Blood Risk Part 15

Tucker said nothing.

An automatic rope ladder wound slowly out of the pa.s.senger door of the helicopter, a feature which Paul Norton had installed for the benefit of his string of less than legitimate customers. In a half minute from the time it had begun to unroll, the ladder's final hemp rung sc.r.a.ped against the mansion roof.

"Who first?" s.h.i.+rillo asked, grasping the ladder and turning to look at the others. He wasn't having any trouble keeping his balance on the gently slanted roof, though to Tucker the angle seemed precipitous and the s.h.i.+ngles seemed to move under them.

Harris said, "I'll take Merle up first. I don't think any of the rest of you can manage him on that ladder."

"Go," Tucker said.

He longed to sit down and rest, even to sleep, but he knew that sleep was a dangerous desire right now.

Harris gave s.h.i.+rillo his Thompson submachine gun and said, "If you need it, do you know how to use it?"

The kid checked it out, nodded, said, "Yes."

Harris turned, gathered up Merle Bachman as if the smaller man were a child, slung him over his shoulder and held onto him with his left hand. He wasn't even bowed by the weight. Now, Tucker realized, despite the danger he'd posed throughout the operation, Harris was doing his share and had become as valuable as any man on the team. He gripped the rope ladder with his right hand, stepped onto the bottom rung and held tight as Norton drew them up toward the open copter door.

A gentle wind swept over the mansion and, in conjunction with the copter's wallowing motion, caused the ladder to swing back and forth in a wide arc that threatened to dump both of the men clinging to it. However, Harris held on, and the sway declined as the ladder shortened. Then the ladder stopped; Harris climbed the last few steps, worked Bachman into the open door and followed the wounded man.

The ladder raveled downward once again.

"You next," Tucker told the woman.

She was on the ladder the instant it fell before her, and she didn't wait to ride it while it retracted. As it pulled up into its mechanism, she climbed and gained the copter door in short order. Tucker wondered what Norton would think, whether he'd be nonplused by her unexpected appearance. He was relieved when, after she'd been inside the craft a moment, the ladder dropped swiftly again.

The copter bobbed but stayed pretty much in one spot, riding the back of the wind.

s.h.i.+rillo shouted, "What about the suitcases?"

Tucker looked at them. "Give me the 'Thompson. You take the bags up one at a time."

s.h.i.+rillo handed over the gun, lifted the smallest case, gripped the ladder and rode upward as it retracted. Harris, who was waiting for him, took the suitcase out of his hands. S'hirillo started back down.

A rifle cracked from below, the sharp noise m.u.f.fled by the heavy thumping of the chopper's blades but nonetheless frightening and recognizable, like an ax splitting wood.

Tucker edged farther down the sloping roof until he could see the gunman on the lawn. Bracing the Thompson between his knees, weaker than ever now, his head swimming back and forth and his vision too blurred to take good aim, he clenched his teeth and let go a long, rattling burst of fire.

Down there, where bullets were plowing up the gra.s.s like rain, the gunman turned and ran, dived for cover behind a cement flower planter a hundred yards out from the house.

Tucker looked at s.h.i.+rillo, saw the kid was just stepping onto the ladder with the second suitcase in hand.

"Move!"

s.h.i.+rillo couldn't make the ladder operate any faster than it was doing now, and he couldn't very well climb it while carrying the luggage, but Tucker couldn't repress the shout. His calm facade was cracking, his carefully cultured composure slipping away. It had been one h.e.l.l of an operation, and it mustn't go bad now because of one gorilla with a rifle, one punk out to impress the boss with his bravery.

The man behind the concrete planter stood up long enough to aim and take a shot at Tucker.

The bullet tore across the s.h.i.+ngle two feet on Tucker's right, spraying chips of tarry fabric.

He loosened a chatter of machine-gun fire, chipping the cement all to h.e.l.l.

s.h.i.+rillo picked up the third suitcase and started up the ladder again, jerked as the man behind the planter got him in the thigh.

Son of a b.i.t.c.h, Tucker thought. His weariness and dizziness flopped over and were anger on the other side, anger enough to bring him into sharp, fast movement. He pulled hard on the Thompson's trigger and was rewarded with the sight of the gunman stepping frantically backward out of the way of a line of dancing bullets.

The man turned and ran, the rifle on the lawn where he'd dropped it, darting this way and that, seeking the shelter of shrubbery.

You dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Tucker thought. I could have killed you, and what percentage would have been in that?

Everyone seemed anxious to die, as if they couldn't wait for it, like this man and the man he'd wounded on the promenade earlier in the evening. And like Baglio, ready to take a beating rather than tell where Bachman was. Of course, in this business you took a blood risk, because you worked with dangerous men at dangerous times. But a risk should be reasonable, the chances of success greater than the chances for failure. Otherwise you were no better than a fool.

"Hey!" s.h.i.+rillo called down, breaking Tucker's reverie. He'd gotten the last suitcase into the chopper and had followed close behind it.

Strapping the Thompson around his chest, Tucker got to his feet, almost fell, almost lost it all right there, grabbed desperately for the rope ladder, caught it, jerked as the device began to draw up into the hovering aircraft.

A blood risk: he'd taken it, and he'd won.

Harris leaned out of the open door, reaching for him, grinning broadly. He said, "Been waiting for you," and he took Tucker's hands to pull him the rest of the way. Tucker noted that Harris hadn't added "friend."

Dr. Walter Andrion was a tall, slim, white-haired gentleman who wore tailored suits and fifty-dollar s.h.i.+rts, drove a new Cadillac and traveled in the fastest social circles. He was married to Evanne Andrion, a black-haired, blue-eyed lovely thirty years his junior, a young lady with incredibly expensive tastes. When Junior called him, he dropped everything and came out to the airfield right away, carrying two heavy bags instead of one, for he had long ago learned that he should meet any such call as fully prepared as he could be. This was not orthodox medicine by any means. He worked fast and was clean, bored out wounds, flushed away clotted blood and dirt, st.i.tched the men up as well as they could have been in a hospital. He didn't speak, and no one spoke to him as he worked. He had made it abundantly clear to Tucker three years ago that he did not want to have to hear anything about the origins of such wounds and that he wanted these sessions to be terminated as rapidly as possible. When he was done, he insisted on taking Merle Bachman back to his clinic for a couple of weeks' rest and recuperation, enough time to have his entire mouth rebuilt as well. He accepted two thousand dollars from Tucker in fifties and hundreds, tucked this into an already fat wallet, helped Bachman into his Cadillac and drove away.

"We'll take the doctor's fees from the suitcases," Tucker said. "Before we decide on a split."

Everyone was in agreement on that, except Miss Loraine, who didn't like it but didn't argue either.

While Simonsen, Paul Norton's partner in the airfreight business, was conveniently out having supper, they opened the three suitcases in Norton's office and counted the money, which they found totaled $341,890. Estimating Bachman's additional medical bills at more than four thousand dollars, they settled on splitting $335,000.

Which wasn't bad, either.

Miss Loraine looked at her $67,000, frowned and said "I thought it was going to be a lot more than this."

"It'll keep you," Tucker said.

"Not for long."

"A girl of your talents? You'll build it into a fortune before the year is out."

"Does anyone have something I can put this in?" she asked.

Norton said, "Paper bag do?"

She took the brown paper bag from him and tucked her cash away inside it, not having bothered to respond to Tucker.

Harris said, "I want to know what you're going to do, what your plans are."

"That's my business," she said.

"It's all of our business," Harris said.

She looked around, saw them watching her, set her lips tighter and said, "Will each of you tell me what you intend to do when we split?"

"Of course not," Harris said. "You're the intruder. You're the one we've got to be sure about."

Paul Norton, sitting behind his dilapidated desk, tilted back in his chair and drinking a bottle of India Pale Ale, had thus far maintained a low profile. Now, however, he said, "You could stay here with me for a while, Miss."

She looked at him, her face unreadable, her eyes cold, and she said, "I don't even know you."

Norton blushed, his face reddening except for the white scars on his cheeks, and he said, "Well, I sure didn't mean there were any conditions on the offer, if that's what you mean. I've got a nice apartment here on the field with two bedrooms, and the guest room has its own private bath, real snug. You wouldn't have to see me at all for days if you didn't want to."

Tucker said, "I thought you never wanted to know anything about my business or the people I deal with."

"I don't," Norton said, raising both hands, his big palms flat, and pus.h.i.+ng them off. "I wouldn't listen to her even if she tried to tell me, and I'd throw her out the first time she got in a talkative mood. I'm just trying to help her, that's it, that's all."

She stared hard at the pilot, obviously on the verge of turning him down, then seemed to catch a glimpse of the shyness behind his tough-man front, knew that he hadn't anything in mind but helping her. She said, "Well, I guess that'd be all right. I need to go to ground for a while and think."

"It still doesn't answer my question," Harris said impatiently. "What will you do when you leave here?"

The woman turned, her face tight, anger boiling up.

Before she could say anything Norton said, "Well, Mr. Harris, that's a long way off, don't you think? She'll need time to consider that. You can't expect an answer this instant."

Pete looked at the pilot and knew there would be no arguing with him. He shrugged and said, "The h.e.l.l with it. I'm going to use my split to buy into a little business, and I'm retiring. What do I care what she does?" He turned and walked out of the office.

It was 5:29 p.m. on Thursday.

At 9:04 that same evening, his arm in a sling, carrying a small, cheap suitcase and slightly whoozy from pain killers, Tucker entered his tenth-floor Park Avenue apartment. He was dressed in a new black suit which didn't exactly fit him, in a new s.h.i.+rt, new tie, new shoes. Despite his wounds he was feeling well.

He went directly to the closet, opened it, stepped inside, opened the small wall safe. He tossed his Tucker credentials inside and took out his real papers, pocketed those. He opened the cheap suitcase and lifted out a large number of money bricks, depositing them one at a time in the safe. When that was done, he closed the safe, spun the dial, shut the suitcase and shelved that.

In the hallway he stopped and looked at his Edo s.h.i.+eld, touched the beaten copper, the flared silver rim, the hand-carved ivory inlays, and the coolness of the materials, their worn edges, calmed him.

In the bedroom he found Elise sitting up watching television, dressed in her favorite old quilted robe, ravis.h.i.+ng. She said, "How'd it go with the bells?"

"I got the seller a price he was satisfied with and the buyer a price he could accept. But it wasn't easy. How'd your pickle commercial go with Plunket?"

"Marvelous," she said. "I seemed to have this fantastic talent for it." Then, as he shrugged out of his suit jacket, she said, "What's that? What happened to your arm?"

He had already gone over, to himself, the story he would have to tell her. He said, "I was shot." When she started up from the bed, he motioned her back and said, "Don't make me feel like an invalid, because it's only a flesh wound."

"But how, why?" she asked.

He said, "It was nothing more serious than an average all-American mugging, when I was on my way to my hotel."

"A mugging? In Denver?"

"What's so strange about a mugging in Denver?" he asked. "We're living in dangerous times, honey. The world's full of dangerous men."