Why was every goddamn person in Chicago out tonight, and why were so many of them on Belmont Avenue? I wondered savagely. And why were the lights timed so that every time you hit a corner they turned and some asshole grandfather wouldn’t clear the intersection in front of you on the yellow? I pounded the steering wheel in impatience, but it didn’t make the traffic flow faster. No point in sitting on the horn, either. I took some deep diaphragm breaths to steady myself. Ralph, you stupid jerk. Making a present of your life to a man who’s had two people killed in the last two weeks. Because Masters wears the old-boy network tie and you’re on his team he couldn’t possibly do something criminal. Naturally not. I swooped around a bus and got a clear run to Sheridan Road and the mouth of the Drive. It was 7:24. I prayed to the patron saint who protects speeders from speed traps and floored the Monza. At 7:26 I slid off the Drive onto La Salle Street, and down the inner parallel road to Elm Street. At 7:29 I left the car at a fireplug next to Ralph’s building and sprinted inside.
The building didn’t have a doorman. I pushed twenty buttons in quick succession. Several people squawked “Who is it?” through the intercom, but someone buzzed me in. No matter how many break-ins are executed this way, there is always some stupid idiot who will buzz you into an apartment building without knowing who you are. The elevator took a century or two to arrive. Once it came, though, it carried me quickly to the seventeenth floor. I ran down the hall to Ralph’s apartment and pounded on the door, my Smith & Wesson in my hand.
I flattened myself against the wall as the door opened, then dove into the apartment, gun out. Ralph was staring at me in amazement. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said. No one else was in the room.
“Good question,” I said, standing up.
The bell rang and Ralph went to push the buzzer. “I wouldn’t mind if you left,” he remarked. I didn’t move. “At least put that goddamn gun away.” I put it in my jacket pocket but kept my hand on it.
“Do me one favor,” I said. “When you open the door, stand behind it, don’t frame yourself in the doorway.”
“You are the craziest goddamn—”
“If you call me a crazy broad I will shoot you in the back. Block your damned body with the door when you open it.”
Ralph glared at me. When the knocking came a few minutes later, he went straight to the door and deliberately opened it so that it would frame his body squarely. I moved to the side of the room parallel with the door and braced myself. No shots sounded.
“Hello, Yardley, what’s all this?” Ralph was saying.
“This is my young neighbor, Jill Thayer, and these are some associates who’ve come along with me.”
I was stunned and moved toward the door to look. “Jill?” I said.
“Are you here, Vic?” the clear little voice quavered a bit. “I’m sorry. Paul called to say he was coming up on the train and I started to walk into town to meet him at the station. And Mr.—Mr. Masters passed me asked him about that paper and he made me come along with him. I’m sorry, Vic, I know I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“That’s okay, honey—” I started to say, but Masters interrupted with “Ah, you’re here, are you? We thought we’d come visit you and that Viennese doctor Jill admires so much a little later, but you’ve saved us a trip.” He looked at my gun, which I’d pulled out, and smiled offensively. “I would put that away if I were you. Tony here is pretty trigger-happy and I know you’d hate to watch anything happen to Jill.”
Tony Bronsky had come into the room behind Masters. With him was Earl. Ralph was shaking his head, like a man trying to wake up from a dream. I put the gun back into my pocket.
“Don’t blame the girl,” Masters said to me. “But you really shouldn’t have gotten her involved, you know. As soon as Margaret Thayer told me she had come back home, I tried finding a way of talking to her without anyone in the house knowing about it. Sheer luck, really, that she walked down Sheridan just at that time. But we got her to explain quite a bit, didn’t we, Jill?”
I could see now that there was an ugly bruise on the side of her face. “Cute, Masters,” I said. “You’re at your best when you’re beating up little girls. I’d like to see you with a grandmother.” He was right: I’d been stupid to bring her down to Lotty’s and get her involved in things that Masters and Smeissen didn’t want anyone to know about. I’d save my self-reproach for later, though—I didn’t have time for it now.
“Want me to put her away?” Tony breathed, his eyes glistening with happiness, his Z-shaped scar vivid as a wound.
“Not yet, Tony,” Masters said. “We want to find out how much she knows and who she’s told it to…. You, too, Ralph. It’s really a shame you got this Polish gal over here—we weren’t going to shoot you unless it was absolutely necessary, but now I’m afraid we’ll have to.” He turned to Smeissen. “Earl, you’ve had more experience at this kind of thing than I have. What’s the best way to set them up?”
“Get the Warchoski broad’s gun away from her,” Earl said in his squeaky voice. “Then have her and the guy sit together on the couch so that Tony can cover them both.”
“You heard him,” Masters said. He started toward me.
.“No,” Earl squeaked. “Don’t go close to her. Make her drop it. Tony, cover the kid.”
Tony pointed his Browning at Jill. I dropped the S&W on the floor. Earl came and kicked it into the corner. Jill’s little face was white and pinched.