Blood Risk Part 5

"Still, yes."

"How much?"

"I paid four hundred and fifty dollars for each gun, thirteen hundred and fifty altogether, the going market price." Tucker knew that Imrie had not purchased the weapons from another collector but from various uninformed sources, probably for as little as fifty or a hundred dollars each. He did not say anything. Imrie was good enough to be permitted as much chiseling as he could reasonably expect was his due. "I restored them to full functional status, supplied the ammunition-considerable ammunition-machined the silencers, a delicate operation that takes no little amount of time-"

"How much?" Tucker interrupted.

Bright eyes flickering over his face, down at the guns, up at his face again, Imrie realized Tucker was in a hurry, perhaps pushed the price up a little because of that. "Twenty-two hundred for the three."

"Two thousand," Tucker said.

"There is the added problem that these particular weapons were originally prepared for another gentleman, as an advance order. He'll be around to collect them in two days. To fill that order, I'm going to have to close the store and stay up eighteen hours a day-"

Tucker cut the fat man short. "Hardly likely," he said. "We both know that you always keep a bit ahead of the demand. That's one reason you keep the hidden closet. You've probably got two more like this-maybe not Lugers but something as sufficient-ready to hand behind the bookcase."

"Really-" Imrie began.

"Two thousand."

"You'll want a case to carry them out of here?" Imrie asked, folding thick fingers together.

"Yes."

"Two thousand for the guns, twenty-five dollars for the attache case."

Tucker smiled. "You're unbelievable."

"The antique business has suffered through a recent economic recession you might have read about in the papers," Imrie said. He took his hands apart and put them palms up as if to ask, "What can I do?"

Tucker counted out the money while Imrie put the guns, silencers and ammunition into a pearl-gray attache case with a silvery stainless-steel handle. He snapped it shut, locked it and gave two keys to Tucker, in exchange for the proper cash compensation.

"I think you'll be pleased," Imrie said.

"I hope I will be."

"Goodbye, then."

"Goodbye," Tucker said.

The fat man led him down the stairs again, into the darkened furniture store, past a row of old floor cabinet radios and a Gramophone on a maple stand. The Gramophone trumpet, once gilded and now tarnished, made Tucker think of Elise Ramsey. She had appeared in a cigar commercial seated on a divan beside an ancient Gramophone. That was one of his favorite commercials, perhaps because she had been wearing a plunging, lacy-necked dressing gown; he had always had the feeling that, as in a cartoon, the Gramophone trumpet was alive and that its gaping mouth was opened in awe of her formidable cleavage.

Imrie unlocked the front door.

Tucker went out and away without saying anything more.

The time was 11:06 on Wednesday morning.

The small Long Island airport out of which Paul Norton and Nick Simonsen operated their catch-all air service had two macadamed runways, one new and even, the other cracked and eroding and hoved up at the center like the back of an angry cat. Both runways were in use. Three buildings-one a warehouse, the second a hangar and the third a combination office suite and three-plane berth-had all seen better days. The corrugated roofing was badly rusted, and the wooden walls needed painting. Tucker paid the taxi driver, tipped him well for running out to such an unlikely spot from which he'd hardly obtain a return fare, and went inside the nearest structure, which contained Norton's office.

Norton was there, behind a scarred desk that looked ready to collapse, leaning way back in a rickety spring-backed chair, his booted feet propped on the stained, notation-cluttered blotter. He was a big man, five inches taller and sixty pounds heavier than Tucker. His face was broad and flat, since his nose had been squashed and his cheeks scarred during his tour in Vietnam. He'd never told Tucker how or why that had happened, or even if the two injuries were from the same source. Perhaps, with unlimited resources and several major operations, a very good plastic surgeon could have rebuilt that ruined nose so it would look as good as new, though no improvement in his appearance would have been noticeable until something was done with the white scars on both cheeks. Looking at him, Tucker had the eerie feeling that some enormous cat had sneaked up behind Norton, dug its claws into his face and shredded the flesh backward in one powerful jerk. Despite the disfiguration, he was not a particularly ugly man-just d.a.m.ned mean-looking.

When he spoke, however, your impression of him s.h.i.+fted like the colored gla.s.s in the bottom of a kaleidoscope. The voice was soft, the tone even, the words measured and warm. His was the voice of a man who had seen too much and gone through more than his share of agony, the voice of a man who never wanted to have to kill or hurt anything again. "A beer?" he asked.

"This time of day?"

"It's after noon," Norton observed, taking his feet off the desk and rising. He moved smoothly, gracefully. From an old refrigerator in the corner of the room he got two chilled beers, opened them and put them on the desk without offering any gla.s.ses.

Tucker sat down in the client's chair, both briefcases beside him.

Norton did not give either of the satchels a glance. He knew that if they were any of his business, Tucker would tell him so. Vietnam had not only made him a gentle man but an extraordinarily wary one as well.

"Ballantine's India Pale Ale," Norton said, lifting his own bottle. "I've tried everything, and this is the only one that makes me happy." He drank a third of his beer in one long swallow that set his Adam's apple bobbing like a dinghy in a typhoon.

Tucker sipped his beer, agreed with the judgment and said, "I need a chauffeur."

"So you said on the phone."

"You have the copter ready?"

"It only took a few minutes."

"Efficiency."

"My trademark."

Tucker swallowed some beer, sighed, put the bottle down, lifted the lighter of the two briefcases, unsnapped the latches and opened the top. He said, "All you have to know to set your price is the destination. Pittsburgh. And the length of time I'll need you-perhaps it'll be as late as tomorrow noon before we get back here. Maybe it'll be some time tonight. Your own complicity involves nothing more than the alteration of the markings on the copter. It's d.a.m.n unlikely that the FAA will find out about that, and, besides, you're accustomed to risking as much."

"Quite accustomed," Norton agreed. "But you forget that, according to the law, I'll be aiding and abetting you with whatever you have in mind. Understand me, Mike, I don't want to know what that is. I just want to point out that I'll be liable for criminal charges."

"This operation isn't directed against anyone the law would rush to defend," Tucker said.

Norton raised his eyebrows, picked up his beer and took another third of it in one swallow.

"That's the last factor you have to consider. We're going up against a man named Baglio, against his entire machine."

"Organized?"

"Let's call him an entrepreneur."

"Successful?"

"Very."

Norton considered the angles for a moment, scratching unconsciously at the three long white marks on his right cheek. "Three thousand sound all right to you?"

Tucker paid without any argument, closed his briefcase again. It was a fair enough price for everything that he was going to ask of Norton and his machine.

The big man put the money in the lockbox in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet behind his desk, locked both the box and the drawer, pocketed the keys and came back to his desk.

"Someone could carry the whole cabinet away," Tucker said.

"It's bolted to the floor."

They drank the remainder of their beer in silence, and when they were finished Norton said, "You ready?"

"Yes."

They left the office and walked to the third berth in the same building, where a gray helicopter sat on a wheeled towing platform. It was the same four-seater quadra-prop that Norton had used twice before when Tucker had required his services, though its own markings had been expertly masked with colored tape. New numbers, also formed with tape, decorated the proper plates on the nose and both sides. The Pennsylvania state seal, with its two rearing horses, was firmly attached to both doors of the craft; below the seal, in white letters, were the words pennsylvania state police. It all looked very genuine. It should have, since the insignia were exact copies of those in use by the authorities, rendered by a friend of Norton's who worked in an ad agency during the day and moonlighted however he could. He had drawn Norton nine sets of state seals so far, though Tucker had not had the opportunity, thus far, to operate in so many different colonies. Norton had other customers.

"Good?" Norton asked.

"Fine," Tucker said.

A golf cart was already hooked up to the platform on which the copter stood, and Norton hopped into this. He started it and drove slowly outside. Out of the hangar, he stopped, detached the cart from the platform, drove it back inside and parked it. They boarded the helicopter.

"You've got a change of clothes?" Tucker asked.

"I packed as soon as you called."

"Good."

"Even before I went out to doctor the copter."

"Fine."

A few minutes later, they drifted onto the cracked macadam runway. Both Tucker and Norton sat in the forward seats; behind them was a pair of seats that folded down to form a large cargo area. Most of Paulnik Air's freight work was handled with one of the two twin-engine Apaches that they maintained, though the dense, built-up New York area often required a helicopter to land where there was no runway. Besides, the copter was the most lucrative of the three Paulnik craft, thanks to Tucker and to others like him.

As they lifted into the early-afternoon sky, Tucker wondered where Simonsen would be hiding. Simonsen professed to know absolutely nothing about Norton's willingness to bend the law for a buck. He handled none of the illegitimate work, though Norton knew his partner always stood at a window and watched proceedings such as these, as if he secretly envied what he supposed was a glamorous mission. He would be down there now, watching and a little jealous, a little frightened.

Then the airfield and the hangars were out of sight as they banked west toward the city.

The time was 2:12 as the copter, laden with auxiliary fuel tanks, began the longest leg of the journey.

Tucker wondered if Baglio had had an opportunity to question Merle Bachman. The driver had been in the mansion more than a full day. If he was not badly injured, that was plenty of time for Baglio to break him, enough time for Bachman to spill everything he knew about Tucker and the others.

Norton had said something which Tucker, lost in the reverie, had not heard.

"What?" Tucker asked.

"I said, 'The pollution sure is nice today, isn't it?' "

Norton waved one burly arm at the vista of yellow-white mist that rose up from all quarters of the city, meshed high overhead and roiled like a ball of snakes, smoke snakes. He indicated the awful scenery much as a legitimate guide might gesture grandly at the undeniable splendor of Niagara Falls.

"Beautiful."

"It'll make a grand sunset."

"Lovely."

"Too bad we can't see it."

"Too bad."

But Tucker could not bring himself to think very long about sunsets and atmospheric pollution.

Perhaps Baglio's people wouldn't be able to trace the Tucker name any farther than the downtown mail drop. They had contacts, yes, of course they had, but they were not omniscient.

Yet, even if they got that far and no farther, he would have to forget the Tucker ident.i.ty altogether, a.s.sume a new name, purchase all new credentials in that name, and strictly avoid everyone who had, to date, known him only as Tucker.

That would require an outlay of cash and a period of relative inactivity, and it would be, in the vulgate, a pain in the a.s.s.

And he could not expect an ident.i.ty change to provide safety for very long. Sooner or later, when one of them was using a new name himself, he would encounter an old acquaintance who'd remember the Tucker ident.i.ty. Then a second name change would be necessary-and after that, a third and a fourth.

He could see no end to it.

Much better to think the driver had not talked yet. If Baglio didn't get through to Bachman in the next twelve hours, they were all home safe.

Tucker looked at the map spread out on his knees, glanced through the front window of the copter as Norton flew at an angle to the roadway below them, and shouted, "There! That's the highway that runs past the turn-off for Baglio's estate-and I think the house is over that way, in those slopes. If I'm right, the turn-off should be just ahead."

It was.

"Good work!" he shouted at Norton, grinning.

Perhaps he wouldn't have had to shout quite so loudly, for the cabin was fairly well insulated against the roar of the overhead rotors. But after several hours in the air, listening to that thumping racket, his ears buzzed like the core of a beehive on a busy spring morning, and he shouted mostly to hear himself.

Norton nodded and said, "Is that a likely place to put down?" He pointed across the highway, almost directly opposite the entrance to the Baglio drive. A thousand yards from the road's edge, the woodlands broke for several hundred feet, providing a clean, gra.s.sy, somewhat sloped expanse of land between arms of the forest.

"Good enough," Tucker said.

They went that way and, five minutes later, were on the ground. Norton cut the engines, let the blades stutter down. The bees began to fly out of Tucker's ears, until the numbed ringing was gone and he could hear once more.

"Now what?" Norton asked.

"Now, you'll wait here while I go telephone a colleague," Tucker said, working loose of the seat belt and the shoulder harness which had bitten deep into his flesh.

Norton stretched his long legs as well as he could in the recess below the control dash and looked around at the pine trees. "I know you're clever at organizing operations, Mike. G.o.d knows, I've been in the thick of two of them, and I could tell as much about your expertise without knowing just what in the h.e.l.l was going on. But I can't believe that you've had a branch line run into these woods just on the off chance that you might have to telephone someone from here."

Tucker smiled. "No branch line. But there's a picnic area not too far from here, along the main highway, with a phone booth at the end of it. Sit tight until I get back."

He pushed open the heavy copter door, jumped out, reached up and slammed the door shut. Fifteen minutes later he made his call from the booth in the picnic area. An hour after that, Jimmy s.h.i.+rillo drove into the parking lot in his red Corvette, cut the engine and climbed out, smiling.

Another man got out of the low-slung car. He was at least twenty years older than Tucker, about Pete Harris's age, though he was slim and almost delicate-looking, like s.h.i.+rillo, quite unlike the bearish Harris. He wore heavy-rimmed gla.s.ses with thick lenses, combed his hair back from his forehead and looked, from the neck up, much like a turn-of-the-century schoolmaster. From the neck down he looked not unlike a hippie, in bellbottom blue jeans and a rumpled blue work s.h.i.+rt with the cuffs rolled up. He looked at Tucker, smiled slightly, bent back into the Corvette to get his equipment which he had packed into a shoulder-slung leather satchel and a small metal suitcase.

s.h.i.+rillo introduced them-Ken Willis, photographer- and let them shake hands. Willis's handshake was indifferent, as if he felt formalities of this sort were a waste of time. Close up, Tucker saw in him an impatience, a need to keep moving, a quality that was unsettlingly like his own.

"You know what we want?" he asked Willis.

"Jimmy told me the most of it."