Dean Koontz - Blood risk

Harris watched the closed doors to the two lighted rooms, his Lüger and the machine gun raised into firing position. He was running with sweat and breathing harder and faster than either Tucker or Shirillo. While he stood guard, the other two men opened each of the four doors at the back of the house and examined the rooms there: a small art room, windowless, the walls tastefully hung with original oils; the ultramodern kitchen; a storage room full of canned goods, racked wine and whiskey still in cardboard cases; a full bathroom carpeted in white shag. No one was in any of these rooms. They closed the last two doors almost as one and turned to Harris, who looked as if he were being pulled apart: neck strained so veins and arteries stood out like thick strings, head thrust forward, shoulders drawn up tight toward his ears, feet spread and legs tensed, legs bent at the knees, arms out from his sides with white knuckles bent around the weapons in each hand.

Tucker motioned for Shirillo to accompany him to the end door and directed Harris to take the first. At a signal from Tucker, Shirillo and Harris stepped forward and opened the doors on the lighted rooms, throwing them wide without banging them against walls.

Tucker saw Harris move quickly into the room on the left as if he had seen someone in there who would need settling down, but he did not wait to see what happened. As the door of the end room began to swing slowly shut again of its own momentum, he preceded Shirillo into the room, where he found a pudgy, mustached, bald-headed little man sitting up in a Hollywood-style bed, a book open in his hands.

"Who are you?" the pudgy man asked.

Tucker leveled the silenced Lüger at the shiny forehead and said, "Shut up."

The stranger shut up.

He turned back to Shirillo and said, "I can handle this one. Go see if everything's all right with our friend."

Shirillo vanished through the open doorway.

Tucker pulled up a chair, facing the man on the Hollywood bed. "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" the stranger asked. The book he was reading was a popular sociological study of the criminal mentality, and it had recently reached the best-seller lists. Tucker supposed that was funny, though he didn't laugh.

"Who are you?" he repeated, pushing the gun closer.

The pudgy man blinked. "Keesey. I'm the cook."

"Sit still, Keesey, and don't try to sound an alarm. If you open your mouth once when I don't tell you to, you'll never open it again."

Keesey understood. He sat stiff, still, quiet, blinking at Tucker until Shirillo and Harris entered the room a couple of minutes later.

"Well?" Tucker asked.

"It's all taken care of, my friend," Harris said. "Next door's a big room that two of Baglio's men share. One of them was in there drinking coffee when I opened the door. He looked like he'd just swallowed a frog when he saw me."

"And?"

"I caught him under the chin with the Thompson's butt. I don't think I broke his jaw, but he won't be up and around for a while. Jimmy tied him with his own bed sheets, just to be sure."

"His roomie?" Tucker asked.

Harris said, "Must be the one you got outside." He turned directly to Keesey. "What've we got here?" He was smiling without humor. It was clear to Tucker that Harris was moving closer to the edge, now growing antagonistic without reason.

"The cook," Tucker said.

"What's he say?"

Tucker turned back to Keesey. "How many gunmen does Baglio keep in the house?"

"None," Keesey said.

Tucker reached across the bed, gently lifted the book out of the cook's hands, marked the man's place with a leaf of the dust jacket, put the book down, leaned forward and slammed the barrel of the Lüger alongside the pudgy man's head.

Just in time Keesey remembered not to yelp. He slid down in the bed and rubbed at his bruised skull, drawing deep and trembling breaths.

"How many gunmen does Baglio keep in the house?" Tucker repeated.

The cook said, "Just two."

"The two in the room next to this one?"

"Yes."

"They mount the night watch?"

"Yes."

Tucker said, "No day shift?"

The cook rubbed his bald head, looked at his hand as if he expected to find it covered with fresh blood, said, "We don't need a day guard most of the time. Mr. Baglio has those only on Mondays and Tuesdays every other week."

"What do you think?" Shirillo asked. He was leaning against the wall by the foot of the bed, and he looked twice as thin and as ineffectual as ever.

Tucker shrugged. "If he's lying, I can't tell."

"I wouldn't lie!" the cook said, raising a hand to touch-his tender scalp.

Tucker said, "Who's upstairs right now?"

The cook stopped rubbing his head and said, "Mr. Baglio, Henry Deffer, Louise and Martin Halverson-and Miss Loraine."

"Deffer is the chauffeur?"

"Yes."

"Who are the Halversons?"

"Maid and handyman."

"How old?"

"Fifties?" the cook asked, questioning himself. He nodded, grabbed his neck as the pain forced him to stop nodding, said, "Yes, in their fifties somewhere."

"He pack a gun?"

"Halverson?" the cook asked, incredulous.

"Yes, Halverson."

"Of course not!" The cook chuckled. "Did you ever see Halverson?"

"No."

"Well, then-"

"Who is this Miss Loraine?" Tucker asked.

The cook actually blushed and, for a moment, forgot about his wounds. The blush carried over from his face and stained the top of his gleaming skull. He said, "She is a very nice young lady, a very pleasant girl. She's Mr. Baglio's-uh, his-well, his lady."

"They sleep together?"

"Yes."

"Is she a big blonde, well built, tall?" Tucker asked, remembering the girl who had climbed out of the demolished Cadillac.

The cook continued to blush and looked at the other two men as if they might tell him he didn't have to answer that. He looked as if he had never heard much about sex and had certainly never tried it himself. Neither Harris nor Shirillo, of course, told him he was free not to answer. Reluctantly he said, "That's her."

Tucker smiled. "Now, if you'd tell me the location of each of their rooms, I'd appreciate it immensely."

Keesey said, "What are you going to do with them?"

"That's not your concern."

"It is. I might find myself without a job." He put one hand on his stomach, as if to illustrate the deprivations he might have to face if he were out of his job. "Will you kill Mr. Baglio?"

Tucker said, "No. Not unless he forces us into it."

Keesey looked at them again, one at a time, reached some sort of judgment about them, nodded and, briefly, explained the layout of the rooms on the second floor. Deffer and Halverson and Halverson's wife were all directly overhead, while Baglio and his woman were all alone in the largest wing of the house, on the far side of the main staircase.

"Now, what about the man who was hurt in the wreck?" Tucker said, still smiling, not smiling inwardly, the Lüger ready for another slash at Keesey's head. This time he would use the side of the barrel with the sight on it and tear a little of the cook's skin.

"I don't know anything about him," Keesey said.

"Sure you do."

"No."

"You cooked for him?"

Keesey shook his head back and forth. "He's only been allowed to take liquids."

"He's upstairs?"

"No."

"You just implied he was when you mentioned his restricted diet."

"They moved him this morning," the cook said.

"Alive?"

Keesey squirmed and looked as if he had been insulted. "Well, of course," he said. "Alive, of course."

"Where did they take him?"

More rubbing of his head. Scratching of his mustache. "I don't know anything about that."

"You didn't ask?"

"I never ask Mr. Baglio anything."

Tucker nodded, watched the pudgy man for a moment, sighed and motioned to Shirillo. "Tie and gag him."