People came out of the building in little groups: parents and children, abraded by the machinery within, solemn and some of them alarmed by whatever had taken place inside the cold black building.

Paul had the engine running and the heater fan blowing hard when the tall kid in the denim jacket came out of the building with another boy dressed in almost identical costume; the second boy was smaller and younger but his features had the same apathetic cast. The two of them came across the street with their hands in their trouser pockets, not talking; their eyes were glossy and hooded—completely without expression: nothing more than eyes, sighted organs.

They got into the car behind him. He heard the doors rattle when they scraped shut. There was the growl of a rotted exhaust muffler and foul smoke erupted behind the ruined car; it swerved out past Paul and rutted forward on its shot springs to the corner.

He let it go out of sight around the corner before he began to stalk them.

The clanking old Mercury seemed to be moving in random directions at first: it turned corners, doubled back, wandered without purpose. Trying to disclose a tail? But he had no trouble staying with them. He remained a block or two behind them, allowing traffic to intervene; his own car was commonplace and anonymous, its paint a little faded, covered with the grey-black streakings of slush and road oil.

Probably they were deciding what to do: thinking up entertainment. He found himself hoping they’d decide to go to a movie. It surprised him but he had no desire for violence.

The Mercury ahead of him drew past the playground of a school. Paul slowed when he entered the intersection; he put his turn indicator on, flashing his intention to make a left. He’d decided to drop it: go back to the office, drop off the guns and the hat and goggles and mustache, go home and shower and shave and put on his tweed suit. He and Irene had been invited to dinner tonight by Harry Chisum, the old law professor.

He was halfway into the turn when he saw the Mercury pull over to the curb and stop.

It was at the far end of the playground on the street he’d just turned off. He stopped his car in the side street and watched through the mesh of the playground’s high fence. The two kids in denim got out of their car and began to walk. Young children were flowing across the playground from the gradeschool building, carrying their books; their breath clouded the air around them. School had just been dismissed for the day: the children were on their way home.

The two thin boys in denim stood at the mesh fence with their gloved fingers hooked in the wire, watching the small children cross the playground.

They had something in mind. Something evil.

Paul put the car in gear. Rolling through the side street he slipped his hands into the rubber gloves; he put on the hat, turned left at the corner, put on the sunglasses and went on to the farther corner; and turned left again.

He’d gone around three sides of the block, behind the school, and now he drove slowly toward the front corner where the children were flowing through the gate onto the sidewalk. Ahead of him the two boys in denim had backed away from the fence and were walking toward the gate corner. They fell in behind a pair of, nine-year-old girls and crossed the street while a fat woman in traffic warden uniform held the cars at bay.

When the woman blew her whistle to allow the traffic to proceed Paul crossed into the street beyond. The two youths were ahead of him, still walking with their hands in their pockets; the two little girls were ahead of them and skipped into a broad vacant lot where something had been torn down and few dilapidated cars were parked askew: they were short-cutting home. The empty land extended straight through to the far side of the block. The two boys in denim stood on the sidewalk and watched the little girls cross the lot. As Paul drove past them the two boys turned and began to follow the girls.

Paul accelerated toward the far corner: he wanted to get around the block by the time the little girls reached the far side of it. While he drove through the narrow street he leaned across the car and rolled the right-hand window down; then he made the second right turn and slowed the car, reaching under the seat for the Centennial. Inside the rubber gloves his hands began to pucker in the confinement of sweat.

He pushed the lever into neutral and let the car roll forward silently; he was leaning forward, peering past the brick corner as the vacant lot came in sight.

The two denim-cased boys stood in the shadows. The little girls cowered against the bricks, cornered and terrified.

The tall boy—the driver—flicked his hand out as if snapping his fingers. But Paul saw the glint of the knife blade as it flipped open.

The younger boy moved forward, deliberately ominous, grinning with a sadistic show of teeth: dramatizing his brutality. He bent, reached for the hem of the larger girl’s coat and yanked it upwards, holding the hem in his fist and pressing the girl back against the wall. She wore white socks halfway up her thighs and dusky white underwear. The boy reached for the elastic.

Paul steadied his aim. The boys were intent on their victims: they noticed nothing except the flesh beneath them. The boy with the knife moved closer to the smaller girl and held her throat with his free hand, pinioning her, choking off her attempt to scream. The other boy ripped the panties off the older girl. He was still holding her coat and skirt bunched up against her chin.

Something made Paul lower the sights a fraction before he fired.

The first bullet took the younger boy in the back of the knee.

The Centennial leveled again across the car sill: Paul was leaning across the seat, firing through the open passenger window, his wrist balanced on the metal. The taller boy was turning, disoriented: the bullet had slammed his friend against him, upsetting his balance, and Paul shot him as he turned: the soft-nose punctured his calf and by the way the boy’s leg twisted it was evident it had smashed the bones.

Both of them fell, broken-legged.

The little girls flattened themselves in terror against the brick; their round eyes swiveled toward Paul.

On the ground the taller boy crawled in a circle of pain like a half-crushed beetle. His partner seemed stuporous; his mouth hung slack and he hardly moved.

In a sudden burst the older girl grabbed the younger one by the elbow and dragged her away. An instant later they were both running in panic, back across the empty lot toward the farther street, leaving their schoolbooks abandoned in the snow.

Paul rolled up the window and straightened in the seat. He made a tight U-turn.

30

“CHILDRESS will eat you alive if you give him a chance,” Harry Chisum said.

“I’ve been forewarned.” Paul caught Irene’s sudden smile. “Anyhow I’m sure it won’t be boring.”

“It’s a dynamic firm,” the old man agreed. “Well then. More coffee, everyone.” He poured from a silver decanter; his aged hand shook a bit. The dining room was like the rest of the house: a relic. Probably nothing in it except the wiring had changed in fifty years. It was a frame house without pretension but it had been built in a time when there had been leisure for elegance of a kind; there was comfort in its solidity, in the heavy darkness of old woods and furniture built for relaxing.

Irene looked at her wrist watch. She’d checked the time frequently in the past quarter hour. “I’m not being rude, Harry, but I don’t want to miss that program.”

“You keep saying you want to see a program. I never knew you to be a television addict.”

“It’s the Cavender interview. He’s going to be grilling Vic Mastro. I want to see what our famous cop has to say.”