Mean Streets

by Graham Marks

  28 END OF THE ROAD?

  The second Tony Burrell’s driver had seen the person in the car in front lean out with a gun, he’d momentarily dropped back and gone as far to the left as he could, without driving off the narrow road. The shot had, as he’d hoped, gone wide. “Who are these guys, Tony?”

  “People in a whole lot more trouble than they were when they woke up this morning, and that’s the truth…” Tony Burrell frowned and turned to the two men in the back. “Get the iron out, boys. And aim for the tyres, I want these types able to talk when we get ’em.”

  “Did the shooter look like it was a Jane to you?” The driver, eyes peeled, speeded up again.

  “The girl looked like a kid to me.”

  “For crying out loud, they’ll be driving getaways next!”

  “This whole thing’s looking bumpy – I mean, the guy getting away like that, on horseback?” Tony shook his head. “I read that in the paper, I’d think they were pulling my leg.”

  “We’re on the straight now, Tony – want me to get closer?” The driver nodded his head backwards. “So the guys can get a better shot?”

  “Go for it – boys, you’re on.”

  The two men in back both racked their recently cleaned and oiled automatic weapons, wound their windows down and leaned out each side of the car. Before either man had had the chance to pull the trigger, the shooter in the car in front made a surprise reappearance and fired twice, making them duck back inside as the bullets whistled past.

  “You sure it’s the tyre you want us to get, boss?”

  “I’m sure, boys. Just do it, will you?”

  “Wait a second, Tony.” The driver jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We have company coming up behind, and take a look down the road…”

  The driver of the Bureau’s Ford saloon could now see the two cars not that far ahead of him; he shifted gear and pressed the gas pedal down harder. He’d dropped his partner at a house a mile or so back so he could call a number in Chicago that was manned round-the-clock by Bureau of Investigation personnel. He really hoped he hadn’t got it wrong about spotting the Burrell character, because if he had he was going to find himself on the carpet in the not too distant future.

  He’d only been with the new “gangbuster squad” – set up not that long ago by Mr. Robertson Bonner – for a couple of months. This was a big operation that he was supposed to be playing a tiny part in, checking activity at the Twelve Oaks estate, making a few circuits with his partner; the job was to report anything they saw back to his immediate boss, who was waiting with a couple of other men at a nearby hostelry. He was not supposed to get involved in a car chase!

  And now, what he saw ahead of him down the road was even more trouble…

  Things were, in Trey’s considered opinion, beginning to get out of hand.

  Next to him, Mr. Shady Jones was loudly muttering all kinds of nonsense about St. Peter and the Pearly Gates and how he wasn’t in any way ready to meet either of them. Behind him was no better. Banjo was barking fit to bust and Velma was being yelled at by Mr. Pisbo, who had gone beyond angry; she had just done the exact opposite of what her father had said and blasted a couple more shots at the car following them, so Trey could see she kind of deserved what she was getting. And, as if coping with all the racket in the car wasn’t bad enough, coming towards him, on what had continued to be a fairly narrow stretch of road, was another motor.

  Trey wished he could ask someone (someone who knew how to drive) for advice, but Mr. Pisbo was far too involved with tearing another considerable strip off his daughter, who was, apparently, about to be grounded until she turned twenty-one. It looked like Trey was, as his gramps would say, really behind the eight ball and would have to sort out this situation by himself.

  “Boy, you driving this jalopy with your eyes shut?” Shady had stopped his grouching and was pointing out of the windshield.

  “I can see it.”

  “Good! That good – but can you also see that this darn road ain’t even nearly two cars wide?”

  “It’ll be okay…” With a car coming up fast behind him, and another in front, all Trey could think of doing was grit his teeth and hope for the best. The best being that the other driver took to the verge, like he was about to do, so they would pass without incident. The only problem with this plan was that Trey didn’t dare slow down, and the verge on his side of the road was quite high. “Hold on, everyone!”

  Trey shifted down a gear, braked slightly and turned the steering wheel sharply to the right…

  Down the road ahead he was aware that the other driver was taking a similar course of evasive action…

  The steering wheel twitched and jerked wildly in Trey’s hands as the car mounted the verge, throwing everyone around like beans in a can…

  Weirdly, as they sped past the other car, Trey found himself thinking it looked remarkably like a grey-and-black two-tone Packard…

  And then he was sure he saw a wide-eyed Alex Little sitting in the front passenger seat, and Davis driving…

  Finally, just seconds after it looked like disaster was inevitable, Trey was hauling the wheel to the left and getting the car back on the road again. He’d done it!

  He wasn’t sure exactly how, but he had done it!

  It looked like everyone had survived as well, although both Shady and Banjo had been rendered silent by the dramatic manoeuvre, while Mr. Pisbo was oohing and aahing that his leg hurt real bad and Velma was making a fuss and demanding to know if there was anything she could do to help. But Trey’s joy was short-lived. A quick glance in the rear-view mirror was enough to tell him that the driver of the car chasing them had been just as successful at evading the Packard and was still right on their tail!

  Alex could not believe what had just happened. In the space of less than a minute he’d almost been involved in a head-on collision with another car, which, he had to admit, was a pretty scary moment. Then Davis had pulled off an extremely nifty and impressive piece of driving that had saved the day – the Packard missing the other car by half a gnat’s whisker. Finally Davis had followed that by somehow managing not to hit the other two motors that it turned out were chasing after the first one at some speed. The chauffeur had now stopped the Packard, his face quite pale, and was gripping the steering wheel and breathing very, very deeply.

  But these were by no means the most extraordinary things that had occurred. Top of that list was the fact that the first car had, unless he was a monkey’s uncle, been driven by Trey! He was one hundred per cent sure of it. Added to which, he definitely recognized the driver of the second car as one of Mario’s men, who had had Tony Burrell and a couple of the other guys with him; he hadn’t the first idea who was in the third.

  The big questions were, of course:

  1. Why was Tony Burrell chasing Trey when he was supposed to be finding out if he’d been kidnapped or not?

  2. Whose car was Trey driving? And,

  3. Where the heck had he learned to drive like that?

  “Hey, Ma, didja see that?” In the silence, Alex leaped up and looked round. “Ain’t Davis the bee’s knees, Ma? Ma, you okay?”

  Alex’s mother, along with Guido’s wife and daughter, Arianna, had been completely unaware that anything was up until right at the very last minute – Davis, the chauffeur, not wanting to alarm them. Which was why Alex’s mother had been applying some lipstick when the car had gone careering half off the road, and then back onto it again. She now sported a bright red slash of colour from lip to left ear, which made her look like she had a strangely ghoulish smile.

  “Okay? Do I look like I should be okay, Alex? Davis, what in heaven’s name happened back there?”

  Mrs. Vittrano and Arianna, who had so far not said a word, both looked at Alex’s mother and burst into tears simultaneously. Alex couldn’t tell if this was because of the lipstick or the driving, but thought it best not to enquire.

  “I must apologize, ma’am.” Davis blinked and did a tiny shi
ver, which had nothing at all to do with him being cold. “There was almost a terrible accident…someone driving down the road straight at us, ma’am.”

  “At us?” Alex’s mother stopped trying to repair the damage to her make-up. “Why us?”

  The possibility that there had been an attempt on their lives only made Arianna and Mrs. Vittrano cry even more and even louder.

  “No, Ma, it was someone being chased by Tony – Mr. Burrell.” For some reason, he didn’t know why, Alex thought that now was probably not the best time to announce that the driver of the car that had so very nearly crashed into them was his new friend from school.

  “What’s Mr. Burrell doing chasing people, for crying out loud?” Alex’s mother looked back at the mirror in her powder compact. “Davis, get back to the house, before someone else tries to turn us all into strawberry jello!”

  “Did you see who that was?” Tony Burrell looked over his shoulder at the fast disappearing rear of the two-tone Packard.

  The driver nodded. “I did.”

  “Jeez…” Tony whistled. “That was close.”

  “You’re telling me, boss.”

  “And what about the guy we now have on our tail?”

  “You think he’s a cop?” The driver glanced in his wing mirror.

  “Can’t be too careful.” Tony looked over his shoulder at one of the men in the back. “You brought your typewriter with you?”

  “Never go anywhere without it, Tony.” The man patted the polished wooden stock of the Thompson sub-machine gun, next to him on the seat, along with a couple of extra 50-round drum magazines.

  “Keep it ready, you never know when we might need it.” Tony Burrell squared his shoulders. “Time we quit fooling around…let’s get that car stopped!”

  29 THE QUIET IS SHATTERED

  The phone call to the Bureau’s Chicago office had been picked up immediately, and the message passed on, with the utmost speed, to the relevant person. This person being Captain Robert B. Maynard, who had been waiting at the Country Inn for the return of his two men in the Ford saloon.

  Now Captain Maynard and his men were primed for action – their two cars, one on either side of the blacktop, were each parked at a forty-five degree angle and waiting to be driven out to block the road. They were all set and eager to go, guns at the ready but still kept holstered and out of sight. If the new recruit, McKelldry, had it right and Tony Burrell was up here and up to something, it might give them the excuse they needed to take a good look at what was going on at Twelve Oaks. On the other hand, if he was wrong then everyone knew McKelldry’s chances of staying in the new squad were non-existent.

  Then, round a bend in the road, they saw a car matching the description McKelldry had given, and behind it the one he’d said was doing the chasing. Everyone moved into position, with Captain Maynard standing up on the running board of one of the cars to check out what he could see with his army-issue binoculars.

  “Blow me down…” Captain Maynard took the binoculars away from his eyes, frowning.

  “Sir?” queried the man nearest to him.

  “There is a kid driving!”

  “How we gonna handle this one, sir?”

  “Start the cars and move ’em as soon as he’s through.” Captain Maynard jumped off the running board. “McKelldry’s got the rear position covered, so Burrell’s got nowhere to go.”

  “Think he’ll make a fight of it, sir?”

  “Listen up, everyone – do not fire until and unless they do, understood?”

  “Yes sir!” came the response.

  Two men got into their vehicles and cranked up the engines, the remaining two officers waiting in the lee of the cars, which they would use to fire from behind, if they had reason to do so. It was fairly obvious to everyone present that, if this didn’t go pretty much like clockwork, things could get messy. Then they saw Captain Maynard walk out and stand right in the middle of the road…

  Trey was just beginning to think he couldn’t take many more surprises when he saw the two cars parked on either side of the road. Surely they couldn’t be waiting for them…could they? And if they were, how had the people behind him managed to organize that?

  There was no time to think of anything clever to do, and anyway, nowhere else to go but straight ahead. Trey was ready for all this to stop. He’d had it up to here with being chased and having no way of escaping. Trent Gripp always managed to snatch some kind of victory right out of the jaws of whatever disastrous situation he found himself in. Always. And although he knew very well that Trent Gripp was a made-up person, in the back of his mind Trey wanted to believe that in real life there would also, somehow, always be a way out. Which was when he saw the man walk from behind one of the cars and stand in the middle of the road. He was beckoning with his right hand and holding up something shiny in his left.

  “You credit that, boy?” Shady shook his head in disbelief. “Looks like we be pulled over for speeding! Must be a angel on our shoulder, as when in this life is there ever po-leece when you really need ’em? You tell me that!”

  Tony Burrell’s driver took his foot off the accelerator slightly, letting the distance increase between them and the car in front. “Boss?”

  “I got a bad feeling about this…” Tony glanced over his shoulder at the car behind them, then stared straight ahead. “Looks like they’re going to let those guys through and have us in a bind…I’d say we’ve been set up good and proper. Hung out to dry.”

  “Who’d do a thing…?”

  “Who knew where we were? Who knew?”

  “Mario? He wouldn’t…”

  “Not Mario, you idiot! Had to be that rat Bowyer Dunne! He knew he was in big trouble and must’ve made some kind of a deal.” Tony reached into his jacket and pulled out his chromed Colt automatic. “We gotta get back to the house…don’t let me down!”

  The driver, whose nickname was “The Wheel”, did not need to be told twice.

  Captain Maynard stepped back, his overcoat tails swinging like the toreador’s cape in a movie about bullfighters he’d once seen; as the Chrysler 50 flew past him, the face of the kid driving a grimace of concentration and fear, Captain Maynard let the car on his right move in front of him across the road. The next few seconds were going to be crucial. Would the pursuing car stop or fight?

  In the event, it did neither.

  Somehow – and later everyone would agree that if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, they wouldn’t have believed it – the driver of the dark red Pontiac pulled off what could only be described as a pretty darned astonishing move. One moment the car was coming straight at the roadblock, and the next the rear end had spun round like the car was a toy on a spindle; in a space that looked far too narrow, and in a matter of yards, it was facing the opposite direction! Tyres squealed like stuck pigs, exhaust smoke billowed and grit flew every which way as the car came to a momentary halt, rocking on its suspension. Then, engine roaring, it took off the way it had come. Straight for the Bureau vehicle coming down the road.

  This was so unexpected that for a split second Captain Maynard was at a loss as to what to do next. That moment’s hesitation was all it took to let all hell break loose.

  Instead of getting out of the way of the oncoming car, the Ford saloon kept going right for it, a decision which caused two men to appear from the rear windows of the Pontiac, guns blazing.

  Refusing to take the hail of bullets as a hint, the driver of the Ford put it into a skid that just clipped the front offside wing of the Pontiac as the driver tried to avoid him. The collision sent the Ford tumbling over on its side and fractured its gas tank, which proceeded to ignite when gasoline spilled onto the intensely hot exhaust system; and then the tank exploded. This happened just after the driver had managed to exit through the smashed front windscreen.

  Apart from damaging a very fine paint job, the Ford’s impact burst one of the Pontiac’s front tyres and broke both the tie rods. This brought the Pontiac to an abrupt
, lurching halt and caused the four occupants to be thrown forwards with some force. The gunman still hanging out of the rear window carried on like a stone from a catapult when the car stopped. He landed awkwardly more than fifteen feet down the road, ending up with a broken clavicle and scapula, a shattered right humerus, plus a punctured lung, some serious cuts and grazes and a mild concussion. His colleagues came out of the Pontiac dazed but, despite that, with guns blazing.

  All this happened in far less time than it took to tell the story the next day in the squad room.

  As the scene unfolded Captain Maynard sent one man back to check on the folks in the Chrysler, then yelled “Fire at will!”, even though he was no longer in the army. As his men – apart from the driver of the Ford saloon – hadn’t been thrown around in an auto accident, their shooting was much more accurate than the fierce, but unfocused gunfire they were up against.

  Chunks of hot lead whistled through the air, thudded into the steel bodywork of the cars blocking the road, and ploughed through the tempered glass of at least one windshield. The noise was deafening. And then Captain Maynard saw someone come into his line of sight with a sub-machine gun, tossing slugs here, there and everywhere else. The Captain was about to try and get a shot off when he saw the man twist sideways, his hat flying off as a couple of bullets ripped into his upper torso. A quick glance showed he’d been shot by the new boy, McKelldry, who’d been driving the crashed saloon. He had blood streaming down his face from a cut scalp, and was kneeling in a two-handed pose that was straight out of the textbooks.

  Silence fell, broken only by the noisy crackle of the Ford burning up.

  A shiny, chromed automatic pistol arced up from somewhere behind the dark red Pontiac, and landed with a dull clunk on the blacktop; it was followed by a second pistol and then a hand appeared waving what looked like a monogrammed white handkerchief.