“Shit,” Sloan said.
“When’s he due back?” Lucas asked.
“Tuesday morning. He should be in by noon.”
“Do you have any netsukes?” Sloan asked.
The young man’s eyebrows went up again. “I believe we do, but you’d have to ask Alan. He handles all the more expensive items.”
CHAPTER
22
Lucas took off his coat and tossed it on the mattress. The two surveillance cops, one tall, one short, were sitting on folding chairs, facing each other, with another chair between them. They were playing gin, the cards laid out on the seat of the middle chair. One of the cops watched the window while the other surveyed his hand. They were good at it. Their shift covered the prime time.
“Nothing?” asked Lucas.
“Nothing,” said the tall cop.
“Anything from the cars?”
“Not a thing.”
“Who’s in them?”
“Davey Johnson and York, up north, behind McGowan’s. Sally Johnson and Sickles, out east. Blaney is over on the west side with a new guy, Cochrane. I don’t know him.”
“Cochrane’s that tall blond kid, plays basketball in the league,” the short cop chipped in. He fanned his cards, dropped them on the seat of the chair between them, and said, “Gin.”
A radio against one wall played golden-oldie rock. A police radio sat silently next to it.
“He’s about due,” Lucas said, peering out into the street.
“This week,” the short one agreed. “Which is odd, when you think about it.”
“What’s odd?”
“Well, one of the notes he left said something about ‘Don’t set a pattern.’ So what does he do? He kills somebody every two weeks. That’s a pattern if I ever saw one.”
“He kills when he needs to,” Lucas said. “The need builds up, and eventually he can’t stand it.”
“Takes two weeks to build up?”
“Looks like it.”
The police radio burped and all three of them turned to look at it. “Car,” it said. And a moment later, “This is Cochrane. It’s a red Pontiac Bonneville.”
The tall cop leaned back, picked up a microphone, and said, “Watch it. It’s the right size, even if it’s the wrong color.”
“Coming your way,” Cochrane said. “We got the tag, we’ll run it.”
Lucas and the surveillance cop watched the car roll down the street and ease to the curb two houses down. It sat with its lights on for one minute, two, and Lucas said, “I’m going down there.”
He was at the stairs when the tall cop said, “Hold it.”
“What?”
“It’s the girl.”
“High-school girl down the street,” said the short cop. “She’s going up to the house now. Must be a date.”
Lucas walked back in time to see her going through the porch door. The car left.
“Could be something going on with her phones,” the short cop said a while later. The phone-monitoring station was at the other surveillance post, behind McGowan’s house.
“What? You mean McGowan’s?” asked Lucas.
“There were a bunch of calls last week and over the weekend. There’d be a whole group, a half-hour apart, more or less. But whoever it is doesn’t leave a message on the answering machine. The machine answers and they hang up.”
“Everybody does that—hangs up on machines,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, but this is a little different. It’s the first time it’s happened, for one thing, a bunch of calls. And she has an unlisted number. If it was a friend, you’d think he’d leave a message instead of calling over and over.”
“It’s like somebody’s checking on her,” said the tall cop.
“Can’t trace them?”
“It’s two rings and click, he’s gone.”
“Maybe we ought to change the machine,” said Lucas.
“Maybe. She’s due home in, what, an hour and a half?”
“Something like that.”
“We could do it then. Set it for five rings.”
Lucas went back to the mattress and the two cops started the gin game again.
“What do I owe you?” asked the tall cop.
“Hundred and fifty thousand,” said the short one.
“One game, double or nothing?”
Lucas grinned, closed his eyes, and tried to think about Alan Nester. Something there. Probably the fear that the netsuke purchase would be discovered and questioned. The purchase bordered on fraud. That was almost certainly it. Damn. What else was there?
Half an hour later, the cop radio burped again.
“This is Davey,” a voice said, carrying an edge of excitement. “It’s showtime, folks.”
Lucas rolled to his feet and the tall cop reached back and grabbed the microphone.
“What do you got, Davey?”
“We got a single white male dressed in dark slacks, dark jacket, dark gloves, watch cap, dark shoes, on foot,” Davey Johnson said. Johnson had been on the street for years. He didn’t get excited without reason, and his voice was crackling with intensity. “He’s heading your way, coming right down the street toward you guys. If he’s heading for McGowan’s, he’ll be in sight of the side of the back-lot house in one minute. This dude’s up to something, man, he ain’t out for no country stroll.”
“York with you?”
“He’s gone on foot, behind this guy, staying out of sight. I’m staying with the unit. God damn, he’s walking right along, he’s crossing the street, you other guys out on the wings, start moving up, goddam—”
“We see him out the side windows of our house,” said a new voice.
“That’s Kennedy at the other post,” the tall cop said to Lucas.
Lucas turned and headed for the stairs. “I’m going.”
“He’s going in the alley,” he heard Kennedy call as he ran down the first few steps. “He’s in her yard. You guys move . . .”
Lucas ran down the three flights of steps to the front door and brushed past the white-haired architect who stood in the hallway with a newspaper and a pipe, and ran out into the yard.
The maddog parked five blocks from McGowan’s house, facing the Interstate. Checked the street signs. Parking was okay. Lots of cars on the same side of the street.
The weather had turned bad early in the morning. A cold rain fell for a while in the afternoon, died away, started again, stopped. Now it felt like snow. The maddog left the car door unlocked. Not much of a risk in this neighborhood.
The sidewalk was still damp, and he walked along briskly, one arm swinging, the other holding a short, wide pry bar next to his side. Just the thing for a back door.
Down one block, another, three, four, onto McGowan’s block. A car started somewhere and the maddog turned his head in that direction, slowed. Nothing more. He glanced quickly around, just once, knowing that furtiveness attracts attention all by itself. His groin began to tingle with the preentry excitement. This would be a masterpiece. This would set the town on its ear. This would make him more famous than Sam, more famous than Manson.
Maybe not Manson, he thought.
He turned into the alley. Another car engine. Two cars? He walked down the alley, reached McGowan’s yard, glanced around again, took a half-dozen steps into the yard. A car’s wheel squealed in deceleration a block away, the other end of the alley.
Cops.
In that instant, when the turning wheels squealed against the blacktop, he knew he had been suckered.
Knew it. Cops.
He ran back the way he had come.
Another car, down the block. A tremendous clatter behind him; one of the cars had hit something. More cops. A door slammed. Across the street. Another one, behind McGowan’s.
He turned out of the alley, the pry bar slipping from beneath his jacket and falling to the grass, and he ran across the yard one house down from McGowan’s, through bridal wreath, running in the night, hit a lilac bush, fell, people shouting, “Hold it hold it hold it . . .”
The maddog ran.
The rookie Cochrane was at the wheel, and tires squealed as he slowed and cranked left into the alley, an unintended squeal, and his partner blurted “Jesus!” and quick as a turning rat, they saw the maddog run into the alley ahead of them. Cochrane wrenched the car straight in the alley, smashed through two empty garbage cans, and went after him.