Judd looked around the room, measuring his chances of escape. Surely DeMarco would prefer not to kill him in his home. It had to be now or never. The Vaccaro brothers were watching him hungrily, hoping he would make a move. Angeli was standing near the window, his hand near his gun holster.
"I wouldn't try it," DeMarco said softly. "You're a dead man - but we're going to do it my way."
He gave Judd a push toward the door. The others closed in on him, and they headed toward the entrance hall.
When Anne reached the upstairs hallway, she waited near the landing, watching the hall below. She drew back out of sight as she saw Judd and the others move toward the front door. She hurried into her bedroom and looked out the win dow. The men were pushing Judd into Angeli's car.
Quickly Anne reached for the telephone and dialed opera tor. It seemed an eternity before there was an answer.
"Operator, I want the police! Hurry - it's an emergency!"
And a man's hand reached in front of her and pressed down the receiver. Anne gave a little scream and whirled around. Nick Vaccaro was standing over her, grinning.
Chapter Twenty-Three
ANGELI SWITCHED ON the headlights. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, but the sun was buried somewhere behind the mass of cumulus clouds that scudded overhead, pushed by the icy winds. They had been driving for over an hour.
Angeli was at the wheel. Rocky Vaccaro was seated next to him. Judd was in the back seat with Anthony DeMarco.
In the beginning Judd had kept an eye out for a passing police car, hoping that he might somehow make a desperate bid to attract attention, but Angeli was driving through little-used side roads where there was almost no traffic. They skirted the edges of Morristown, picked up Route 206 and headed south toward the sparsely populated, bleak plains of central New Jersey. The gray sky opened up and it began to pour: a cold, icy sleet that beat against the windshield like tiny drums gone mad.
"Slow down," DeMarco commanded. "We don't want to have an accident."
Angeli obediently lightened his foot on the accelerator.
DeMarco turned to Judd. "That's where most people make their mistake. They don't plan things out like me."
Judd looked at DeMarco, studying him clinically. The man was suffering from megalomania, beyond the reach of reason or logic. There was no way to appeal to him. There was some moral sense missing in him that allowed him to kill without compunction. Judd knew most of the answers now.
DeMarco had committed the murders with his own hand out of a sense of honor - a Sicilian's revenge, to erase the stain that he thought his wife had placed on him and his Cosa Nostra family. He had killed John Hanson by mistake. When Angeli had reported back to him and told him what had happened, DeMarco had gone back to the office and found Carol. Poor Carol. She could not give him the tapes of Mrs. DeMarco because she did not know Anne by that name. If DeMarco had kept his temper, he could have helped Carol figure out whom he was talking about; but it was part of his sickness that he had no tolerance for frustration and he had gone into an insane rage, and Carol had died. Horribly. It was DeMarco who had run Judd down, and later had come to kill him at his office with Angeli. Judd had been puzzled by the fact that they had not broken in and shot him. But he realized now that since McGreavy was sure Judd was guilty, they had decided to make his death look like a suicide, com mitted in remorse. That would stop any further police investigation.
And Moody...poor Moody. When Judd had told him the names of the detectives on the case, he had thought he was reacting to McGreavy - when it was really Angeli. Moody had learned that Angeli was involved with the Cosa Nostra, and when he followed up on it...
He looked over at DeMarco. "What's going to happen to Anne?"
"Don't worry. I'll take care of her," DeMarco said.
Angeli smiled. "Yeah."
Judd felt a helpless rage sweep over him.
"I was wrong to marry someone outside the family," brooded DeMarco. "Outsiders can never understand it like it is. Never."
They were traveling in an almost barren section of flatlands. An occasional factory dotted the sleet-blurred skyline in the distance.
"We're almost there," Angeli announced.
"You've done a good job," DeMarco said. "We're going to hide you away somewhere until the heat cools down. Where would you like to go?"
"I like Florida."
DeMarco nodded approvingly. "No problem. You'll stay with one of the family."
"I know some great broads down there." Angeli smiled. DeMarco smiled back at him in the mirror. "You'll come back with a tanned ass."
"I hope that's all I come back with."
Rocky Vaccaro laughed.
In the distance, on the right, Judd saw the sprawled build ings of a factory spuming smoke into the air. They reached a small side road leading to the factory. Angeli turned into it and drove until they came to a high wall. The gate was closed. Angeli leaned on the horn and a man in a raincoat and rainhat appeared behind the gate. When he saw De-Marco, he nodded, unlocked the gate, and swung it open. Angeli drove the car inside, and the gate closed behind them. They had arrived.
At the Nineteenth Precinct, Lieutenant McGreavy was in his office, going over a list of names with three detectives, Captain Bertelli, and the two FBI men.
"This is a list of the Cosa Nostra families in the East. All the Sub-Capos and Capo Regimes. Our problem is, we don't know which one Angeli is hooked up with."
"How long would it take to get a rundown on them?" asked Bertelli.
One of the FBI men spoke. "There are over sixty names here. It would take at least twenty-four hours, but..." He stopped.