Blood risk

greasepaint doesn't make us invisible. It would have been enough to thwart any search that Baglio might be able to mount; but the police, when they get the descriptions from the Halversons and from Keesey, are going to be able to match those to your photograph where it appears in about a million' mug books. That's a small chance of discovery, admittedly, but large enough to worry about. You want to kill everyone in the house, then, even the maid and the handyman?"
        Harris softly cleared his throat and stood away from the wall, though he couldn't think of anything to say. He had made a fool of himself in front of Tucker. He couldn't afford that.
        Tucker flopped Deffer onto his stomach, got his hands behind him and tied them in place, rolled him onto his back again. Even if the old man's throat permitted him to speak in more than a whisper when he regained consciousness, there did not seem to be any need to gag him. By the time he came to, everyone in the house would already know the place had been breached.
        "Still…" Harris said at last, trying to break the silence.
        "Even if you kill everyone in the house," Tucker interrupted, "how do you know Baglio hasn't communicated what Bachman told him to others, maybe to that dandified accountant, Chaka? If he did, all your killing's for nothing."
        "A flaw in your reasoning," Harris said. "This is already a police affair. The guard you shot makes it that."
        "Bullshit, and you know it," Tucker said. "Baglio will get his own doctor to fix his boy up."
        Harris knew that, but he still wouldn't let go of it. "I can't afford to go to ground for a year, dammit."
        Because he had to get Harris off the subject, Tucker said, "Maybe by the time we leave here you'll have a bankroll to last you for a year or even longer."
        "How?"
        "Wait," Tucker said, because he had no real answer.
        They left Deffer's room, turning off the lights and closing the door behind them.
        Jimmy Shirillo was waiting with the Halversons. He was standing just inside their door, while they were sitting up against the brass headboard of their bed, bound and gagged, their hands tied to the brass bars behind them. She was thin and somewhat pretty, though with the sagging look about the eyes that indicated a woman wearied and almost beaten by life. Her husband, a tall, thin, sallow-faced man with bushy eyebrows and ears that looked as if they had been grafted from a hound, had been weathered even worse by the years, servile and eager to please. And terrified.
        "Questions?" Shirillo asked.
        Tucker looked at the Halversons again and saw exactly what Keesey had meant. "No questions. If they even know what Baglio is, I'd be amazed. I have a feeling our man could have been kept in this house for the last month without these two ever being aware of it,"
        Shirillo nodded. "They were so obliging, I thought they were going to tie each other up."
        "Let's check out the rest of the rooms on this side," Tucker said. "Just to be safe."
        In the last two rooms in that smaller of the mansion's two wings, they found proof that both Keesey and Deffer had lied to them: two used bedrooms with full closets. A cursory examination of each was enough to convince Tucker that two more gunmen were up and about and currently unaccounted for.
        "I wouldn't have guessed the cook would lie to us," Harris said. He had pocketed his Lüger and was using his free hand to caress the sleek lines of the machine gun.
        "He did, though," Tucker said. "And when Deffer mentioned more than two guards, I thought he was lying."
        "But where are they?" Harris asked. Anxiously he turned to face the unlighted stairwell, the long arm of the corridor, then the short one.
        Shirillo said, "They have to be outside yet." He wasn't ruffled at all. He had surprised himself, and Tucker, with the degree of his adaptability. If Harris became unreliable, Tucker would still be able to count on Shirillo.
        "They must have seen us," Harris insisted. His voice was coarse, unsteady. "The way we've been turning the lights off and on in this place, anyone outside would-"
        "We haven't, really," Shirillo said. "We've mostly used the flashlight, and the draperies would block that much from a man outside. The only places we used ceiling lights were the art room, storage room and the Halversons' bedroom. The first