Death Sentence (23 page)

39

H
E SAW
another reason why Pyne had chosen the dilapidated old car: it blended into the neighborhoods Pyne liked to prowl. Nobody was likely to mistake it for an unmarked official car.

It fascinated him to watch the way Pyne worked: it was as if he himself had trained the man. Pyne tried twice to entice muggers to follow him out of night-service pawnshops on the South Side. When that failed he parked the car on a side street and went into a bar and fifteen minutes later came stumbling out, patently drunk, and went wandering in search of his car. No one trailed him. Pyne was perfectly sober when he got in the car and drove away.

Paul gave him a one-block lead.

In the back streets of the ghetto Pyne drove at a crawl, searching the shadows. Paul had to take risks, veering away and driving around a block and waiting for Pyne to go by in front of him; otherwise Pyne would have realized a car was dogging him. He seemed preoccupied with his own hunt and Paul saw no indication that he was worried about surveillance but there was no point making his presence obvious.

Paul reached under the car seat. He pulled out both of his guns; slipped the Centennial in his right coat pocket and the .25 automatic in his left. He had to get rid of them tonight. He had the cleaning kit under the seat as well. He knew where he's get rid of them, on his way home.

The Impala made a right turn into a dark narrow passage. Paul turned right a block earlier and went quickly along the parallel street to the corner, and looked left, waiting for the Impala to appear a block away.

It took too long; the car still didn't show up. Paul made the left and drove to the corner.

It was there, stopped in the middle of the passage; the lights were off. In the darkness it was hard to make things out but he saw the car door open slowly. The interior light did not go on; evidently it had been disconnected. A shadow emerged from the car—vaguely he could see Pyne's light-colored wig. And the hard silhouette of the gun in Pyne's hand.

Pyne's head was thrown back; he was looking at the upper windows of a four-story brick tenement. Paul turned everything off—ignition and lights—and let the car roll silently through the intersection to the far side. When it stopped he set the emergency brake, got out and walked back to the corner.

Pyne had his back to Paul. He stoòd on the sidewalk looking up at the building across the street from him. Paul began to walk forward, not hurrying.

He'd seen what he had to see: the gun in Pyne's hand. It was confirmation enough.

Pyne heard him coming. Casually the gun-hand went into the coat pocket and with the other hand Pyne reached inside and brought out a cigarette. Then to screen his lighter from the wind he turned and hunched, and the maneuver enabled him to peek at Paul.

The tall man saw it wasn't a cop and Paul saw his shoulders relax. Paul glanced up at the building Pyne had been staring at. There was a light moving around behind a window up there—a flashlight, probably. Pyne had keen eyes.

And from where he was standing he commanded an upward view of the outside fire escape of the building.

Paul stopped ten feet away and spoke softly. “Let's let him get away with it this time, what do you say.”

The tall man stared at him.

“Your name's Orson Pyne,” Paul told him, “and that's a .45 caliber Luger in your right hand coat pocket.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“If you ever use that Luger again I'll have to give the police your name. That's all I'll need to tell them. They'll find the rest themselves. It's got to stop, Mr. Pyne. It's no good, it didn't work, it was wrong. You can't just—”

Pyne had very fast reactions. Paul saw the right hand lift from the coat pocket and he didn't have to wait and find out Pyne's intentions; he had time only to throw himself to the side, diving behind Pyne's Impala, and the noise was ear-splitting when the first hollow-point .45 slug smashed the fender of the car above him.

Paul skidded on the frozen surface, abrading his right side; he drew his legs up foetally to get them out of the line of fire; he heard Pyne's feet moving and he jabbed his hand desperately into his. coat pocket. He lay on his right side; it was his left hand and that was the little automatic, the .25, and it felt absurdly toylike in his hand.

The Luger exploded again and the bullet screamed off the pavement; he heard it slam the bricks across the road.

Paul dropped flat. Beneath the car he saw the shadows of the tall man's overshoes, moving hesitantly. Paul fired.

Left-handed; it was a miss; the bullet whined off the curb.

The overshoes began to run toward the car.

Terror pumped adrenaline through him; his hand shook. He rolled back into the street and that was what took Pyne by surprise because Pyne expected him to cling to the shelter of the car. Paul came in sight before Pyne expected it and when Pyne fired it was too hasty; the shot went wide somewhere and Paul was shooting as fast as he could pull trigger, the sounds reverberating madly in the narrow canyon like something careening around inside a metal can.

The .25's stopped Pyne in his tracks and hurled him backward, exploding against his body; the Luger fired once more, high into the air; then the tall man toppled. It was clear by the way he fell that he was dead: one of the wild bullets had struck his throat.

“Dear God.”

40

P
EOPLE WOULD HAVE HEARD
the noise but they wouldn't have a fix on it and it wasn't the kind of place where things were reported immediately to the Man. He glanced at the upper windows; the moving light had been extinguished. Certainly that one wasn't going to report anything.

It came to him then in a moment's crazy inspiration as he crawled to his feet and stood swaying. He felt an insistent hammering behind his eyes. It would work; he saw it full-blown in his mind and he was incredulous.

He took the Centennial from his pocket. He still wore the rubber gloves. He knelt by the dead man. The Luger was clutched in the outflung right hand. Paul slipped the Centennial, into Pyne's left-hand coat pocket. Then he went back to his own car. He had a bad moment of shakes before he was able to turn the key but he knew he had to get clear before he could afford to let the reaction hit him and he forced himself, tightening up the muscles of his stomach and squeezing the steering wheel with all his strength until the dizziness subsided. He gunned the car away and didn't put the headlights on until he was several blocks distant. He heard the approaching sirens but he never saw them; he stayed to the side streets until he was well away.

Then he parked and let himself slump with the back of his head on top of the seat-back, choking down the nausea and letting the shock wash over him, not fighting it, waiting it out.

There was still one thing to do. When he felt strong enough he started the car again and drove north into the Loop. It was nearly two in the morning; the city was dark and silent. He went north onto the Dearborn Avenue bridge and stopped the car in the middle of the bridge. Put the .25 automatic into the paper bag along with the gun-cleaning kit and stepped out of the car. He stopped briefly, his nerves prey to imagined dangers, but nothing stirred in the night and he took two quick strides to the railing and dropped the heavy bag into the Chicago River.

Then he drove home.

41

CHICAGO, JAN.
7
TH
—The Chicago vigilante is dead. He died as he lived, by the gun.

The body of Orson B. Pyne, 47, of 2806 Reba Place, Evanston, was found last night riddled with bullets in a side street off Lafayette Avenue in South Chicago after police received two telephone reports that shots had been heard in the area.

(For story on Pyne's background, see page 14.)

Found in the dead man's possession were a .45 caliber Luger automatic pistol and a .38 S&W Centennial revolver. The Luger had been fired four times, according to the police. The Centennial had not been fired.

Pyne was killed by several shots from a small-caliber weapon, according to Captain Victor Mastro of the Chicago Police Department's special Vigilante Squad.

Mastro said, “He finally ran into a criminal who was faster than he was.”

Police are searching for the man who killed Pyne but if there are clues to his identity, the police are not revealing them. Captain Mastro said, “He was found on a very dark side street. Probably he went in there to entice a mugger to follow him. The mugger was armed—preliminary ballistics reports indicate it was probably a .25 caliber automatic with dum-dum bullets—and evidently there was a gun-fight. The entry angle of the death bullets indicates that the assailant was flat on the street when he fired, which may mean he'd ducked for cover or may mean he was wounded himself, although we doubt that's the case, since any injury from that .45 Luger would have torn him up pretty badly and he wouldn't have gotten away. We found no blood on the scene that couldn't be traced to the dead man.”

Both guns found in Pyne's possession were rushed immediately to the police laboratory. Captain Mastro said, “There's absolutely no doubt that these are the two weapons that were used in all the vigilante cases.”

42

A
WEEK LATER
he left the office at six o'clock and put the Pontiac up Lake Shore Drive through a gentle snowfall; he was at Harry Chisum's house by half past the hour.

He'd stopped by two days ago but Irene's car had been parked at the curb and he'd gone by without stopping; he'd had a very bad time of it that night but he knew he had to face the old man and it was better to get it done.

There was no sign of Irene's car. He rang the doorbell and took a vague satisfaction in the surprise with which Harry Chisum greeted him.

“I'd like to talk to you.”

“By all means, Paul. Come in.”

“Are you alone? I don't want to disturb—”

“We're quite alone.” Harry led him into the parlor and Paul glanced at the ancient television set. Not long ago he'd have hated it for betraying him.

“Would you like a drink? Sherry perhaps?”

“Scotch if you've got it.”

“How are things at Childress Associates?”

“They keep me jumping.”

“It's probably good for you to have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes, it's a life saver.”

Harry made the drinks and they returned to the parlor. “Well then.”

Paul said, “There's something I want you to know.”

“I've pretty much figured it out for myself.”

“I tried to talk to him. He wouldn't let me finish. He pulled out that goddamned Luger and started shooting at me. It was blind luck as much as anything else. It might just as easily have been me. I had no intention of shooting the man, Harry.”

“Yes.”

“I've got to know you believe that.”

“Is there any reason why I shouldn't?”

“When I planted the thirty-eight on his body it was an afterthought. I hadn't planned that.”