arry Legs kept me twisting in the wind the rest of the afternoon. At five I tried calling him but couldn't locate him at Area Three or Eleven-Twenty-One, as the department's headquarters was known. The secretary in the homicide office refused to disclose his whereabouts or to page him. At six I was resigned to being blown off when there was a knock on my door. It was him.

"Hey, Jack," he said without stepping in. "Let's take a ride."

Washington had his car parked in the valet lane in the hotel drive-up. On the dash he had placed a Police Business card so there was no problem. We got in and pulled out. He crossed the river and started north on Michigan Avenue.

The snow had not abated as far as I could tell and there were drifts along both sides of ' the road. Many of the cars on the road had a three-inch frosting on their horizontal surfaces. I could see my breath in Washington's car and the heater was on high.

"Guess you get a lot of snow where you come from, Jack."

"Yeah." He was just making conversation. I was anxious to see what he really had to say but thought it better to wait, to let him tell me at his speed. I could always pull the reporter act and ask questions later.

He turned west on Division and headed away from the lake. The sparkle of the Miracle Mile and the Gold Coast soon disappeared and the buildings began to get a little more seedy and in need of repair and upkeep. I thought maybe we were heading toward the school Bobby Smathers had disappeared from but Washington didn't say.

It was completely dark now. We went under the El and soon passed a school. Washington pointed at it.

"That's where the kid went. There's the yard. Just like that, he was gone." He snapped his fingers. "I staked it all day yesterday. You know, a year since the disappearance.

Just in case something happened or the guy, the doer, came back by."

"Anything?"

Washington shook his head and dropped into a brooding silence.

But we didn't stop. If Washington wanted me to see the school, the view had been quick. We kept heading west and eventually came upon a series of brick towers that somehow looked abandoned in some way. I knew what they were. The projects. They were dimly lit monoliths against the blue-black sky. They had assuredly taken on the appearance of those that were housed within. They were cold and despairing, the have-nots of the city skyline.

"What are we doing?" I asked.

"You know what this place is?"

"Yeah. I went to school here-I mean in Chicago.

Everybody knos Cabrini-Green. What about it?"

"I grew up here. So did Jumpin' John Brooks."

Immediately, I thought of the odds. First of just surviving in such a place, next of surviving and then becoming a cop.