The defenses had been set up with that very idea in mind. Nothing obvious. Hell no, don't scare the bastard away. Let him think it would be easy — as easy as that hit on Dum-Dum Fasco at the China Gardens. Let him think it would be waltz job, a quick in and a quick out like he'd always had. He would find it a quick in, sure. That's exactly where they wanted him, in. But the only way out would be through Tony's playroom on the third floor — and he would find that a worse way than none at all. Yeah, they'd take the bastard alive, all right.

Had Bolan ever heard of the Tiger of Russian Hill?

Probably not.

Tony Rivoli was a family secret. He had never been in jail, never been questioned by any of those crime commissions or any of that jazz, never been mentioned in the press or "exposed" by those jerk magazines.

No. Bolan the Quick would be expecting the routine, run of the mill sort of palace defense. Like old man DiGeorge had down at Palm Springs. A bunch of punk-ass lads who'd never shot anything but the bull's-eye out of a target, and some tired old men who should've stepped aside years ago.

Bolan the Jerk had never run in on a real Tiger defense.

And the tiger of this hill wasn't tipping his hand to the jerk. He just wished the guy had come on in that night, while everybody was up for the job, while his boys were primed and trembling with the anticipation of bagging the biggest game that ever hit this town. Yeah.

So what the hell. The guy would show. Rivoli was positive that the guy would show. This was the palace, wasn't it? There was no secret about that. The guy would come. He was just being cagey, cautious, keeping them waiting; thinking that maybe the defenses would get too uptight, maybe over-anxious and careless.

Tonight, probably, would be the night. The guy could even try a daylight hit. But in San Francisco? Right here at the top of the town? With two damned cops per square foot all over the place?

Probably not.

Rivoli checked the time. It was a little past eight o'clock. It was daylight. The old man had gone back to bed. How could he go to bed at a time like this? Bolan might be out there somewhere, watching the joint, checking it out. He could be.

Now if the boys just didn't get uptight and...

The Tiger went out through the French doors to the garden-patio and casually circled the grounds. The fog was lifting. It was now holding at about rooftop level, but the air below it was still saturated with moisture, cold, uncomfortable. Miserable goddam crap! The outside boys would be getting stiff and disgruntled if this kept up.

Rivoli made a mental note to make hourly shifts. As unobtrusively as possible, he would have to rotate those boys between the cars and the open-air stakeouts. The inside boys stayed inside, period and bullshit. There would be no juggling around with those hard boys inside.

A police car went by out front, cruising slowly, and the sight of it disrupted the Tiger's chain of thought. He frowned and headed that way. Those jerks would scare the guy off. Imagine, patrolling in a marked cruiser. How dumb could a cop get? Were they trying to scare the guy away?

As he reached the front of the big house, Rivoli noted that a delivery van was standing at the curb down by the service gate, and a guy was coming out of the van with a clipboard under his arm.

Cool it, goddammit, cool it! Don't go slapping that guy up against the fence and frisking him, Christ's sake!

The Tiger hurried forward to personally supervise the reception of the deliveryman, groaning inwardly with the certain feeling that the two gatemen were going to over-react — and that those cops in the cruiser would nose into the act. One thing Tony did not need at this point was cops swarming all over the place and asking a lot of jerky questions.

His worries were apparently an over-reaction within himself, though, and this he discovered as soon as he was within earshot of the service gate.

Apparently the boys knew this guy, this delivery jerk. He was a tall guy wearing Levi's and a white jacket, and Rivoli himself had seen the Bay Messengers truck around the neighborhood. The guy had shoved his hat back away from his forehead, and he was grinning and scratching the bridge of his nose with a pencil.

Jerry the Lover Aspromonte was jawing around with the guy through the closed gate, obviously kidding him about something, and Rivoli caught the scrap of a comment, "... told you the other day, meathead, LaManchas don't live here,"

The guy sort of giggled and told Jerry the Lover, "Aw shit, ain't you ever gonna let me live that down?"

"Shit it ain't my fault you can't read th' fuckin' addresses," Aspromonte was saying when Rivoli got there.

"I got it right this time," the guy insisted, with a pleading glance at the new arrival. "You gonna take the damn package or ain't you?"

Tony Tiger didn't give a damn about this jerk and his small worries. The cop car, sure as hell, had come to a complete halt and the dummies were idling there beside the van and ogling the little exchange at the fence.

Rivoli angrily punched the electronic lock and swung out through the gate, causing the delivery jerk to dance back out of the way. The Tiger crossed the street and leaned into the cruiser.

"You guys need something?" he inquired quietly.

One of the guys in there was a fucking spade. In plain clothes, at that. He showed Tony an ivory smile and told him, "Routine patrol, Mr. Rivoli. Don't you be concerned — we have the entire neighborhood under surveillance."

Where the hell did these guys get off, dropping his name around that way? How did that black bastard know what his name was?

Rivoli muttered, "Why the hell should I be concerned about anything?" He whirled around and crossed back to the other side of the street.

The delivery jerk was standing there, arms crossed over his chest, grinning at him with that fuckin' paisano mustache curling down over his upper lip and into his mouth. He probably sucked on it, he probably liked the taste of hair in his teeth.

Rivoli snarled, "What the hell are you smiling at, guy?"

The smile froze and the jerk just stood there. He mumbled something about just trying to do his job, then he turned back to Jerry the Lover and said, "Hey, take the package, eh?"

"What is this great big worry you got there, guy?" the Tiger growled.

"I got a delivery for a Tony Rivoli, in care of Roman A. DeMarco. It's this address, I got the right address, but this guy won't get serious. He keeps telling me LaManchas don't live here, just because I..."

"Okay okay, whatta you mean you got a delivery? What kind of a delivery?"

"This little package here, that's all."

The jerk was holding it in the palm of his hand. It was square, like maybe a ring box or something done up in brown wrapping paper.

Rivoli saw the police cruiser in the edge of his vision, moving slowly on along the street.

"Who the hell sent it?"

"Well why don't you just take it and maybe you'll know who sent it. Hell I just run the things around, I just drive the damned..."

Tony the Tiger snatched the package out of the guy's hand and moved on inside the fence.

The guy moaned, "Hey I gotta have somebody sign."

"Sign it and give the jerk a buck," the Tiger instructed Jerry the Lover. Then he went on to the front entrance to the house, fuming inwardly over spade cops who dropped his name around like they had a right to or something.

A package?

Who the hell would be sending the Tiger of the Hill a goddamned package? A package of what? In all his thirty-three years, no one had ever sent Tony Rivoli a package of anything. Not even on his birthdays. Not even, by God, on Christmas. It couldn't be a damn bomb, it was too small.

It couldn't be a...

Something froze around Rivoli's heart and his fingers trembled slightly as he tore at the wrapping. Too late he had an impulse to yell back to Jerry the Lover to stop that jerk, to hold him there a minute... the van was already moving along and cornering onto the street at the side of the house.