Blood risk

into a tattered pair of slippers and started to stand up.
        "Sit down," Tucker said.
        Deffer looked like a plucked turkey, his scrawny neck bright red, the stubble of his beard like the pinfeathers that the plucker had missed. He scowled at Tucker and smacked his lips as if he were considering pecking out his adversary's eyes.
        "Sit down and be quiet," Tucker said again.
        Deffer looked longingly at the top dresser drawer only three steps away. He raised his arms like wings, let them drop to his sides when he realized he couldn't fly, caught himself staring, looked away from the dresser and back at Tucker again. "Punk," he said. He evidently liked the sound of it. He wrinkled up his gray face and said it again: "Punk!" Satisfied that he hadn't been completely cowed, he sat down on the bed as directed.
        Tucker went to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer, lifted out a Marley.38 that lay on top of two piles of neatly folded underwear. It was a beautiful gun, well cared for, and it was also fully loaded.
        "That's mine!" the chauffeur snapped.
        Tucker turned to face him and raised the barrel of the Lüger to his lips, like a long finger, to signal the need for silence. In a thin whisper he said, "Be quiet, or I'll have to kill you with it."
        Deffer tried not to look upset.
        Tucker unloaded the Marley, admiring the craftsmanship and design even now when the situation would seem to rule out consideration of anything but the job. He put the empty gun and the bullets in the unused pocket of his windbreaker, zipped the pocket shut.
        "You don't got a chance-punk," Deffer said.
        Smiling falsely, Tucker stepped up to the chauffeur and put the cold end of the silenced barrel against Deffer's forehead. He said, "I asked you to whisper."
        Deffer scowled. His teeth were in a glass of water on the night stand, smiling at Tucker like a fragment of the Cheshire cat. Without his dentures he looked older than before. "What do you want?" he asked in a whisper.
        "Why don't you relax, just stretch out there on the bed," Tucker directed.
        " 'Cause I don't feel like it," the turkey said, fluffing his wings again, smacking his lips.
        "That wasn't a question," Tucker said wearily, motioning with the barrel of the Lüger.
        Deffer stretched out on his back.
        Tucker got a chair and dragged it to the bed, sat down. He felt less nervous sitting down, because he couldn't feel the weakness in his legs that way. He said, "I'm going to ask questions, and you're going to provide answers. If you lie to me, I'll make sure you don't get a chance to collect your pension from the organization."
        Deffer said nothing at all. He simply glared at Tucker with malevolent red-rimmed eyes, lying as stiff and straight as if he were on a plank bed.
        Tucker said, "Where's Baglio keeping the man who wrecked the Chevrolet Tuesday morning?"
        Deffer's eyes brightened. Clearly he had not connected this affair with the events of Tuesday morning. That was all Tucker had to see to understand why Baglio, a much younger man, was in the driver's seat figuratively, while Deffer was there literally.
        The chauffeur cleared his throat and smiled broadly. He said, "You can't get away with this. You punks. Nice bunch of punks. There's guards all over this place."
        "You're lying," Tucker said.
        "See if I am."
        "I've already talked to Keesey. Two guards. One gagged and tied downstairs, the other knocked out by a bullet wound."
        "Dead?" the turkey asked, his grin fading.
        "Not yet." Tucker asked about Bachman again.
        "They moved him," Deffer said.
        He had lost all expression in his wizened, gray face. He only looked old and tired now. But that wasn't genuine; it was a poker face, and there was no way to tell what all it concealed. Deffer might not be exceptionally bright, but he had a lot of guts for an old man and a canniness that was not going to be easy to break down.
        "Killed him?" Tucker asked.
        Deffer looked at the silenced Lüger with more respect than he had shown to this point, though that might be as much pretense as was his expression of weariness. He said, "No."
        "Where'd they take him?"
        "Don't know."
        "Bullshit. You're the chauffeur."
        "They didn't move him by