The shot had pushed him half around, so that he leaned back against the wall and, just now beginning to reach for his shoulder, fell forward and lay still.

Despite the high risk a.s.sociated with his profession, Tucker had only twice been pressed into a position where he had no choice but to kill a man. Once, it had been a crooked cop who tried to force his point with a handgun; the second time it was a man who'd been working with Tucker on a job and who'd decided there was really no sense in splitting the proceeds when one shot from his miniature pearl-handled revolver would eliminate that economic unpleasantry and make him twice as rich. The cop was fat and slow. The partner with the pearl-handled revolver was as affected in every habit as he was in his choice of handguns. He didn't choose to shoot Tucker in the back, which would have been the smartest move, but wanted instead to explain to Tucker, in the course of a melodramatic scene, in very theatrical terms what he intended to do. He wanted to see Tucker's face as death approached, he said. He'd been very surprised when Tucker took the revolver away from him, and even more surprised when, during the brief struggle, he was shot.

Both kills had been clean and quick, on the surface; but both of them had left an ugly residue long after the bodies had been buried and begun to rot. For months after each murder Tucker was bothered by hideous nightmares in which the dead men appeared to him in a wide variety of guises, sometimes in funeral shrouds, sometimes cloaked in the rot of the grave, sometimes as part animal-goat, bull, horse, vulture, always with a human head-sometimes as they looked when they were alive, sometimes as children with the heads of adults, sometimes as voluptuous women with the heads of men and as b.a.l.l.s of light and clouds of vapor and nameless things that he was nonetheless able to identify as the men he had killed. In the few months immediately following each kill, he woke nearly every night, a scream caught in the back of his throat, his hands full of damp sheets.

Elise was always there to comfort him.

He couldn't tell her what had caused the dreams, and he would pretend that he didn't understand them or, sometimes, that he didn't even remember what they had been.

She didn't believe him.

He was sure of her disbelief, though she never showed it in her manner or in her face and never probed with the traditional questions. She could not know and could hardly suspect the real cause of them, but she simply didn't care about that. All she was interested in was helping him get over them.

Some nights, when she cradled him against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he could take one of her nipples in his mouth as a child might, and he would be, in time, pacified in the manner of a child. He wasn't ashamed of this, only welcomed it as a source of relief, and he did not feel any less a man for having clung to her in this manner. Often, when the fear had subsided, his lips would rove outward from the nipple, changing the form of comfort she offered, now offering her a comfort of his own.

He wondered how other people who had killed handled the aftermath, the residue of shame and guilt, the deep sickness in the soul.

How, for instance, did Pete Harris handle it? He'd killed, by his own admission, six men during the last twenty-five years, not without cause-and countless others before that, during the war when he had carried the Thompson and used it indiscriminately. Did Harris wake up at night pursued by demons? Dead men? Minotaurs and harpies with familiar human faces? If he did, how did he comfort himself, or who comforted him? It was difficult to imagine that lumbering, red-faced, bull-necked man in the arms of someone like Elise. Perhaps he never had been consoled and nursed out of his nightmares. Perhaps he still carried them all inside him, a pool of that dark, syrupy residue of death. That would explain the bad nerves as well as anything.

"I think his shoulder's broken," Shirillo said, looking up from the wounded gunman.

"He's not dead?"

"You didn't mean him to be, did you?" the kid asked.

"No," Tucker said. "But a silenced pistol can kick off the mark, even if it's been well machined."

"He's bleeding," Shirillo said. "But it's not arterial blood, and it won't kill him."

"What now?" Harris asked.

Tucker knelt and looked at the gunman's wound, peeled back his eyelids, felt for and found the rapid beat of his heart. "He'll come to before long, but he'll be in shock. He won't be any threat if we leave him behind."

"He could sound a warning," Harris said.

Shirillo said, "He's not going to have the strength for that, even if he's thinking clearly enough to try it."

"We could gag him."

"And maybe kill him if the gag triggers convulsions," Tucker said. "No. We'll just take him inside with us and tuck him in a closet and hope for the best."

Shirillo nodded, still cool, much cooler than Tucker would have expected him to be at a time like this, and he went back to the window, finished applying the masking tape to the center pane, cut a circle of gla.s.s, lifted that out of the way, reached in and carefully felt around with his fingers. "Wires," he said. "An alarm."

"Know the type?" Tucker whispered.

"Maybe. Flashlight, please."

Tucker took that out of his windbreaker pocket and handed it over.

Shirillo flicked the light on and directed it through the hole he had cut in the window gla.s.s, angled the beam left and right, grunted softly as if confirming something he already thought to be true, flicked the light off and returned it to Tucker.

"Well?"

"I know it."

"Built in?"

"No. The wire loops through two bra.s.s guide rings screwed into the base of the window. When I lift the window, I stretch the wire and trip the alarm-if I'm stupid."

"You aren't stupid," Harris said.

"Thanks. I needed your rea.s.surance."

Tucker said, "How long to finish with it-two or three minutes?"

"Less."

"Go on, then."

Working more quickly than Tucker himself would have been able to, Shirillo taped and cut another pane in the bottom row of the window segments, lifted that out of the way and, using the special tools in his pouch, reached inside and worked the guide rings free of the wood. That done, the wire would lie in place on the sill no matter how high the window was lifted. Finished, he returned the tools to his pouch, belted that around his waist beneath his jacket. Reaching through the window with both hands, he freed the latch and carefully slid the whole works up high enough for a man to pa.s.s under it. The frame was a tight fit, and the window remained open.

"You first," Tucker said.

Shirillo hunched and went inside.

"Help me with him," Tucker said, indicating the wounded man who was still unconscious on the promenade floor.

He and Harris put their guns down and lifted the guard, worked the man through the window and into the darkened room, where Shirillo helped settle him gently to the floor. They had to work more carefully and take more time with the man than they would have if he'd been dead. But that was okay. That was fine. At least there wouldn't be any nightmares this way.

"Now you," Tucker said.

Harris handed his Thompson through the open window and went in quickly after it, as if he would be unable to function if the weapon were out of his hands and out of sight for more than a brief moment. He had to twist himself around painfully to force his bulk through that narrow frame, but he didn't protest, made no sound at all.

Tucker picked up the circles of gla.s.s that had been cut from the window panes, peeled the tape off the window around the holes and pa.s.sed these through to Shirillo, then looked around to see if they'd left any other trace of their work here.

Blood.

He studied the pattern of the blood on the promenade floor where the wounded man had lain. There was not much of it, because the blood had come in a thick trickle rather than a spurt, and the guard's clothes had absorbed most of it. Already, what little blood there was had begun to darken and dry. Even if someone pa.s.sed this way-and that seemed unlikely if this was the wounded man's patrol sector-he might not properly interpret the stain. In any case, there was nothing to be done about it.

He looked around the fog-shrouded front lawn one last time, at the h.o.a.ry shrubbery, the mist that laced the big trees, the gra.s.s made colorless by the dim house lights.

Nothing.

He listened to the night.

Silence.

Except for the wounded man, no one else had discovered them. Now their chances were pretty good. They would finish the job properly. He felt it, beyond intellect, beyond reason. Success was theirs. Almost. Unless Merle Bachman had talked, in which case they were all blown.

He followed Harris through the window and into the house, closed the window behind himself.

"It's a library, friends," Pete Harris said as Tucker let the flashlight play across the big, comfortable reading chairs, an outsized oak desk and hundreds of shelved books.

"A cultured crook," Shirillo said.

Tucker moved cautiously about the room until he was sure that it was clear. He located a closet and helped Shirillo move the unconscious wounded guard into it.

"No turning back from here on out," Harris said.

"Too right," Tucker said.

Cautiously they opened the main library door and filed into the dimly lighted first-floor corridor, closed the door after them. Across the hall another door opened on steps that led down into darkness.

"Bas.e.m.e.nt," Shirillo explained.

"What's there?"

"Swimming pool, sauna, gymnasium."

"This the only entrance?"

"Yeah. n.o.body down there at this hour anyway, not in the dark. It's safe enough."

Tucker stared down into the blackness, then shook his head. "Check it anyway," he said.

Shirillo didn't argue. He took the flashlight and went down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, out of sight.

The silence in the house was oppressive, deep and still enough to touch and, in their present state of mind, subtly false, as if they were being witched every moment and had been prepared for.

Not three minutes after Shirillo reached the bottom of the cellar steps, Harris deserted his post from which he had been covering the corridor, went to the open cellar door and looked down into the inkiness. His face was red, beaded with perspiration, and he was trembling slightly. He said, "Come on, friend."

"Take it easy."

"Where is he?"

"Give him a few more minutes."

Harris turned back to the open corridor, obviously unhappy with the waiting, both the machine gun and the pistol raised from his sides. Tucker hoped no one would come upon them accidentally, because Harris couldn't be trusted to use the silenced pistol first. He'd open with the big Thompson, out of habit, out of need, out of fear. He'd ruin any element of surprise.

Two minutes later, as Shirillo had promised, he returned. "No one down there," he said.

Harris smiled and used the back of his pistol hand to wipe the perspiration from his face. He wondered if he was sweating only because he was scared, or because he was rapidly becoming physically exhausted as well. G.o.d, he felt old. He felt much older than he really was. This wouldn't be the last job now, with the money gone, but the next one would have to be.

"Let's hustle," Tucker said. He was afraid that if they remained still for much longer, he'd be unable to maintain the composure he was known for. All they needed to louse up this operation was both he and Harris quaking in their boots and only the green kid with any nerve left.

Quickly they opened doors on both sides of the corridor and ascertained that all the rooms beyond were deserted. Past the front entrance to the house and the main staircase, past the foyer with its eagle-print wallpaper, in the other ground-floor wing where the lighted rooms lay, they were almost certain to find things more difficult than this.

Harris watched the closed doors to the two lighted rooms, his Luger and the machine gun raised into firing position. He was running with sweat and breathing harder and faster than either Tucker or Shirillo. While he stood guard, the other two men opened each of the four doors at the back of the house and examined the rooms there: a small art room, windowless, the walls tastefully hung with original oils; the ultramodern kitchen; a storage room full of canned goods, racked wine and whiskey still in cardboard cases; a full bathroom carpeted in white s.h.a.g. No one was in any of these rooms. They closed the last two doors almost as one and turned to Harris, who looked as if he were being pulled apart: neck strained so veins and arteries stood out like thick strings, head thrust forward, shoulders drawn up tight toward his ears, feet spread and legs tensed, legs bent at the knees, arms out from his sides with white knuckles bent around the weapons in each hand.

Tucker motioned for Shirillo to accompany him to the end door and directed Harris to take the first. At a signal from Tucker, Shirillo and Harris stepped forward and opened the doors on the lighted rooms, throwing them wide without banging them against walls.

Tucker saw Harris move quickly into the room on the left as if he had seen someone in there who would need settling down, but he did not wait to see what happened. As the door of the end room began to swing slowly shut again of its own momentum, he preceded Shirillo into the room, where he found a pudgy, mustached, bald-headed little man sitting up in a Hollywood-style bed, a book open in his hands.

"Who are you?" the pudgy man asked.

Tucker leveled the silenced Luger at the shiny forehead and said, "Shut up."

The stranger shut up.

He turned back to Shirillo and said, "I can handle this one. Go see if everything's all right with our friend."

Shirillo vanished through the open doorway.

Tucker pulled up a chair, facing the man on the Hollywood bed. "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" the stranger asked. The book he was reading was a popular sociological study of the criminal mentality, and it had recently reached the best-seller lists. Tucker supposed that was funny, though he didn't laugh.

"Who are you?" he repeated, pushing the gun closer.

The pudgy man blinked. "Keesey. I'm the cook."

"Sit still, Keesey, and don't try to sound an alarm. If you open your mouth once when I don't tell you to, you'll never open it again."

Keesey understood. He sat stiff, still, quiet, blinking at Tucker until Shirillo and Harris entered the room a couple of minutes later.

"Well?" Tucker asked.

"It's all taken care of, my friend," Harris said. "Next door's a big room that two of Baglio's men share. One of them was in there drinking coffee when I opened the door. He looked like he'd just swallowed a frog when he saw me."

"And?"

"I caught him under the chin with the Thompson's b.u.t.t. I don't think I broke his jaw, but he won't be up and around for a while. Jimmy tied him with his own bed sheets, just to be sure."

"His roomie?" Tucker asked.

Harris said, "Must be the one you got outside." He turned directly to Keesey. "What've we got here?" He was smiling without humor. It was clear to Tucker that Harris was moving closer to the edge, now growing antagonistic without reason.

"The cook," Tucker said.

"What's he say?"

Tucker turned back to Keesey. "How many gunmen does Baglio keep in the house?"

"None," Keesey said.

Tucker reached across the bed, gently lifted the book out of the cook's hands, marked the man's place with a leaf of the dust jacket, put the book down, leaned forward and slammed the barrel of the Luger alongside the pudgy man's head.

Just in time Keesey remembered not to yelp. He slid down in the bed and rubbed at his bruised skull, drawing deep and trembling breaths.