by the Middletown cutoff we pulled into the parking lot and sat there, surveying the traffic. Only two cars stopped, each one with big families. One had Pennsylvania plates and the other Ontario.

So far it had been a clean run. We locked the car, throwing an old khaki jacket over the two cellular phones on the seat. There was no more demand for CB radios. Personal telephones were the big deal for vandals. Then we went inside and got a booth where we had a clear vision of traffic on Route 87.

Over a bowl of hot oatmeal Velda said, "When do you tell me what's going on?"

"We're going to find the money, doll."

"And what are you going to do with it?"

"Nothing. I'm just going to find it."

"Do you know where it is?"

I grinned at her. "I think so." Her eyes narrowed and she waited for me to tell her. I shook my head. "You wouldn't want to know, honey."

"Why not?"

"Too many bats."

Her mouth twitched and she said sharply, "Stop it, Mike." Then her eyes grew grimmer for an instant. "You are going back to Harris' cave again, aren't you?"

"Dooley wasn't fooling about those numbers, kitten. He knew what he was doing."

"That cave was saturated with experts and they didn't find a thing!"

"They weren't the right kind of experts," I told her. "They only thought they were doing a clever search job."

"What did they miss?"

"Lat.i.tude and longitude gives you an exact location. Out on the ocean you can locate the exact spot within a couple of feet with regular loran equipment. You can give me a number and I can run right to the spot . . . if I know how to use the equipment."

"But you gave them the numbers you found on Dooley's boat."

"I didn't tell them what Dooley had told me, though. He had changed the signs so the arrows pointed in the wrong direction. Those loran numbers crossed in the middle of the big cave. Nothing was there at all. In fact, the spot wasn't even in the middle of the cave, but down toward one end."

"How did you find that out? You didn't have any equipment with you."

"An offhand remark one of the feds made who did have the equipment. He thought the whole business was a red herring dreamed up by a loony who had a big gripe against the government."

"But you don't think so, do you, Mike?"

"I believe Dooley, kid."

"Then let's do it."

We made two stops in the Albany area before I drove to a farm equipment place outside of town. I told the manager I wanted to rent a small backhoe and a pick and shovel combo to do some digging on property I just bought. I told him it was a simple job I could handle myself if he showed me how to run the backhoe. It wasn't too far off what I had used a few times in the army, so the lessons were quick and I signed the papers for the stuff. He hooked a trailer hitch to the rear of my car, loaded the backhoe on a trailer and slid the trailer hitch on the ball then waved me off.

Velda was giving me another of those "who are you" looks again. She said, "Mike, I don't believe you. Where did you learn about this machinery?"

"I didn't know you were such a nurse, either," I said.

"We've been out in the field together before."

"Not like this. And we were younger then."

"Are we smarter?" she asked me.

"If we're not, we're in trouble."

Getting to Harris' property now was no problem. All the recent traffic had widened the opening of the driveway, crushing down the weeds that almost obscured it earlier. I swung wide, turned up the road, dropped the transmission into low range. Those many cars had made the road smoother, so hauling the backhoe wasn't much trouble at all. I crept by the see-through slash in the trees, pa.s.sed the old wrecked Mack truck and came out on the plateau of the property.

The residue from a couple of hundred official visitors was plain. Cigarette wrappers were all over the place, with soda cans and quick food bags making it look like a sloppy camper's picnic area.

I drove up to the semi-hidden opening to the cave, lowered the wheel ramps on the trailer, started up the backhoe and drove it off. While I flipped on the lights and went into the cave, Velda drove the car into the nearest grove of trees and joined me in that vast empty dome that was a bootlegger's perfect warehouse.

She hopped up beside me and clung to my neck as I drove across the dirt floor. Too many feet had softened the crust and the dust hung thick in the air. I had thought this could happen, so brought a couple of plastic filters that we slipped over our heads. Breathing became a little better then.

I started where the numbers intersected, fifty feet back from the rear of the wall. The pile of rubble Slateman said had come from the roof lay straight ahead, looking for all the world like it had been pushed there to get it out of the way of the trucks.

But Slateman was wrong. None of that rubble had come down from the ceiling. The scarring above was minimal compared to the pile below. I touched the controls and dropped the scoop, and while Velda stepped down to watch the operation, I started digging into the seemingly immovable heap of stone.

Only at first was it difficult, most of it due to my inefficiency with the scoop, but once I had the routine down it became faster. In thirty minutes the rubble had been parted and the scoop was digging in loose, pebbly material and I knew I was almost there. I lifted the scoop and left the engine running with the lights blazing and took the pickax and began hacking at the indentation.

Velda said, "You're through, Mike. There's nothing back there."

"Oh, there's something back there, all right," I told her through labored breaths. I used the shovel, sc.r.a.ping the dirt away until the hole was wide enough for the two of us to walk through without sc.r.a.ping.

You could hear them now. They made funny noises at being disturbed, tiny sounds and noise like the beating of wings. Velda looked at me, her eyes wide, holding back from entering the hole in the wall.

"They're bats, kitten. Millions of bats. They're bottled up in here guarding eighty-nine billion dollars."

"How do they get out?" There was a shudder in her voice.

"Someplace there's an opening. It's probably well concealed and you'd only spot it when the bats exit the area. But we know it's there and we know how to get back in here again." I took her arm and gave her a tug. She didn't move. I pushed a little harder and she took a reluctant step.

"Mike . . ."

"What?"

"They don't really get caught in your hair, do they?"

"You should know better," I reminded her. "They have the best radar system in the world. They won't even touch you."

Velda nodded. She believed me. She knew it was the truth, but her steps were still forced.

The fierce light from the backhoe's floods made it seem like the opening of an ancient tomb. There was a smell of age, and the magnificence of the gigantic casket that rose six cartons high and fifty feet wide, diminishing into the darkness of the hole beyond it, made us feel tiny in comparison.

I took out my pocket knife and went to the nearest carton and slit an opening in its side, finally making a door that revealed the packets of green inside. I pulled out a dozen wrapped bundles of hundreds, counted out a certain amount and put the remainder back in the carton.

Velda watched carefully and said, "What's that for?"

"Office expenses. This was a job, remember? Okay, I'm paying us."

"How much?"

"Enough to pay for your ring, our salaries and Uncle Sam his taxes."

"How are you going to declare it?"