Part 12 (1/2)

He moved quickly, grabbed her arm, twisted it, levered it up behind her back, forcing her to bend and grunt in pain. ”Remember what I told Baglio about your face?”

”You wouldn't do that to me.”

She was right, but he couldn't afford to strengthen her certainty, so he pushed harder on her arm.

”I don't know where the h.e.l.l he was!” she snapped, jerking straight up and breaking his hold. He hadn't applied full pressure, not what he would have used against a man. The ease with which she'd pulled away from him was a warning not to misjudge her again.

”Keep her covered,” Tucker told Harris. ”You feel up to it?”

”Sure, friend,” he said, lifting the machine gun.

Tucker went to talk with s.h.i.+rillo and found that the kid didn't know where the gunman had come from. ”I didn't know he was here until he shot Pete. Then I fell flat and stayed flat to keep out of the way of ricochets from the Thompson.”

Tucker looked at his watch. He examined the corridor again, stared at the corpse, tried to imagine where he'd come from. He said, ”Did you look in the closets in the Halversons' room?”

”You know I did.”

”What about those rooms you checked out on your own, down there in the other wing?”

”Give me some credit.”

”Dammit, he came from somewhere.'”

s.h.i.+rillo grimaced and said, ”He came from the same place they're holding Bachman.”

Tucker wiped at his face as if there were cobwebs over it. The greasepaint made his skin feel sticky. His vision was blurry, his mouth hot and dry. He said, ”How do you get that notion?”

”It's logical.”

”The attic?” Tucker said.

”We can go look. But I doubt that's it, because I seem to be standing under the attic door.” He pointed to a trap in the ceiling directly overhead, reached up and gripped the chromed handle, pulled down a set of folding metal steps that led up into darkness.

Tucker went up and came back in less than five minutes. ”Empty,” he told s.h.i.+rillo. ”And this is the only door in or out.” He left the stairs unfolded because, according to the plan, they'd need to use them later.

”Now?” s.h.i.+rillo asked. He was in complete control of himself, holding it all together.

Tucker took a roll of lime-flavored Life Savers from the pocket of his windbreaker, offered one to s.h.i.+rillo, popped one into his own mouth when the kid declined, sucked on the candy. He said, ”How do you go about finding a hidden room?”

s.h.i.+rillo blinked, wiped a hand over his hooded head as if he wanted to run fingers through his hair, said, ”Isn't that a bit much?”

”You're the one who sold me on the idea that the Mafia is melodramatic, remember?”

”But a hidden room?”

”Bachman's in this house somewhere. I know it. But we've looked in every room and closet from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the attic.” He jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and worked at the ring of sweetness in his mouth. ”A man like Baglio might find a hidden room very useful. For one thing, he could store the money there every other Monday night-and anything else he might think is too hot to leave out in the open or put into a safe-deposit vault that federal agents could get a court order to open.” He cracked the Life Saver in two.

s.h.i.+rillo said, ”But a safe would do it. A hidden room is a grandiose way of-”

”A safe wouldn't do, say, for a large drug s.h.i.+pment. And if cops showed up at the door with a warrant, they'd be empowered to open a safe, whereas they'd bypa.s.s a hidden room altogether.”

”Maybe.”

”So how would you go about looking for a hidden room?”

s.h.i.+rillo considered it awhile and finally said, ”I guess you'd have to compare part.i.tions from the corridor and from inside the rooms, try to find a discrepancy somewhere.”

Tucker nodded, looked at his watch.

5:36.

”I better get moving then,” he said.

s.h.i.+rillo nodded.

”Our missing guard is either in the hidden room, somewhere between you and Pete, or he was outside the house when he heard the shots.”

”If he was outside,” s.h.i.+rillo said, ”we would have heard from him by this time.”

”Unless he decided not to come in here after us.”

”Why wouldn't he?”

”Maybe he knows he's outnumbered.”

”He couldn't know.”

Tucker finished the candy. An unpleasant possibility had occurred to him, and he didn't want to have to talk about it, though he knew that s.h.i.+rillo had a right to hear what he was thinking. Of course Harris had the same right, though he'd never tell Harris. The kid, he felt sure, would be able to think about it without panicking. Harris might break. ”Maybe he was outside, heard the shots, knew he wouldn't do any good rus.h.i.+ng in here alone. Maybe he opened the garage door, got out the limousine, managed to drift it down the drive and out of earshot, started it and went after help.”

”Christ.” For the first time during those long evening hours s.h.i.+rillo looked scared.

”Don't worry about it,” Tucker said. ”It's just a thing I thought we should keep in mind.”

”Sure.”

”We'll be a long time gone before he beats it back here with the reinforcements.” He smiled and slapped s.h.i.+rillo's shoulder, feeling like an older brother. ”If he went away after anyone.”

”He did.”

”We can't be sure.”

”Yes, we can. It's the worst thing that could happen- and that's been par for this whole operation.” Despite his sincere pessimism, the kid wasn't ready to run for it.

Tucker knew what s.h.i.+rillo said was true, and he felt the hard, emotional intolerance of failure that had driven him this far. He thought of his old man, of Mr. Mellio at the bank, of the trust monies held up in the long court battles, and he knew he wouldn't louse this up. He couldn't fail like that.

”Anyway,” he said, ”who's going to shoot at a state-police helicopter?”