“On this King Boulevard sidewalk just a few hours ago another tragedy was acted out by Chicago’s infamous vigilante and his victims. The police say the young man and the teen-age boy were making a connection here. The sale of four caps of heroin was going down when a forty-five caliber pistol roared four times in the quiet grey afternoon. It left the pusher and the addict dead together, their bodies sprawled across one another. We found Captain Victor Mastro at the mayor’s fifth-floor office at City Hall….”
The image cut to a corridor crowded with lights and cameras and reporters. The same reporter in the same trench coat was thrusting his microphone under Mastro’s face. There was a babble of voices, everybody asking questions at once.
“We haven’t had a chance to check out ballistics yet,” Mastro was saying. “But it looks like the same .45 Luger from the other cases. We’ve got a witness who said the shots were fired from a car…. No, it was stopped, it pulled over and stopped before he did the shooting. It wasn’t moving…. What? I can’t hear you, I’m sorry.… Yes, this makes twenty-three all told. Nineteen dead. Eleven with the thirty-eight and twelve with the .45…. I’d rather not comment on what the witness saw, beyond what I’ve already told you. We’re still interviewing him…. Intensifying it? No, we’re not intensifying it. It’s already as intense as it can get. We’ve got sixty officers assigned to this case alone, full time. What? … No, I can’t describe the leads we’re working on at this time. We do have leads, that’s all I can say, and we’re subjecting every one of them to an exhaustive and thorough examination… I’m sorry, gentlemen, that’s all for now.”
The camera followed Mastro’s back as he pried his way through the mob; then it cut to the studio moderator.
Paul switched it off. He crossed to the window and looked out at the lights. A haze brought the sky down low and brightened the city like a stage set.
It was a slim chance, it probably wouldn’t lead to anything. But he had to do it. He had to try.
He went to the phone and searched for Spalter’s home number; he’d written it down somewhere…
Spalter came on the line, cheerful and ebullient. “Hey, Paul, How’re they hanging?”
“Jim, something’s come up. A personal thing, nothing vital, but I’m going to have to be out of town for a couple of days. I won’t be able to start work until the middle of the week. I realize it’s awkward but can you explain it to Childress for me? I’ll report in on Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.”
“You have to go back to New York?”
“Yes. It’s a family thing. My wife’s estate—you know these idiotic legal hassles. But it’s got to be straightened out before it gets any worse.”
“Sure, I know. Okay, Paul, I’ll cover for you with the old man. Hope everything works out okay. I’ll see you Wednesday or so, right?”
“Thanks very much.”
“Don’t mention it, buddy. Have a good trip—give my love to Fun City.”
He rang off and reached for his drink. It was probably a bad hunch. The thing probably was still squatting there under the glass countertop, untouched since he’d seen it weeks ago. But there was a chance. He had to find out.
36
HE WAS OUT and rolling before the Monday morning rush. By seven he was crossing the Wisconsin line. A little while later he left the divided highway and switched off the headlights. Snow lay in deep drifts on the verges: the countryside looked like something in a calendar photograph, sunlight on rolling fields of snow, the occasional farmhouse on a far hilltop. The world was new and clean.
The shop hadn’t opened yet and he sat in the car until restlessness prohibited it; then he walked through town and back while the cold stung his ears and came inside his coat. From a block away he saw Truett limp to the door and unlock the security gate and roll it up. Truett unlocked two or three bolts and perhaps a burglar alarm and finally went inside; two minutes later Paul entered the cluttered shop.
“Morning.”
“Hello there. Mr. Neuser, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got a good memory.”
“Pride myself,”Truett said. His moist eyes peered up at Paul and then he continued on his rounds, switching lights on. “What can I do you for?”
He’d thought of half a dozen lies during the night and rejected them; finally he’d settled on the simplest story and rehearsed it until it was smooth. “I was talking to my brother-in-law about my last visit up here. I mentioned that Luger I saw in your collection. The .45. He got very interested—he’s a gun buff and he served in Germany with the Occupation after the war. Anyway it’s his birthday coming up and I wondered if you still had the thing for sale. I don’t see it here under the counter.”
“Sold that one a few weeks ago. Just a few days after you were here, matter of fact.” Truett still had the folded newspaper under his arm; now he limped around behind the counter and put the newspaper down before he reached up to pull the switch-strings of the ceiling fluorescents.
It was a Milwaukee newspaper. That relieved Paul. If Truett didn’t get the Chicago papers he probably wasn’t aware of the ballistics reports; details that small wouldn’t be printed in Milwaukee papers or reported on Milwaukee television, he was sure.
“That’s too bad,” Paul said, trying to keep his feelings out of his voice. “It’d make such an ideal birthday present for Jerry.”
“I sure am sorry, Mr. Neuser. Maybe there’s something else I might turn up. Got a nice World War Two Walther in the back room, practically mint condition, the old double-action P.38 model. …”
“No, Jerry really got excited over that forty-five Luger. Say, I’ll tell you what, Mr. Truett. Maybe the fellow who bought it from you wouldn’t mind turning a quick profit on it.”
“Well….”
Paul opened his wallet and counted out bills. “Of course you’d be. entitled to a finder’s fee and a commission.” He spread the fifty dollars on the glass. “Do you happen to have the name and address of the fellow you sold it to?”
“Well sure I do. Have to take down all that stuff for the Federal registration, don’t I.”
37
IT WAS a small house on Reba Place in Evanston, in the middle of a block of elderly detached houses on postage-stamp lots, each driveway forming the boundary with its neighbor’s property; the houses were narrow and old-fashioned and the trees along the curbs had attained towering heights. The carport alongside the house had no cars in it. Paul didn’t go up to the door but he sensed the house was empty.
He had a name—Orson Pyne—and this address. He sat in his car and studied the house and tried to form a picture of the man who lived in it. He had little success. But he had a strong feeling the house was empty and that meant either Pyne lived alone or his wife worked. The place wasn’t equipped for two cars but that didn’t mean much; it was only two or three blocks’ walk to Asbury where you could pick up a Western Avenue bus.
There was a filling station on the corner two and a half blocks away. It was worth a try. Before he started the car Paul opened his wallet and sorted through the ID’s and business cards. There was a lot of outdated junk, he saw—even a 1973 plastic calendar—and he was amazed it had been that long since he’d gone through the contents of the wallet. He decided on the card that identified him as a member of the West 71st Street Community Association. It had been sent to him when he’d made a financial contribution to the block association’s campaign to install high-intensity street lighting off West End Avenue. The lettering was too small to be read at a glance and beneath the lettering on the white card was imprinted a pale green shield. At a cursory glance it might pass for an official identification card. He put everything back in the wallet and slid the ID card in so that it was exposed in the Plexigas window. Then he drove to the filling station.