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 gra.s.s 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 d.a.m.n 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 c.o.ked 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 circ.u.mstances."

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 d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.s, then," Tucker said. "I've got a h.e.l.l of a lot of arrangements to make."

The suitcase in which Harris carried the machine gun in its less conspicuous, fragmented form was in 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 ch.o.r.e, 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. Bulls.h.i.t. In truth, he was an icy b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 s.e.xy, 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 not share anything else. There was a respect and trust between them that Tucker had never found with anyone else-and yet, when it came to the real nature of his business, he had to lie to her. Not because he didn't trust her but because he didn't want her involved in anything where a court might find her an accomplice or contributing party.

Besides, neither had professed a Great Love for the other, merely a sweet affection. When this finally came to an end, if it did come to an end, he would feel much better knowing that she was completely ignorant of his criminal reputation.

He sat down at the foot of her chair on the thick s.h.a.g carpet, kissed her knees and then went to work on the drink that he'd built. He said, "How about you and Madison Avenue?"

"I got a call," she said, grinning. "You're never going to guess what I'm selling this time."

"They're allowing that to be pushed on television now?" he asked.

"Gutter mind," she said.

"I apologize. What are you selling?"

"Pickles."

"Pickles?"

"Peter Piper Pickles," she said, chuckling. He was always delighted with that chuckle, almost a giggle, because it was so out of place in a woman as big as Elise, as sophisticated as Elise, and it gave her another dimension altogether.

"I thought pickles were-what do you call things like that?"

"Family goods," she said.

"That's it. You always say you can't get jobs pushing family goods even in your breathless teenager role."

Elise had once explained, in detail, that housewives were the purchasers of family goods-foodstuffs, kitchen utensils, waxes, soaps and the like. Housewives didn't want to see a stunningly attractive woman or precocious, budding teenager selling them products, because they were reminded of their own spreading behinds and gradually bulging middles. They didn't want to feel as if they were competing with the women in the commercials; therefore, family goods were sold by cutesy women or plain types. Bombsh.e.l.ls like Elise were reserved for pitches aimed at men: cigars, automobiles, beer and hair-grooming preparations.

"They've come up with a different approach for this one," she said.

"Who has?"

"Marcus, Marcus, Pliney and Plunket," she said.

To Tucker the name of the ad agency always sounded like the first line of a children's nonsense rhyme.

"What's the approach?"

"f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o," she said.

Tucker almost spat out a mouthful of good Scotch. When he did at last manage to swallow it, he coughed and cleared his throat. "Beg pardon?"

"It's another one of Plunket's brainstorms. My agent's gotten work for me with Plunket before, both times for crazy things. Plunket's convinced the Peter Piper Pickle people to try something different in hopes of boosting sales. He's cooked up quite an argument for making a s.e.xy pickle commercial, family goods or not."

"I'd like to hear it."

"Plunket says, with the new wave of female awareness, modern housewives are more and more dissatisfied with their husbands as bed partners and, more and more, have s.e.x on the mind, either subconsciously or consciously, and he uses polls, sociological studies and tons of other data to make his point. He's sold the pickle people on the idea; he says they can't go wrong by showing a s.e.xy girl, full-face, slowly devouring a nice big Peter Piper dill while the voice-over announcer gives the regular sort of pitch." She chuckled again, finished her drink and put down the gla.s.s. "Plunket says that it'll implant, in the woman's mind, the notion that pickles from Piper are a sensual experience. A pickle is very phallic, you know."

"I never noticed."

"Oh, yes, indeed."

He said, "Will the average housewife really go for this, though?"

She shrugged. "It's to be a limited approach, just one commercial, playing only in a few selected test areas. No national exposure unless it proves workable. So, I don't get any residuals, but a pretty good flat fee for a day's work."

Tucker recalled the night that, watching a two-hour network special sponsored by a soap company, they saw three commercials featuring Elise, played three times each, which had earned her an additional five hundred and forty dollars under the residuals clause in her contract. Most weeks, she averaged between a thousand and two thousand dollars as one of the most popular current commercial faces, all of it from work already finished and on the air weeks before; and when she worked on a new one, she doubled that particular week's take with her initial payment. It almost seemed to Tucker that he should give up a life of crime and start hawking toothpaste.

He finished his Scotch, stood up and put the gla.s.s on the stand. He looked at her and said, "Do you feel like practicing?"

"Practicing what?" she asked.

"The pickle commercial, of course."

Much later, finished with that practice and a number of others, having eaten a late dinner and practiced some more and having fallen asleep together in the big bed in the front room, Tucker woke, his heart beating like a sledge driven against an iron block, the rhythm ringing along his bones. He had been frightened by some nightmare that he could not recall, and he reached out and touched Elise's warm, bare b.u.t.tocks, concentrated on her until he could see her lines draped across with sheeting. As her nearness sank in, as he realized he was not alone, his heart slowed and his mouth grew moist again, the fear subsiding. In a moment he was even able to remember what the nightmare had been about: his father.

Even for the president of a Fifth Avenue bank, Mr. Mellio's office was too rich, paneled in too much teak, carpeted in too deep a pile, furnished in much too luxurious a style. The painting behind his desk was clearly an original Klee, and even though it was surely on loan from the bank's investment art collection and had not been purchased solely for Mr. Mellio, it gave you the feeling that these people were not managing your money very properly and were, in fact, almost throwing it away on personal aggrandizement, baubles and unnecessary luxuries.

Mr. Mellio himself, however, countered this impression so completely that you could almost forget entirely about the riches of the room and about the fate of your fortune. He radiated confidence and ability. He was a tall, wide-shouldered man, and he would have fit right into an early John Wayne movie as one of those non-speaking cowpokes who step forward to stand behind the Duke, grim-lipped and resolute in the name of good and honor. At fifty his hair was more white than brown, full enough to be combed over the tips of his ears but certainly not mod. His face was blocky, with a slab of a forehead, rocky cheekbones, a stiff straight nose, a chin like an expertly carved piece of granite. He thrust that chin forward and offered Tucker his hand. The hand was enormous and applied just enough pressure to avoid the extremes of a fish shake and a bone crusher. Like the handshake, everything that Mr. Mellio did seemed planned; you had the feeling he didn't take a breath until he had a.s.sessed the need for it. Despite the decor of the room he worked in, such a man would handle money as a priest handled the Eucharist.

"How have you been?" Mr. Mellio asked, taking his seat behind the huge, dark, uncluttered desk. "I haven't seen you in-let's see-"

"Eight and a half months," Tucker said. "Not since the last time I had you and my father in court."

Mr. Mellio grimaced, smiled through capped teeth and said, "Yes, of course, an unfortunate afternoon."

"For me," Tucker agreed.

"For all of us, especially your father," Mellio said. "You know, Michael, he doesn't want to fight with you over this thing. It grieves him terribly to-"

"My father never grieved over anything, Mr. Mellio, least of all his son." He tried to say it without emotion, calm and easy as if he were merely reading something from a textbook, something indisputable. He thought that he succeeded.

"Your father does care about you, Michael, cares more than you-"