“No.”
“On the prowl.”
I thought about that.
“Is his black leather jacket hanging in that closet you were lookin’ in?”
“No,” I said.
“Then guess where he is right now.”
“On the prowl,” I said.
He nodded.
12
Now I was on the prowl.
I went up Lakeshore, turned onto Sheridan, and followed it up to the Loyola El stop. The notepad on Lapps’ desk had sent me here, to Rogers Park, the northernmost neighborhood in Chicago; beyond was Evanston. Here, in a three-block-wide and fourteen-block-long band between the lake and the El tracks was the middle-class residential area that would suit the kid’s M.O.
Lapps seemed partial to a certain type of building; according to Drury, many of the boy’s burglaries were pulled off in tall, narrow apartment buildings consisting of small studio apartments. Same was true of where the two women who’d been killed had lived, and Katherine Reynolds, too.
First I would look for the dark-haired, black-leather-jacketed Lapps around the El stops — he had no car — and then I would cruise the side streets off Sheridan, looking in particular for that one type of building.
Windows rolled down, half-leaned out, I crawled slowly along, cutting the Plymouth’s headlights as I cruised the residential neighborhoods; that way I didn’t announce myself, and I seemed to be able to eyeball the sidewalks and buildings better that way. Now and then another car blinked its brights at me, but I ignored them and cruised on through the unseasonably cool July night.
About two blocks down from the Morse Avenue business district, on a street of modest apartment buildings, I spotted two guys running back the direction I’d come. The one in the lead was a heavy-set guy in his T-shirt; close on his heels was a fellow in a plaid shirt. At first I thought one was chasing the other, but then it was clear they were together, and very upset.
The heavy-set guy was slowing down and gesturing with open hands. “Where d’he go? Where d’he go?”
The other guy caught up to him and they both slowed down; in the meantime, I pulled over and trotted over to them.
“The cops, already!” the heavy-set guy said joyously. He was a bald guy in his forties; five o’clock shadow smudged his face.
I didn’t correct their assumption that I was a cop. I merely asked, “What gives, gents?”
The guy in the plaid shirt, thin, in his thirties, glasses, curly hair, pointed at nothing in particular and said, in a rush, “We had a prowler in the building. He was in my neighbor’s flat!”
“I’m the janitor,” the fat guy said, breathing hard, hands on his sides, winded. “I caught up to the guy in the lobby, but he pulled a gun on me.” He shook his head. “Hell, I got a wife in the hospital, and three kids, that all need me unventilated. I let ’im pass.”
“But Bud went and got reinforcements,” the thin guy said, taking over, pointing to himself, “and my wife called the cops. And we took chase.”
That last phrase almost made me smile, but I said, “Was it a dark-haired kid in a black leather jacket?”
They both blinked and nodded, properly amazed.
“He’s going to hop the El,” I said. I pointed to the thin guy. “You take the Morse El stop, I’ll...”
A scream interrupted me.
We turned toward the scream and it became a voice, a woman’s voice, yelling, “He’s up there!”
We saw her then, glimpsed between two rather squat apartment houses: a stout, older woman, lifting her skirts almost daintily as she barreled down the alley. I ran back there; the two guys were trailing well behind, and not eagerly. A lame horse could have gained the same lead.
The fleeing woman saw me, and we passed each other, her going in one direction, me in the other. She looked back and pointed, without missing a step, saying, “Up on the second-floor porch!” Then she continued on with her escape. It would have been a comic moment, if the alley hadn’t been so dark and I hadn’t been both running and scrambling for my nine millimeter.
I slowed to face the backyard of a two-story brick building and its exposed wooden back stairways and porches. Despite what the fleeing woman had said, the second-floor porch seemed empty, though it was hard to telclass="underline" it was dark back here, the El tracks looming behind me, casting their shadow. Maybe she meant the next building down...
As I was contemplating that, a figure rose on the second-floor porch and pointed a small revolver at me and I could see the hand moving, he was pulling the trigger, but his gun wasn’t firing, wasn’t working.
Mine was. I squeezed off three quick rounds and the latticework wood near him got chewed up, splinters flying. I didn’t know if I’d hit him or not, and didn’t wait to see; I moved for those steps, and bolted up one flight, and was at the bottom of the second when the figure loomed up above me, at the top of the stairs, and I saw him, his pale handsome face under long black greasy hair, his black leather jacket, his dungarees, and he threw the revolver at me like a baseball, and I ducked to one side, and swung my nine millimeter up just as he leaped.
He knocked me back before I could fire, back through the railing of the first-floor porch, snapping it into pieces like so many matchsticks, and we landed in a tangle on the grass, my gun getting lost on the trip. Then he was on top of me, like he was fucking me, and he was a big kid, powerful, pushing me down, pinning me like a wrestler, his teeth clenched, his eyes wide and maniacal.
I heaved with all my strength and weight and pitched him off to one side, but he didn’t lose his grip on me, and we rolled, and I was on top now, only he hadn’t given up, he hadn’t let go, he had me more than I had him and that crazed, glazed look on his face scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t punch him, even though I seemed to have the advantage, couldn’t get my arms free, and he rocked up, as if he wanted to take a bite out of my face.
I was holding him down, but it was a standoff at best.
Then I sensed somebody coming up — that janitor and his skinny pal, maybe.
But the voice I heard didn’t belong to either of them: “Is that the prowler?”
Still gripping my powerful captive by his arms, I glanced up and saw hovering over us a burly guy in swimming trunks holding a clay flowerpot in his hands.
“That’s him,” I said, struggling.
“That’s all I wanted to know,” the burly guy said, and smashed the flowerpot over the kid’s head.
15
On the third smack, the flowerpot — which was empty — shattered into fragments and the kid’s eyes rolled back and went round and white and blank like Orphan Annie’s, and then he shut them. Blood was streaming down the kid’s pale face. He was ruggedly handsome, even if Cornell Wilde was stretching it.
I got off him and gulped for my breath and the guy in his bathing trunks said, “Neighbors said a cop was after a prowler.”
I stuck my hand out. “Thanks, buddy. I didn’t figure the cavalry would show up in swim trunks, but I’ll take what I can get.”
His grasp was firm. He was an affable-looking, open-faced, hairy-chested fellow of maybe thirty-five. We stood over the unconscious kid like hunters who just bagged a moose.
“You a cop?”
“Private,” I said. “My name’s Nate Heller.”
He grinned. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Bill Drury’s pal, aren’t you? I’m Chet Dickinson — I work traffic in the Loop.”