Cesar was frowning but he curbed his tongue; presently he nodded, recognizing that was the way it had to be. “But we have to figure Barbara made us for them. They know who we are.”

“And that is why we’re leaving the country tonight.”

Peggy stubbed out her cigarette. She kept grinding it into the glass ashtray long after it was extinguished. “We’re going to be on every post-office wall in the country by tomorrow, we’re leaving the country on a slow boat to Lisbon, and you’re talking about getting Line and the rest of them out of hock. Sorry but I don’t follow that.”

“Discipline doesn’t require that you follow it.” Sturka opened Mario’s canvas case and upended it over the bed and Mario’s stock certificates cascaded into a disordered heap like bonfire kindling. “We’ll trash them with these. It’s fitting. Have you counted these?”

“Why?” Mario went toward the bed, suspicious.

“I have.” Sturka touched one of the certificates. It was very large and imposing, the size of Life magazine, the color and style of a dollar bill, and it represented one thousand shares of common stock in Mezetti Industries. Mezetti common was selling in the neighborhood of thirty-eight dollars a share.

Mario’s two hundred shares of NCI were worth about eight thousand dollars. His twelve hundred shares of Coast National Oil were worth just under sixty thousand. His four thousand shares of White-side Aviation were worth about eighteen thousand. And he had altogether thirty-five thousand shares of Mezetti Industries common. All inherited from the patriarchal grandfather who had used proletarian bodies for railroad ties. The canvas bag contained something over $1,200,000 in securities and they had been carrying it around on the streets for a month because Sturka had said they might need it fast when they needed it at all.

“It’s time, then,” Mario said.

Sturka began to stack the certificates neatly and slide them back into the case. “It’s time.”

Mario was dubious. “You can’t just take this much stock into a bank or a broker and tell him to sell it. It would knock hell out of the market. They wouldn’t do it.”

“Don’t sell them,” Sturka said. “Hock them.”

“For what?”

“What can you get? Half a million?”

“Probably.”

“A cashier’s check. Then you take the cashier’s check to another bank and break it down into a number of smaller cashier’s checks. Then you go to still other banks and cash some of them.”

“How much cash?”

“At least half of it. The rest in internationally negotiable certified checks or cashier’s checks.”

Mario could become shrewd in the blink of an eye when it came to finance. He had been raised in a family of financiers and the wizardry had rubbed off on him.

He latched the case. “Large bills, I guess.”

“Anything else would be too bulky. You’ll have to buy money belts for us. The cheap canvas ones will do.”

“It’s pig money, isn’t it?” Mario grinned. “We’ll use it to smash the pigs.”

“Spend an hour in a barbershop first,” Sturka adjured. “Buy a good suit of clothes. You’ll need to be presentable.”

“Naturally.”

“Peggy will go with you. You may take the car. Drive it into New York and leave it in a parking garage—tear up the ticket, leave it there. The police may have a description of it from Barbara.” But the police wouldn’t have the plate number; they had changed license plates on the car last night.

“Your chances of being arrested on the crowded streets are too negligible to worry about. You’ll blend. But in the bank you’ll have to give them a plausible reason for borrowing against the securities.”

“Sure. Peggy and I are getting married, we want to buy a yacht for our honeymoon.”

“No. That’s frivolous.”

Mario scowled; Sturka touched his arm with a fingertip. “It’s a real estate deal. Very big. Be sly with the banker, take him into your confidence. You need the cash for an under-the-table bribe to persuade the land conglomerate to accept your bid. It’s a short-term project and you’ll be repaying the loan within three months.”

Alvin stared at Sturka. The man had a command of the most unlikely things.

Mario nodded. “That’ll work.”

Cesar said mildly, “We’ll have to clean her up.”

“Jesus,” Peggy muttered.

Sturka’s finger stabbed toward her. “Your father is a college professor—you know how to comport yourself.”

“My father’s a phony liberal drunk. A fucking hypocrite.”

“You’re Mario’s secretary. A very wealthy man’s secretary—you’ll behave as you would in polite society.”

“Pig society.”

“Peggy.” Sturka’s voice was very quiet, very mild, but it shut her up. “While Mario is in the barbershop you’ll buy a demure dress and have your hair done.”

When she made no rebuttal Sturka went back to Mario. “Impress on the banker that this is confidential. No one is to know about it, it might cause your deal to go sour.”

“Sure. So no stocks change hands, no sale has to be registered with the SEC or the Exchange.”

“And your family doesn’t learn about it.”

“Yeah.”

Sturka went to Peggy. “When you’ve finished in the city take the Path Tube to Newark and go by taxi to the Washington Hotel. Time it to arrive between six-thirty and seven. Wait at the front entrance.”

“Inside or outside?”

“Outside, we’ll be watching. If I’m satisfied you haven’t been followed we’ll pick you up.”

“What if we can’t make contact there?”

“Use the usual method of leaving a message for me and we’ll arrange something.” Sturka employed a telephone answering service in the name of Charles Wernick; when you left a message for him you reversed the digits of the number: if you were calling from telephone 691-6243 you left word to call 342-6196.

Alvin yawned. Cesar said, “Wake up, okay?”

“I’ve been two days without sleep.”

“You’ll have a week to sleep on the boat.” Cesar took the pillbox from his pocket. “Take one of these.”

“Uppers?”

“Bennies. Just take one.”

“I guess not.” Alvin had come down off heroin in the Army and hadn’t touched any kind of drugs since, medicinal or otherwise; he was terrified of them, he didn’t want to get back into the spiral.

Sturka was shepherding Mario and Peggy to the door. Alvin heard the car doors, heard the car start up and drive out of the motel.

Cesar was dragging out items from the theatrical makeup kit they had bought in New York a week ago. They made one another up: styrofoam pads inside the cheeks to change the shape of cheek and jaw; skullcaps and hairpieces to change hairlines; dye to hue eyebrows and hair.

A set of cheekpads and a cropped gray smudge of a moustache and a salt-and-pepper gray hairpiece in tight kink-curls added twenty years to Alvin. Cesar said, “Remember walk a little stooped over.”

A skullcap receded Cesar’s hairline and an application of makeup and eyeglasses changed him from swarthy brigand to middle-aged businessman. Sturka became an ascetic type in a wavy brown wig and neatly trimmed goatee.

“Let’s go then.”

Outside the air was heavy with a stink of heavy morning traffic grinding up Route 22 toward Newark Airport and the city. The parking court of the motel was busy with slamming car doors, people hustling luggage into car trunks, kids hollering, salesmen driving out into the heavy traffic. The sky was a murky brown—what passed for a clear day in the smog of northeast New Jersey.

WEDNESDAY,

JANUARY 5

2:15 P.M. EST Lime left Satterthwaite’s White House office in a dour mood and ambushed a taxi. “Police headquarters.”

Lunch in the office of the President’s sardonic chief security advisor had been dreary with takeout food and Satterthwaite’s sonorous essay on political needs and realities. Lime spent the ride leaning his head far back against the cushion, eyes closed, unlit cigarette askew in his lips, thinking drowsy erotic thoughts about Bev Reuland.