Chicago Confidential

Had she overdosed? Surely that would have taken more immediate effect; but perhaps not—perhaps what she’d been put through…and was being put through…had taxed her system, her heart….

And who the hell knew what they’d slammed into her?

“I’ll get you out of here,” I said to her.

She summoned a weak little smile. “I’ll be…all right. I’ll be…all right.”

“I’m getting you help, baby.” And I didn’t mean just tonight.

“I’ll be fine…just let me…let me catch my breath.”

I heard movement and snapped my attention back to the midway and saw him—my round-faced assassin.

He wasn’t running—he was prowling, staying low, fanning his gun out now, as if it were a flashlight in the darkness, walking close to the trees, not on the midway itself, rather on the grass, behind the benches, near the train tracks.

If he would just keep coming, keep that same pace and direction, stepping into that shaft of moonlight, I could get a good shot at the son of a bitch….

The night cracked, like a whip, and the bullet stood the little assassin up straight, as if he were coming to startled attention—and then dropped him on his face.

From in back of the fallen assassin, Tim O’Conner came into view, his expression as stunned as if he had been the one who’d been shot…not the one doing the shooting.

I left her propped against the side of the booth, whispered, “Stay put, baby,” and she nodded, as I scooted out into the midway, .38 in hand.

I wasn’t sure whether Tim had seen me or not—I guessed not, because he seemed in a sort of trance as— damn!—he fired again, his revolver belching orange as he shot down into the figure already sprawled across the little train tracks.

“This is for Bill Drury, you lousy cocksucker,” he said, and then he put one in the back of the dead assassin’s skull; the sound was like a ripe melon hitting cement.

O’Conner stood there, his revolver limp at his side now, the acrid smell of cordite heavy in the air.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

He blinked, swallowed, looked up at me with that stunned puss. “Are you? I heard the gunshot, and came running.”

Tim’s job had been to scope out the park, even as I was entering it, and take care of any sniper in the woodpile, or shut down any other sort of trap that might have been laid for me; after that, he was to position himself on the other side of the lagoon, close enough to Aladdin’s to maneuver himself no matter what took place. Shooting one of Bill Drury’s two assassins in the back was his own idea.

O’Conner seemed almost embarrassed, as he nodded down at what he’d done. “Jeez, Nate…I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You through?”

O’Conner nodded, and I kneeled over the corpse, turning it over just enough to get at the guy’s wallet. I flipped it open and the metal of a badge caught the moonlight and winked at me.

“What the hell,” O’Conner said, leaning down. “Is he a cop?”

I nodded, reading the ID card. “Calumet City. I bet his dead partner’s got the same kind of tin in his wallet.”

This made an awful sort of sense: Tubbo Gilbert—the State’s Attorney’s investigator running for sheriff—did business with crooked cops all around Cook County, and the state for that matter. The Calumet City P.D. was a handy place to recruit a pair of contract killers whose faces would be unknown in Chicago.

O’Conner was saying, “His partner is dead, too?”

Distant sirens announced we had outworn our welcome at Riverview—the gunshots and the lights of Aladdin’s Castle had attracted neighborhood attention.

“Fill ya in later,” I said, trotting over to where I’d left Jackie, but she wasn’t leaning against the stall now—she lay prone on the ground.

“Shit!” Kneeling over her, I saw awful signs: the brown eyes were open and empty, a trail of spittle ran down her cheek. And she was motionless.

O’Conner was right there. “What is it? What’s wrong with her?”

I was trying to find a pulse. “I think she’s overdosed—help me with her! We have to get her to a hospital!”

He was bending beside her now, taking a closer look, touching her throat. “Nate—I don’t think…”

“Help me carry her!”

O’Conner’s hand gripped my shoulder. “Nate! She’s dead! We have to get out of here, unless you want to explain all of this—maybe to the State Attorney’s investigators? Leave her!”

I could have knocked his teeth down his throat for that, except for one thing: he was right.

She was dead.

“No helping her,” I said.

“What?”

“No helping her—not now.”