The two companions stopped and Crubb walked up a driveway and cupped both hands to look through a window into a closed two-car garage. He shook his head and rejoined the others and they moved on.

Paul was sure of it now. They were looking for an empty garage: a sign that no one was home.

They were walking away from him but he saw Crubb’s head turn—an instinctive wariness toward the backtrail. Paul swiveled back out of sight before Crubb had a chance to see him. He gave it a few seconds and then reconnoi-. tered cautiously.

They had nearly reached the end of the block. Crubb poked a finger toward a house on the near side of the street; it was set back and Paul couldn’t see it. All three of them crossed the street.

There was only one thing to do. He went back across the intersection, retracing his own path. None of them looked his way; they were intent on the house. From the south corner he could see the edge of it and the garage into which Crubb was peering. Crubb made a quick hand motion and all three men disappeared into the passage between houses; the third man paused to look both ways and Paul faded back. When he looked out again they were gone from sight. They’d be checking out the house before breaking into it.

Paul crossed the intersection a third time and turned left and walked toward the house, looking for a place to post himself and ambush them when they emerged with their loot. On his palms the cold dampness of fear was an old familiar companion.

13

¶ CHICAGO, DEC. 24TH—Five men were shot to death yesterday in two separate incidents in Chicago, bringing to a boil the rapidly heating controversy over the disputed existence of a “vigilante” on the city’s streets.

Early yesterday afternoon three separate residents of the Humboldt Park residential area telephoned police to report gunshots, bringing fast response by motorized patrolmen who discovered the bodies of three men in a passage beside the residence of Ernest Hamling, of 3046 West Hirsch Street. On and near the bodies were a cassette tape recorder, silverware, two cameras, a shotgun, a small battery-powered television set and other items identified as the personal property of Mr. and Mrs. Hamling, neither of whom was at home at the time of the shootings.

Announcement of the identities of the three dead men has been withheld by police pending further investigation and notification of relatives. It was revealed by a police spokesman, however, that one of the three men had been released on bail by the Cook County Criminal Court only that morning, pending trial on a charge of robbery and assault.

The three men were allegedly killed by bullets from a single .38 revolver which may have been the same weapon that has been credited with the deaths of five alleged criminals in recent days. Police ballistics laboratories have taken the bullets for analysis.

In a separate incident last night, two youths were shot to death on a South Side fire escape while allegedly escaping from an attempted burglary of the Lincoln-Washington Social Club. The youths, identified as Richard Hicks and John R. Davis, both 16, were found by the club manager, Sherman X, after several loud gunshots were heard; allegedly the youths had broken in through a rear window and had stolen the club’s cashbox containing receipts from a benefit discotheque dance, and were shot while escaping down the outside fire stairs at the rear building. A police spokesman said, “We’ve analyzed the angle of entry of the bullets. They were fired up at the victims from the alley beneath.”

The bullets have been identified tentatively as having been fired by a .45 caliber automatic pistol. Interviewed in his Headquarters office this morning, Police Captain Victor Mastro, in charge of the “vigilante” investigation in the Homicide Division, pointed out that the two South Side youths were not killed by the same weapon which reportedly killed the other eight “vigilante” victims. “But,” Mastro said, “the modus operandi is very similar, you’d have to say. We can’t rule out the possibility that the killer owns more than one gun.”

14

HER EYES FLASHED angrily. She’d been waiting near the door; she stood up when Paul entered the courtroom. He was once again surprised by how diminutive she was: she hardly came up to his shoulder and he was not especially tall. She wore a light sweater with the sleeves pushed up casually above the elbows; a long plaid skirt that was mainly orange and yellow; she’d done something with her hair and it was softer and fuller around her face than it had been yesterday.

“I’m not late, am I?”

“Actually you’re early. No—it’s not on your account I’m breathing fire. Let’s go, shall we? I need a drink.”

He helped her into her coat and they went down the steps trying to avoid puddles and slushpiles left from last night’s snowfall. She said, “I was supposed to try an aggravated assault and attempted murder case this morning. The bastard didn’t show up.”

“Jumped bail?”

“That’s right. Eight hundred dollars bail. I fought it at the hearing—it was ridiculously low.”

“Do they skip bail often?”

“Not so often that I’m used to it.”

He held the car door for her and then went around to get in. “Where to?”

“Do you like German food?”

He didn’t, especially, but he said he did and she gave him directions; they put the car in a multistory garage in the Loop and walked to the Berghoff.

They ordered highballs and Paul lit her cigarette from a restaurant matchbook. When the drinks came they touched glasses. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Happy New Year.” She drank and shuddered theatrically. “Hoo boy.”

“A tough one?”

“Some of them bother you more than others,” she said. “This one was a fairly vicious little bastard. I hate to imagine what he’s up to now.”

In the restaurant light she had a softer prettiness than he’d remarked yesterday. Her cheeks were high and freckled; she had a short nose and wide grey eyes. Her bones were prominent and she was curiously rangy—that was what made her seem much taller than she was.

She blew smoke through her nostrils. “I feel awkward. It’s not a habit of mine, making dates with strangers. I did it on impulse, you know.”

He smiled to reassure her. “So did I.”

“Have you ever been to a psychiatrist?”

He was taken aback. “No.”

“Neither have I. I wonder what a shrink would say about my ‘motivations.’ I’ve never had a loved one mugged. I’ve never even been burgled. But when I passed the bar exams I went straight into the DA’s office and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve never been able to picture myself as anything except a prosecuting attorney. I never had the slightest urge to defend the downtrodden and support the underprivileged. It’s strange because I don’t think of myself as a redneck. I’m not politically right-wing at all. I don’t know. Right now I’m in one of those agonizing reappraisals about the people I have to deal with every day. I’ve started asking myself whether there’s any possibility of a society surviving without the things we think of as the old traditional civilized values. Personal dignity, respect for the law.”

She wanted a sympathetic ear; he didn’t interrupt.

“I’ve never believed crime was an illness that could be cured by treatment. Maybe one day we’ll be able to go into them surgically and program new personalities and send brand new good citizens out into the world. I’d rather not live to see that either. But in the meantime I keep hearing about rehabilitation and reform, and I don’t believe a word of it. The law isn’t supposed to rehabilitate people or reform them. You can’t force people to behave themselves. You can only try to force them not to misbehave. That’s what laws are for. The humanitarians have forced us into this illogic of reforms and rehabilitations, and all they’ve succeeded in doing is they’ve created an incredible increase in human suffering.”