Further along Linden Boulevard the neighborhood improved a little. The housing there was similar to where Corelli had lived in Hicksville, two-story semidetached brick fronts. The lawns here were smaller, and few of them had more than scattered patches of weeds springing up from hard-packed dirt. There were trees, but they were scrawny.
“I made a mistake,” he told her. They were waiting for a light to change. “I told that cop Lorring Avenue. He could remember.”
She didn’t answer him. He lit a fresh cigarette, thinking that this was something new, another unfamiliar element. The policeman was to be feared, to be avoided. He should have just asked the way to Linden Boulevard and found his own way from there. There were so many things to learn, a whole new approach to social phenomena that had to be fixed in the mind.
At Fountain Avenue, Linden Boulevard cut forty-five degrees to the left. Lorring Avenue started across the intersection from it, running due east. It was almost entirely residential. Here and there an older building remained, with a grocery store or delicatessen on the ground floor and apartments over it. The rest of the homes were semidetached brick fronts, blocks of them, all very much the same. Most of the houses had very tall television antennas. The cars at curbs or in driveways were Fords and Plymouths and Ramblers and Chevys. There were a lot of station wagons and a few Volkswagens.
When they crossed Grant Street, they moved into an older part of the neighborhood and the scenery changed abruptly. For half a block there were brick fronts on one side of Lorring, but the rest of that block and the other side of the street were made up of older frame houses, larger buildings set somewhat further back from the street. A sign in the front window of one white-clapboard house announced that tourists were welcome.
The block after Grant was Elderts Lane. Lee Ruger lived at 723 Lorring, between Elderts and Forbell. His house, like several others on that block, was three stories tall. A wooden sign on the lawn said “Rooms,” and a small metal strip on the front of the house beside the door said “Rooms for Rent.”
They walked past the house and kept walking almost to the end of the block. The Pontiac they had seen yesterday was not at the curb, nor had they seen it alongside the house. It might be at the back, in the rear of the driveway or in a garage.
He said, “I don’t know if he’s home or not. I didn’t see the car. Of course, it might be Krause’s car, the one we saw.”
“They don’t live together?”
“I don’t think so. They might share an apartment, but this is just a furnished room. They wouldn’t share a room. Unless they both have rooms in the same building. There’s still a lot we don’t know. We have to know whether or not anybody’s home.” The gun was still in his pocket, and its weight made him uncomfortable. He looked around quickly to make sure no one was watching him, then took the gun from the pocket and jammed it once again beneath the waistband of his slacks.
“This is crazy,” he said.
“What is?”
“What we’re doing now. Standing on the corner waiting for him to come by in a car and blow our brains out. I feel like a target, standing here in the open.”
“We could call up and—”
“The hell with it,” he said. “I don’t want to call him. A phone call would only put him on guard if he is home, anyway. And I’m sick of calling people on the phone. Look, there are two possibilities. He’s there or he isn’t. If he isn’t home, I want to know about it, and I also want to get upstairs and search his room. Or take another room at the house so that we can sandbag him when he comes in.”
“What’s sandbag?”
“Surprise him, I don’t know. They say it on television. If he is home, there’s no sense waiting in the shadows for him to leave the house. He might be there now, lying in bed, sound asleep. It’s still early. He could be sleeping. If he’s home, the only thing to do is go upstairs and kill him.”
She shivered.
“That’s what we came for,” he said.
“I know. Would you shoot him in bed?”
“If I got the chance.” Her eyes were lowered. He cupped her chin with his right hand and raised her face so that her eyes met his. “Listen to me,” he said. “It’s not fair play. Fine. We are not playing. They were not playing before, not with Corelli and not with us, and we are not playing now. I’m not Hopalong Cassidy. I don’t want to be a good sport and let that bastard draw against me. I’d much rather shoot him in the back, or while he’s sleeping.”
He watched as she put her tongue out to lick her lower lip. “All right,” she said.
“Do you understand, Jill?”
“I understand.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Only—”
“Only what?”
“Nothing,” she said. He waited, and she started to say something else, then gripped his arm and pointed.
He spun around. A car was coming toward them down Lorring, a car the color of the one they had seen at Gramercy Park the day before. He shoved Jill behind him and dropped automatically to one knee. His hand went for the gun. The front sight snagged momentarily on his clothing. Then he got the gun out. The car came closer.
It was a convertible, though, and it wasn’t a Pontiac; it was a Dodge, and a woman was driving it. There were two kids and three bags of groceries in the back seat. The car passed them, and he looked at the gun in his hand and felt like an idiot. He shoved it under his waistband and got to his feet. She said, “I thought—”
“So did I.” He pointed down Forbell Avenue. There were stores a block away at the corner. “Go down there,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because you’d be in the way now. I have to go inside, and I have to go alone.”
“Now?”
“Now. There’s no sense waiting. That car wasn’t them, but the next one might be, and we’re perfect targets like this. Go on.”
She hesitated, then turned and went. He waited until she was a few doors down the block. Then he went back to 723 and walked quickly to the front door. A sticker on the windowpane said “We Gave.” There was a red feather under the inscription. There were curtains behind the window and he couldn’t see into the house. He tried the door. It was locked. He rang the bell.
Nothing happened. He took a breath and rang the bell again. An angry voice, sounding neither male nor female, said, “I’m coming!” He waited. There were footsteps, coming closer, and he put his hand inside his jacket and let his fingers settle on the butt of the.38. The metal felt very warm now.
The door opened warily. He saw a face, and for a shadow of a second he thought it was Lee’s face and he tensed his hand to draw the gun. Then the door opened wider, and he saw that it was a woman, an old woman with rheumy eyes and a mannish moustache. Her hair was black, sprinkled with flat gray. She looked at him and waited for him to say something.
“Does Lee Ruger live here?”
“Ruger?” She looked at him. “He’s here,” she said. “Why?”
“Is he home?”
She looked exasperated. “Eight rooms here,” she said. She drew the door open, stepped back. “Eight rooms, and seven of ’em rented. You think I own this place? I just run it, I get the rent, I make sure it’s clean. You expect me to keep track of who’s here and who isn’t? I got enough without that.”
He entered the house, looked over her shoulder at the staircase. There was a table at the second-floor landing. On it was a vase of withered flowers. The house smelled of cigarette smoke and old furniture. He said, “Ruger—”