It must have been a long month for Lindsey.
Well, there it was in a nice little package. Robert Minnow’s rising star had been nipped just short of its peak by a dirty bank absconder. I even made some of the out-of-state papers.
I folded them up carefully and slid them back into the racks. Then I stood there looking at them. Inside, I had a vaguely unpleasant feeling, a gnawing doubt that told me I could be wrong and if I was I would hang for the mistake. The basement got cold and damp suddenly.
But it wasn’t the basement. It was me. It was that damn doubt telling me it could have happened that way after all and my lovely crusade was nothing but a fool’s errand.
I could feel the sweat start over my eyes and run down my cheeks. I got so goddamn mad at myself for thinking that I could be wrong that I balled up my fist and slammed it against the side of the metal bin until the place echoed with a dull booming and my knuckles were a mess of torn skin.
I sat down until the mad passed and only the doubt was left. Then I cursed that and everything about Lyncastle I could think of. When I got done swearing to myself I yanked out a couple of the sheets again and opened them to a feature section that sported a two-column spread by a writer named Alan Logan. I jotted his name down in my memory and tucked the papers back.
Of all the people who had anything to say about Robert Minnow or me, he was the only one who didn’t convict me before the trial. The rest had me drawn and quartered in absentium. I went back upstairs and outside where I could smoke. standing on the steps trying to think. I was so damn deep in thought that the chunk I heard didn’t make an impression until I noticed the two kids looking at the wall behind me. I turned around to see what they were looking at, saw it and went flat on my face on the concrete just as there was another chunk.
On the wall right behind my back was a quarter-sized dimple plated with the remains of a soft-nosed lead bullet and if I had been standing up the last one would have gone right through my intestines.
If I had rolled the kids probably would have followed me, so I got up on my feet and ran like hell. I tore around the back of the building, shoved the gate open and angled off into an alley that led to the street.
Now the fun was beginning. This was more like it. Guys who were better at tailing somebody than the cops. Guys with silenced rifles who didn’t give a damn about kids standing around their target. Now I didn’t have any doubt any more.
I made a quick circuit of the block until I reached the corner where I could see the library. Opposite the building the street was lined with private residences and it was a sure bet that I wasn’t being potted at from there. They wouldn’t have missed if they were that close.
But behind the private homes on the other side of the block was a solid string of apartment houses with nice flat roofs that were perfect gun platforms and anybody at all could get to the top if they wanted to badly enough. There wasn’t a bit of sense looking for them. They had plenty of time to get away, and a gun could be broken in half and carried on the street wrapped up in a mighty innocent-looking package.
Out of plain curiosity I crossed the street, walked the one block and turned in at the first apartment. It was a five-story affair like the rest with a self-service elevator. I took it to the top, got out and walked up the short flight of stairs to the roof. That’s how easy it was.
A guy was bending over fastening a television antenna to the chimney and gave me a “howdy” and a nod when he saw me coming. I said, “Anybody been up here the last few minutes, Mac?”
He dropped his wrench and stretched his legs. “Umm, no, not that I know of. Think there might’ve been somebody down a couple places or so. Heard a door slam.”
“Okay. Thanks.” He went back to work and I stepped over the barrier between the buildings.
You could see the library from nearly every roof top, but you could command it properly from only two if you wanted a good background for a target standing on the steps.
The first one I looked at was where the guy had been.
He was smart, too. There weren’t any empty shell cases around, no scratches on the parapet where a careless guy would have propped a gun, no trinkets that might have fallen from the pockets of a gunman shooting prone, no nothing. I’d even bet the bastard threw his clothes away to get rid of any dust traces he could have picked up.
Yeah, he was smart, all right, but not smart enough to rub out the marks his toes and elbows had left. They made four cute little hollows in the gravel of the roof and when I stretched out on top of them with my own toes in the impressions he made my elbows came out about eight inches above his.
Junior was a shortie. A guy about five-six. And he was going to be a hell of a lot shorter when I caught up with him.
I used the same entrance he had used and didn’t meet a soul going out. I walked to the corner and back up to the main drag without getting shot at either.
It was ten after ten and I used up another half hour buying myself a second jacket. Next to the store where I got the jacket was a pawnshop that had a nice selection of guns displayed in the window and I would have picked one up right there if it weren’t for the sign that said a certificate was required for purchase of any hand gun.
If you wanted to shoot at anybody you had to have a certificate.
Two doors down was a cigar store with a telephone plaque on the front. The old lady behind the counter changed a buck into silver for me and I picked up the Lyncastle News number from the directory.
A voice said hello and I asked for Alan Logan. There was a rapid series of clicks then, “Hello, Logan speaking.”
I said, “Logan, you tied up right now?”
“Who is this?”
“Never mind who it is. I want to speak to you.”
“What’s on your mind, feller?”
“Something that might make a good story. An attempted murder.”
That was all the answer he needed. “I’m not busy. Why?”
“Pick out a nice place where I can meet you. No people, understand?”
“You mean no cops, don’t you?”
“They’re included.”
“There’s a bar on Riverside,” he said. “It’s called the Scioto Trail and its probably just opening up. The owner’s a friend of mine and we can talk in the back room.”
“Okay. Say in a half hour?”
“Good enough.”
I stuck the receiver back in the cradle and went over to the counter. The old lady told me where Riverside was, but I wasn’t about to walk any three miles to get there. I called a cab and had a soda until the cab beeped outside for me.
The guy said, “Where to?”
“Know where the Scioto Trail is on Riverside?”
“Sure, but they ain’t open yet, bud.”
“I’ll wait for it to open.” The driver shrugged and crawled out into the traffic.
The Scioto Trail was a big white frame building that had started life as a private home, lived until the river made a bed in its back yard, then made a quick switch into a gin mill whose owner stuck a dock out from the back porch to pick up the yacht club trade. The parking lot was empty and except for the kid on the gasoline barge that was swinging at anchor near the dock, the place seemed deserted.
I paid off the cabbie and walked around the building to the veranda. A new Chevvy was crowding the back of the building behind a Buick sedan, so the place wasn’t too deserted after all. I rapped on the door a few times, heard heavy feet pounding across the floor inside and a tall skinny guy with a crooked nose pulled the door open and said, “Yeah?”