Max Collins - Target Lancer

Shoppa said, “So a shell exploded and turned him homo? That’s a new one.”

“I’m out of my depth there,” Martineau said. “But there’s worse on his record than just perversion-his psychiatric evaluation also notes ‘homicidal threats’ and ‘chronic brain syndrome associated with brain trauma.’”

“This is just peachy,” Shoppa said.

“So,” I said, “he gets his honorable discharge because the Marines blame themselves for his mental condition.”

Gross asked, “What else do we have on this character?”

Martineau shrugged. “We know that Vallee is, or was, a member of the John Birch Society. We also know he drives a Ford Falcon with New York plates-he moved back to Chicago from Hicksville, Long Island, in March-and of course we know his home address. We don’t have his work address as yet.”

Eben said, “His place of employment is a printing facility of some kind in the Loop. We’re checking out every possibility by phone, emphasizing any plants on the parade route. There’s an agent working that angle right now.”

Martineau said to the two cops, “We would like you men to get right on this. Get over to that rooming house and once Vallee shows up, stake him out, and don’t let loose of him. If you can find a way to get him off the street, do it.”

“You want him off the street,” Shoppa said, rolling his cigar around his mouth, “he’s off the street.”

Martineau raised a calming hand. “Keep in mind Mr. Vallee hasn’t committed a crime.”

“Yet,” I said.

Martineau lifted his eyebrows, then continued: “One of the saddest and most frustrating situations a Secret Service agent faces is knowing that someone threatening a president’s life has not committed an illegal act. Nor is it illegal for Mr. Vallee to have those rifles, that handgun, and that ammunition. He’s protected under the Second Amendment like the rest of us.”

A knock at the door got our attention.

Martineau called, “Yes?”

One of the anonymous crew-cut, dark-rim-glasses-wearing agents stuck his head in. “We have Vallee’s workplace, Marty. It’s the IPP Litho-Plate Company.”

“Good,” Martineau said. “Tell me you didn’t tip our hand. I don’t want this getting back to Vallee.…”

“No,” the agent said, crisply. “Nothing was given away. This was just a routine check, as far as IPP is concerned. Vallee works on the third floor as a lithographer, which apparently means he changes the paper in a big machine.”

“Nice job, Fred. What’s the address?”

“West Jackson Boulevard. 625 West Jackson.”

Martineau whitened.

Ebe groaned, and I said, “Well, fuck a duck.”

The agent in the doorway frowned and said, “That’s on the motorcade route, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Martineau said rather numbly. “Thank you, Fred. That’ll be all.”

The door shut, and the two cops didn’t seem to be getting it. The motorcade route was eleven miles long, after all.

I said, “That address, if I know my Loop geography at all-and we can walk right over there, gents, if you like-is a perfect place to watch the President’s limo make its slow turn from the expressway off-ramp onto Jackson.”

“Ideal for a sniper,” Eben said.

Martineau was on his feet, looking at the map. But he wasn’t saying anything.

“Any of you fellas ex-military?” I asked.

Neither Martineau nor Boldt responded, but both Gross and Shoppa nodded.

“Then maybe you already know this,” I said. “But the way a sniper plans to hit a moving target is by knowing in advance where that target-in this case Lancer-is going to be. The exact point past which the target will stroll by, or maybe drive by in a car. The sniper aims his rifle at a chosen spot and just waits in his nest till the target walks or drives into the crosshairs. That way, a sniper can keep his rifle still as hell, with his only movement the squeezing of the trigger. Saves him from having to move himself and his rifle in sync with that moving target.”

Eben asked, “Does this make Vallee a bigger threat than our team of four assassins?”

Martineau, his back half turned to us as he studied that map, said, “He may be part of that team.”

Shoppa said, “He ain’t Smith or Jones, and he sure as hell ain’t Gonzales or Rodriguez. Listen, we are happy to take Vallee off your hands, Chief Martineau, but are you sure you don’t want your own people on this?”

Martineau was thinking.

Then he wheeled and said, “The AG says our primary suspects are those four: Gonzales, Rodriguez, and-as you put it, Sergeant Shoppa-Smith and Jones. So, yes, take over the Vallee investigation, Lieutenant Gross, which is chiefly a surveillance job at this point. But the moment you see Vallee making contact with any one of those four … call us immediately. Call us right fucking now .”

That was the first time I’d heard Martineau use that kind of language.

Gross glanced at Shoppa, and Shoppa glanced back.

“All right,” Gross said. He was the ranking officer, so it was his decision. “We are on it. Where on Paulina is that rooming house again?”

We gave them the address and they were off.

The cops were barely out of the door, the smell of Shoppa’s cigar still lingering, when another of those crew cuts leaned in and said, “We just got an interesting tip, Marty, courtesy of the Chicago FBI.”

“Yeah?”

“Seems there’s a landlady on the North Side complaining about some ‘spics’ renting a flat from her. She says they have four rifles with telescopic sights in there.”

“Where would we be today,” I said, already on my feet, “without suspicious landladies?”

“Ebe, you and Nate follow this up,” Martineau said.

But Ebe was right behind me, as we trailed the agent out and to his desk, to get that address, grab our raincoats, and go.

The rooming house, oddly enough, was just four blocks south and a couple of blocks east of my town house. The compact nature of the geography of this case was starting to feel weird.

The light-yellow Victorian wood-frame, peak-roofed structure dated to the teens. The landlady lived in the basement apartment of the old three-story, whose outer walls almost touched the newer brick buildings on either side-a twenties-era terra-cotta-trimmed number with offices over a Walgreens drugstore and a nondescript fifties-vintage four-story with apartments over a “New and Used” record shop. Three decades represented by three side-by-side buildings-not unusual in this part of the city.

She met us up the handful of steps on the small porch, a squat woman in her fifties wearing a floral tent and nurse’s shoes, another DP but of Greek extraction. Her features were coarse in a squashed circle face, her hair gray and netted, her eyebrows thick and black with a facial mole perfect for today-Halloween.

I introduced myself, showing her my Justice Department credentials, and, wide-eyed, she pointed past me to Eben Boldt, like somebody about to yell, Fire!

“Is he with you?” she demanded.

“We’re together,” I admitted. “He’s a Secret Service agent.”

She folded her arms like Chief Sitting Bull. “Well, the boy waits outside. No colored allowed.”

Eben’s face turned hard as a carved African mask-a frightening one, at that-also fit for All Hallows’ Eve. He seemed about to verbally explode, so I stepped in.

“Ma’am, he needs to come along. I may require him to take notes for me, or maybe run errands.”

Eben’s eyebrows went up, but so did the heavy black ones on our witchy hostess’s mug.

“Okay, then.” She heaved a wary sigh, then shook a schoolmarmish finger at me. “But you deal with him. I don’t truck with the colored.”