Red Dragon (24 page)

Lounds strained hard when he smelled the gasoline, separating the skin from under his forearms and making the stout chair groan. The gas was cold all over him, fumes filling his throat and they were rolling toward the center of the street.

“Do you like being Graham’s pet, Freeeeedeeeee?”

Lit with a whump and shoved, sent rolling down on the
Tattler
, eeek, eeek, eeekeeekeeek the wheels.

The guard looked up as a scream blew the burning gag away. He saw the fireball coming, bouncing on the potholes, trailing smoke and sparks and the flames blown back like wings, disjointed reflections leaping along the shop windows.

It veered, struck a parked car and overturned in front of the building, one wheel spinning and flames through the spokes, blazing arms rising in the fighting posture of the burned.

The guard ran back into the lobby. He wondered if it would blow up, if he should get away from the windows. He pulled the fire alarm. What else? He grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and looked outside. It hadn’t blown up yet.

The guard approached cautiously through the greasy smoke spreading low over the pavement and, at last, sprayed foam on Freddy Lounds.

The schedule called for Graham to leave the staked-out apartment in Washington at 5:45 A.M., well ahead of the morning rush.

Crawford called while he was shaving.

“Good morning.”

“Not so good,” Crawford said. “The Tooth Fairy got Lounds in Chicago.”

“Oh hell no.”

“He’s not dead yet and he’s asking for you. He can’t wait long.”

“I’ll go.”

“Meet me at the airport. United 245. It leaves in forty minutes. You can be back for the stakeout, if it’s still on.”

 

 

 

Special Agent Chester from the Chicago FBI office met them at O’Hare in a downpour. Chicago is a city used to sirens. The traffic parted reluctantly in front of them as Chester howled down the expressway, his red light flashing pink on the driving rain.

He raised his voice above the siren. “Chicago PD says he was jumped in his garage. My stuff is secondhand. We’re not popular around here today.”

“How much is out?” Crawford said.

“The whole thing, trap, all of it.”

“Did Lounds get a look at him?”

“I haven’t heard a description. Chicago PD put out an all-points bulletin for a license number about six-twenty.”

“Did you get hold of Dr. Bloom for me?”

“I got his wife, Jack. Dr. Bloom had his gall bladder taken out this morning.”

“Glorious,” Crawford said.

Chester pulled under the dripping hospital portico. He turned in his seat. “Jack, Will, before you go up . . . I hear this fruit really trashed Lounds. You ought to be ready for that.”

Graham nodded. All the way to Chicago he had tried to choke his hope that Lounds would die before he had to see him.

The corridor of Paege Burn Center was a tube of spotless tile. A tall doctor with a curiously old-young face beckoned Graham and Crawford away from the knot of people at Lounds’s door.

“Mr. Lounds’s burns are fatal,” the doctor said. “I
can
help him with the pain, and I intend to do it. He breathed flames and his throat and lungs are damaged. He may not regain consciousness. In his condition, that would be a blessing.

“In the event that he does regain consciousness, the city police have asked me to take the airway out of his throat so that he might possibly answer questions. I’ve agreed to try that—briefly.

“At the moment his nerve endings are anesthetized by fire. A lot of pain is coming, if he lives that long. I made this clear to the police and I want to make it clear to you: I’ll interrupt any attempted questioning to sedate him if he wants me to. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Crawford said.

With a nod to the patrolman in front of the door, the doctor clasped his hands behind his white lab coat and moved away like a wading egret.

Crawford glanced at Graham. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.
I
had the SWAT team.”

Lounds’s head was elevated in the bed. His hair and ears were gone and compresses over his sightless eyes replaced the burned-off lids. His gums were puffed with blisters.

The nurse beside him moved an IV stand so Graham could come close. Lounds smelled like a stable fire.

“Freddy, it’s Will Graham.”

Lounds arched his neck against the pillow.

“The movement’s just reflex, he’s not conscious,” the nurse said.

The plastic airway holding open his scorched and swollen throat hissed in time with the respirator.

A pale detective sergeant sat in the corner with a tape recorder and a clipboard on his lap. Graham didn’t notice him until he spoke.

“Lounds said your name in the emergency room before they put the airway in.”

“You were there?”

“Later I was there. But I’ve got what he said on tape. He gave the firemen a license number when they first got to him. He passed out, and he was out in the ambulance, but he came around for a minute in the emergency room when they gave him a shot in the chest. Some
Tattler
people had followed the ambulance—they were there. I have a copy of their tape.”

“Let me hear it.”

The detective fiddled with his tape recorder. “I think you want to use the earphone,” he said, his face carefully blank. He pushed the button.

Graham heard voices, the rattle of casters, “. . . put him in there,” the bump of a litter on a swinging door, a retching cough and a voice croaking, speaking without lips.

“Freddy, did you see him? What did he look like, Freddy?”

A noise like a drain sucking. A doctor’s voice: “That’s it. Let me get there. Get out of the way.
Now.
”

That was all.

Graham stood over Lounds while Crawford listened to the tape.

“We’re running down the license number,” the detective said. “Could you understand what he was saying?”

“Who’s Wendy?” Crawford asked.

“That hooker in the hall. The blonde with the chest. She’s been trying to see him. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Why don’t you let her in?” Graham said from the bedside. His back was to them.

“No visitors.”

“The man’s dying.”

“Think I don’t know it? I’ve been here since a quarter to fucking six o’clock—excuse me, Nurse.”

“Take a few minutes,” Crawford said. “Get some coffee, put some water on your face. He can’t say anything. If he does, I’ll be here with the recorder.”

“Okay, I could use it.”

When the detective was gone, Graham left Crawford at the bedside and approached the woman in the hall.

“Wendy?”

“Yeah.”

“If you’re sure you want to go in there, I’ll take you.”

“I want to. Maybe I ought to go comb my hair.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Graham said.

When the policeman returned, he didn’t try to put her out.

Wendy of Wendy City held Lounds’s blackened claw and looked straight at him. He stirred once, a little before noon.

“It’s gonna be just fine, Roscoe,” she said. “We’ll have us some high old times.”

Lounds stirred again and died.

Captain Osborne of Chicago Homicide had the gray, pointed face of a stone fox. Copies of the
Tattler
were all over the police station. One was on his desk.

He didn’t ask Crawford and Graham to sit down.

“You had nothing at all working with Lounds in the city of Chicago?”

“No, he was coming to Washington,” Crawford said. “He had a plane reservation. I’m sure you’ve checked it.”

“Yeah, I got it. He left his office about one-thirty yesterday. Got jumped in the garage of his building, must have been about ten of two.”

“Anything in the garage?”

“His keys got kicked under his car. There’s no garage attendant—they had a radio-operated door but it came down on a couple of cars and they took it out. Nobody saw it happen. That’s getting to be the refrain today. We’re working on his car.”

“Can we help you there?”

“You can have the results when I get ’em. You haven’t said much, Graham. You had plenty to say in the paper.”

“I haven’t heard much either, listening to you.”

“You pissed off, Captain?” Crawford said.

“Me? Why should I be? We run down a phone trace for you and collar a fucking news reporter. Then you’ve got no charges against him. You
have
got some deal with him, gets him cooked in front of this scandal sheet. Now the other papers adopt him like he was their own.

“Now we’ve got our own Tooth Fairy murder right here in Chicago. That’s great. ‘Tooth Fairy in Chicago,’ boy. Before midnight we’ll have six accidental domestic shootings, guy trying to sneak in his own house drunk, wife hears him, bang. The Tooth Fairy may like Chicago, decide to stick around, have some fun.”

“We can do like this,” Crawford said. “Butt heads, get the police commissioner and the U.S. attorney all stirred up, get all the assholes stirred up, yours and mine. Or we can settle down and try to catch the bastard. This was my operation and it went to shit, I know that. You ever have that happen right here in Chicago? I don’t want to fight you, Captain. We want to catch him and go home. What do you want?”

Osborne moved a couple of items on his desk, a pen-holder, a picture of a fox-faced child in band uniform. He leaned back in his chair, pursed his lips and blew out some air.

“Right now I want some coffee. You guys want some?”

“I’d like some,” Crawford said.

“So would I,” Graham said.

Osborne passed around the foam cups. He pointed to some chairs.

“The Tooth Fairy had to have a van or a panel truck to move Lounds around in that wheelchair,” Graham said.

Osborne nodded. “The license plate Lounds saw was stolen off a TV repair truck in Oak Park. He took a commercial plate, so he was getting it for a truck or a van. He
replaced
the plate on the TV truck with another stolen plate so it wouldn’t be noticed so fast. Very sly, this boy. One thing we do know—he got the plate off the TV truck sometime after eight-thirty yesterday morning. The TV repair guy bought gas first thing yesterday and he used a credit card. The attendant copied the correct license number on the slip, so the plate was stolen after that.”

“Nobody saw any kind of truck or van?” Crawford said.

“Nothing. The guard at the
Tattler
saw zip. He could referee wrestling he sees so little. The fire department responded first to the
Tattler.
They were just looking for fire. We’re canvassing the overnight workers in the
Tattler
neighborhood and the neighborhoods where the TV guy worked Tuesday morning. We hope somebody saw him cop the plate.”

“I’d like to see the chair again,” Graham said.

“It’s in our lab. I’ll call them for you.” Osborne paused. “Lounds was a ballsy little guy, you have to give him that. Remembering the license number and spitting it out, the shape he was in. You listened to what Lounds said at the hospital?”

Graham nodded.

“I don’t mean to rub this in, but I want to know if we heard it the same way. What does it sound like to you?”

Graham quoted in a monotone: “ ‘Tooth Fairy. Graham set me up. The cunt knew it. Graham set me up. Cunt put his hand on me in the picture like a fucking pet.’”

Osborne could not tell how Graham felt about it. He asked another question.

“He was talking about the picture of you and him in the
Tattler
?”

“Had to be.”

“Where would he get that idea?”

“Lounds and I had a few run-ins.”

“But you looked friendly toward Lounds in the picture. The Tooth Fairy kills the pet first, is that it?”

“That’s it.” The stone fox was pretty fast, Graham thought.

“Too bad you didn’t stake him out.”

Graham said nothing.

“Lounds was supposed to be with us by the time the Tooth Fairy saw the
Tattler
,” Crawford said.

“Does what he said mean anything else to you, anything we can use?”

Graham came back from somewhere and had to repeat Osborne’s question in his mind before he answered. “We know from what Lounds said that the Tooth Fairy saw the
Tattler
before he hit Lounds, right?”

“R ight.”

“If you start with the idea that the
Tattler
set him off, does it strike you that he set this up in a hell of a hurry? The thing came off the press Monday night, he’s in Chicago stealing license plates sometime Tuesday, probably Tuesday morning, and he’s on top of Lounds Tuesday afternoon. What does that say to you?”