Part 6 (1/2)
To s.h.i.+rillo Tucker said, ”Are you sure of him?”
”Of course. He's my uncle, on my mother's side, by marriage.”
”For one thing,” Willis explained, ”even if I were willing to sell out on you, I wouldn't know where the h.e.l.l to go to do it. My line is mostly weddings and freelance nude photography for men's magazines.”
”Good enough,” Tucker said. ”It's a fifteen-minute walk to the helicopter. Jimmy, you'll stay here with the car until we come back. You can pretend you got sleepy driving and pulled off for a nap-that is, if a cop stops and wants to know if you're just loitering. We'll be back before dark, I hope.”
s.h.i.+rillo returned to the car.
Tucker picked up Willis's heavy metal suitcase and said, ”Across the highway. We'll wait until there aren't any cars coming before we try it. We don't want to stir up anyone's curiosity.”
The big red summer sun had already touched the peak of the mountain on which the Baglio mansion rested, caressed the gentle ridgeline with bright fingers and slowly began to settle out of sight. Full darkness was still more than an hour away, the true sunset obscured by the mountainside, but even so they were going to have to scramble to get done everything they had come here for.
Norton took them over the roof of the huge white house, a dozen yards above the television antennae, peeled to the right when they had reached the end of the lawn and circled back, swept over the house from the opposite direction, even closer this time.
”Can you get it like that?” Norton shouted.
Willis shook his head vehemently, negatively. ”I'll either have to hang out of the door or shoot through the nose gla.s.s here.” He reached across the narrow dash and thumped his knuckles on the winds.h.i.+eld. They made a hollow tok, tok, tok sound.
”I can stand her on end a little,” Norton said.
”And do it going away from the sun,” Willis said, ”so there's no glare against the gla.s.s.”
Tucker sat in the seat directly behind Norton, watching the mansion closely, waiting for the first sign of Baglio's bodyguards. He wondered what they'd think when they came das.h.i.+ng out and found a police helicopter buzzing their retreat.
Norton stood the helicopter on its nose at a thirty-five-degree angle, slanted enough so that they all slid forward on their seats, testing the belts that bound them in.
”Good,” Willis said.
The photographer had loaded his camera, unfastened his seat belt and was now out of his bucket-form chair, leaning across the dash, his face pressed close to the window as he focused and shot one frame after another.
Paul Norton didn't like the fact that Willis wasn't strapped down, but he didn't say much about it. He concentrated on keeping the copter's flight path as even and steady as possible so that there was little chance of Willis being thrown around.
Below, two men came out of the front door of the white house and looked up at the circling craft, raised flattened hands to s.h.i.+eld their eyes from the last direct glints of sunlight that touched the polished framework and the winds.h.i.+eld of the copter as it fluttered in a tight little turn. They were, Tucker saw, the next thing to nonent.i.ties, two husky muscle types, their sports coats hanging open so that guns would be more quickly at hand.
Tucker leaned forward and said, almost in Norton's ear, ”The gla.s.s isn't bulletproof, is it?”
”Plexigla.s.s,” Norton said. ”It'll deflect a pistol shot pretty well, even if we were close enough for them to use handguns. Even when it cracks under rifle fire, it can throw the slug away first.”
Tucker remained forward in his seat, bracing himself against the back of Norton's seat, staring down through the tilted nose window. ”I think we have enough front-to-back shots. Let's try cruising it from end to end.”
Norton obliged, brought the copter around in a whine of engine noise, coasted the length of the mansion while Willis busily used his camera.
Baglio himself had come out of the house and stood in front of the pillared promenade in the circular driveway, looking up at the copter. Right now he would be wondering whether they knew that Bachman was in the house or whether this was only routine police hara.s.sment. He would be wondering, too, how he could get Bachman out of the mansion under their noses if they should land with a search warrant. Tucker hoped that, when Norton took them away from here without landing, Baglio didn't panic and have Bachman killed and buried. It would be so easy for him to have the driver tucked away in a grave beneath the pine trees upslope of the house. Of course, Bachman might already be dead. He might have talked and been put to sleep without the proper honors.
Tucker said, ”Can you take her down and parallel the house so Willis can get some ground shots of all four sides?”
”Sure,” Norton said.
He leveled the machine and, when they were behind the mansion, took it down within five feet of the lawn while the photographer took his shots through the side window. When they came around in front of the house, where Baglio and his two men were standing, the hoods danced quickly back out of the way of the chopping blades that were still much too high to reach them but which must have looked sobering anyway. They were too busy, then, to notice the copter's occupants.
”Now up,” Tucker said. ”Let's get some shots of the house in perspective, the entire lawn and the perimeter of the forest.”
When that was done, Norton said, ”Next?”
”That's it,” Tucker said. ”Let's get back to home base.”
By the time they landed on the gra.s.sy floor of the forest clearing nearly two miles from Baglio's mansion, Willis had packed away all of his gear and was ready to go. The moment the chattering rotors began to stutter down into silence, he pushed open his door and jumped out, reached back inside and dragged his two cases of equipment after him.
”Wait a moment,” Norton said as Tucker pushed Willis's seat forward and made to follow the photographer.
”Yeah?”
Norton said, ”Obviously, you're going in there. Since you told me to be ready for four pa.s.sengers-and since I've only heard about three of you so far-it seems likely you're going in to get back a man of yours.”
Tucker said nothing.
Norton continued: ”Wouldn't they be expecting something like this-the copter and all?”
”No,” Tucker said. ”They're expecting small-time tactics, if they're expecting anything at all. They're very secure up there, or think they are. Besides, I'm sure they were altogether misled by the police insignia on the copter.”
”That's another thing,” Norton said. ”Wouldn't they think it's pretty odd to be hara.s.sed like this? Wouldn't they be making regular payoffs to eliminate just this kind of ha.s.sle?”
”Not to state police,” Tucker said. ”There are rotten apples in every police force, and they probably do carry a couple of the state boys on their payroll, but they can't buy off one of the toughest and best forces in the country. The price would be too high.”
Norton said, ”Okay. I wasn't being nosey. I just wanted to know what to expect the next time I have to take this crate in there. If they're going to have me figured out and be waiting for me, then I want to know about it.” He stretched again, arched his back and pressed upward against his seat belt.
”They won't be expecting you,” Tucker said. ”A flat guarantee.”
”I'll be here when you need me.”
Tucker jumped out, took the two briefcases that Norton handed to him, one with less than five thousand cash packed into it, the other containing the guns. He also handed down a soft khaki tote bag with a heavy load in the bottom, special equipment that Tucker had asked him to supply when he had originally called him from the department-store phone that morning. Tucker carried the briefcases in one hand, since they were both slim, the tote bag in the other, led Willis back into the woods and, fifteen minutes later, to the red Corvette where Jimmy s.h.i.+rillo was still feigning sleep.
By a quarter of ten they were in the city again. Merle Bachman had been in Baglio's hands slightly over thirty-six hours.
In the dream he lay upon a soft bed, the covers drawn away from him, a feather pillow propping his head up. The room was almost completely dark, though swaths of soft blue light striped the thick carpeting and made odd shadows on the walls; the source of the light, though he looked for it, was not apparent. Elise Ramsey appeared on the far side of the room, held for a moment in a band of blue light, like a specimen in a collection, on display, then stepped forward into shadow. She was nude, striding toward him with the confidence of a lioness. She came out of shadow into light again, cupping her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s in her hands, making him an offering, one that he was instantly willing to accept. She stepped into shadow again, reappeared in light, all slickly moving, sinuous curves. He would have been aroused to full ability in another moment-except that he saw the incredible hand rising up behind her, the hand that she was clearly unaware of and which, even had he warned her, was moving too fast for her to avoid. It was large enough to cup Elise in its palm, a giant's hand that faded away into the darkness of the ceiling just beyond the thick wrist. The fingers were spread to encircle her, the flesh gray and cold and rigid in appearance. It was an iron fist, and it would crush her in another moment. What made the dream metamorphose into a nightmare was not the fact that she would be squashed like an insect, or even the understanding that the hand would come after Tucker when it was finished with the girl, but the certainty that the hand did not belong to Baglio this time. This time, the iron hand was his father's. Shadow and blue light, bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s, stiffened nipples and the convulsing grasp of iron digits ”Hey!”
Tucker blinked.
”You all right?” Pete Harris asked, shaking his shoulder gently but insistently. ”You okay, friend?”
”Yeah,” Tucker said, not opening his eyes.
”You sure?”
”I'm sure.”
Tucker sat up and rubbed his eyes, ma.s.saged the back of his neck and tried to decide what had crawled into his mouth and died during his nap in Harris's hotel bed. He flicked his tongue around and didn't find any corpse, decided that he must have swallowed it and that he would have to scrub his teeth well to get rid of the last traces of its demise.