A Night With Pauley LaPointe, Chicago’s Nightcrawler

At precisely two minutes before midnight, the door of a parking garage on an elevated stretch of 18th Street in Chinatown judders to life. Like an aluminum theater curtain, it rises inch by clattering inch, revealing first a snarl of railroad tracks just outside, then, once fully opened, the twinkling grandeur and brooding depths of the city’s skyline. Idling in his gurgling Crown Vic, amid a static storm of police scanner squawks, bleats, beeps, and babble (All units . . . 23-Robert . . . Shots fired), Pauley LaPointe paradiddles the steering wheel, amped by the vision unscrolling before him, antsy to pounce on the opportunities laid bare just past the cresting avenue.