“Keeping a guard posted there?”

“Yeah. And that is twenty-four hour.” He sighed, shook his head. “Heller, there’s a lot about this case that doesn’t make sense.”

“Such as?”

“That maroon Plymouth. We never saw a car like that in the entire six weeks we had the union hall under surveillance. Rooney drives a blue LaSalle coupe.”

“Any maroon Plymouths reported stolen?”

He shook his head. “And it hasn’t turned up abandoned, either. They must still have the car.”

“Is Rooney that stupid?”

“We can always hope,” Pribyl said.

I sat in an easy chair with sprung springs by the window in room 301 of the residential hotel across the way. It wasn’t a flophouse cage, but it wasn’t a suite at the Drake, either. Anyway, in the dark it looked fine. I had a flask of rum to keep me company, and the breeze fluttering the sheer, frayed curtains remained unseasonably cool.

Thanks to some photos Pribyl left me, I now knew what Rooney looked like: a good-looking, oval-faced smoothie, in his mid-forties, just starting to lose his dark, slicked-back hair; his eyes were hooded, his mouth soft, sensual, sullen. There were also photos of bespectacled, balding Berry and pockmarked, cold-eyed Herbert Arnold, V.P. of the union.

But none of them stopped by the union hall-only a steady stream of winos and bums went in and out.

Thenhe ound seven, I spotted somebody who didn’t fit the profile.

It was a guy I knew-a fellow private op, Eddie McGowan, a Pinkerton man, in uniform, meaning he was on nightwatchman duty. A number of the merchants along Madison must have pitched in for his services.

I left the stakeout and waited down on the street, in front of the plumbing supply store, for Eddie to come back out. It didn’t take long-maybe ten minutes.