Down the block a car arrived home and Paul waited until its driver parked and went inside a house. Then he walked to Pyne’s car and swiftly pressed the tape across the rear bumper. He straightened and went directly back to his own car. The fluorescent tape would make it easier to follow Pyne at a distance in the night; Pyne probably wouldn’t notice it and even if he did there was no harm in it for Paul.

At seven a man came out of Pyne’s door and descended the steps. At first Paul was confused. The man had pale hair—grey or blond—and a long pale mustache. Then he realized it was Pyne in wig and false whiskers. It made him smile a bit. Pyne backed the Ambassador out of the driveway and rolled toward Paul. When the Ambassador had disappeared at the corner by the filling station, Paul made a quick U-turn and followed.

It was easy tailing the bright strip of red tape. He hung back more than a block, letting traffic intervene. Was it going to be this easy?

There was a shopping center on the right and the Ambassador turned into its parking lot. Paul slowed as he went past, and cramped the car into the second entrance to the lot. He cruised through the lanes—most of the stores were still open and there were hundreds of cars.

Pyne had pulled into a slot at the far end of the lot. Paul reached the end of a row, went around the parked cars and started slowly up the next row; through the glass of the cars he watched Pyne. The tall man got out of the Ambassador and locked it. Did he have some secret knowledge of a crime planned here in this parking lot?

Then Pyne went into his pocket and brought something out. It was too small to be visible; certainly not a gun. He walked across the aisle between parking rows and looked all around him. Paul turned and came driving toward him down the aisle. Pyne stooped, fitting his key into the lock of a battered old car.

He’s changing cars.

How brilliant, he thought. It’s something I should have thought of.

It was at least ten years old—the kind of car you could buy for a hundred dollars cash with no questions asked. A phony name, a phony address. Untraceable.

Pyne was backing the old car out. Paul gave it close scrutiny as he drove past. It was pocked with dents and rust stains; it squatted low on its springs. It was a four-door Impala; it had once been blue but had faded toward grey. It had a Wisconsin plate. He recognized the deep treads of the snow tires: Pyne wasn’t taking chances on getting stuck. Probably the car was in much better mechanical shape than the exterior implied; Pyne was a physicist, he’d have a respect for mechanical things and an awareness of the need for maintenance to ensure reliability. But it was a sure thing he didn’t have it serviced in that filling station where he took the Ambassador.

Well of course he was clever. He’d have been caught long ago otherwise.

But if that was the case why had he used his own name and address when he’d bought the Luger from Truett? And why the Luger at all, since it was so rare and easily identifiable?

It was a question to which he couldn’t provide an answer out of pure speculation. Possibly when Pyne had bought the gun he hadn’t had vigilantism in mind; perhaps that had come afterward. There were a lot of ifs and none of them really mattered; the only thing that mattered was the answer to one question: was Pyne the other Vigilante?

He knew how to force Pyne to cease his raids. But he couldn’t confront Pyne until he was absolutely certain Pyne was the right man. Confront an innocent man and the whole thing could backfire in his face: an innocent man would have no reason not to turn Paul in to the police. Only the second vigilante could be counted on to keep Paul’s secret.

He followed the Impala south into Chicago.

39

HE 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.