Blood risk

car."
        "How?"
        "Ambulance."
        "That's a lie. The last thing that Baglio wants is a public record of that man's injuries. The police come nosing around a hospital, our man might find it to his advantage to spill the beans about Tuesday's caper. Baglio doesn't want anyone to know about those biweekly shipments of cash."
        "It was a private ambulance," the turkey squawked. He looked, just a little, as if he were beginning to be afraid, a patently manufactured fear.
        "What's that got to do with anything?"
        "They didn't necessarily take him to a hospital."
        "Where, then?"
        "I don't know."
        "The whole story's a lie," Harris said. He had entered the room without Tucker hearing him, and he stood beside Tucker's chair, the machine gun pointed directly at Deffer.
        Deffer swallowed hard. Maybe he really did respect something as heavy as the Thompson. It was impossible to be certain.
        "You questioned the Halversons?" Tucker asked.
        "Not yet." Harris jabbed the gun toward Deffer. "But, friend, this old crock would lie to God and the angels. A whole life working for the organization, for Baglio? He'd have long ago forgot what truth is."
        "I think you're right," Tucker said. "Our man's still in the house-or dead."
        "I want to talk to you about that possibility," Harris said. He was still red-faced, still sweating.
        "In a minute," Tucker said. "First, I have to make Grandpa secure."
        "Takes much less than a minute," Harris said. He stepped forward, shifting his grip on the Thompson, and slammed the heavy metal hip rest of the gun into the underside of Deffer's chin. The old man gagged, flopped once and lay still. A light foam of blood frosted his wrinkled lips, and a spreading bruise the color of grape juice seeped out from his chin, sent stains down his thin neck.
        "That wasn't necessary," Tucker said.
        "He didn't have any teeth to lose, friend," Harris said. He was using the "friend" much too often, further on the edge than he had ever been before.
        "I was going to tie and gag him."
        Harris looked at the old man, prodded him with the barrel of the machine gun and said, "He's only unconscious. He'll stay completely out of the way and this saved us time."
        Tucker got out of his chair and felt the quivering weakness behind his knees again. "You said you wanted to talk."
        "I do," Harris said. He crossed to the window, looked out, turned, sidestepped and leaned against the wall. Still in a whisper, he said, "What if Bachman talked? What if they killed him?"
        "Then we get out of here and go to ground for a while, until they've given up on us."
        Harris shook his head violently. "No. I can't afford that. I've got nothing to show for this job, and I needed the cash. I have another idea altogether."
        Tucker knew what it was, but he asked anyway.
        "If they got it out of Bachman, got anything at all out of him, we'll have to kill Baglio, maybe Deffer-maybe the guard downstairs."
        "What about the girl, Miss Loraine?"
        Harris looked genuinely perplexed. "What about her?"
        "Baglio's sleeping with her," Tucker explained patiently. "He's a fifty-year-old man, and she isn't half that. She's one hell of a looker, the kind of chick who sometimes engenders gratitude in a man that old. It's possible that he could think of her as more than just another lay-that he might be telling her more about his affairs than he should. Other men have been known to make fools of themselves in the same manner."
        Harris thought about it a moment, his deep-set eyes sinking even deeper. He said, "I don't like it-but we kill her too if we have to."
        "The Halversons?"
        "They wouldn't know anything," Harris said confidently. "A man like Baglio wouldn't be blabbing his business to the maid and butler."
        "Handyman."
        "Whatever."
        Tucker shook his head sadly and went to the bed, took Deffer's pulse and checked his breathing. He began to tear the pillowcase apart to make strips of binding. He said, "Pete, you're in a bad way. I recommend retirement as soon as possible."
        "You do, huh?"
        Tucker nodded, not bothering to look at him, hoping to avoid a show of temper that way. He began to tie Deffer's ankles together. "If you kill Baglio and the others, this becomes a police affair. This