Fatal Reaction

with arms like a stevedore came in followed immediately by a tall woman in a bandana and sunglasses. They were immediately followed by a family with two toddlers who had to practically wrestle their double stroller through the door. It looked like the husband and wife were yelling at each other and both children were crying. We fast-forwarded through another twenty minutes of vacant lobby. I found myself wondering why I was doing this.
    Then suddenly Elliott hit the pause button. “There!” he exclaimed. “This must be who the neighbor saw.”
    He hit the slow-motion button and we watched a figure in a gray Armani raincoat with a baseball hat pulled low over his face walk quickly through the lobby. The time in the lower right-hand corner of our screen read eleven twenty-seven. On one shoulder was slung an athletic bag, which looked as though it was filled to near bursting. The tape was black and white, but even so the bag was distinctive—two colors, one dark and one light, dappled in what looked like a zebra pattern. In the other hand, the person carried a Marshall Field’s shopping bag, large but apparently not heavy. Whether by accident or design, he kept his head down and turned away from the camera as he walked quickly through the lobby and disappeared out the door and into the street.
     

CHAPTER 17
     
    Elliott rewound the tape and we looked at it again. I wish I could say we saw something new. But every time we viewed the tape, which we did dozens of times— backward, forward, in slow motion, and in freeze-frame—every time it was exactly the same. The figure of a man wearing Danny’s raincoat and a baseball cap, with an athletic bag slung over one arm, darted quickly through the lobby and out into the street....
    By the time we finally gave up I had a headache from squinting at the grainy images on the video screen. I was also starving. The dinner the firm brought in every night for people working late had long ago been served. From long experience I knew that by now only the picked-over dregs remained. There aren’t many restaurants that stay open for dinner in the loop, so I suggested we grab something at the Union League Club.
    Outside the temperature had dropped and the wind roared through the canyon of office buildings, gathering speed, and seemed to drive right through us. It was literally too cold to speak. I clutched my coat around me and leaned into the wind. LaSalle Street was completely deserted except for the man huddled over the newspaper machine across from the Board of Trade, filling it with the next day’s edition. It was hard to miss the headline that announced in ten-point type that the body of Sarrek’s first victim had been identified. They were running what looked like a high school graduation picture beside the now familiar head shot of Stanley Sarrek. I thought of Joe Blades. One down, sixty-two left to go.
    We arrived at the Union League with the relief of refugees. Shedding our coats in the cloakroom we made our way up the club’s graceful central staircase to the main dining room. At that hour there were only a half-dozen diners lingering over their brandy. Louis, the maître d’ wished us a good evening and ushered us to a quiet table by the window.
    The Union League Club is a bastion of emphatic political incorrectness. After all, it had once boasted General Philip Sheridan—he of “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” fame—as a member. Women were a very recent concession and our presence had in no way altered the deliberately staid gentleman’s club atmosphere.
    Tonight I didn’t care. I just wanted food. A few seconds later a waiter appeared in response to my telepathic summons and deposited a basket of fresh rolls. I helped myself as Elliott watched me, grinning.
    “What?” I demanded, greedily tearing one in half. “Nothing.”
    “Oh, come on. What?”
    “I just get a kick out of watching you eat.”
    “You can’t possibly mean that.”
    “You don’t understand. Most women are afraid to let anyone see that they’re hungry. They tell the waiter to take the butter away and order their salad dressing on the side.”
    I was curious about these breadless women of his acquaintance but realized that by asking I would be opening myself up to questions I did not intend to answer.
    “Well, tonight I’m so hungry that I’m thinking of ordering a glass of salad dressing as an aperitif,” I announced.
    “I’ve missed you, you know.”
    I shook my