Fifty-Eight.

When Thinnes and Oster walked into the squad room after lunch, Viernes hailed Oster. "Carl, some suspect you busted is screaming for you down at County. Name of Leon. Mark Leon."

"Now there's a coincidence," Oster said. "Just so happens, we want to talk to Mr. Leon."

"Let's see if Columbo would like to get in on this," Thinnes said. "Maybe he can meet us down there."

An hour later, they brought him into the conference room at 26th and Cal, and Leon went ballistic. He took one look at Thinnes and did an about-face. When the guard wouldn't let him out, he aimed an impressive stream of profanity at them, finishing with a demand for his lawyer.

"Learns fast, doesn't he?" Thinnes asked.

"Take him back," Columbo told the sheriff's deputy.

"Wait!" Leon said.

Thinnes could see the conflicting desires at work. "Are you waiving your right to have your lawyer present?"

Leon thought about it for a minute. "No! I wanna talk to my lawyer first."

It was another hour before they could locate the public defender who'd been a.s.signed to represent him. A woman. Just under five feet and a hundred pounds-fully clothed and soaking wet. She was in uniform-power suit, female version; expensive, unrevealing blouse; and three-inch heels, matching briefcase. She'd been angry when she'd found out how Leon had been duped into talking to Oster in the first place, now she was furious. "Where do you get off-"

Columbo interrupted. "There're two more murders, Counselor, in which your client's implicated."

That rattled her cage. But she said, "You're bluffing!"

Columbo shook his head. Thinnes said, "So far, it's purely circ.u.mstantial, Counselor, but the ballistics test done on the gun we found in Leon's possession shows it was used in a killing last year. And the MO of that killing matches one we had a few weeks before Leon killed Jolene Wilson. If he doesn't have an alibi for the times those shootings occurred, we could probably clear up both of them by making him the offender."

"What's stopping you?"

"Just the fact that he talked to Carl about Wilson," Thinnes said.

Her mouth actually dropped open. "Did I miss a step?"

Columbo was staring, too.

"He cooperated," Oster said. "We'd like to cut him some slack."

Both attorneys looked skeptical.

"We'd like to get the real killer in those cases, but we don't know that wasn't Leon unless he helps us."

"What're you offering?" the PD asked.

"He cooperates," Columbo said, "and we'll let him plead to murder two."

"Manslaughter!"

Columbo shook his head. "C'mon, Counselor. He was driving around with her in the trunk."

"You didn't know that when you stopped him." She turned to Thinnes. "How many traffic citations have you handed out in the last year, Detective?"

Thinnes managed to avoid smiling. Gotcha! "I didn't write the citations, but I made three stops. And all of them were cited."

That got her.

"We'll put in a good word at the sentencing hearing," Columbo said, "if he'll plead second and cooperate on these other homicides. That's the best we can do."

The PD shrugged and sighed. "I'll talk to him."

Leon looked faded and scared as he sat across from Oster in the conference room, and he started his statement with, "He said he'd kill me if I ever narked."

"We just need his name and address," Oster told him. "We'll get a search warrant and if we find any guns, we'll nail him for that."

"You're lying! He'll know as soon as you ask about the gun."

"You can't be the only one he's sold a gun to," Oster said.

"If you won't give us a name," Thinnes said, "we'll have to a.s.sume it's because there isn't anyone else, and you did the two killings yourself."

"No!" Leon buried his face in his hands and sobbed, mumbling, "Just the girl. That was a accident."

Oster stood up and leaned over the table to put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. "You'll feel better after you've told us everything. And you'll clear yourself on these..." He tapped the Indian case files on the table between Thinnes and himself. "...other two shootings."

Leon wiped his face on his sleeve and snuffled. "Little kid-said his name was Chico-sold it to me."

"How little?"

Leon shrugged. "What do I know about kids?" He held his hand up, palm down, about midchest level. "This tall, maybe. Little spic kid. Oh, and he had a scar under his..." Leon had to move his own hands to figure out right and left and translate to where'd they'd be facing him.

The guy was dumber than a box of hammers.

"Left eye," Leon finally said. "I gave him fifty bucks and he went away and came back with the gun."

The tactical officer folded a copy of the Daily Bulletin into an airplane and sailed it into the wastebasket between Thinnes and Oster. Then he took his feet off his desk and said, "The kid's Chico Galardo. Ten years old going on fifty. He's a gofer for Xaviar Ocampo, a.k.a. Hielo, the neighborhood gang chief."

"Ocampo," Oster said. "Must be Irish."

"Yeah. Just like the IRA."

"It would be nice," Thinnes said, "if we didn't have to name our source. Maybe we could set up a buy and use that for probable."

"We got a little problem there-finding someone they won't spot in a Chicago second."

"A fresh face?" Thinnes said.

"Yeah."

Oster looked at Thinnes. "What about Azul?"

"Who?" the tac cop asked.

"He's a beat copper," Oster said. "Very sharp and he'll fit the profile."

The tactical cop looked skeptical but said, "We'll check him out and let you know."

Fifty-Nine.

There was a brown van parked in front of the apartment building they were watching, with the C removed from the name CHEVY on the front-a HEVY van. A sign on the dash, propped against the windshield with an oversize ghetto blaster, said: THE DRIVER OF THIS VEHICLE IS ENGAGED IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF TELEPHONE DIRECTORIES.

Across the street, inside the surveillance vehicle, Oster said, "S'pose it's bogus? That'd be great cover for somebody up to no good. Anybody spotting it wouldn't give it a second look."

The tactical officer sitting next to him said, "Maybe it was stolen, but it's real. If you were gonna make up a sign, you'd just say something like, 'Driver delivering phone books.' Anybody would. Only a utility company would come up with bulls.h.i.t like 'engaged in the distribution of telephone directories.' "

"Well," Thinnes said, "when he comes out, let's ask him."

The phone-book delivery man was able to draw them a pretty good diagram of the building. The gang had let him in because Chicago directories are useful but heavy, and none of the gang-bangers wanted to carry them up to the second and third floors. He hadn't seen anyone who looked like the picture they showed him of Ocampo, but one of the kids who lived on the second floor had asked, "You gonna go up where Ice live?"

Just in case he might be tempted to drop a dime to "Ice," they sent the phone-book guy Downtown to look at mug shots while they did a background check.

They wore their vests. And jackets with POLICE stenciled on the backs. Thinnes led, followed by Oster, two tactical officers, and two hefty uniform cops. Inside, on the third-floor landing, they waited while Oster caught his breath and the tac cops coordinated, via radio, with the troops covering the rear, the roof, and the back alley. Then, guns drawn, Thinnes and Oster flanked the door. Thinnes pounded on it with his free hand. "POLICE. OPEN UP!"

He counted five before the cops attacked the door with their battering ram. On the first hit, the jamb splintered, and the door flew open. Four Maglite beams played around the interior as Thinnes led through the door, with Oster covering.

Thinnes got an impression of clutter and chaos. Guns. Smoke. Hostiles. Two people across the room; one close.

Thinnes focused on him-male Hispanic, stretched out on the couch, reaching for a nine millimeter on the end table near his head.

"Don't try it! FREEZE!"

Behind him he heard one of the tac cops yell, "No se mueva!"

The man froze, pinned to the couch by fear and flashlight beams.

As the tac cops swarmed across the room, Thinnes pointed his .38 at the man's head. He shoved his flashlight in his belt and grabbed the nine millimeter. He noticed a man and a woman across the room, naked, on a mattress on the floor, caught by the lights and confusion, and shocked into consciousness. He held the captured gun out behind him and said, "Take him, Carl."

Oster said, "Yeah," as he moved to cover the goof.

Thinnes took the flashlight from his belt and rushed the bedroom, glancing into the can as he pa.s.sed it. The tac cop who'd been third into the apartment covered him while he kicked open the bedroom door. It slammed against the wall inside the room and rebounded. Thinnes pushed it wider as he dived through the doorway. In the bed to his left, a woman screamed. Hispanic. The color of half-milk coffee. Alone.

Holding the light away from his body, Thinnes ran to the far side of the room. No one. A shotgun under the bed. The woman sat against the headboard, with the covers pulled up around her neck, and kept screaming.

"Shut up!" he told her. "Cllase!" He knew that much Spanish. "Silencio!"

She covered her mouth with a hand and whimpered.

The tac cop switched on the room lights. Thinnes put his flashlight away. He and the tac man converged on the closet. "COME OUT, OCAMPO!"

Nothing happened. They stood to either side of the door, guns pointed. Thinnes cautiously turned the k.n.o.b, then yanked the door open.

The closet was full of guns-rifles and shotguns, boxes of ammunition, and an Uzi. And booze-cases of it. There wasn't room to hide a cat.

Thinnes turned back to the woman and jerked the covers off her. She was naked and pregnant, and only about fifteen. A child. She stifled a scream. Thinnes's disgust for Ocampo made him feel like puking. He pointed to the foot of the bed and the girl scrambled on all fours to curl up there in the fetal position. He threw the covers over her, and she clutched them around her, leaving only her face exposed. He flipped over the pillow she'd been sitting on, revealing a .357. Nickel plated. c.o.c.ked.

The tactical officer said, "Christ!"

Thinnes dec.o.c.ked the gun and put it in his pocket. "Where's Xaviar?" he asked the girl. Her eyes widened. "HIELO?"

"No se," she said, but her eyes tracked toward the window.

Thinnes pulled out his radio and said, "Ocampo's escaped. He may have gone out a window." He put away the radio and went over to look. The room was hot, so the quarter-inch gap between the sash and sill seemed innocent. He carefully moved the curtains aside. Light from the room showed a brick wall two and a half feet beyond the gla.s.s. Thinnes cautiously pushed up the sash. No shots. He heard the tac cop call the roof squad to ask what they could see.

"Nothing up here" came back over the air. Ferris's voice.

Thinnes stuck his head out and looked. Above him, the roof team probed nearby rooftops with their lights. Below, the searchlight from a marked squad played over garbage and litter in the gangway. Something moved. A human form materialized from the trash and slunk, like a giant rat, away from the lights, toward the alley behind the building. "OCAMPO, FREEZE!" Thinnes shouted. The figure kept running. Thinnes backed into the room and grabbed his radio. As he keyed it, the tac man climbed out on the window ledge and leaned back until his shoulders. .h.i.t the wall of the adjacent building. He wedged himself between the two walls and started downward like a mountain climber in a rock chimney.

"Don't shoot!" Thinnes said into the radio. "Spiderman's a cop! The suspect just ran in the alley!"

He looked around. The girl was still curled up on the bed. Out in the hall, Ryan was holding another girl, of about five, wrapped in a towel. Two older boys were holding onto Ryan, and a male uniform was carrying a toddler of indeterminate s.e.x.

"Ryan," Thinnes said, "there's a female juvenile in here who needs to get dressed."

Ryan came into the room. The girl she was holding put her two middle fingers in her mouth and began to suck them.

Thinnes pulled the .357 far enough out of his pocket for Ryan to see. "Don't be fooled by her age and condition," he said. "She was sitting on this." He laughed when Ryan did a double take. He let the gun drop back in his pocket and went into the front room.

The lights had been turned on. There was a strong smell of cigarette smoke and pot. The man Thinnes had disarmed and the naked couple-now clothed-were cuffed and sitting on the couch. Oster was watching as narcotics and tactical officers systematically searched the room, piling contraband on a table for one of the tac cops to tally.

"Reinforcements are on the way," Oster said. He looked tired. "Rossi's coming."

"Good," Thinnes said. "He can talk to the press. Let's go. Ocampo's getting away."

The street was lit by the orange glow of the sodium-vapor lights and the blue-and-white strobes of police squads. Exhaust from the cars and the cops' breaths condensed in clouds in the frigid air.

"Any sign of Ocampo?" Thinnes asked a patrol officer leaning against his car. He was a rookie, Thinnes guessed, from his energy and fitness level.