Captain Mastro said, “There’s a danger in this kind of thinking. When an armed robber comes into your place of business, you run a tremendous risk if you resist him. A lot of these men are hardened criminals. Unless you’re as tough and as expert with guns as they are, the chances are pretty good that you’ll end up the loser if you get into a gun battle with them. It’s our official policy to recommend against the possession of any deadly weapon, even it it’s purchased purely for reasons of self-defense. It’s too easy for people to get hurt or killed. A few dollars out of a cash register isn’t worth a shopkeeper’s life.”
But when asked whether Chicago’s street-crime rate had been reduced since the vigilante case began, Captain Mastro refused to comment. “Any answer to that question would be misleading right now,” he said. “There are too many factors involved.”
He carried the two cups of coffee into the bedroom. She came out of the bathroom naked, toweling beaded water off her shoulders. The ends of her hair were matted damp. She smiled—very warm and still a little sleepy.
“Happy New Year.”
“It is.” She dropped the towel and embraced him. Her skin was tight from the shower. He had a saucer and cup in each hand; he put them down carefully and closed his arms around her. Her kiss was soft and slow. “Thanks for making it the happiest one in a long time, darling.”
She disengaged herself and went to her clothes; he watched the sway of her small’round hips. He said, “There’s coffee here.”
“I think I’ll wait. If I drink it steaming hot I’ll only want a cigarette.”
When he had showered and dressed they sat in the kitchen spooning segments of grapefruit and Paul said, “I don’t have to report for work until Monday. That gives us five days. Why don’t we go away somewhere? How about New Orleans?”
“Oh I’d love that. I’ve never been to New Orleans. But I’ve got to be in court tomorrow and Friday.”
“We’ll do it another time, then.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” She pulled the morning paper around. “Mastro again. My God, if this vigilante business goes on much longer he’ll be the most famous cop in the country. Next thing he’ll be running for President.”
“What sort of guy is he?”
“He’s all right. A good cop, really. He’s got a brain and he still knows how to use it—he hasn’t been anaesthetized by the bureaucracy. But nobody ever heard of him, outside of the professionals, until the vigilante case started. Now he’s had a taste of what it means to be a celebrity, and I think he’s learning fast how to make the most of it. Christ I’d like a cigarette. How can you read the morning paper without a cigarette?”
“You get used to it after the first ten or fifteen years.”
“You’re a fat help.”
He had to tread gingerly. “The paper yesterday said he’d identified the vigilante’s guns. I got the impression between the lines that he knows more than he’s telling the public.”
“That’s the impression they want to give. They want the vigilante to think they’re closing in on him. Actually they’re no closer than they were the day it all started. They haven’t got any leads at all.”
“But what about those witnesses in the pizza place?”
“They saw somebody in a car at night. He had a gun in his hand and bullets were flying around. They saw it through a filthy window, from a brightly lit room, looking out into a dim parking lot thirty or forty feet away. What do you think?”
“Do they think it’s just one vigilante or a bunch of them?”
“They haven’t got any idea.”
“Personally I’d guess it was just one guy,” Paul said. “He’s pretty clever, obviously. He must be clever enough to use two or three different guns just to confuse the police.”
“Beats me,” she said. “And it beats Vic Mastro too, I’m afraid. He wants to nail the vigilante—he knows how much it would do for his career. But he doesn’t want it to happen too quickly. Vic wants to milk it for every ounce of publicity he can get before he finally marches up the City Hall steps with the vigilante in handcuffs.”
“Do you think that will happen?”
“Eventually it’s bound to. Sooner or later the vigilante will make a mistake. He may have made one already—the night he tangled with that nut with the machete. He may have been cut pretty badly. They’re canvassing all the hospitals and private doctors within a hundred-mile radius. They may find him. If this one doesn’t turn up any leads, the next one will. The vigilante has one fatal disadvantage. He only needs to make one mistake. That’s all, just one, and he’s finished. The police can make all the mistakes in the world. They only need to be right once.”
“You make it sound cut and dried. Inevitable.”
“It is, really. It’s only a question of time.”
“What if the vigilante just decided to retire or move on to some other town?”
“Who knows,” she said. “The interesting question to me is, what happens if they do catch him?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s quite a hero to a lot of people out there. What happens if we have to put him on trial?”
“I see what you mean.”
“We could have demonstrations—even riots. Nothing’s unheard of in this town. A vigilante trial in Chicago could turn into an incredible political football.”
“I wonder how it would turn out,” Paul said. “More coffee?”
27
THURSDAY MORNING he dropped Irene at her office and drove south into the slums. He spent the day prowling the inferior regions of the city but the extreme clear cold was keeping people off the streets and at half past two he went back toward the center of the city to carry out the next step in his plan.
He’d singled out half a dozen ads from the classified real-estate page and he looked at four of the offices until he found one that suited his purpose. It was on a backwater fringe of the Loop near the intersection of Rush and Grand Avenue. There were a parking garage, several woebegone shops, a bar, a porno-poster shop, and on one corner a vacant lot and beyond it a building undergoing demolition.
The ad led him to a three-story brick building old enough to be grimed with soot. A narrow passage between two storefronts led him up a flight of steps. The superintendent had a cubbyhole on the landing; he was a bald man with a black monk’s fringe above his ears, in need of a shave and a beer-free diet; he led Paul up another flight to the top floor.
The office was a single room. Its two filthy windows looked out upon Grand Avenue. It was offered as a furnished office: that meant it had a desk that looked as if it had been bought surplus from the army, a flimsy swivel-chair on casters with frayed upholstery, a dented filing cabinet, a gooseneck lamp on the desk, the threadbare remnants of a rug; the lamp and the ceiling fixture had no bulbs in them but someone had left half a roll of toilet paper on top of the filing cabinet. There was a coat closet—two bent wire hangers—and a legend on the frosted glass pane in the door had been badly scraped off, leaving enough paint behind to see that a previous occupant had been a novelty company. There was a black phone on the desk but the superintendent told Paul it would need connecting. The rent was eighty dollars.
Paul signed a six-month lease in the name of his deceased brother-in-law. He gave the superintendent one hundred and sixty dollars in cash for security and the first month’s rent. At no time did Paul remove his gloves. He told the superintendent he ran a small mail-order business in personalized greeting cards; the superintendent showed no curiosity. He gave Paul keys to the outside door, the office door and the bathroom down the hall.