He gave me the address; not so far from Peg and me.
Sobering as that was, what was more interesting was that the kid lived at school, not home; even during summer session. Specifically, he was in Gates Hall on the Midway campus.
The Midway, a mile-long block-wide parkway between 59th and 60th, connected Washington and Jackson parks, and served to separate Hyde Park and the University eggheads from the real South Side. Just beyond the Midway were the Gothic limestone buildings and lushly landscaped acres of the university. At night the campus looked like another world. Of course, it looked like another world in the daylight, too.
But this was night, and the campus seemed largely deserted. That was partly summer, partly not. I left the Plymouth in a quadrangle parking lot and found my way to the third floor of Gates Hall, where I went to Lapps’ room and knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again. No answer. The door was locked.
A student well into his twenties — probably a vet on the G.I. Bill — told me where to find the grad student who was the resident assistant in charge of that floor.
The resident assistant leaned against the doorjamb of his room with a bottle of beer in his hand and his shirt half tucked in. His hair was red, his eyes hooded, his mouth smirky. He was perhaps twenty years old.
“What can I do for you, bud?” the kid asked.
“I’m Jerry Lapps’ uncle. Supposed to meet him at his room, but he’s not in.”
“Yeah?”
“You got a key? I’d like to wait inside.”
He shrugged. “Against the rules.”
“I’m his uncle Abraham,” I said. And I showed him a five-dollar bill. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
The redheaded kid brightened; his eyes looked almost awake. He snatched the five-spot and said, “Ah. Honest Abe. Jerry mentioned you.”
He let me into Lapps’ room and went away.
Judging by the pair of beds, one against either wall, Jerome Lapps had a roommate. But the large single room accommodated two occupants nicely. One side was rather spartan and neat as a boot-camp barracks, while across the room an unmade bed was next to a plaster wall decorated with pictures of baseball players and heartthrob movie actors. Each side of the room had its own writing desk, and again, one was cluttered, while the other was neat.
It didn’t take long to confirm my suspicion that the messy side of the room belonged to the seventeen-year-old. Inside the calculus text on the sloppy desk, the name Jerome C. Lapps was written on the flyleaf in a cramped hand. The handwriting on a notepad, filled with doodles, looked the same; written several times, occasionally underlined, were the words: “Rogers Park.”
Under Jerome C. Lapps’ bed were three suitcases.
In one suitcase were half of the panties and bras in the city of Chicago.
The other suitcase brimmed with jewelry, watches, two revolvers, one automatic, and a smaller zippered pouch of some kind, like an oversize shaving kit. I unzipped it and recoiled.
It was a medical kit, including hypos, knives, and a surgical saw.
I put everything back and stood there and swallowed and tried to get the image of JoAnn Keenan’s doll-like head out of my mind. The best way to do that was to get back to work, which I did, proceeding to the small closet on Jerome’s side of the room. On the upper shelf I found a briefcase.
I opened it on the neater bed across the way. Inside were several thousand bucks in war bonds and postal savings certificates. He’d apparently put any cash he’d stolen into these, and any money from fenced goods, although considering that well-stuffed suitcase of jewelry and such, I couldn’t imagine he’d bothered to fence much if any of what he’d taken.
As typically teenager-sloppy as his side of the dorm room was, Jerry had neatly compartmentalized his booty: ladies underwear in one bag; jewelry and watches in another; and paper goods in the briefcase. Included in the latter were clipped photos of big-shot Nazis. Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels.
Jerry had some funny fucking heroes.
Finally, in the briefcase, was a photo album. Thumbing through it, I saw photos of an attractive woman, frequently in a bathing suit and other brief, summer apparel. There was also a large photo of the same woman with a ferret-faced male friend in a nightclub setting; you could see a table of men sitting behind them as well, clearly, up a tier. A sweet and tender memento of Caroline Williams and Sam Flood’s love affair.
I removed the photo, folded it without creasing it, and slipped it into my inside suit coat pocket. I put the photo album back, closed up the briefcase, and was returning it to the upper shelf of the closet when the dorm-room door opened.
“What the hell are you doing?” a male voice demanded.
I was turning around and slipping my hand under my jacket to get at my gun, at the same time, but the guy reacted fast. His hand must have hit the light switch, because the room went black and I could hear him coming at me, and then he was charging into me.
I was knocked back into the corner, by the many-paned windows, through which some light was filtering, and I saw a thin face, its teeth clenched, as the figure pressed into me and a single fist was smashing into my stomach, powerfully.
The damn guy was almost sitting on me, and I used all my strength to lift up and lift him off, heaving him bodily onto the floor. He was scrambling to his feet when I stuck the nine millimeter in his face and said, “Don’t.”
Somebody hit the lights.
It was the red-headed dorm assistant. Even drunk, he didn’t like the looks of this.
Neither did I: the guy in front of me was not Jerome Lapps, but a slender, towheaded fellow in his mid-twenties. The empty sleeve of his left arm was tucked into a sport-coat pocket.
I was a hell of a tough character: I’d just bested a cripple. Of course, I had to pull a gun to do it.
“What the hell...” the redheaded kid began. His eyes were wide at the sight of the gun in my hand. The one-armed guy in front of me seemed less impressed.
“Police officer,” I said to the redhead. “Go away.”
He swallowed, nodded, and went.
“You’re Jerome’s roommate?” I asked the one-armed fellow.
“Yeah. Name’s Robinson. Who are you? You really a cop?”
“I run a private agency,” I said. “What branch were you in?”
“Army.”
I nodded. “Marines,” I said. I put the gun away. “You got a smoke?”
He nodded; with the one hand he had left, he got some Chesterfields out of his sport-coat pocket. Shook one out for me, then another for himself. He put the Chesterfields back and got out a silver Zippo. He lit us both up. He was goddamn good with that hand.
“Thank God them bastards left me with my right,” he grinned sheepishly.
He sat on his bed. I sat across from him on Lapps’.
We smoked for a while. I thought about a punk kid cutting out pinups of Hitler while sharing a room with a guy who lost an arm over there. I was so happy I’d fought for the little fucker’s freedoms.
“You’re looking for Jerry, aren’t you?” he asked. His eyes were light blue and sadder than a Joan Crawford picture.
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. “Figured that kid would get himself into trouble.”
“You roomed with him long?”
“Just for summer session. He’s not a bad kid. Easy to get along with. Quiet.”
“You know what he’s got under his bed?”
“No.”
“Suitcases full of stolen shit. If you need a new wristwatch, you picked the right roomie.”
“I didn’t know he was doing anything like that.”
“Then what made you think he was going to get himself in trouble?”
“That black leather jacket of his.”
“Huh?”
He shrugged. “When he’d get dressed up like a juvie. That black leather jacket. Dungarees. White T-shirt. Smoking cigarettes.” He sucked on his own cigarette, shook his head. “He’d put that black leather jacket on, not every night, more like every once in a while. I’d ask him where he was going. You know what he’d say?”