Target Lancer nh-14

by Max Allan Collins

Last night, after I got back from Agostino’s, Helen was a wreck, anxious as hell, flying into tears when I stepped through the door of the downstairs apartment. She kissed me and kissed me and kissed me some more, and pulled me down to the carpet where suddenly my underwear and pants were around my ankles, her dress pulled up and her panties pulled down, and we were screwing there, rug burn be damned, and it was frantic and quick and intense, and the best time I’d had all week.

  We were both too old to be embarrassed about such impulsive behavior, but we did take time to pull ourselves together. We shared a shower upstairs, purely cleansing, put on fresh clothes, and made our way to the Erie Cafe on Wells. We’d discussed Riccardo’s, but after Agostino’s and Johnny Rosselli, I was no longer in the mood for Italian.

  Helen and I ordered the Erie Cafe house specialty-a seven-inch-thick broiled steak with their special steak sauce. Rare, which we would share.

  “Those men,” Helen said, “they looked … awful. That one looked like the wild man from Borneo escaped from a circus.”

  This was the first she’d directly mentioned Chuckie and Mad Sam. I explained that the gentleman who’d summoned me had sent them to make a point, and that everything was fine now.

  Her head tilted, and her gray-blue eyes took on a sad tinge. “Will you always have to deal with those kind of people in your work?”

  “Probably till I retire. You deal with a lot of them, yourself.”

  She shrugged. “What can I do? They own the venues, and pay me to share my talents. I suppose in a way the same is true with you.”

  “I try not to work for them.”

  “Will you ever?”

  “What, work for them again?”

  “Retire, one of these days? As Sophie Tucker puts it.”

  “I think so. I’m feeling like I’ve about had all the fun I can stand. I’ll probably go to sixty-five or so. I’m hoping when Sam gets out of college, he’ll take over the business. If he wants to. How about you, Helen? Great as you look, how long can you shake your … fans?”

  “Maybe not much longer,” she admitted with a shrug. “Who knows? Maybe it’s time that you and I…”

  A waiter brought us Poncinos-rum in very hot coffee with a lemon twist.

  “You and I what?” I asked, after a sip of the deadly stuff.

  Her smile twitched and seemed to be thinking about what it wanted to settle into. What it decided on was warm and lovely.

  “Nate … we’ve been friends a long time. I have a kid, you have a kid. We have both been around and then some.”

  “No argument.”

  “I’m not sure we’ve ever exactly been in love. I’m not sure we haven’t been, either. And we’ve both had busted marriages, me more than my share. Still … maybe we should start thinking about, well … I mean, old age is coming, my darling.”

  “Some mornings, it’s here.” I saluted her with my Poncino. “If that was a proposal of marriage, I’m in.”

  She smiled. Patted my hand. “Maybe I’m just feeling sentimental. Maybe I’m feeling knocked around after a week of hustling from club to club trying to wrangle a booking out of guys younger than me. They look at me like … like I’m the Statue of Liberty or something.”

  “Hey, sooner or later everybody visits the Statue of Liberty. And you did get booked.”

  “Yes. At a strip club. And a strip club that is probably about to get itself shut down by the law, and in Chicago yet. Look, light of my life. Assuming the Frolics is still open in January, I’ll be back in town, and maybe I can borrow that downstairs apartment again, and upstairs bedroom, too. And we can pick this conversation up where it left off.”

  Which is what it did-leave off. Our giant steak arrived, and our talk turned to other things, too dull for me to remember.

  So now I was thinking about my fifty-something fan dancer as I sat parked in a Secret Service Chrysler on Division Street next to a Negro agent who was once again staring too conspicuously at the lodging place of our subjects.

  “You’re doing it again,” I told him.

  “They’re coming out.”

  I sat up.

  The two Cubans were in tan zippered jackets, chinos, and sneakers, same as before, but they were not joshing around with each other, not today. In fact their expressions were sober and they walked with what might be termed purpose. Or was I reading in?

  Anyway, they got into their green Pontiac-Gonzales driving, Rodriguez riding-and pulled out into the light traffic. I caught a break by way of a lull that let me pull a U-turn and fall in a couple of cars behind them. They were in no rush, heading west into a run-down area, home of hookers who liked to call nearby Clark Street “the Rush Street of the Working Man.”

  The Pontiac crossed LaSalle where Urban Renewal was busy creating the future by displacing the present. Just to the north, Carl Sandburg Village (named for the Bohemian newsman poet) housed white-collar Loop workers. Like the moon, its towers were seen by the people around here, but they could not hope to live there.

  We tailed the green Pontiac past Wells and under the Ravenswood El. Just north were the blocky towers of Cabrini Green, a modern high-rise slum replacing the Sicilian tenements of Little Hell.

  Beyond Halsted, the green buggy crossed the ancient, stone-towered steel-lift bridge that led onto Goose Island, three blocks of industrial wilderness-warehouses, manufacturing lofts, scrap-metal junkyards. As we rolled by in slow pursuit of the Cubans, large chunks of iron whooshed into the air, with a rattle like the Devil trying for seven or eleven-a missed tank of compressed gas, not entirely emptied, had made its way into a crusher.

  Neither Eben nor I registered any surprise at this explosion.

  From Goose Island we were led below the new four-lane expressway, Mayor Daley’s extension of the national highway system linking Chicago to Wisconsin and Indiana, and O’Hare to the Loop, a concrete ribbon across the North and Northwest Sides that had made fortunes for insider speculators in right-of-way property. Would have been nice if one of my wealthy clients had clued me in. Hadn’t I helped save or end enough fat-cat marriages to rate that?

  Soon we were in an older neighborhood, once Polish, Russian, and Jewish, now turning Puerto Rican; well-kept older storefronts with apartments above mingled with small narrow two- and three-flat buildings. Things seemed more run-down on side streets. West Town (as the area was called) was dominated by looming factories and the steeples of its many churches, mostly Catholic.

  Now we entered a wide square where Ashland-a major four-lane street-bisected Division, and where another angled street, Milwaukee Avenue, also crossed. What you probably noticed first was the three-story building to the north whose huge sign announced DAILY ZGODA.

  Taking that in, Eben asked, “A Polish newspaper?”

  “For more Poles than Chicago,” I said, “I suggest Warsaw.”

  A small central park featured junkies wandering, and was an old woman taking a crap in the grass? Yes, she was. And those old guys passing her on the sidewalk, hauling grocery bags, either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  The Pontiac turned north on Milwaukee, where block after block of stores awaited, of all types and all nations, signs in Polish, signs in Russian, signs in Spanish, even a few in English. Cuba’s flag was painted on some store windows and Puerto Rico’s on others. The spire of the Morris B. Sachs flatiron building, five blocks north, dominated this fiefdom of two- and three-story buildings with their storefronts below and apartments above.

  “They’re pulling over,” Eben said.

  “I see it.”

  The Bonneville pulled into a place near where a side street cut across, no light, no stop sign. I went on through the intersection-having to pick my way through the light traffic-and pulled into a place half a block up.

  Eben, turning to watch, said, “They’re getting out. Cutting over to that side street.”

  I shut off the engine. “I’ll see where they’re going.”

  Eben nodded, content to stay put. Not many Negr
oes around this part of town. Not any, right now, except him.

  As I rounded the corner, the Cubans were entering a storefront in the middle of the block. Pedestrians were mostly older people and moms with little kids, apparel ranging from Sears to rummage store, Poles outnumbering Puerto Ricans two to one. A few winos, a few junkies. No Cubans to speak of-they were the area’s ownership class.

  I walked down to where Gonzales and Rodriguez had disappeared and found an old kitchenette with GOOD FOOD written in big bold red cursive on the window. Through the glass, between two flags painted there (Cuba and Puerto Rico), I could see our two subjects heading toward the back. They slipped into a booth, sharing the same side.

  Cozy.

  I walked quickly back to the car and leaned in like a carhop, telling Eben, “Drive around and find a place opposite ‘Good Food’ restaurant. Middle of the block. They’re in there. Keep a close watch.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to have a Coke. Haven’t you heard? It’s the pause that refreshes.”

  I headed back for the luncheonette.

  Good Food’s food smelled good, in a carnival kind of way. The old restaurant was just a clutter of Formica tables with kitchen chairs on linoleum, rows of wooden booths along the left and right walls. Across the rear was a counter behind which was a diner-style window onto the kitchen. This time of afternoon was slow, but about a dozen customers were seated, mostly Puerto Ricans.

  Running the place was a skinny man and a plump woman, handsome Cubans in their late thirties, neatly dressed in white shirt and slacks, or in the woman’s case dress. Husband and wife, most likely, with hubby at the register and the better half behind the diner counter. Behind her, dark faces scurried in the kitchen.

  Over the serving window was a big wide plastic menu board, courtesy of Coke-listing sandwiches geared toward both Poles and Latinos: Polish sausage, fritas, plus typical diner fare. On the walls were Orange Crush, Green River, and 7-UP signs, but behind the register hung a huge “Old Cuba” calendar with a magnifico color photo of the Hotel Nacional in Havana, once owned by that great native Cuban, Meyer Lansky.

  Exiles owned all the stores around here, thanks to SBA loans-seemed Uncle Sam wanted to show the Cuban DP’s just how much better America was than Castroville. As Spanish speakers, they could serve the Puerto Rican customers well. But resentment was brewing, since the PR’s-like the Negroes-somehow couldn’t seem to wrangle those kind of loans.

  At the counter, I ordered a Coke, glad to be in street clothes and unshaven, just another working stiff. The zippered Windbreaker was blousy enough to conceal the holstered nine-millimeter under my arm, and I was hardly the only white guy in the joint. For example, there was a joe in a work shirt and matching pants eating a Polish sausage sandwich just down from me. And down from him, a husky guy in a checkered shirt and black pants having chicken soup.

  And two white guys just over to my left, sitting on the same side of a booth …

  … across from the pair of Cubans we’d tailed here.

  Not just any white guys, either-these were (as Sergeant Shoppa of the Chicago PD had dubbed them) Smith and Jones, the ex-soldier Southern boys with butch haircuts who rounded out the set of four Justice Department surveillance photos. Collect them all.

  The blond guy, in a plaid shirt unbuttoned over a T-shirt, reminded me of Vallee, but with a narrower, fox-like face; he was chewing a toothpick and frowning, not irritated, just trying to think. His black-haired associate, in a well-worn gray U.S. Army sweatshirt, was listening, chewing gum, as the Cubans spoke to them in Spanish.

  That impressed me. These two white-trash ex-GIs had picked up a second language, and here I was barely functional in English. I gulped some Coke from the room-temperature bottle I’d been served, while the two Cubans-the older, fright-wig character doing most of the talking-continued with what might have been a briefing.

  The confab hadn’t gone on long before the two white guys gave knowing nods to their booth mates, slid out, and headed back around the counter.

  Had I been made?

  Casually as possible, I unzipped the Windbreaker.

  But they weren’t getting behind that counter to better deal with yours truly-they did not seem to have noticed me. No, they were going out, through the kitchen, letting no grass grow. An alley was back there, and I was about to lose them.

  Moments later, the two Cubans exited their booth quickly, tossing a couple of bucks on the tabletop for their own soft drinks. As they hurried out onto the street, I kept my back to them, perched on my counter stool.

  Not wanting to be too damn obvious, I finished my Coke, tossed a quarter on the counter, and went outside. Looking diagonally across to Milwaukee Avenue, I could see the two Cubans getting into their Pontiac. They had hustled.

  I jaywalked over to the Chrysler, where Eben sat in the passenger seat. That was good surveillance technique: stay in the driver’s seat and other cars’ll pull up and wait, thinking you’re vacating your parking space.

  Getting behind the wheel, I said, “The two white guys were in there.”

  “All right,” Eben said, and then he was pointing. “Subjects are heading north on Milwaukee again.”

  The Pontiac indeed was on the move. But not moving fast-interesting, considering the Cubans had all but run out of the restaurant.

  Then I put it together.

  “They’re gonna pull into the alley behind the restaurant,” I said, waiting for an opening in traffic.

  “Why?”

  “The Caucasian Twins are back in that alley. My hunch is, it’s a weapons delivery.”

  “Damn, I bet you’re right!” Eben sat forward. “The rifles the landlady saw in that flat are in their trunk now! I better call this in.…”

  The Negro agent got on the radio, and by the time I had taken the left on Milwaukee, he was saying into the hand mike, “Tell Chief Martineau we have located all four subjects, repeat, all four subjects. More information as things develop. Ten-four.”

  Just like Broderick Crawford on Highway Patrol.

  Turning through the intersection, I saw no sign of the Pontiac.

  “They’ve already pulled in,” I said.

  I was driving faster than I should when I swung into the alley-narrowly missing the iron pillar supporting the Elevated tracks above-and had to slam on the brakes not to bump headlights with the Pontiac parked back there.

  Gonzales was again at the wheel and he reared back as our vehicles almost kissed snouts. The Bonneville trunk was up, with just the top of a bushy-haired head visible over it; then the trunk slammed shut, and revealed Rodriguez, gaping in annoyed surprise.

  That lowered trunk also provided us a better view down the alley, as another car-a light-blue Ford Falcon (couldn’t catch the damn plate)-was waving its ass and taillights at us from down at the other end of the alley, making a right turn and then out of sight.

  The white boys.

  From behind the wheel, I offered Gonzales a goofy grin, and shrugged in a way that proclaimed myself the dumb ass at fault here. The alarm left the Cuban’s expression and he nodded, reluctantly polite. Why call attention?

  That was when the damn police radio squawked: “This is Chief Martineau. What is your location, Agent Boldt?”

  Eben lurched forward to turn down the volume, but far too late.

  The message had been heard by the two Cubans-it had frozen them, in fact. But they’d thaw soon enough.

  Fuck it.

  I leaned out my window. “Secret Service! Exit the vehicle with your hands up!”

  That sounded like something a real G-man would say, right? Who wouldn’t wilt under that kind of verbal assault?

  Well, the Cubans didn’t. The bushy-haired guy yanked open the Pontiac’s rear left door and threw himself inside the car, slamming that door just as Gonzales threw the vehicle into reverse, hitting the gas and backing up, fast.

  I hit the gas, too, rocketing down the alley after them-they could never o
utrun us in reverse, though I could hardly blame them for trying.

  But we would never know the outcome of such a chase, because as they neared the alley exit, another car backed in, pausing, apparently to turn around, and we were on top of the Pontiac again, headlights getting reacquainted. I threw it in Park, leapt from my side of the vehicle as Eben did the same from his, both of us with guns in hand.

  Gonzales gave up immediately, getting out to stand with his hands up and his chin down, even assuming the position against a brick wall, making it easier on Eben cuffing the guy’s hands behind him.

  But Rodriguez wasn’t so cooperative. While Eben was making his collar, the big bushy-haired bastard scrambled out of the backseat on the other side and came charging at me, like an offensive tackle rushing the line, and despite my having the Browning in hand, he practically ran me down, shoving me aside and against a brick alley wall, jarring me, overwhelming my ancient ass.

  Still, I recovered quickly and picked up pursuit.

  He dashed out of the alley and across the street, several cars slamming on brakes and swerving to miss him, getting himself sworn at in various languages, and I was right behind him, taking advantage of the path he’d cleared. Where the alley picked back up, he went down it. For a big man, both broad-shouldered and bulky, he was fast, or at least adrenaline was making him so.

  We ran down the alley, footsteps echoing, the Elevated tracks visible above, a train rumbling by, its shadow racing across the buildings at left whose backs provided a collective wall. As the chase continued, the El started its roller-coaster dip into the subway, enclosed now by a short cement barrier topped by a wire-mesh fence on either side of the double tracks.

  Huffing and puffing like a Big Bad Wolf with no house to blow down, I somehow managed to cut the distance between us. Rodriguez was younger, but also fatter, and his sprint was losing steam into distance running. The tracks were right next to us now, behind their fence, as the El continued its descent.

  The nine-mil was still in my right fist-I could have shot the bastard, and maybe I should have and spared myself the aches and pains that the aftermath of all this running would bring, not to mention the burning gut-ache that was already starting. A leg shot might have brought him down, though you can kill a guy with a leg shot-there’s an important artery hiding inside.