Blood risk

something happens. The Dodge isn't wedged tight. It should slide loose. The moment it's moved enough for you to squeeze your heap past it, do just that."
        "And if I keep going?" the driver asked. He smiled as if this were a joke between them, and he had very nice teeth.
        "We'll shoot out your tires, blow out the back window, very likely put half a dozen slugs in the back of your head-and possibly blow up your gas tank." He smiled back; his own teeth weren't bad, either.
        "I thought so," the driver said. He eased his foot down on the accelerator.
        For a moment nothing much happened. As the engine noise built into a scream, a ring-necked pheasant took off from the brush behind Tucker and Shirillo, startling the boy but not the older man. The Mustang's bumper popped a bolt and crunched back onto the grill. Still, the engine noise climbed. The driver was gritting his good teeth, aware that the Dodge might tilt the wrong way, that he might slip off it and careen into the shale wall himself.
        Then the Dodge began to creak and give. A section of the shale broke loose from the wall and crashed down over the ruined automobile, rained on the Mustang, clattered at the feet of the gorilla who stood against the far wall, above the, wreck. Then the big car twisted sideways, its roof coming around flat against the shale wall across the road. The driver of the Mustang pulled his car through the opening, badly scraping the whole length of his side against the rock. He stopped where he was supposed to, opened his door and got out.
        "Come back up here," Tucker said. He hadn't been sure that the Dodge would move, but now he showed no surprise. Tucker was never surprised. It would have damaged his reputation if he had been.
        The driver came back, stood beside his companion and looked very disgusted with himself. He had a right. However, unlike the other gorilla, he didn't try to tell them that they wouldn't get away with it. He looked at his dusty shoes, wiped each of them against the back of a trouser leg and did a good job of pretending boredom.
        "Where's this road go?" Tucker asked. While he held the shotgun on them, Harris went downslope to the place where he'd climbed the bank, gained the road again and walked back up toward them.
        "Nowhere," the driver said.
        "It's a dead end?"
        "Yeah."
        The smaller of Baglio's men, the one who hadn't had enough sense to keep quiet before, looked at the driver quizzically, then smiled and looked up at Tucker. His face might as well be a blackboard with a huge, chalked message on it. "You're never going to get out of here. Mr. Baglio will get you sooner or later, 'cause this is a dead end."
        The driver looked scornfully at the other man, spat on the road and sighed, leaned back against the shale wall,
        "Is he Baglio's son-in-law, or something?" Tucker asked the driver.
        "No," the driver said. "But help's not easy to get these days."
        The smaller gorilla blinked stupidly, looked from one to the other. "Son-in-law?" he asked.
        When they were all in the Mustang and Jimmy Shirillo had pulled away from the wreck and the two gunmen, Harris said, "Obviously, it's not a dead end at all."
        "Go to the front of the class," Tucker said.
        Harris's goblin mask hung below his chin like a second face in the middle of his chest, bobbing when he talked. "A dead end would be bad, but this is something worse, so why go on?"
        "Because we can't go back," Tucker said. "Obviously Baglio knows we're on this road and has the other end sealed up. But we might come to something else before we run into the roadblock."
        "Like what?"
        "I couldn't say, but I'll know it when I see it."
        
        _
        
        At the beginning of May, when the trees were just greening and the summer ahead seemed devoid of any job possibilities, a letter had arrived at Tucker's midtown Manhattan mail drop, sealed in a white envelope with no return address. He had known that it was from Clitus Felton before he opened it, since he was accustomed to receiving letters like it on the average of ten times a year. Half that often they contained something worthwhile. Clitus Felton, despite his unlikely name, earned his way as a contact point between freelancers on the East Coast, operating out of a small specialty bookshop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Once he had been