Брайан Гарфилд - Death Sentence

“I did a couple of museums,” he said. “No point driving around in this blizzard.”

“Have you seen the papers?”

“Yes.”

She put a fingernail on the vigilante headline. “It’s got the machine in a real uproar.”

“I imagine it would.” He contrived to make his voice casual. “Do you want another one of those?”

“Not just yet.”

He ordered scotch and water. The waitress repeated the words in a heavy French accent and went away wiggling the tail of her bunny costume.

“I spent half the day in the Museum of Science and Industry. You could get lost in that place.” He’d been looking for muggers in the dark corridors where they liked to prey on wandering teen-agers and old women.

“I keep wondering if it isn’t one of our esteemed mayor’s crazy stunts.”

“What’s that?”

“The vigilante,” she said. “It could be a cop, you know.”

“I suppose it could be.”

“Or the whole thing might be a phony. Suppose it’s something they’ve cooked up in the crime lab? The victims could have been shot by eleven different guns, for all we know — we’ve only got the crime lab’s word for it that there are only two guns involved. Suppose every time they find a dead man with a criminal record, they pin it on the vigilante?”

“Why would they do that?”

“Mastro was in court today to testify in a case. He told me—”

“Who?”

“Vic Mastro. He’s a police captain, they’ve put him in charge of the vigilante case.”

“Oh that’s right,” he said vaguely. “I knew I’d seen the name somewhere.”

“Mastro said something interesting. You know cops, they’ve got an interstate grapevine like everybody else. He’s got a friend on the force in New York. They’re still blaming murders on the vigilante there.”

“Yes, I know. They haven’t caught him yet.”

“He’s been blamed for three killings in the past two weeks in Manhattan. Mastro thinks they’re phonies. All three were shot by different guns. But the police are keeping the vigilante alive.”

“You mean he’s dead?”

“Nobody knows. But as long as the vigilante gets publicity, the crime rate stays down.”

“Is it really down? There was a lot of debate about that when I was still in New York. The police and the mayor’s office denied there’d been much change.”

“They had to. Otherwise they’d be admitting the vigilante was accomplishing what their own police department couldn’t accomplish. The fact is, street crimes were off almost fifty percent for a while. They’ve started to climb again, but it’s still far below the record rate. Mastro insists they’re keeping the vigilante myth going for that reason.”

Paul reached for the scotch when the waitress took it off her tray. “What’s happened to the crime rate here in Chicago?”

“Down about twenty percent in the past few days.”

“Well it might be a policeman,” he said. “Or a small secret group of policemen.” He lit her cigarette for her; he’d taken to carrying matches with him. “Let’s talk about something a little less grim.”

She smiled. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotten too used to taking my work home with me. What time is the party?”

“Seven. You sure you want to go?”

“It’ll be a change from the faces I see around the courtroom.”

“They’re probably crashing bores.”

“We can always leave early.”

The car had been manufactured before the introduction of interlocks or seat-belt buzzers and she perched next to him on the middle of the seat. He was pleased and he was alarmed. There was too much conflict in his reactions to her. He had contrived to cement the acquaintance because he needed to know more than the newspapers could tell him about the official hunt for the vigilante: every item of knowledge would help him stay ahead of them. Now that he knew she was on good terms with Mastro he knew he had to go on cultivating her. At the same time he liked her and that was dangerous because he could not afford ever to relax with her.

He waited in the living room of her apartment while she changed behind the bedroom’s closed door; he sipped a drink and read about himself in the Tribune.

“That’s lovely,” he said when she appeared. Pleased, she pirouetted for him; Paul laughed at her. At the awning on the sidewalk he opened the umbrella and convoyed her to the car under it; then they were driving north in a crawling tangle of half-blind cars, wipers batting the snow.

“You’re a very careful driver.”

“I lived all my life in New York. This is the first car I’ve ever owned. I’ve had a license since I was eighteen but I’ve never particularly enjoyed driving.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re still alive.”

He had to counter the impulse to look sharply at her. She’d said it cheerfully enough; she meant nothing by it. But her eyes in repose had something near a mischievous expression and at times he had the odd feeling she was amused by him: the feeling that she could see his every thought. It was a fantasy but it unnerved him; she was a clever woman and that implied peril.

She fumbled a cigarette from her bag and dropped it and Paul nearly panicked when she began to feel around on the floor for it. Suppose her hand touched the .38 that was clipped to the springs under the seat?

She found the cigarette and punched the dashboard lighter.

“I’m not sure whether that thing works.”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

The lighter clicked and she put the red end to her cigarette. “For shame. You didn’t test it before you bought the car?”

“I kicked the tires. Isn’t that enough?” Get a grip on yourself.

Childress lived on Clark Square in Evanston. The square was a park that fronted on the lake; three sides were faced by stately old houses and big trees heavy with snow arched over the street. It had a kind of decaying dignity like parts of Riverdale he’d seen.

They picked their way under the umbrella, skirting drifts and puddles. In front of the house a small car was parked. “That’s Childress’s car. Spalter told me about it.”

“He does have a sense of humor, doesn’t he.”

The bumper sticker was large and bright-hued: “Be American — Buy American.” The car was a Datsun.

The lawns were the sort that in the spring would bloom with azaleas and rhododendrons. You’d probably see children riding their bikes along the shaded sidewalks. Northwestern University was close by; doubtless some of the deans lived here; it was an odd neighborhood for an executive like Childress who routinely was described by flacks as “towering” but Spalter had explained that Childress had been born and raised in the house and had never entertained thoughts of moving to a more expensive area. Paul wondered how it would feel to live with his roots as solidly implanted as that; he had spent his own life adrift from apartment to apartment, driven from neighborhood to neighborhood by the constant shifts in New York’s ethnic and economic boundaries. He couldn’t remember having had anything like a home in the apple-pie Hollywood sense. It wasn’t a lack for which he’d ever pitied himself but at times he was curious about it and the old-glove comfort of Childress’s Victorian house brought the feeling to the surface.

It was a center-hall house with matter-of-fact staircase and carpeting that had seen wear. A maid admitted them: she wore an aproned uniform that put him in mind of old movies. Gusts of laughter and talk came along the hall. Paul noticed the windowpanes were striped with electronic alarm tape.

Childress and Spalter appeared behind a woman in the far doorway; the three of them advanced smiling and there was a round of introductions and handshakes. The woman proved to be Childress’s wife. She was a middle-aged club-woman, inclined to fat, grimly corseted; Paul had a glimmer of the motivation behind Childress’s disapproval of corporate wives.