The thought of the automatic in the door pocket at my side reassured me. My aim with my left hand wasn’t as good as with my right, but it was still better than average. When the unknown man got into a car and started away, I followed. Mostly I hung back half a block, varying it at intersections or when the occasional car intervened.
“You follow well,” Bartoz observed as we made our way back across town.
I welcomed neither his assessment nor his assumption I needed one.
“What time is it?” I asked tersely.
He showed me his wristwatch. An hour and a half remained before Frances sent out the troops. It surprised me how little time had elapsed.
“I don’t think I’ve been in this part of your city before. When the count gives a speech, some men pick us up near the hotel. They drive, but a different direction.”
“You go north. Across the river.”
“How do you know this?” He’d grown wary.
“That’s the Polish neighborhood. Over by St. Adelbert’s church.”
He fell silent. My purse rode along on the seat between us. His eye moved toward it, maybe speculating that my .38 was inside and out of my reach.
“You’re not afraid of me,” he said as I downshifted at an intersection.
“I’d be a fool not to be afraid of you, Bartoz.”
“Yet you came tonight.”
“I do what I need to for my job.”
“Yes. I also.”
The car I was following was a Chevrolet, gray as nearly as I could make out in the dark, and with plenty of years on it. It turned into a neighborhood between Warren and Patterson. Things were several steps better than where Polly Bunten had lived, but the area was nonetheless shabby.
The Chevy stopped in front of a three-story house. A sign in a front yard the size of a table advertised ROOMS. The man who’d met with Perry got out of his car and retrieved a duffle bag of what looked like laundry. Whistling softly, he let himself into the darkened rooming house.
“Stop here and watch,” whispered Bartoz. “I’ll walk to the corner where I can see the other side. If I start back this way, drive to the corner and wait for me. If not, pick me up there in five minutes.”
He was out before I could speak, nudging the car door so it closed with a muted click, then vanishing into the shadows. He was good at fast planning, I’d give him that. My heart hammered. The house between me and the rooming house had a light on in a back room. Otherwise, the street was dark.
My hand closed on the automatic and transferred it to my right hand. I couldn’t see Bartoz at all. I pushed the lock down on my door and cranked the window up. I couldn’t reach the locks on the rear doors at all, and sliding across to the one on the passenger side would make me vulnerable. The rooming house remained dark.
Then, at the end of the block, a figure stepped into the street and started toward me. I wasn’t sure it was Bartoz. As it came closer, though, the chin raised as his had when he’d signaled to me at the hotel.
Leaving my lights off, I started the engine. As the car crept forward, the figure ahead veered suddenly to the side with the rooming house and disappeared again. What the devil?
I drove to the corner and switched my lights on low. In my rearview mirror I could see a light in a third floor window. Had five minutes passed? Was I crazy, sitting here waiting for Bartoz when I wasn’t sure if I trusted him?
Nothing moved on the street. Nothing I could see. The door across from me flew open. I swung toward it, leveling the automatic.
“Don’t.”
It was Bartoz.
“I ought to. You scared the peewadding out of me.”
I leaned back and tried to summon saliva. Bartoz slid in next to me and closed the door almost without a sound.
“The light went on shortly after I stopped to watch. It’s his room, I think. I went into the vestibule thinking there might be postal slots, something with names.”
“And?” I changed gears and let out the clutch.
“There was some sort of rack, with things written. But there was no light, and I didn’t have a torch.”