"Son of a bitch," he said. He turned off the tape recorder and went upstairs, looked at the cut, which was superficial, washed it, bandaged it, and went back down the stairs.
The tape recorder had picked up the sound of the shot, along with the clank when the silencer pulled apart, but he would not have identified either of the noises as a shot.
The silencer was a mess. The internal tube had been knocked out of alignment with the gun's barrel, either by the blast of gases ahead of the slug or by the slug itself. It hadn't changed the slug's trajectory much. He made some mental notes on alterations to the silencer. The main requirement was that it had to be easily detached from the gun and just as easily disassembled. Accuracy counted not at all.
When he had finished examining the silencer and decided on the alterations he would make, he dug the slug out of the telephone books and looked at it. It was a handgun hunter's hollow-point and was so deformed that it would take an expert to identify its exact caliber.
Lucas nodded. He had the right ammunition, but he needed time to work on the silencer.
He had yet to make the blank.
***
Midmorning. Gray light filtered in through the kitchen window as he tried to wake up with coffee and an aging bagel. The Smith, with silencer modified and reattached, was in a disreputable-looking gym bag he'd found in a back closet. The gun/silencer combination was grossly illegal. If, somehow, it was found in his car, he would claim that he'd taken it off the street.
A car door slammed close by and he picked up the cup of coffee and stepped into the hallway and peered out the front windows. Carla Ruiz coming up the driveway, a taxi pulling away. He stuffed the gym bag under the kitchen sink, walked back to the bedroom, and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. The doorbell rang and he pulled a sweatshirt over his head, went out to the door, and let her in.
"Hi," she said softly, her face down, looking at him only in brief lateral glances.
"What's wrong?"
"I thought we should have some coffee."
"Sure," he said curiously. "I've got some hot water." He led her into the kitchen, dumped a heaping teaspoon of instant coffee into an oversize ceramic cup, and handed it to her.
"Jennifer Carey came over last night," she said as she sat down. She unbuttoned her coat but left it on.
"Oh." Lucas sat down across the table.
"We had a talk."
Lucas looked away from her into the front room. "And did you decide my future? Between the two of you?"
Carla smiled a very small smile. "Yeah," she said. She took a sip of coffee.
"Good of you to let me know," Lucas said sourly.
"We thought it was the polite thing to do," Carla said, and Lucas had to laugh in spite of himself.
"What did you decide?"
"She gets custody," Carla said.
"You don't mind?"
"I mind, kind of. It makes me angry that you were sleeping with us alternately, one down here, one up in the North Woods. But I figured our relationship wasn't long for the world. We live in different places. I weave, you shoot people. And it seemed like she had a better prior claim, with the baby and all."
"What about what I want?"
"We decided that didn't matter too much. Jennifer said you'd wiggle and squirm, but eventually you'd come around."
"Now, that pisses me off," Lucas said, no longer smiling.
"Tough," Carla said.
They stared at each other across the table. Lucas flinched first. "I may tell Jennifer to take a hike," he said.
"Not with her being pregnant," Carla said, shaking her head. "No chance. That's Jennifer's judgment, and I agree. I asked her what she'd do if you went with somebody else. She said she'd go over and have another talk with the somebody else."
"Jesus," Lucas said. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back and massaged the back of his neck. "What'd I do to deserve this?"
"Slept with one too many women," Carla said. "It's actually pretty flattering, when you think about it. She's good-looking and smart. And in her own screwed-up way, she's in love with you. In my own screwed-up way, I'm not-though I'd still like to use the cabin a couple of times a year. Until I can afford my own."
"Anytime," Lucas said wistfully. He wanted to say more, but couldn't think of anything.
Carla took a last sip of coffee, pushed the cup, still half-full, into the middle of the table, and stood up.
"I better get going," she said. "The cab should be back."
Lucas sat where he was. "Well, it was real."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked as she retrieved her purse.
"That's what you say when you can't think of anything to say."
"Okay." She buttoned her coat. "See you."
"How come Jennifer didn't deliver the message?"
"We talked about that and decided I should do it. That'd make a clean break between us. Besides, she said you'd spend about a half-hour on some kind of Catholic guilt trip, then you'd go into a rage and kick stuff, then you'd try to call her on the telephone so you could yell at her. Then in about two hours you'd start laughing about it. She said she'd rather skip the preliminaries." Carla glanced at her watch. "She'll be over in two hours."
"Motherfucker," Lucas said in disbelief.
"You got that right," Carla said as she went out the door. A yellow cab was waiting. She stopped with the screen door still open. "Call you next spring. About the cabin."
***
It was more like three hours. When Jennifer arrived, she wasn't embarrassed in the slightest.
"Hi," she said when he opened the door. She walked past him, took off her coat, and tossed it on the couch. "Carla called, said the talk went okay."
"I'm pretty unhappy-" Lucas started, but she waved him off.
"Spare me. McGowan's going to network, by the way. It's all over town."
"Fuck McGowan."
"Better hurry," Jennifer said. "She'll be gone in a month. But I still think what you did was awful. McGowan's just too dumb to recognize it."
"Goddammit, Jennifer..."
"If you're going to yell, we could have this talk some other time."
"I'm not going to yell," he said grimly. He thought he might strangle.
"Okay. So I thought I might give you my position. That is, if you'd like to hear it."
"Sure. I mean, why not? You're running the rest of my life."
"My position is, I'm pregnant and the daddy shouldn't screw anybody else until the baby is born, and maybe"-she paused, as though considering the fairness of her proposition-"maybe a year old. Maybe two years old. That way, I can kind of pretend like I'm married and talk to you about the baby and what we did during the day and his first words and how he's walking and I won't have to worry about you fooling around. And then, when you can't stand it and start fooling around again, I can just pretend like I'm divorced."
She smiled brightly. Lucas was appalled.
"That's the coldest goddamn thing I ever heard," he said.
"It's not exactly an extemporaneous speech," she said. "I rewrote it about twelve times, I thought it was rather cogently expressed, but with enough emotion to make it convincing."
Lucas laughed, then stopped laughing and sat down. He looked haggard, she thought. Or harried. "All right. I give up," he said.
"All right to all of it?"
"Yeah. All of it."
"Scout's honor?"
"Sure." He held up the three fingers. "Scout's honor."
***
Late in the evening, Lucas lay on the surveillance team's mattress and thought about it. He could live with it, he thought. For two years? Maybe.
"That's weird. You see that?" said the first surveillance cop.
"I didn't see anything," said his partner.
"What?" asked Lucas.
"I don't know. It's like there's some movement over there. Just a little bit, at the edge of the window."
Lucas crawled over and looked out. The maddog's apartment was da
rk except for the faint glow from the night-light.
"I don't see anything," he said. "You think he's doing something?"
"I don't know. Probably nothing. It's just every once in a while... it's like he's watching us. "
CHAPTER
30
It was the winning stroke. If he had the nerve, he could pull it off. He imagined Davenport's face. Davenport would know, but he wouldn't know how, and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it.
In some ways, of course, it would be his most intellectual mission. He didn't need this particular woman, but he would take her anyway. To the police-not Davenport, but the others-there would be a logic to it. A logic they could understand.
In the meantime, the other pressure had begun to build. There was a woman who lived in the town of Richfield, a schoolteacher with almond eyes and rich sable hair, wide teeth like a Russian girl's. He had seen her with a troop of her children in the basement level of the Government Center, installing an elementary-school art show...
No. He put her out of his mind. The need would grow, but he could control it. It was a matter of will. And his mind had to be clear to deal with the stroke.
He first had to break free, if only for two hours. He didn't see them, but they were there, he was sure, a web of watchers escorting him through the city's streets and skyways. His night watches and his explorations in the attic had been fruitful. He knew, he thought, where two of their surveillance posts were. The lighting patterns were wrong for families or individuals, and he saw car lights coming and going at odd hours of the night, always from the same two houses. One of the houses, he was sure, had been empty until recently.
They were waiting for him to move. Before he could, he had to break free. Just for two hours. He thought he had a way.
The law firm of Woodley, Gage & Whole occupied three floors of an office building two blocks from his own. He had twice encountered one of their attorneys in real-estate closings, a man named Kenneth Hart. After each of the closings, they'd had lunch. If someone had ever asked the maddog who his friends were, he would have mentioned Hart. Now he hoped that Hart remembered him.
At Woodley, Gage, status was signified by floor assignment. The main reception area was on the third floor, the floor shared by the partners. The lesser lights were on the fourth. The smallest lights of all were on the fifth. With a less-affluent firm, a client arriving at the third-floor reception area in search of a fourth- or fifth-floor attorney would be routed back down the hall to the elevators. With this firm, no such side trip was necessary. There was an internal elevator and an internal stairway.
Best of all, there were exits to the parking garage on all of the first eight floors. If he could go into Woodley, Gage on the third floor, and the cops didn't know about the internal elevator, he could slip out on five.
Before he could use Woodley, Gage, a preliminary excursion would be necessary, and it would have to take place under the noses of his watchers.
The maddog left the office early, drove his bugged Thunderbird south to Lake Street, found a place to park, got out, and walked along the row of dilapidated shops. He passed a dealer in antiques, peered through the dark glass, and breathed a sigh of relief. The fishing lures were still in the window.
He walked on another half-block to a computer-supply store, where he bought a carton of computer paper and headed slowly back to the car, still window-shopping. He paused at the antiques dealer's again, pretending to debate whether or not to enter. He should not overplay it, he thought; the watchers would be professionals and might sense something. He went inside.
"Can I help you?"
A woman emerged from the back of the shop. She had iron-colored hair tied back in a bun, her hands clasped in front of her. If she'd been wearing a shawl, she'd have looked like a phony grandmother on a package of chocolate-chip cookies. As it happened, she was wearing a cheap blue suit with a red tie and had the strained rheumy look of a longtime alcoholic.
"Those fishing lures in the window; are they expensive?" asked the maddog.
"Some are, some aren't," the woman said. She maneuvered around him toward the display, keeping her feet wide apart for balance. She's drunk, the maddog thought.
"How about the bluegill one?" he asked.
"That's hand-carved, hand-painted up at Winnibigoshish. There are a lot of fakes around, you know, but this is the real thing. I bought the whole bunch from an old resort owner last summer, he was cleaning out his cellar."
"So how much?"
She looked him over speculatively. "Twenty?"
"Sold."
She looked like she wished she'd asked for more. "Plus tax," she said. He left the store with the lure in a brown paper bag and went to the bank, where he wrote a check for two thousand dollars.
***
The bluegill was carved from a solid piece of pine and had three rusty treble hooks dangling from it. An early pike lure, the woman said, probably carved back in the thirties. The maddog knew nothing about fishing lures, but this one had the rustic rightness of real folk art. If he collected anything, he thought, he might collect this stuff, like Hart did. He would call Kenneth Hart tomorrow, just after lunch.
***
He rethought the entire project during the night and decided to call it off. At dawn, groggy, he staggered to the bathroom and took half a pill. Just before it carried him away, he changed his mind again, and decided to go ahead.
"Hello, Ken?"
"This is Ken Hart..." A little wary.
"This is Louis Vullion, down at Felsen..."
"Sure. What's up?" Friendly now.
"You going to be in for a few minutes?"
"I've got a meeting at two..."
"Just want to see you for a minute. Got something for you, actually."
"Come on over."
***
The invisible net, he supposed, spread around him as he moved through the skyways. He tried not to look, but couldn't help himself. A lot of the watchers would be women, he knew. They were the best tails. At least, the books said so.
The maddog left his regular wool overcoat in his office and went to Hart's office wearing a suit coat and carrying a briefcase. An inexpensive tan trench coat was rolled and stuffed inside the briefcase, along with a crushable tweed hat.
The maddog went directly to the third-floor reception area of Hart's firm.
"I'm here to see Ken Hart," he told the receptionist.
"Do you have an appointment, Mr.... ?"
"Vullion. I'm an attorney from Felsen-Gore. I called Ken a few minutes ago to tell him I was running over."
"Okay." She smiled at him. "Go down the hall..."
He smiled back as pleasantly as he could. "I know the way."
He went down the hall and punched the private elevator for the fifth floor. The net, he hoped, was fixed on the third-floor reception area.
"Ken?" The other attorney was paging through a brief, and looked up at the maddog.
"Hey. Louis. Come on in, sit down."
"Uh, I really can't, I'm in a rush," the maddog said, glancing at his wristwatch. "I wanted to drop something off. Remember when we ate lunch, you mentioned you collected old fishing lures? I was up north a couple weeks ago..." He dumped the lure out of the paper bag onto Hart's desk.
"Whoa. That's a good one," Hart said, looking pleased. "Thanks, man. How much do I owe you?"
"I virtually stole the thing," the maddog said, shaking his head. "I'd be embarrassed to tell you. Of course, if you want to buy the cheeseburgers after the next closing..."
"You got a deal," Hart said enthusiastically. "Damn, this is really a good one."
"I've got to get out of here. Can I get out on this floor, or do I have to run back down... ?"
"No, no, just down the hall," Hart said. He came with him to his office door and pointed. "And jeez, Louis, thanks a lot."
Thank you, the maddog thought as he left. The whole charade had been an excuse to walk through the door on the fifth floor
. He hesitated before he pushed through. This was critical. If there were people outside in the hallway, and if one of them happened to wander along behind as he went out through the parking ramp, he would have to call it off. He took a breath and pushed through the door. The hallway was empty.
The maddog walked the width of the building to the parking ramp, stopped before the steel fire door, took out the coat and hat, put them on, and stepped outside. The ramp had its own elevator, but the maddog took the stairs, looking down each flight before he took it. At the ground floor he kept his head down and strode out onto the sidewalk a full block from the entrance to Hart's building. He crossed the street, jaywalking, walked into another office building, up one floor, and into one of the remotest skyways in the system. He walked for two minutes and glanced back. There was nobody behind him.