Tully’s main street was very much like the main street of every little town in rural America, a broad treeless avenue filled with fast-food places, motels, shopping malls, until you reached the older part of town, where the trees were higher and the houses larger, rambling red-brick Victorian constructions on placid side streets, some old shops in the central square, a post office, a county cop shop, and a theater. Tonight’s feature, on the darkened marquee of the Lux, shrouded by falling snow, was Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The Apex Muffler Shop had been built into the side of a former Woolworth’s, at the intersection of Miller and Main. The building was a two-story pile of red clay bricks, slightly swaybacked. The muffler shop was closed, darkened, and the streets of the town were deserted.
The snow that had been falling nonstop since Monday had covered all the lawns and trees, but a plow had been through earlier that day, so dirty wet snow was heaped up along the walkways and blocked a few of the alleys. The streetlamps were old-fashioned and gave off the warm yellow light of incandescent bulbs, so that the snow swirling around inside their halo looked like bright yellow moths fluttering around candles.
The New York state trooper car was right where he said he’d be, a slate-gray unmarked Caprice parked off on a side street, with a view of the back stairs of the Apex Muffler building. His lights were off, and the car was black and silent as Luke parked his car a hundred feet back, locked it, zipped up his black raid jacket, and put a long gray duster coat on over it. He stretched his bones and adjusted his belt and walked quietly up through the snowfall toward the state car.
He got a double-click on his handset as he reached the car. Grizzly, Walt, and Rico were in position a few hundred yards back. Once Luke got a read from the trooper, they’d decide just how this thing was going to happen. He clicked back once and tapped on the dripping side window of the car.
The window slid down with a muted mechanical whir. The trooper was an older man, with gray hair in a military cut, a large gray mustache, and wrinkled weary-looking eyes. He smelled of mint and aftershave.
“You the feds? I’m Pete Gruwchyk. Hop in.”
Luke went around to the passenger door and got in, closing the door softly. The interior light did not come on when he opened the door, which reassured him. The trooper knew his trade. The cop’s heavy winter jacket rustled as the man fumbled around in his pockets, extracted a pack of cigarettes, and offered one to Luke. Luke took it after a moment, Gruwchyk lit them both up and blew out a puff of smoke. Luke thanked him, asked how long he’d been on station.
He checked his watch, grinned.
“Six hours. I relieved the day man at 2200 hours.”
“You sure it’s him?”
“Let’s see the shot again.” Luke had the photo in his raid jacket pocket. He flipped it onto the radio console between the seats. The cop used a Mini-Maglite to study it again.
“Damnedest thing. You know, my wife’s been buying groceries from this guy for a couple of weeks. There’s a produce store, Lucky Garden, out by the arena. Chinese family runs it, been in town for years. Good people. This guy here, he starts working there a while back, my wife doesn’t like him. Says the whole atmosphere in the store went sour.”
“It would, if they’d been told to hide this guy, if they had no choice.”
Gruwchyk nodded. “Ghost Shadows, hah? Sounds nasty.”
“It is. Got any suggestions?”
Gruwchyk looked a little surprised. “You want my advice? You sure you’re really a fed? Lemme see some tin.”
Luke laughed outright. “Hey, you know the town.”
Gruwchyk looked pleased.
“Well, I have been giving the matter some thought, and I thank you for asking me. Most of the time, guys like you roll into town, we do the perimeter, you run the show. It gets a little old, okay? Anyway, this place where he’s staying, I’ve been in it lots of times. The whole upstairs over the muffler shop is a series of railroad flats—they run in a straight line from the doorway to the living room, to a kitchen, and then into a bedroom. Bedroom has one window. No windows in any other walls, because there’s five apartments up there, all the same, share the side walls, see? So if you go in the door at the top of the stairs there, that door leads to the main hallway. The apartments run sideways off that hall, like the sidebars on the letter E? Only there’s five bars, okay?”
Luke was writing this down in a notebook.
“Okay, five. Which one’s he in?”
“According to the folks, he’s in the A apartment, which does have an outside wall, so it has an extra window. In the living room. That’s it right up there.”
“He can see us from that window?”
“I know. But there’s no other way to keep an eye on the place. I don’t think we spooked him, because we always have a car sitting around on a side street these days. The kids, you know, spray-painters? Can’t jail ’em, and they won’t let us shoot them. So we baby-sit. There’s nothing unusual about us having a car here like this. We do it all the time.”
“Okay. How many other people up there?”
“That’s the thing. There’s the Pruitts in C, some guy works for the muffler shop in D, and Father Mike in E.”
“A priest?”
“Retired. He was a Basilian. He’s working on a book. His family used to live around here. He’s a decent old guy. Got a weakness for single malt.”
“That’s a weakness?”
Gruwchyk smiled. “Not by me. But if you have to get him out of there at this hour, he may fuss a little. Trouble is, only the outside walls of that place—it used to be a Woolworth’s—only the outside walls are brick. The rest is wood. Thin wallboard between the apartments too, and the floorboards are real creaky. Walking around inside there is like walking around inside a packing crate. Lousy place for a gunfight.”
Luke was looking at the building. A set of wooden stairs led up to a main door—the hallway door, according to Gruwchyk, and the outside wall of apartment A had a window overlooking the main street, a window looking out onto the cluttered back lot of the muffler shop, and a single sash-window along the side wall, which gave a view of the side street, where they were parked. Tricky.
“Who’s in B?”
“Nobody. Empty now. But still, there’s no through-door into A.”
“Damn,” said Luke.
Gruwchyk was watching him, his face expectant.
“Well …?”
“Pete.”
“Well, Pete, you said you had an idea. What was it?”
Gruwchyk was beaming at him. He pulled on his cigarette, leaned forward, and stubbed it out on the ashtray. He looked at Luke sideways as he did this, a glimmer in his eye, his cheek scored with age lines.
“I thought you’d never ask.”