Blood risk Read Free Page B

filling the woods about them with a manic chatter. Shirillo looked up, could not see anything because of the Dodge and the angle of the trail beyond that, bent again and took hold of the log, put everything he had into one final, frantic heave. Together they muscled the tree farther around than they had the last time before they were forced to let it go. Dropped, the tree landed in the baked roadway with a soft, dusty thump.
        "Far enough?" Shirillo asked.
        "Yes," Tucker said. "Move ass now!"
        They ran back to the car. Shirillo slid behind the wheel and started the engine. That was enough of an alert for Harris, who had not used the Thompson for almost a full minute. The big man jumped up and got into the back of the Dodge again. Tucker was sitting up front with Shirillo and was fumbling with his seat belt. He clicked it together as Jimmy pulled out, turned to Harris and said, "Get any tires?"
        "No," Harris said. The admission bothered him, for he respected Tucker and wanted the young man to return his respect. If this job had gone right, it would have been his last; now, because they'd botched it, he would need to work again, and he preferred to work with Tucker more than with anyone else, even after this fiasco. "The bastards caught on too quick, shifted into reverse before I'd nailed any tires." He cursed softly and wiped at his grimy neck, his voice too soft for Tucker to hear the individual words.
        "They coming?" Shirillo asked.
        "Like a cop with a broomstick up his ass," Harris said.
        Shirillo laughed and said, "Hold on." He tramped the accelerator hard, pinning them back against their seats for a moment, cutting into a long, shadow-dappled section of road.
        "Why don't they let us alone?" Harris asked, facing front, the Thompson across his lap. His face matched his body: all hard lines. His forehead was massive, the black eyes sunk deep under it and filled with cold, solid intelligence. His nose, broken more than once, was bulbous but not silly, his mouth a lipless line that creased the top of a big square chin. All those harsh angles crashed together in a look of bitter disappointment. "We didn't get their money."
        "We tried, though," Tucker said.
        "We even lost Bachman. Isn't that enough?"
        "Not for them," Tucker said.
        "The Iron Hand," Shirillo said. He took a turn in the road too far on the outside: pine boughs scraped the roof like long, polished fingernails, and the springs sang like a bad alto.
        "Iron Hand?" Harris asked.
        "That's what my father used to call them," Shirillo said, never taking his eyes off the road ahead.
        "Melodramatic, isn't it?" Tucker asked.
        Shirillo shrugged. "The Mafia itself isn't a staid and sober organization; it's as melodramatic as an afternoon soap opera. It's all the time playing scenes straight out of cheap movies: bumping off rivals, beating up store owners who don't want to pay for protection, fire-bombing, blackmailing, peddling dope to kids in junior high school. The melodrama doesn't make it any less real."
        "Yeah," Harris said, glancing uneasily out the rear window, "but could we go a little faster, do you think?"
        The road curved gradually eastward now and narrowed as the huge pines and occasional elms and birches crowded closer-like patrons at a play getting restless for the last act and the climax of the action. Abruptly, the trail slid downward again, and the dust dampened and became a thin film of mud.
        "Underground stream somewhere nearby," Tucker said.
        At the foot of the hill, the land bottomed for a hundred yards before tipping over another slope. Here, shrouded by overhanging trees and flanked by thousand-layer shale walls, the Dodge choked, coughed, rattled like Demosthenes talking around his mouthful of pebbles and expired with very little grace.
        "What's the matter?" Harris asked.
        Shirillo