I was disappointed. I considered just staying in my room. But then thoughts of the U-Boat triggered off another realization. I’d also been disappointed with the Chicago police report that Fothergill had sent me. In particular, the file on McIntyre’s apartment. It had been little more than a list of contents. There’d been no serious attempt to interpret or analyze. And now it hit me why not. Mcintyre wasn’t the kind of individual they were used to dealing with. He wasn’t an ordinary criminal. They weren’t on the same wavelength as him. In the same way as you’d need to be in the navy to fully appreciate the submarine, you’d need to be in the same line of work as McIntyre to look at where he’d been hiding and see any sort of significance. And the only other person around here in that line of work was me.
So I did still leave the hotel. But I changed my destination.
I told the guy at the front desk I needed a cab to O’Hare, but once we were under way I told the driver we had a new heading. Lincoln Park Zoo. I’d seen a sign for it yesterday when I was zigzagging around the city behind Rollins, so I knew it was in the right general area. The guy took it well at first. He was happy as long as I let him talk. But he was less impressed when I pulled him up short on Clark, just shy of Fullerton. I got out of the taxi, turned the corner and walked past the building McIntyre had been using, staying on the opposite side of the street. There were cars parked on both sides. I checked carefully, but none of them were occupied. I suppose the city’s budget didn’t run to stakeouts in the way ours did. Either that, or they were less thorough. But either way, I didn’t risk approaching the place from the front. I followed round to Geneva Terrace and made my way back down the alley at the rear. Only this time I didn’t have to worry about gates or fences. I guess the police had taken care of those, when they responded to the “shots fired” call yesterday. There were splintered remains lying around everywhere, so I just picked my way through the debris and walked up to the side door.
Three lengths of police crime-scene tape were hanging from the frame, flapping limply in the breeze. They’d been cut. Not with a knife, though. At least, not a sharp one. From the ragged edges I’d say more likely with the edge of a key. I peered through the dusty glass, and right away I saw someone. Some legs, anyway. They were on the far side of the inner door. Lying down. Nothing was visible above the knee. The rest of the body was hidden by the internal wall. It must have been stretched out, toward the abandoned laundry room. All I could see was the lower half of a pair of stained, ripped jeans and two shabby shoes. One was brown. One was black. It wasn’t a promising outfit. And not a place you’d usually choose to sleep, either.
The door opened as soon as I applied the slightest pressure. The lock had been broken. Forced, from the outside. The same had happened to the inner door. I eased that one open more carefully and squeezed through the gap, keeping well clear of the body. Or actually, bodies. A second one was sprawled out farther down the corridor, out of sight of the entrance. Both were male. I’d guess the first was in his thirties. The other was maybe twenty years older. The state they were in made it hard to be sure. Their clothes were ruined and filthy and torn. Their skin was blotchy and riddled with scabs. Their hair was unwashed, uncut, and plastered to their scalps. They were unshaven. And definitely unwashed.
The only question was whether they were still alive.
The younger one’s problem was with the side of his head. Something had made a real mess of it, just above his right cheekbone. The skin wasn’t broken, though, so I was thinking maybe an elbow had been used. Delivered hard enough to knock him out cold, if not more. I checked his breathing. It was shallow, but definitely present. The other guy hadn’t been so lucky. He’d taken a blow to the throat. It looked like his airway had been crushed. I guessed he’d suffocated, but I wasn’t about to put my fingers down his windpipe to make sure. There was no point. His days of receiving help were clearly over.
The floor was much dirtier than yesterday. I could make out at least nine sets of dried, muddy footprints leading from the door to the stairs. They’d be from the emergency crews I’d seen swarming all over the grass, I guessed. Two more sets—darker in color, with less well defined sole patterns—were smeared over the top of these. They led toward the window. Which had been broken. From the inside, out, judging by the pattern of glass fragments. That suggested two people escaping, presumably from whoever had set upon the other homeless guys. I thought that was all there was to find, but when I looked really carefully I picked up one final set, on top of all the others, also heading for the stairs. Someone had gone up there. Recently.
And there was no sign of them having come back down.
Logic told me that whoever had arrived there before me could have gone anywhere in the building. But I didn’t believe in coincidences. And I didn’t have much time. It would be stretching credulity to be found there with another dead body. So I gambled. I headed straight for the apartment that McIntyre had been hiding in. I still had the mirror I’d borrowed from Rollins, so I used it to check the entrance. The door had been replaced with a new one. It was made of rough, unfinished wood. Industrial ply. I could see Chinese emblems stamped into the surface with red dye. A flimsy plastic handle had been attached above a roughly cut, not quite circular keyhole. Off cuts of the wood someone had used to build the temporary frame had been left lying on the floor near the bannister rail. And next to the timber was a wad of discarded crime-scene tape.
I took out the replacement cell phone Fothergill had pressed on me and checked that it was set to vibrate as well as make a sound. I scanned the list of ringtones and selected the one that looked the most annoying. Made sure the volume was set to maximum. Then fired off a text to the duty receptionist at the consulate.
call back. this no. 2 mins.
Most of the pieces of leftover wood were too short to be of any use—five or six inches, at the most—but I did manage to uncover one chunk that interested me. It was a hair short of three feet long. I extracted it from the pile and picked my way toward the apartment door, moving carefully to avoid the worst of the ill-fitting floorboards. I took my time, arriving silently with twenty seconds to spare. Just long enough to wedge the phone between the handle and the frame—tight, so its vibrations wouldn’t shake it loose—step to the side, and line up with my makeshift club.
The phone rang, dead on cue. “Ride of the Valkyries” grated electronically from its tiny speaker. It was surprisingly loud. The hollow door buzzed and rattled in time with the vibrations. I tightened my grip on the wood. But no one emerged for me to hit.
The snippet of music played for a second time. And a third. Until finally I heard movement from inside the apartment. Rapid footsteps. They approached the door. Stopped. Then bullets started to rip through the plywood surface.
Three were at head height. Three at chest level. And three low down, skimming the ground.
I heard a thud. Metal on wood. A magazine being changed. Then nothing for twenty seconds. Thirty. The person inside was patient. Armed. And with a choice of exits. I wanted to be sure they came out of mine. So I switched my grip on the wood and tossed it down the stairs, spinning it around and sending it cartwheeling off the treads.