Blood risk

wrong with elephants?"
        "Oh, elephants," Harris said. "Well, elephants always look a little stupid, don't you think? They certainly aren't ferocious; they don't instill fear in anyone. Baglio saw me coming in an elephant-decorated windbreaker, he might think I was the local Good Humor man or someone selling diaper service, something like that. Besides, I've been a lifelong Democrat, and elephants aren't my insignia."
        "You vote?" Shirillo asked, surprised.
        "Sure, I vote."
        Both Shirillo and Tucker laughed.
        Harris looked perplexed, rubbed at the alligator on his chest and said, "What's wrong with that?"
        "It just seems strange," Tucker explained, "that a wanted criminal is a registered voter."
        "I'm not wanted yet," Harris said. "I was wanted twice before, but I served less than two years both times. I'm a clean citizen now. I feel it's my duty to vote in every election." He looked at them, at what he could see of them in the dark. "Don't you two vote?"
        "No," Shirillo said. "I've only been eligible a few years, and I just never got around to it. I don't see what good it does."
        "You?" Harris asked Tucker.
        Tucker said, "Politics never interested me. I know people who spend half their lives worrying about how everything's going to hell in a basket-and it all goes to hell in a basket anyway. I figure I'll survive no matter what nincompoop the public puts in office next."
        "That's just terrible," Harris said, clearly taken aback at their unpatriotic sloth. "It's a good thing neither one of you has any kids. You'd be the kind of parents who'd set rotten examples."
        Tucker and Shirillo laughed again.
        "Come on," Tucker said, prying the lid off a small can of greasepaint, "Let me blacken your face."
        "What for?" Harris asked.
        "For one thing," Tucker said, "it'll make it harder for anyone to see you in the dark. More important, with a hood over your hair and black paint covering your face, it's going to be difficult for Baglio or any of them to make a positive identification of you later. Change a man's facial color, and you alter him almost as thoroughly as if he'd donned a mask. And in the close work we'll be doing tonight, a mask wouldn't be good; it would just get in the way. The greasepaint will conceal you and give you the optimum in mobility, the use of your eyes."
        Grunting unhappily, Harris submitted to this indignity, all the while fingering the outline of the raised green alligator on his breast.
        Ten minutes later they had all been black-faced, the paint put aside with the clothes they had taken off.
        "Now?" Harris asked, plainly expecting yet another indignity.
        "I'll show you the guns," Tucker said.
        "I always use the Thompson," Harris said, lifting it away from the car where he had leaned it.
        "You'll take it along," Tucker agreed. "But you'll use it only if you have to. If at all possible, you'll keep it shoulder-slung and you'll use this." He got out the three Lügers and three silencers, fitted the parts and distributed the weapons. He divided up the clips of ammunition, four each, and supervised the loading.
        "Very nice," Harris said.
        Tucker relaxed as the big man strapped the submachine gun over his shoulder and tested the pistol in his hand. "Keep the ammunition zipped into the right-hand pocket of your windbreaker."
        Harris said, "Holsters?"
        "None," Tucker said.
        "Gun goes in left-hand pocket?"
        "No. Keep the pistol out at all times."
        "Sometimes you need both hands for other things," Harris said.
        "Not tonight, I think. We've got to keep a gun ready. For one thing, getting that damn long silenced barrel out of a holster could be tricky in a pinch. For another, once we're in the house, we could be come upon and shot before we had time to draw. Remember, Baglio keeps at least four armed men in that place, four professionals. And it's their home ground, not ours."
        Shirillo had been unable to learn exactly how many people lived in the Baglio mansion.
        Tucker took out a special belt from which hung a number of tools in thin plastic pouches. He pulled up his windbreaker, buckled the belt around his waist, drew the jacket down again.
        "Shirillo get you that?" Harris asked.
        "Yes."
        "Looks like a nice set."
        "It is," Shirillo