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exhausted yes, but sleepy no.
    He pulled up across the street from her apartment and looked up to her windows. The lights were still on. He could vaguely make out a woman. She seemed to be reading a book or else watching television. He wished he’d remembered to ask Turner for a pair of binoculars. It would have helped at this point. But the more he scrutinized the figure in the window the more he was convinced this wasn’t Sheila. Wrong build, wrong way of moving, wrong something.
    No more than ten minutes had elapsed since he’d begun his surveillance when another car came around the corner, then slowed, and came to a stop just in front of the building. A man got out and opened the door for the woman sitting on the passenger side.
    It was Sheila. And the man?—he was sure he knew the man. His resemblance to Harry Callahan was so striking Gallant was positive that was who it was.
    What was this? He could scarcely believe his eyes. Fate, which for so many years had borne down on James Gallant and given him nothing but abuse, had suddenly, mysteriously, taken a liking to him. Everything was going right.
    The two walked up the stairs and went into the building. Some minutes later a taxi appeared and the young woman Gallant had seen originally, came down. This must be the babysitter, he reasoned, for he now recalled that the cop he’d killed had a kid. Of course, it was the babysitter.
    Gallant hoped to catch a glimpse of something intriguing in the light of the window, but the light was soon extinguished. Everything was left to Gallant’s imagination. And it was one hell of an imagination, developed to a highly sensitive degree after six years of prison.
    Since Harry seemed likely to spend the night, it stood to reason that he would at one point or another put aside his .44. It got in the way when one tried to make love, and it wasn’t very comfortable to sleep with either.
    Gallant resigned himself to waiting. He waited for what seemed like hours, killing time listening to all-night talk shows. Then, at quarter to two, he left his car and ascended the steps to the apartment building. The front doors were unlocked, but not so the one just inside the vestibule.
    What Gallant didn’t know about breaking and entering before he was sent away he’d learned once he was in jail. The geniuses that were behind bars could have solved the problems of the world if only their minds were bent in that direction, Gallant thought.
    It said S. Richmond on the door of her apartment. Having thwarted the lock downstairs so silently and efficiently, he hoped to accomplish the same thing here. He certainly did not want to awaken anybody.
    There were two locks. One was as easily defeated as the other. Fate was still with him. He had no idea how long this situation would persist, but he might as well go with it for so long as it did.
    Now, the risk was stumbling into something in the darkness and toppling over the television set or a ceramic dish. But a trickle of light was seeping in from down the hall—the bathroom he saw—and so at least he had some sense of where he was going.
    Suddenly, there was a shriek. Good God, he thought. I haven’t made a fucking sound! It must be the kid. He stood stock still, paralyzed. Then he heard a door opening. He slipped behind a couch and peered into the gloom to see what was happening. What had started as a shriek had turned into a prolonged scream, broken at intervals by breathless sobs.
    Then Sheila appeared, a silhouetted figure in a white, nearly diaphanous gown, sweeping across the hallway in the direction of her daughter’s bedroom.
    “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he heard her say.
    The child’s sobbing grew more muffled.
    “Were you having a bad dream?” Sheila asked.
    Gallant forsook his hiding place, and slipped quietly down the length of the corridor until he stood just outside the door to her bedroom. He was gambling on a great deal, he realized, but if there was one thing he had