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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 in the business himself, expertly planning and executing two or three substantial jobs a year. But age had gotten to him-as had his wife, Dotty, who was afraid that the amazing Felton luck was soon going to be stopped by a cop's bullet or a long stretch behind walls. However, a bookshop wasn't enough to keep Felton interested in life. He was only six months behind the counter when he began to contact old friends and offer his middle-man service. He kept names, aliases and addresses all in his head, and when someone contacted him about a perfect job with a need for the proper partners, Felton considered the possibilities, wrote a few letters and tried to help out. For a percentage. Usually five, if the job worked out as expected. Vicarious crime. He lived for it.
        This latest letter had intrigued Tucker. He placed a couple of telephone calls, got the information that couldn't be trusted to the mails and flew to Pittsburgh, from Kennedy International, to meet with Jimmy Shirillo.
        When Shirillo welcomed him at the airport, Tucker almost said thanks-but-no-thanks, almost got right the hell out of there before he had heard anything more about the job. Shirillo looked far too young, seventeen at the most, and he didn't look any better to Tucker when he said he was actually six years older than that. Despite the Italian surname, he was fair-complexioned, blue-eyed, with sandy brown hair. He was only about five feet four, perhaps a hundred and thirty pounds. A well-placed bullet wouldn't just kill him; it would knock him a couple of blocks if there was any breeze moving at all.
        Tucker wasn't such a big man himself, standing five feet nine and weighing a hundred and forty-odd pounds. He supposed, too, that he didn't look the way a man in his profession should look. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with high cheekbones, a thin-boned nose, an air of the aristocrat, and he had been told, at different times, that he was somewhat fey. However, he looked like a bruiser compared to the kid; he looked a thousand times more experienced and cautious and capable. The kid inspired no confidence at all, and he made Tucker feel like a father meeting his son.
        Shirillo, smiling, reached out and took Tucker's single suitcase with one hand while he offered the other to be shaken. His handshake was surprisingly firm, though unforced, the handshake of a man who was certain of himself. It was enough to make Tucker hold his initial judgment in check.
        As Shirillo drove them into and then across the city during the first wave of morning rush-hour traffic, handling his new Corvette with caution but with no restraint whatsoever, making better time than Tucker would have thought possible, he was forced to junk his first evaluation of the boy and come up with a different one altogether. Beneath that somewhat fragile exterior was a man of competence and-as he proved again and again in that freeway war- not just a little daring.
        "Why you?" Shirillo had asked, weaving around a large beer truck, squeaking back into the proper lane with no more than a thickness of paint to spare.
        "Excuse me?"
        The boy grinned. "You've been sizing me up ever since I took your suitcase in the arrivals lounge, and you seem to have decided to trust me."
        Tucker said nothing.
        "Now," Shirillo said, "I'd like to size you up. Why did Felton think you were especially right for this