But in the few seconds I’d taken in the murder scene, I’d already decided to try to catch the sons of bitches, before they made their getaway from the neighborhood, and—nine millimeter tight in my fist—I ran back out of the alley, to where I’d left the Olds on Wolcott.
It’s what Bill would have done.
For me.
Since no getaway car was in sight down the alley, I figured the shooters had jumped a backyard fence to cut over to either Addison or Eddy, where their vehicle would be parked, possibly with a wheelman waiting.
As I backed out into Wolcott—catching a break: no cars in either lane—I craned around looking left and right, checking both streets and saw a maroon coupe, a Ford, go flying east on Eddy, the driver hunkered forward, like he was in a goddamn stockcar race.
That was good enough for me.
I swung the Olds around and took pursuit—twilight had faded fully into nighttime—but when I turned onto Eddy, the maroon coupe was not in sight. That was no surprise—after going under the El, Eddy dead-ended just half a block off Wolcott. I could see taillights glowing like red eyes in the darkness, about a block down Ravenswood, a deserted-looking street to my left, and that had to be the coupe, although I’d have to get closer to find out for sure.
I took the left onto Ravenswood, and followed the taillights, warehouses and factory lofts to one side of me, an embankment on the other. The maroon coupe—if that was the coupe up ahead—had slowed down, and I stayed back; unless I wanted a full-blown chase, I needed not to attract their suspicion, which on this desolate stretch wasn’t easy. I cut my headlamps.
Three blocks down Ravenswood, the vehicle turned right on Roscoe, as if tracing the path of the El tracks; in doing so, the coupe revealed itself definitely as the maroon Ford, gliding under a streetlight. The driver wasn’t sitting forward now, and the car was moving along at a legal twenty-five miles per hour. No sign that they’d spotted me….
Soon the coupe had turned right onto Lincoln Avenue, and we were no longer alone, or in the dark—this was a busy shopping district, rich with German bakeries and small shops of every stripe, dominated by a huge Goldblatt’s department store, the sidewalks crowded, the streets clogged with traffic. I put the lights back on, though I hardly needed them. This wide busy thoroughfare allowed me to put several cars between my Olds and the maroon coupe—they still hadn’t made me, it appeared—but when we approached the Lincoln/Belmont/Ashland intersection, I got worried.
This was one of Chicago’s patented crazy three-way intersections, with Lincoln cutting diagonally across Ashland and Belmont, the kind of crossing that can give a tourist an instant nervous breakdown…and even a veteran Chicago driver the shakes….
The coupe did not take the sharp left onto Belmont, but the easier, saner one onto Ashland. That made my life easier, too, if not saner—this was a four-lane boulevard, sharing space with the streetcar line, and gave me more maneuvering room. I was now having no trouble maintaining a tailing distance of almost a block, keeping cars between us. Most of the time I was driving one-handed, as I had never let loose of the nine millimeter in my fist; and no other drivers had noticed—on those occasions I used both hands on the wheel—that I was juggling a Browning automatic.
My hope was that the assassins were on their way to report in to their boss; but even if they weren’t, following them to a destination, any destination, would be better than turning this into a Wild West guns-blazing car chase. Somewhere along Ashland, I took time to put down my Browning for a moment and fish a pack of Camels out of my glove box, a pack Lou Sapperstein had left behind last week; matches were conveniently tucked in the cellophane and I lit up, sucking the smoke into my lungs greedily. The tobacco craving was rare, but when it came, it really came.
The drive down Ashland took us up onto the overpass across the north branch of the Chicago River. For a moment I thought the maroon coupe’s driver had finally made me, when he took a quick left onto Courtland; but I had a feeling it was just a turn he almost missed, and—not wanting to lose him—violated proper surveillance technique and, rather than continuing on straight through the intersection and doubling back, took the Courtland left, myself.
I’d been expecting them to hit Armitage, another busy commercial street, but then I saw the coupe take a right, sliding onto Kingsbury, a dreary rutted road cutting through a canyon of factories, with a railroad track running down the center, to feed the concrete tongues of loading docks on either side. This solitary stretch was all but uninhabited—save, presumably, for the odd night watchman— and the streetlamps were minimal, throwing occasional pools of light into the shadow-soaked world.
Had they spotted me? Were they leading me to a lonely section where they could deal with me, unseen? I had cut my headlights again, as soon as the coupe turned down this tunnel-like passage. I dropped back, a block and a half; they weren’t slowing, or speeding—just proceeding at a legal twenty-five to wherever the hell they were going.
It then occurred to me that we were heading—or at least could be heading—to where Drury and that lawyer Bas were supposed to be meeting the surprise witness, in…I checked my watch…fifteen minutes. Was Bas the boss to whom the hitmen were reporting? Had the lawyer suckered, and betrayed, Drury, with his unlikely story of a witness without a name?
At North Avenue, the coupe turned left; I followed, and almost missed noticing that—two blocks down—they’d taken a fast right onto Orchard. I made a last second turn and got honked at by a startled, pissed-off driver—I’d forgotten my headlamps were off.
But I left the lights off, despite the irate motorist’s bleat, because traffic was sporadic now, as I crawled behind the coupe into the outer circles of Hell. From where we were, and southward, lay Little Hell, the roughest slum of the Near Northside; this had been a Sicilian area, not so long ago—Little Sicily, they’d called it, proud home of Hell’s Corner, the location of more gangland slayings than any other spot in the city.
Though the fringe blocks we were creeping through were still home to a few handfuls of Sicilians, and white faces were not completely unknown in these parts, the area was eighty percent colored, now. At the south end of this nasty neighborhood was some new public housing—the Frances Cabrini Homes, several blocks of tidy row houses—intended for the colored residents of the area, but filled with Sicilians and other whites who moved into the projects, bequeathing to the blacks the truly decrepit slum dwellings of Little Hell—a mix of dilapidated paint-peeling frame houses and crumbling brick tenements, dating back to the Chicago fire.
Little Hell was an apt phrase, except perhaps the “Little” part. These tenement apartments were usually shared by two families, and most buildings were without functioning bathrooms or running water. Sections of the vaulted sidewalks— often used to store coal—were cracked and unsafe, fissures in the cement that might have been the
