I spun to face the opening, laid flat on my back, pointed the weapon toward the hole and fired. Someone in the passageway groaned loudly then cried out, “Goddamnit!”
I didn’t wait for a casualty report. Rolling, I cleared the opening, found Claudia behind the abandoned hopper car, and grabbed her hand, taking off over rock and rail toward the gray dab of light across the chamber.
I looked back once, saw both men wedge through the opening a beat apart, guns drawn. Carpaccio spotted us and fired wildly, his shot caroming off the old coal car as we struggled over the loose surface. Before he could get a clear line, we had made the safety of the tunnel mouth and begun scampering down the long straightaway ahead.
“You’re gonna die, Buonomo!” the burly beef carver roared as he rushed on behind us. “I swear to God you’ll hang on a meat hook tonight!”
His gravelly baritone thundered throughout the murky underground realm, reverberating off the high chamber walls and surging into the tunnel alongside us, matching our every step as we fled in a dead run toward a distant light a hundred miles away.
75
We ran full out. Then we ran some more, toward the light and as fast as we could, but Claudia was doing it in heels and a long woolen skirt. We’d probably started with better than a hundred-yard lead, but the sounds of their pursuit kept nearing. They’d shoot when they were close enough. Knowing that fat son of a bitch Carpaccio would probably drop dead from a heart attack just after killing us provided me with surprisingly little consolation.
We’d come a good quarter mile, the periodic dim overhead bulb the only illumination in the tunnel itself. The light at the end loomed closer even as our breathing became heavier. Claudia was struggling, missing steps, panting hard. I stopped running behind her, slid up against a darkened section of the wall, and dropped to a knee. “Keep going,” I urged as I drew the pistol. “I’ll catch up. Don’t stop!”
The boys came on, shoe leather spanking cement. Neither would’ve medaled in Rome, but Carlo had moved into the lead as his boss faded, his strides long, arms pumping as he passed under a ceiling lamp toward his idea of glory.
I aimed for the center of his moving mass, waited until he was big enough to see clearly, then fired.
The old revolver exploded in my hand, the barrel caroming against the wall and clanging off the near rail on the bounce. Carpaccio dove for cover in the distance, but Carlo came on undaunted. I chucked the ruined weapon aside, grabbed my throbbing hand, and got up into a crouch, preparing to do what I could to delay him.
Carlo slowed, his steps out of rhythm. He looked at me queerly, braced an arm against the tunnel wall, and stopped cold. Then he fell forward, facedown on the tracks.
I was up and moving in a heartbeat, passing on the dicey chance for his weapon, moving out to catch up with Claudia instead. She was near the opening now, laboring visibly but still moving. I dug deep as I took off toward her, raggedly drawing in air and shaking my stinging hand at my side as I went, never daring to look back.
Carpaccio shouted something when he reached Carlo, then cursed me again and discharged his weapon several times, a bullet skipping off the wall beside me close-in. I leaped over the tracks to the opposite side, stiff-armed the wall, and surged on.
Seconds later, I was rushing into a large, open chamber. Just ahead, the north-south line we’d been running along junctioned into an east-west one at a big sweeping curve. Switching devices, lighted displays with colored bulbs, generators, and other large pieces of equipment dotted the room. There weren’t any people in sight. No workers—and no Claudia.
I jumped clear of the line of fire, spun around. “Claudia! Claudia, where are you?”
There was no response. All I could hear was Carpaccio’s raspy breathing as he lumbered forward.
A steady hum began to buzz through the air, then a low rumbling I could feel through the concrete.
“Claudia!”
She still didn’t answer. She must have been hiding, too afraid to speak. I darted over to an iron door, tried the handle. It didn’t even turn. I pounded on it. “Is anyone in there?”
The rumbling I’d felt grew louder. A light appeared in the east-west tunnel. I knew immediately that it was one of the old scaled-down electric locomotives that distributed coal and mail in open cars throughout the Loop. It was smaller than a house, but a helluva lot bigger than a breadbox and moving at a good clip—definitely not something you’d want to get hit by more than once.
I peeked down the north-south line. Carpaccio was staggering on, sucking wind, arms sagging from the weight of the pistols he now held in each hand. Behind me, the train was closing in fast, its headlight splashing the opposing wall with light. The beam fell on a recessed archway as it advanced, exposing Claudia’s shock-white face. She looked exhausted and frightened.
I started across the tracks toward her, jerked back at the whistle of gunfire, throwing myself flat on the cement at the edge of the rails.
Carpaccio was bearing down on the opening, coming up on Claudia’s side of the tracks. He hadn’t spotted her yet, but he unleashed an especially evil leer as he targeted me.
“Almost dere, Buonomo,” he growled. “Just you wait.”
“The train,” I shouted. “Claudia, jump on the train!”
Her almond eyes bloomed wide, frozen in the light as the automated locomotive chugged forward and leaned into the curve, a rolling wedge that would separate us from each other in just a few seconds.
I pushed off the floor with my hands, coiled up. The engine sped by, blue sparks dancing off the ceiling where the steel runner met the electrified rail. I leaped, grabbed the slats of the first cargo car, and hurled myself over the top rail, falling onto a coal pile at the bottom.
Scrambling up, I reached over the far side, thrust out my blackened hands. Carpaccio was twenty yards from the opening, cars clacking by as he pointed his pistols toward me.
“Give me your hand!” I yelled at Claudia, “Now!”
She stared at me, mouth agape, until it was almost too late. Then she summoned her courage, limbs springing into action as she darted forward like a deer.
I reached for her, heard Carpaccio shout something that was lost in the trundling creak of the switch rails and the whir of the wheels as our hands came steadily together, closing, closing, leather-clad fingertips grasping for mine.
Then I had her—for a split second.
She slipped free, outstretched arms hunting for mine, her mouth a stunned red O, as I hauled in, falling backward into the car without her.
The train rolled on toward the tunnel ahead. Claudia dropped away screaming, the empty space between us multiplying exponentially as I looked on in shock from a cloud of coal dust, a bracing angst in my heart and an empty white glove in my fist.
76
Claudia lunged for the next car in line, stumbled, the slats slipping past her hands as she tried to grasp the painted wood. I dashed across the shifting coal and vaulted the boards into the empty middle car, my momentum carrying me clear across the ten-foot bed and smack against the back rail.
The next car was the last. Claudia was crying in desperation as she clawed for it. She got her fingers around a post, swung her legs upward as the train carried her forward.
Carpaccio had found a fifth gear. He was sprinting full-out, hell-bent to get a hold of Claudia before I did. I read his intentions and threw myself up and over the railing, dropping onto the cardboard boxes and mail sacks below.
Claudia was still struggling to get aboard, legs flailing as she clung to the post. Carpaccio wa
s reaching out for her, just a few yards away. I grabbed one of the boxes, heaved it over my head. It hit the wall above him and bounced away, but still forced him to duck, putting him a few steps farther back.
Claudia got one leg up on the bed outside the posts. Then she lost her balance, her upper hand slipping free. She fell backward, clinging wildly to the post—half on, half off—as the engine pushed into the narrow tunnel mouth.
The mob boss closed in, clutching for her trailing hand as it waved wildly. He’d have her in a second.
Reaching down, I hefted up a sack of mail, wound up like Warren Spahn, and slung it backward off the car with everything I had.
The mailbag sailed through the air and hit the butcher square in the chest, knocking him flat.
I whipped around, saw the first car entering the low tunnel. Bounding to the top of the pen, I reached down, grabbed Claudia’s arm, yanked hard. “Come on, baby,” I urged. “Come on!”
I could feel her muscles straining as she pushed up with her leg, hear her desperate exertions as she twisted toward me.
The second car whooshed into the shaft, darkness looming.
Leaning all the way over, I got my hands around her shoulders, hauled back.
Then she was in my arms, floating into the car. We fell together on the canvas bags as the low ceiling closed overhead, blackness blotting out the artificial light.
I caught sight of Carpaccio through the slats. He was still on the seat of his pants in the middle of the tracks, kicking wildly at the mailbag, frothing and foaming in rage.
We surged into the subterranean passage and chugged away rapidly, the oval shape of the tunnel framing Carpaccio in the fading light. The irate capo grew ever more remote in the distance, the rhythmic clacking of the wheels slowly subsuming his primal roars. Smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter, until finally he just wasn’t there anymore.
We lay flat on our backs on the mailbags, gasping for breath, taking in great lungfuls of cool, life-sustaining air as our hearts wound down, our arms together.
“Madre di Dio,” she finally said. “Che è succeso?”
I rubbed my face with both hands, forgetting the coal dust in the darkness. “We got away, baby—that’s what happened.”
“That was the most fantastic thing that ever happen in my life,” she declared.
I stroked her hair. “You’re fantastic, Claudia. Beating up mobsters, leaping on a moving train . . . Wow.”
“I was ballerina when I was young. Maybe that helps, hmmm?”
“Maybe.”
I leaned over, found her lips. “Maybe this will, too.”
We passed under a light. “Dio mio, you are so black!” she exclaimed, noticing my coal-smudged clothes and features for the first time. I looked at my hands, chuckled. Claudia began to giggle. Two minutes earlier, we’d been fighting for our lives; now we were laughing at grime.
I pulled her over on top of me, kissed her again, deeper.
The little locomotive zipped forward amid a comet’s tail of sparks, passing beneath the unseen city blocks forty feet up. From my childhood sojourns, I knew there were signs posted overhead indicating the names of the streets above. Roosevelt, Polk, Harrison, Congress, Jackson—I’m sure they all flashed by.
I didn’t see a one.
77
The train finally came to a stop at Adams. We crept off the far side and slunk away in the shadows as a pair of night hands approached the mail car. While they were slinging bags, we slipped across a loading dock and into the subbasement of one of Chicago’s behemoths. Four flights of stairs later, I kicked open a fire exit marked to wabash and we stepped into an alley.
The night air was bracing, but the building blocked most of the wind. Even still, little eddies of trash spun up periodically as we trotted through the alley and across the short end of the block. Out on Michigan Avenue, it picked up again, that north wind sweeping through the broad urban canyons with gusto. Neither one of us was dressed for the weather, but we had no choice.
Taking no chances, I checked both ways for headlights before we lit out across the double-wide thoroughfare. Once across Michigan, we cut north at the Art Institute, hugging the shadows below the grand masters as we scampered through the garden. We ran east on Monroe, crossing the Illinois Central tracks and arriving at the north end of a Grant Park whose empty environs looked a lot less enticing than they had a few days earlier. Three minutes of duck-dodge-hide later we hit the lakefront.
Despite my late arrival, Ronnie’s Imperial was still motoring silently in a dark corner of the Monroe Harbor lot. A whistle and a high sign later, Claudia and I piled into the luxury vehicle and shut the door, reveling in the warm air redolent of tobacco.
A man in the front turned around, eased an elbow over the seat, looked me up and down. “What’s with the coal dust? Going Welsh on me?”
I held up my hands, turned them over. “Just a drop of the midnight oil, McBride.”
He gestured toward Claudia. “That the Siren?”
“Singer.”
“Like I said. Christ, she’s a looker.”
Claudia’s self-conscious grin became a grimace the second McBride looked away.
“Never mind all that,” I said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”
As I gave them the thirty-second rundown on the devolving situation with Carpaccio, Jack and Ronnie exchanged multiple surprised glances as the details emerged. Neither one blinked though.
Then I asked, “You pull the strings I asked about, McBride?”
He thumped the seat back. “Damn right I did—told you I had clout. The night crew took a powder, place is yours until seven a.m. Not a minute more, mind you.”
I patted his arm. “Thanks. I’d better get started then. Coming with?”
He shook his head. “That’s no place for a septuagenarian drunkard like me.”
“Suit yourself. Ronnie?”
“Ronnie stays with me,” he said before the Indian could answer.
“Why don’t you let him speak for himself? I could use a man like him.”
“So can I, what with the hornet’s nest you stirred up.”
“It’s all right, Joe,” Ronnie interjected. “I’ve got an obligation to Mr. McBride; we’re partners in this thing. But thanks.”
Jack made a sour face. “What gives? You’ve got your cop friend over there anyway.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Sal?”
“That’s the one. Been here for some time. Don’t you know your own plan? You ain’t inspiring much confidence here, Rififi.”
I smiled through the jab, delighted to know Sal would be with me. “All right, it’s settled then.”
“Right. Come over to the Medinah as soon as you get back. Ronnie and I will keep a close watch on your little dove here tonight.”
Claudia cut me a look, started to object. I eye-checked Ronnie in the rearview mirror. His nod told me things would be okay. Claudia raised a hell of a fuss, but I finally convinced her she’d be far safer overnight with McBride. She still turned her head away when I tried to kiss her good-bye.
Italian girls. Christ.
I got out, shut the door. McBride’s window came down. “Remember . . . I put you on to this thing,” he said. “Seventy-five–twenty-five, my way. And take a good look for that deed—It’s got to be there somewhere.”
I chuckled in derision. “Tell you what. . . . I find the head of St. John the Baptist, it’s all yours. Any money gets split how I see fit. And if I see even a postcard with the Merchandise Mart or Joe Kennedy’s name on it, I’m torching
the whole works. We clear on that?”
He was all out of cards to play. He sputtered, caught himself. Finally, he bowed his head in resignation and sighed. “Please don’t do that.”
It was as solemn a look as I’d seen from him. I thought it over a second. “We’ll see.”
I gazed back toward Claudia. She was still sulking. “Ciao, bella. See you soon.”
“Vai, vai!” she said bitterly, waving me away.
I turned, took a step.
“Hey!” McBride called out, a hint of mischief in his brogue. “Damn precious cargo you’re leaving here, Buonomo. I wouldn’t waste any time comin’ back for her if I were you—I’ll be showin’ her how things are in Glocca Morra if you don’t check in by eight.”
“Get bent, McBride,” I said, laughing at his boast.
The old man chortled back, gave me an exaggerated wink of his one eye.
I waved goodbye to all, then set off for the waterfront.
78
The City of Chicago mandates that all leisure boats be out of the lakefront harbors from the end of October until things thaw out again in May. That makes for a short season for pleasure cruisers, but Lake Michigan is no place to be fooling around when November’s storms come calling.
The lake was choppy tonight, igloo-shaped whitecaps dotting the forbidding waves beyond the breakwater. But I had no intention of going in the water—and I wasn’t going out on a pleasure boat anyway. I was taking the Pelecanos.
It wasn’t hard to find her. There were only three boats in the harbor to begin with, and only one with a Chicago cop on board.
“’Bout goddamn time you showed!” Sal carped when I came down the gangway. “I been freezin’ here an hour already.”
“Yeah, no problem. Thanks for posting that guy at my mother’s place.”
“Got two there now, plus your brother.”
My Kind of Town Page 25