Surrounded

face. He would have made a good head waiter or doorman for a fancy restaurant, Tucker thought.
        "Why don't you put the cops onto me? Or even the Internal Revenue Service?"
        "We don't want you in jail," Littlefield said. "We just want you where you belong-in the family again."
        "You people think you can conduct human relationships like you would a business merger," Tucker said. "You're all barbarians." He opened the door and slammed it when he went out. He would have to start watching for tails again. It sounded as though his father were ready to hire another batch of private investigators to get to the truth about his son's life.
        

----
        
        From a public telephone booth on the edge of Central Park, Tucker called Frank Meyers to tell him that everything was on for the next Wednesday in California, and then he went home. Because the usual gray-green polluted overcast was gone and the autumn sun was streaming down like golden curtains between the buildings, he decided to walk. He kept looking behind for one of his father's private detectives, but he could not spot anyone who might have been tailing him. The early Friday afternoon rush had begun, the sidewalks crowded with people who were in a hurry to get nowhere, but he was still reasonably certain that he was not being followed.
        Back at the apartment, he mixed himself a drink and sat in the den thinking about Meyers and Edgar Bates and the new job. He turned the Oceanview Plaza operation over and over in his mind, worrying it like a cat with a large ball of string. There were a few loose ends. However, he was happily unable to tie them in. The plan was good.
        Elise arrived home just before five o'clock, came into the den and perched on the arm of his easy chair. "How did it go with Littlefield?"
        "Terribly."
        "I thought they wanted to compromise."
        "That was the problem," Tucker said.
        They went out to the Spanish Pavilion for dinner, drank" a great deal of sangria, and went home for a sound night's sleep. That set the tone for the remainder of the weekend. They went to a couple of good films, did some light reading, watched an old horror movie on television, made love more than once, and generally lazed around.
        The only bad moment in this brief idyll was a vivid nightmare from which Tucker woke early on Sunday morning. He had dreamed, once again, about the shopping mall they were going to hit and about his father and about dozens of policemen who pursued him down endless glass-walled corridors and around counters heaped high with jewelry and other merchandise. This time there was a great deal of gun play and blood. He could not easily get back to sleep. Lingering impressions of the nightmare haunted him. The following day, Elise and life seemed twice as precious as they ever had before.
        Monday morning, after Elise had left to attend several interviews for commercial work, Tucker put his real credentials in the living-room closet safe and removed those bearing the Tucker name. Then he went out and caught a cab and went to Radio City Music Hall where he called Clitus Felton from a telephone booth.
        First thing when he phoned back, Felton said, "I'm afraid this is a waste of money."
        "You didn't learn anything?"
        "I asked around. But there wasn't anything to learn."
        "Maybe you didn't ask enough people."
        "I asked everyone I could find. Everyone. Hell, you know how I work, Mike." He sounded hurt that Tucker would question his thoroughness. As inactive as he was these days, his reputation was all that Clitus Felton had, and he guarded it jealously.
        The receiver still pressed to his ear, Tucker sighed loudly and closed his eyes and put his forehead against the phone box and thought about things for a long moment. "Do you happen to know what his last job was?"
        "Oh," Felton said, "Frank worked with that armored car company out in Milwaukee."
        "When was this?"
        "Six months ago."
        "I believe I remember now."
        "You should remember," Felton said. "Frank did extremely well out there."
        "Who were his consultants on that one?" Tucker asked, opening his eyes and staring down at the crushed cigarette butts and chewing-gum wrappers that littered the booth floor.
        "Lindsay, Phillips, Spooner, and Pierce," Felton said, as if he were reading off the name of a