Tucker raised a hand and waved the words away. He said, "If he cares so G.o.dd.a.m.ned much, why doesn't he turn over my inheritance? It would make things a good deal easier for me."

Mr. Mellio looked pained, like a loving father who has to teach an unpleasant lesson to a child. He leaned back in his chair, Klee looming behind him, and said, "Your mother's will specifically stated that your father was to remain the director of your trust until such a time as you matured to the point where you could handle the funds yourself."

"Until such a time as he felt I had matured," Tucker corrected. "He weaseled that out of my mother when she was sick, very sick, two weeks before she died."

"You pretend as if your father attempted to gain control of your inheritance to enrich his own estate. In the face of his own considerable wealth, that's absurd."

"I pretend no such thing," Tucker said. "He gained control of my inheritance in an attempt to gain control of me, but he lost the bet."

"Michael," Mellio said, leaning forward now, propping both elbows on the top of the desk, putting his chin in his hands, trying to look somewhat pixie-like, failing miserably in that, "you could see your father. You could make amends. I'm sure that, if you tried to work things out between the two of you, he'd soon turn the estate over into your hands."

"Fat chance," Tucker said. "Perhaps after I'd been a faithful toady for eight or ten years, he'd give me what I want. I don't wish to give up that much time to a corrupt, selfish old man."

"Michael, he is your father!"

Tucker leaned forward in his own chair now, his face slightly flushed. "Mr. Mellio, when I was a child I saw my father on the average of twice a week, for an hour each time. Once was at Sunday dinner when I was permitted to dine with the adults, the other was on Wednesday night when he quizzed me on my previous week's lessons. I was learning French and German before grade school, from a nanny who doubled as my instructor, and my father wanted to be certain that he was getting his money's worth. For a period of eighteen months, when I was twelve and thirteen, I saw my father not at all, because he was consolidating his European ventures then. My secondary schooling was at a boarding school considerably farther away from home than my first military academy had been. I saw my father at Christmas for a couple of hours. By the time I was in college, I stayed away from home on purpose. That's how much he's my father. Christ, Mr. Mellio, I don't even know the man."

Mellio said nothing.

Tucker said, "I early decided that the last thing I wanted to be was like my father. If having money meant you had to spend all of your time shepherding it and none of your time enjoying life, then money wasn't for me at all." He leaned back in his chair now, the intensity of his voice sliding away. "Money, to me, is to be spent. That appalled the old man, and it was because he found that I was unamenable that he got that clause in my mother's will. He wanted me to be an empire builder like himself. Life's too short, however, to waste in a series of boardrooms."

"To have money you must make money," Mr. Mellio said, as if he were reading the sentence from a lacquered wall plaque. "A fortune can be squandered quickly, Michael. Even one the size of your inheritance-or the much greater size of your father's estate."

"My mother left three million dollars, give or take a few thousand in small change. Even invested at a paltry six percent in tax-free bonds, that earns back a hundred and eighty thousand a year. I could live with that very nicely, Mr. Mellio."

"Your father believes you couldn't, that you'd start nibbling away at the princ.i.p.al."

"My father doesn't give a d.a.m.n about that," Tucker said. "He simply wants me under hand so he can mold another corporate mastermind. In the next step of the court tests, or the step after that, a judge is going to agree with me. He can't continue to pay off every court official who comes up. One of them is going to be honest, especially the higher the courts get."

Mellio dropped the pixie pose and picked up the role of the shocked banker taken aback by irresponsible accusations. He was even worse at that than at playing pixie, about as believable as Elise would be if she tried to play a s.e.xless, weary housewife in a television commercial. "You can't be seriously implying that-"

Tucker cut him short. "Can we talk about the loan, please?"

Mellio moved his lips up and down, like a man with something caught in his throat, finally closed his mouth and ordered his thoughts. He said, "Michael, there is an account in this bank composed solely of the monthly allowance checks from your trust-which you have not picked up or cashed in more than three years. I believe there are now thirty-seven deposits in the account, each in the amount of ten thousand dollars. I cannot see why you would wish to make a loan when you have these funds available."

"Credit me with at least a modic.u.m of intelligence, Mr. Mellio," Tucker said. He sounded tired, and he was tired. This sort of fencing was something he was no good at and was, to boot, completely out of practice for. He was anxious to be done with Mellio, the bank and the city so that he could get back to the most pressing problem of all- getting Merle Bachman out of Baglio's mountain estate before the driver was forced to spill everything about the rest of them. "I am aware that my father has conditioned the delivery of those checks, and I am thoroughly acquainted with what I would be losing by meeting his conditions. I have a good lawyer. He and I have talked a great deal about all of this, all of you."

Mellio looked shocked again, apparently decided that this was not one of his better roles, gave up on it and got very businesslike. "Okay, by signing the waiver to get your allowance checks, you'd be endorsing your father's control of the inheritance. But what does that matter, Michael? It's nothing more than a formality, anyway. Your father, by virtue of your mother's will, already has control."

Tucker sighed again, slumped down in his chair, looked at his watch: a quarter of nine. The Klee was beginning to strain his eyes, and the dark teak paneling seemed to be closing in on him. "Signing for the allowance checks, I'd be signing away my right to carry on with the suit we now have in federal court. I'd be limiting myself to the position of a minor for the rest of my life-or for the rest of my father's life, anyway."

"But you've said you only care about having money to spend," Mellio argued quietly. "This way, you would have that nice monthly check."

"I said that I could get along on a hundred and eighty thousand a year, but I can't possibly make it on a hundred and twenty. One thing I did acquire from my father was expensive tastes."

"The allowances could be raised, naturally," Mellio said.

Tucker shook his head. "No. It's not just that. Once I'd signed the waiver and no longer had a lever to use against my father, he'd have more control over me than I want him to have. He could even cut back the allowances until I had to knuckle under and go through the charade of learning the business from him."

"He wouldn't do that," Mellio said.

"You're full of it," Tucker said politely, smiling.

Mellio said, "You must hate him."

"Not merely that; I loathe him."

"But why?"

"I have my reasons."

He thought of many things, but most of all he thought of the women his father had kept, a string of mistresses which, cruelly, he hadn't hidden from his wife. In fact, he seemed to take some strange pleasure in flaunting his adultery in front of her. Tucker remembered sitting with her, once when he had come home over the holidays from the boarding school, listening to her as, hating herself, she told him about his father's women. She had been a strong family-oriented woman, and this was an attack at her base, her sacred foundation. She had huddled in upon herself and cried, silently, shaking, her face cold to his touch. If only his mother had had a bit of Elise in her, less of an old-fashioned outlook and more modern fire, she would have stood up to the old man; she would have left him. Instead, she had stayed on, unable to admit it all had gone bad. Then the cancer, the long slow hospital death, when the old man was too busy to visit her for more than an hour or two a week, her knowing that it wasn't only his financial affairs that took so much of his time.

"Your father is a fascinating man and one of the kindest that I've ever known," Mr. Mellio said. "I can't imagine what reasons he would have given you to loathe him."

"Then you don't know him well."

"Perhaps I know him better than you do."

Tucker smiled frostily. "Considering that you're a banker and that my father was always more interested in money than in his son, perhaps you do."

For the first time the banker seemed to see beyond Tucker's facade and to catch a glimpse of the man behind it. He looked quickly down at the bare top of his ma.s.sive desk, as if that single glimpse had frightened him, and he said, "What size loan were you considering?"

"Only ten thousand," Tucker said. "I've suddenly found myself short of operating cash."

"Collateral?" Mellio asked, looking up as his courage flooded back in the course of a conversation he must have gone through a thousand times before with a thousand different customers. Familiarity always breeds confidence, especially in men of finance.

"My trust," Tucker said.

"But you do not, strictly speaking, have the right to put up the trust-fund monies as collateral. Only the trust administrator can do that."

"My father."

"Yes."

"Then I can put up that account full of uncollected allowances."

"The same holds true there," Mellio said. "Until you sign for the checks, they aren't legally yours."

Tucker sat up straight in his chair, sensing a battle of wills that he had to win. "What would you suggest I use as collateral, then?"

"Well, you seem to be running a very profitable business," Mr. Mellio said. "You live in the style you like, without touching your inheritance, so you must have other a.s.sets."

"Forget that," Tucker said.

Mellio leaned back in his chair, testing the hinged backrest to its limits, looking at Michael across the curious perspective of his raised knee. It was evident that he felt in command of the situation once more. "Now, Michael, there isn't any sense in your att.i.tude. If you'd give me a full picture of this art business of yours, initial capital and estimated income, sources and projections, we could get you a loan. We could make it a sweat loan on the power of your success thus far. And, I might add, if you'd tell your father exactly what you've been doing, he might very well be so impressed with your business ac.u.men that he'd free your inheritance."

"No chance," Tucker said. "My business isn't in the empire-building mold, but erratic and highly chancy. I don't attend board meetings, float stock options or employ thousands of people. My father wouldn't be impressed the way he'd have to be to give me a free hand with my inheritance."

Mellio's voice softened into a patently false sentimentality. "You might at least let him know the nature of your art dealings, inform him of some of your more notable triumphs, as a son extending the minimal courtesy to a father. He's proud of your evident success, believe me. But he's much too proud to come and ask you how you've achieved it."

Tucker grinned and shook his head. "You're still full of it, Mr. Mellio. I'm sure you know how many times my father's had me followed by private detectives, trying to learn what dealers I work with, what prices have been paid for certain objects and what profits other sales have brought me. Unfortunately for him, I've been cleverer than any of them; I've spotted each new tail from the start."

Mellio sighed, still looking across his knees. He said, "Your father wouldn't have you followed, Michael. But, very well, forget about your work. Is there any other collateral that you can offer the bank against this ten thousand you need?"

"My furniture, automobile, some art objects."

"Inadequate, I'm afraid."

"I have some very good artwork."

"Art may be worth a fortune today, nothing tomorrow.

The critics and the connoisseurs are fickle in their approval of any talent."

"And the bank is involved in such unsound investments?" Tucker asked, feigning innocence, pointing at the Klee.

Mellio said nothing.

Tucker said, "These aren't paintings but primitive artifacts, valuable as antiquities and as art."

"I'd have to have them appraised," Mellio said. "That would take a week, maybe longer."

"I can send you to a reputable appraiser who would verify their value in half an hour."

"We'd prefer to use our own man, and we'd need a week."

"G.o.d," Tucker said, "I can't wait for the next stockholders' meeting so I can point out how you people are throwing money away on Klee paintings and other such claptrap. By your own admission-"

"You're being childish," Mellio said.

"And you are being dishonest, Mr. Mellio. I'm sure my father directed you to take every step to deny me this loan and to force me into signing the waiver. But you must see that if I don't get the ten thousand now, right now, I've got excellent grounds to level yet another suit against you, the bank and the administrator of the trust. No judge is going to believe that you seriously fear losing what you loan to me. It will be quite evident that your refusal is a spiteful tactic and nothing more."

Mellio sat up and reached for his intercom controls. To Tucker he said, "I'll want a signed note from you, at least."

Tucker said, "If I approve of the note's wording."

"Of course."

Mellio called for his secretary to bring the proper loan papers, though he was clearly unhappy about being forced into this.'

"I'll want it in cash," Tucker said. "I'll tell you the denominations of the bills."

"Cash?" Mellio asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes," Tucker said. "I'm afraid your check might bounce."

At nine-thirty, four blocks from the bank, with his ten thousand dollars packed into a slim briefcase, Michael Tucker made three short telephone calls from a public phone booth in a department store-one to a number in Queens, one to a number rather far out on Long Island and the third to Jimmy Shirillo in Pittsburgh. Satisfied that everything was moving along smoothly, he hailed a cab and rode to a point two blocks from the Queens address, got out, paid the driver, watched the taxi pull away and disappear in heavy traffic, then walked the rest of the way. That might have been an unnecessary precaution, even though the driver kept fare records that could be checked, but he had grown accustomed to his father's occasional private detectives padding in his wake, and he did not mind the slight inconvenience. No one followed him the rest of the way to Imrie's place.

Imrie's place was a ground-floor showroom of a three-story brick structure on a quiet side street in Queens. A sign outside, reproduced in gilt lettering on the cracked gla.s.s door, said: antiques and used furniture. When Tucker went inside, the opening door caused a buzzer to shrill loudly far back in the stacks of chairs, tables, scarred bookcases, lamps, hutches, beds and a considerable variety of bric-a-brac. A moment later, as if unwillingly propelled forward by that noise, Imrie waddled out of a shadowed aisle between stacks of chairs and picture frames both used and antique.

He said, "Just let me attend to the door, and I'll be with you." And he went to attend to it.

Imrie was in his early fifties, bald except for a fringe of curly gray hair that accentuated the smoothness of the top of his skull, almost like a medieval friar. He stood no taller than five feet six, but he weighed an even two hundred pounds. Though his store looked like the streets of a Florida town after a hurricane disaster, and though his own style of dress was no style at all except comfort, he was a tidy man when it came to his specialty. His specialty was guns.

"Upstairs," he said, pa.s.sing Tucker on his way back into the maze of tarnished, tottering furnishings.

At the back of the store, through a yellow cloth curtain, they went up a set of narrow wooden stairs, pa.s.sed the second floor where Imrie lived, climbed to the third and last level where he kept his gun collection. Here, as on the first floor, the part.i.tions had been knocked out-to make one large room. Racked on the walls, shelved against wooden display lifts, nestled in velvet-lined cases and-in the case of new acquisitions not yet touched by Imrie-dumped unceremoniously in cardboard boxes, were more than two thousand rifles, shotguns and handguns, with the overwhelming emphasis on the last category. Also in the room, against the far wall, were a number of metal-working machines, including a complete miniature gas-fired forge and cooling pot where metals could be melted and shaped.

"I think I have exactly what you want," Imrie said. 'In the store downstairs he'd seemed bland, as gray as his fringe of hair, a little sleazy but not sleazy enough to be colorful. Here, among his weapons, he came alive like a puppet jerked up on strings and touched, magically, by some good fairy. His eyes, hooded and dull in the antique store, were wide, bright and shifted quickly from one thing to another-not ignoring, either, Tucker's reaction to everything he said and, in a few moments, to everything that he showed him.

They stopped at a bookcase that filled half the wall to the right of the door, and Imrie looked up over the bushy gray thatch of his eyebrows, embarra.s.sed. He said, "Mr. Tucker, I hope you'll excuse the television dramatics here."

"Of course," Tucker said. He had been in contact with Imrie nine times before. Three times Imrie had opened the hidden closet in Tucker's presence-the sign of trust and respect he gave few customers-and every time he apologized for the melodrama.

"You can't be too careful these days," Imrie said, using both hands to remove several volumes of poetry from the fifth shelf. He handed the books to Tucker, who took them and waited patiently. "There was a time, not so many years ago, you could leave everything out in the open. If I was working on a gun-making special changes-and I got sleepy, I'd leave it on the workbench while I caught a few winks, you know?" Tucker said he knew. "But now you can't take any chances. All this public uproar about guns puts pressure on the cops and, directly, pressure on me too. You'd think, listening to these anti-gun nuts, that every handgun in existence is used in crime of some sort. Take a look around this workshop, though. I got maybe twelve hundred, thirteen hundred handguns. How many of them am I going to sell to special customers like you? Thirty? Forty? No more than that." He made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat, located the lock previously covered by the books, used a key on his chain to open it. He stepped aside and swung the bookcase out of the way, walked into a closet about four times his own size, pulled on a chain that lighted a forty-watt bulb, located a card-board box he wanted, turned out the light and stepped into the main room again. He put the box down, closed and locked the bookcase door, took the poetry volumes from Tucker's hands and slipped them onto the shelf again. "Makes me feel like a criminal," he said, grunting in the back of his throat. He sounded as though he were looking for someone to spit on.

At the main workbench, Imrie showed Tucker what he had for him. "Three Portuguese National Guard contract Lugers, all in excellent shape."

"Fakes?"

Imrie looked hurt. "Genuine, I a.s.sure you. A good fake, of course, would be sufficient for anything you'd want to use it for. But these are the real article, 1906-type with four-and-three-quarter-inch barrels."

"In 7.65 mm?"

"Yes."

Tucker worked the unloaded pistol.

"See?" Imrie asked.

"What about the silencers?" Tucker ran his thumb over the threads that had been cut into the outer circ.u.mference of the Luger's barrel.

Imrie lifted three bright tubes from the box, handed one of them over. "I guarantee the continuity of the barrel."

"Of course."

Tucker fitted the silencer to the Luger and had almost eleven inches of barrel. The effect was at once silly and deadly.

"Ammunition? Clips?"

Imrie took those out of the box and placed them neatly on the table. He watched while Tucker fitted the silencers to each of the weapons, loaded them, held them, did everything but shoot them. He was not offended by the thoroughness of the examination, for he knew that Tucker was making no comment on his own trustworthiness but was merely taking as many precautions as he could. Indeed, he admired the other man's professionalism.

Tucker broke the guns down and said, "How much?"

"You understand that a genuine Portuguese National Guard Luger is a collector's item?"

"Even modified with a silencer?" Tucker asked.