The elevator doors opened and he and Ed stepped in.
They rode down the shaft to the government garage, headed to the Division section and toward a blue Hudson, Chicago Division car number 13. Ed jumped behind the wheel, Sam in the passenger seat; they laid the two weapons in the space beneath the dashboard and leaning upward to rest on the seat next to Sam. Ed turned the engine over, backed out of the space, and headed out of the garage. A bolt of gray sky hit them as they climbed the ramp to Adams Street.
“Go north to Touhy,” said Sam, looking at the map he’d taken out of the glove compartment. “That’s our fastest route to U.S. 14. Then we’ll head out that, with our eyes open for a shiny black V-8.”
“What if we run into him?” said Ed. “Are we going to follow?”
“We’ll just see how he wants to play it,” said Sam. “Maybe the Thompson will convince him to give up.”
“Anyone else,” said Ed, “but not this guy.”
—
“CAN’T YOU GO A LITTLE FASTER?” J.P. said. “They might be getting close.”
“We don’t want some country cop pulling us over for speeding,” said Les.
“Yeah, yeah,” said J.P., his mouth dry, no spit, his breathing hard and ragged.
The land changed after the Wisconsin border, the pines giving way to Illinois prairie, towns of no particular distinction, farm structures spread here and there in the little stands of trees.
Les looked back to Helen in the rear seat, where her seatmates were a Colt Monitor and a Thompson with a drum, plus assorted magazines and automatic pistols.
“Are you okay, honey?”
“I’m swell,” she said.
“See, no problem,” he said. “We’re way ahead of the game. That fed’s probably still trying to get his mind around it, he has no idea where we went to, he’s probably just going to file a report and call it a day. As I say, we hit D’Abruzzio without a hitch and then we’re home free. Next stop: Reno. J.P., you can get your girl Sally over from Sausalito and we can rent a house together. Helen, you’ll like Sally. You gals can go shopping, and J.P. and I’ll play golf or something. We’ll get the kids out pretty soon. It’ll be great.”
Why did none of them believe it?
Beyond Crystal Lake, the road turned due east for a while. It was flat country, though dotted with brush and clusters of trees. Two lanes, separated by a median strip, ran unerringly toward Lake Michigan, still thirty miles or so ahead. Traffic was sparse, no police cruisers were seen, and Les kept scanning his rearview mirror for evidence of a Division fleet, but nothing came over the horizon that wasn’t another civilian car dawdling through errands or sales calls. He began to relax. He could almost believe himself. Yeah, they were going to get away with it, and it would all be just fine, exactly as he had said. He cranked around and smiled at Helen.
“How’re you doing, sweetie?”
She smiled back.
“Just fine,” she said. “I hope none of these damned things go off, though.”
“They’re fine,” he said. “Just don’t get curious and start poking at them. You could blow fifty holes in the roof.”
The road turned again, though not so severely, adopting a forty-five-degree angle to the southeast. In time, they passed a wide spot in the road called Fox River Grove, of no consequence except as the locale for a well-known Mob watering hole called Louis’s and the bridge over the Fox River.
“Next stop,” said Les, who knew the road, “Barrington. Then we’re practically there.”
—
CHARLES DROVE. SINCE it was his own private car and not a Division vehicle, he had to stay just above the legal speed limit for fear of losing even more time being stopped for speeding by a local. His automatic weighed heavily under his left shoulder, though as a precaution against fast, sudden action he’d unsnapped the strap.
He ran into traffic, had to pull over for an ambulance, got caught behind an at-grade train crossing, each little incident putting him farther behind than where, ideally, he could have been. He ground his teeth, scanning the band of road ahead of him for the shiny black Ford V-8, but it never came up.
It seemed there were 8s all over the place, however, and each demanded a close examination, but none was the 1934 model year, or particularly shiny. Each one, as well, cost him some time.
He was driven by an image of Sam in a fight and the prospect ate a hole in his guts. He found himself secretly hoping that Nelson had been smart, had gotten off Northwest Highway as soon as he got into Illinois, and had chosen a less direct route into Chicago. He tried to put his mind inside that of the man he was hunting. It made sense. Knowing he’d been made by Justice, Nelson would default from the straight, clear, obvious highway into the big town and either worm his way in via the jiggly little roads of the North Shore or go wide around the city on a western arc and come into it from another direction. He might even have gone north from the Lake Como Inn and would now be headed deep into Wisconsin or would have turned again and be coursing west to Minnesota.
Why would he shoot like an arrow into Chicago? It made no sense at all.
—
THE TRAFFIC OUT TOUHY was not heavy, as it was still mid-afternoon, and they hit Northwest Highway by 3:15 p.m. Turning right, they began the angle out toward Wisconsin, still sixty miles distant, which would take them through small towns just at the edge of bedroom-community distance from Chicago, like Park Ridge, Des Plaines, and Arlington Heights.
Sam placed his hand on the two heavy weapons to secure them, to hold them still, to keep them from bouncing. He tried to think of something to say but came up with nothing. Though technically in command, he was well aware that Ed Hollis had been blooded at Little Bohemia and was Charles’s co-shooter on the Dillinger kill.
He looked over, took some pleasure in the young man’s calm visage and straight-ahead concentration on the driving issues before him. Ed betrayed no symptoms of fear; he didn’t appear to be breathing hard, he wasn’t abnormally blanched of color, he wasn’t licking conspicuously dry lips.
Fine, being paired with a solid guy like Hollis was a great break for Sam, whose insides trembled at the thought of what could lie ahead. He tried to order his heart to beat more slowly, his breathing to lose its rawness, his mouth to moisten. The body would not listen to his mind.
Think of the guns, he thought. Think of what Charles said. You concentrate on the gun, the shooting, that clears your mind of fear and you are able to operate. He tried to imagine looking over the flat receiver of the Remington and pulling the trigger, feeling the hard bark of the gun against his shoulder, and seeing the man of his many nightmares stagger backwards and drop. But the image disappeared and was replaced by another, of himself pulling the same trigger and nothing happening and him struggling, banging it, pushing levers and pulling cranks, trying to get it to work, while Baby Face Nelson, laughing, walked closer and closer . . .
“There,” said Hollis.
Sam looked at what was indeed a shiny black V-8 in the other lane, across the median, and his eyes locked on the license as his hand clenched the barrel of one of the guns.
Illinois 556091.
He breathed an involuntary sigh of relief.
“Close, but no luck,” said Hollis.
Sam said nothing. He wanted it to be Baby Face; he didn’t want it to be Baby Face. He wanted it to be now; he wanted it to be never. He wanted it to be finished; he wanted it to never start.
He laughed. Manhunts were such a trite, pulp thing, and yet here in life, as in pulp, the ending was the same. The head man hunter faced the quarry, gun to gun, face-to-face. It never happened that way except in pulp! In life, the boss was usually far away in an office or a thousand miles away in a capital city! Yet somehow this boss had ended up in this car with this riot gun.
They ran into some traffic as they hit a jog in the road just outside o
f Barrington; that little bedroom village contributed more than its share of cars to the traffic stream, and the two agents eyeballed each one, their car going the opposite direction, feeling both frustration and relief as each passing car turned out to be innocent.
Beyond Barrington, the traffic again thinned, and a sign announced that FOX RIVER GROVE would be next, six miles farther down. The land was flat, gone to thatch, the trees skeletal in late fall, the weather gray and chilly, at 40 degrees just cold enough to produce vapor from breathing to smear the windshield. Ahead, a single car came toward them. Yes, it was black. Yes, it was shiny. Yes—
“It’s them,” Hollis said.
Sam caught the first three numbers of the plate before the angle of passage took the view away: 639—
The cars passed, Sam turned, craning to verify the plate, and saw the last three: —578.
With a calm that surprised even himself, he said, “Okay, Ed, get us across the median and we’ll close on him.”
Without thinking, he took up the Thompson.
—
“OKAY,” said Les, eyeing his rearview, “I got a guy coming around on us.”
He watched in the mirror as a heavy, dark vehicle raised dust as it bounced across the median, and, in profile, the car he made out was a dark Hudson. It hit the pavement, rammed its way through a hard left, and began to come after them.
“He’s Division,” Les said. “That’s what they drive.”
“Oh, hell,” said J.P.
“I wonder how he got on us?” said Les.
“Les, I’m scared,” said Helen.
“Honey, it’s nothing,” said Les. “We’ll let him get close, then J.P. will give him a squirt with the Colt rifle in the hood and blow out his engine and he’ll be dumped way out here with no way to call headquarters. We’ll get off this big road and zip into Evanston and lay up. Tomorrow, we’ll get a new set of wheels and go on with the plan. It’s nothing. J.P., you get that thing ready. Honey, get down on the floor, just to stay out of the way.”
His voice was falsely chipper, and he watched as whoever was behind the wheel of the Division car leaned on the pedal, and it seemed to go from very far away to damned close in a single second.
Beside him, J.P. leaned over the seat and pulled the Colt Monitor over the obstacle of the seat back and oriented it toward the back window, nesting it against his shoulder, his forearm on the seat back, lowering his eye to the sights, exactly when Helen slithered to the floor.
He could feel J.P. squirming, adjusting, fiddling with the heavy rifle, cocking it, checking the mag, trying to get comfortable in what was admittedly a tough position from which to shoot well off his knees on the seat, against the sway and jiggle and roar of the car. Still, J.P.’s clumsiness with the task deeply annoyed Les and he wished he’d been on the gun, J.P. driving, because he was such a better shot and so much more effective in action.
“Have you got him yet?”
“This car’s bouncing, that car’s bouncing, the gun’s bouncing, I’m bouncing, the whole world is bouncing. Maybe if you slowed down a little bit.”
“He’ll be by us if I slow down, and he’ll have shots into us and we won’t have a thing to throw back. Goddammit, hit him. Hit him!”
J.P. fired a short burst, insanely loud in the confines of the car, the smell of burning powder and the spew of flecks and debris, driven by the fury of gas bleed-off, as well as the hot-as-hell spent shells pitching into the Ford’s cabin, one scorching shell hitting Les in the bare neck and making him flinch.
He saw the Hudson evade left, out of the line of fire, through the galaxies of crack and puncture of the back window.
“Did I hit him? I had him good!”
“He’s still coming, he’s around on us, trying to get into the blind spot. I’m gunning it. Get ready to fire again.”
Les punched it hard, felt the small car buck ahead and put a few feet of distance between his vehicle and the government men’s, which brought the Hudson back into J.P.’s field, and he squeezed off another short burst, repeating the drama of the heavy weapon firing in the confines of the small cabin.
“Goddammit, I thought I had him.”
“He’s still there. The guy’s got a machino!”
Les punched again, spurting ahead, just as the rip of the Thompson announced that a squad of hardball had been launched. One or two of the five or six seemed to hit the Ford, announcing their arrival with a smack of rending metal upon penetration, and a shiver of vibration, but most of the rounds blazed off in the direction of Barrington.
“Go for the windshield,” Les screamed. “Kill these bastards!”
—
IT WAS SO HARD. The gun was moving, the car was moving, dust filled the air, and Sam tried to hold the wedge of the front sight on the wavering image of the Ford a few dozen feet ahead, also roaring along at seventy-five miles per, but it was a total universe of swerve and jounce and tremble and shudder, the blur of the world, and even as he fired, he knew a rogue lurch had taken the sight off the target and, by the time he’d stopped shooting, he was staring at empty space above the Ford’s roof.
“Dammit!” he screamed to nobody.
The gun was so heavy, and he was resting the drum on the sill, trying to pivot with the wanderings of the two cars in the hot, blurry world of seventy-five miles per hour, but it was all but impossible. He pulled both grips tight against him, drawing the weapon hard to his shoulder, even as his back was in a strange twist in defiance of anatomical regularity, driving a pain into him, but as the car seemed to go calm for just a second. He had it, he was there, at about forty-five degrees to it, and he fired three and knew that two of them had blown blisters in the hood. Then the fragile relationship of car to car shattered in the random swerves of the chase and the Ford spurted ahead again, out of position for him to pivot the muzzle on it.
He looked in horror as the gunner in the Nelson car yanked his gun off the seat back, where it had rested for aiming through the window, cranked hard toward them, and just at that moment Ed hit the brakes, the Hudson fishtailing out of contention and the opponent’s field of fire, and the heavy sounds of the Colt were only sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The Hudson slid, wavering left, its tires grabbing for traction but finding none, and suddenly it was perpendicular to the direction of the road. Ed fought the wheel, finally got control of the car, but both saw that the gangster Ford had blown the chase open and was opening distance at a relentless pace. Ed cranked the wheel, stood on the accelerator, and rocketed ahead.
“He may have too much on me now, goddammit!” he screamed.
“Go, go, we can catch him!” Sam heard himself yelling, feeling magnificently without fear, his blood hot and angry, his instincts in a place they’d never been before, demanding that they close the gap, get into muzzle-burn range, and kill the gangsters.
“He’s slowing,” yelled Ed.
It was true. For unknown reasons, the Ford was decelerating, careening right, off the road to the shoulder, and then fishtailed down a dirt road, which had suddenly presented itself, where it came to a sloppy, dusty stop maybe fifty yards off Northwest Highway.
They roared by as Sam got the Thompson set again and dispatched a long burst, hoping to rake the car and send all its occupants to the morgue, but his shots started high, and went higher as they passed, while Ed pumped the brakes for control and brought the Hudson to a halt fifty yards or so beyond the turnoff.
“We’ve got him now,” yelled Sam, spilling from the car to get behind it, find cover, and resume firing.
—
“BASTARD PUT ONE INTO THE ENGINE!” screamed Les. “I got no speed or acceleration.”
“Pull over!” screamed J.P.
Helen just screamed.
Les fought the dying car through a rocking right-hand turn, and as he transitioned from the pavement t
o the raw dirt of the smaller road, the windshield went red with dust, which typhooned through the open windows, blanketing everything in choking grit.
Then it was over, as the car came to a halt and its engine finally died.
At that moment the federal car flew by, trailing its own column of ruptured earth, even as one of the G-Men fired a Thompson burst as he passed them. It was bum shooting, and neither Les nor J.P. had time to react, or really any need to, the bullets spending themselves fecklessly far beyond their target.
“We take these guys, we grab their car, we detour into Evanston, it’s fine, it’s no problem,” Les directed.
Helen, crumpled in the rear seat well, screamed again.
“It’s okay,” Les said. “Sweetie, jump out and take a powder. Nobody’s going to shoot the woman. We’ll pick you up in a few minutes.”
Helen popped the door, rolled out.
“I love you, baby,” she yelled.
“I love you too, baby girl.”
She scampered away, as Les, outside on his side of the car, reached across the backseat for the Thompson gun, fetched it by its front grip, and brought it to the shoulder. Behind him, J.P., with the Monitor, squirmed out, slipped down the car body to the front tire, and came over the hood, bracing the heavy weapon on it.
“Try not to hit the car,” Les yelled. “We need it in one piece, and we need to do this goddamned thing fast.”
He brought his own gun up, oriented down the receiver, Lyman aperture to front sight, and confronted the blue Hudson, about a hundred fifty feet out, on the shoulder. It faced due south, while the Ford had died facing due west. Between them, the contested ground was a triangular chunk of grassy Barrington parkland unmarked by trees or bushes, just open ground, its yellow-brown grass alive in the chilly breeze, while, all around, skeletal trees stood in twisted postures, as if arranging themselves for the best view of the fun in front of them. Les squinched his eyes and could make out behind the Hudson the shapes of the two agents as they secured their weapons and set themselves for the fight of their lives.
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