Blood risk

the dandified one, is Chaka, Baglio's accountant and trouble-shooter. He's the second most powerful man in the local organization."
        "The other two?"
        "Just hoods."
        "That the money, in those suitcases?"
        "Yes."
        "How much, do you think?"
        "I've asked around. No one could say for sure except Baglio and Chaka. But it's likely to be somewhere between two hundred and five hundred thousand, depending on what kind of two weeks it's been."
        "Where's it come from?" Tucker asked.
        "Baglio's suburban gambling operations, the small stuff -punchboards in a couple of hundred gas stations, small numbers operations out of laundromats and newsstands and beauty parlors, small sports betting from maybe sixty or seventy barrooms. Each one of them's a tiny situation in itself. Multiply a small stake by two thousand situations, and it turns into big money."
        "Why only a twice-a-month collection?"
        "Because it is so little compared to inner-city numbers running, organization hookers, protection money, the dope take from both suburbs and inner city. It isn't enough to warrant all those rounds every week. Besides, these situations with the punchboards and the dollar bets are mostly legitimate businesses copping a little dirty money on the side that they don't have to report on the income-tax returns. They like holding onto Baglio's share, interest free, for a couple of weeks; sometimes, it might help a guy make a payment he'd otherwise be a few days late on. Baglio doesn't mind that so long as they turn in an honest percentage and don't get behind."
        A black Cadillac limousine had pulled out of the driveway and was on its way toward them down the narrow lane. They stepped even deeper into the shadows and watched it go past.
        Shirillo said, "Baglio has about fifty collectors for the suburbs. Every second and fourth Monday of every month they hit the road, picking up the small change from these situations. They deliver it here starting midafternoon, until dinner. Monday night it's counted, packaged and put in suitcases for the trip into town Tuesday morning."
        "What's done with it then?"
        "Baglio owns a good piece of a bank in town, one of the big ones on Forbes. Deffer parks the Caddy in the garage under the bank, while Chaka and one of the bodyguards use the bank president's private elevator to take the suitcases to the president's sixteenth-floor office. What happens to it then, I don't know. I imagine that it's all very cleverly laundered and made clean again."
        "Do you have a spot picked out to stop the car?"
        "Yes," Shirillo said. "Let's go look at it."
        They spent that afternoon tramping the woods along the private lane, scouting prospective sites for the execution of the robbery. That done, they drove into the city again, where Tucker took a room in the hotel at Chatham Center. In his room, for the rest of the afternoon and evening, they discussed the fine points of the plan, argued alternatives and got it worked out to their mutual satisfaction. It looked good.
        Back in Manhattan, Tucker needed only two weeks to locate and interest Bachman and Harris. The four of them had met in Pittsburgh this past Sunday, had gone over the details until they were exhausted. They monitored the delivery of the cash on Monday, went over everything one last time on Monday night in Tucker's hotel room, pulled the job off well. Quite well. Except for that damned woman in the Cadillac. That damn unexpected Cadillac.
        Tucker hated failure more than he hated losing the money, more than the possibility of violence and death. He meant to see that the job did not end here.
        
        _
        
        "If Baglio's men are in front of us and behind us," Jimmy Shirillo said, "what do we do next?" He'd slowed the Mustang to a crawl, and he felt like stopping it altogether. If he could freeze them here, stop time, fix this instant for eternity, they'd not have to face Baglio at all; nothing bad could happen to them. For his first major job he'd held up quite well, in the face of almost total failure, but he had his limits. He remembered his brother, the weeks in the hospital, the limp, and he didn't want to go on with this. Tucker traced circles on the shotgun stock with his index finger and wondered how to answer the kid's question. His own reaction to failure was different from Shirillo's; his