veterans dug out their service weapons and returned fire, attacked streetcars, turned over autos, destroyed property. In four days, twenty whites died, fourteen colored died, and a thousand-some others of both races were injured. My father, an old union man who had no truck with bigots, had told me the story many times. It was his favorite example of “man’s inhumanity to man.” In my time I’ve seen plenty more.
This stretch of Bronzeville was so shabby that the riot might have taken place here last week, instead of a few decades ago. Some storefronts were boarded up, as if the depression were still here. For many of these people, it still was, of course. Always would be, probably. An occasional prosperous business-a barber shop, a laundry, a drugstore-seemed the exception, not the rule; the streets were thick with hot, sweating coloreds, men mostly. The curbs were all but empty of parked cars. This was a poor neighborhood. The cars on this street were moving.
Actually, ours was slowing to a stop; maybe it makes me a bigot, too, but in a neighborhood this colored, this poor, I feel uncomfortable whenever a traffic light insists I stop. For a moment I was glad I had a shotgun in my lap.
Up ahead, a gray Buick sedan had stopped at the light; a shabby-looking green Ford delivery truck, with a tan tarp covering its skeletal frame, some orange crates visible in the back end, rolled past Walt and me and came to a slow stop in the righthand lane. I sat up.
“That truck,” I said, pointing.
We were poised just behind Ragen’s car. I had to speak up, because a train was rumbling by on the nearby El; it was to our left, just back of these ramshackle buildings along State Street.
“Huh?” Walt said. He was a puffy-looking, heavy-set man of fifty-some, with hooded eyes. Despite all that, despite the “huh” as well, he was a hardnosed, alert dick.
“No license plates,” I shouted, over the El.
Walt sat forward. “They’re slowing next to Ragen-”
They were indeed; rather than pulling up to the intersection of State and Pershing, next to the gray sedan, they had stopped next to the Lincoln.
And the tan tarp on that same side was parting, down the middle, like theater curtains.
The barrels of two shotguns slid into view. Shiny black metal caught some dying sun and winked at us.
“Christ!” I said, and hopped out, shotgun in my hands, feet slapping cement, firing at the truck.
Or trying to.
The sawed-off jammed. I didn’t even know the fucking things
And now the afternoon was interrupted by shotgun fire, but not mine, not mine, as the two barrels extending like long black snouts from the side of the delivery truck delivered on Ragen’s car, ripping the metal of the front right door, just under the absent rider’s open window, but you could barely hear the blasts, what with the roar of the El. The train made a great silencer.
Up ahead the traffic light had changed, but the gray sedan before Ragen was keeping its position. Whether the driver had panicked (in which case you’d think the asshole would hit his gas pedal and hightail it away) or was in on the hit, I couldn’t say.
In fact all I could think to say was, “Shit! You bastards,” as I moved quickly toward the truck, yanking the nine millimeter from under my arm and firing on them, three times, right into that fucking tarp.
From which one of the barrels turned upon me and fired and I dove for the cement, between the two cars, as the windshield of the bodyguard car just behind me caught the brunt, spiderwebbing. As if sliding toward home, I landed in the next of the four lanes, sprawled in front of oncoming traffic. Despite the El’s rumble, I heard the screech of tires and wondered if I’d wind up so much spaghetti sauce on the Bronzeville pavement; but I seemed to be alive and rolled into the next lane, the sidewalk my goal, as another shotgun blast ate into the side of Ragen’s once-proud Lincoln, repeatedly puckering the top of the car, entering the rider’s window. I heard a scream, which had to be Jim, and then I screamed something, “Fuck,” I think, and got to my feet and started firing the nine millimeter again. Walt had climbed out of the bodyguard car, which shielded him some as he was shooting, ripping off shot after shot from his revolver, right at the truck. Traffic had finally had sense enough to stop and I stood there, feet apart, gun gripped in both hands, planted in the middle of the empty left lane like the world was my target range. I ripped three off and then a shotgun barrel was aiming my way, in the hands of an indistinct figure in a white sportshirt, but that shotgun was distinct enough, the guy standing up in the truck now, visible over the shot-up Lincoln, and I dove and rolled onto the sidewalk.
The blast that followed blew across the top of the Lincoln and shattered the window of the corner drugstore. The colored pedestrians were running for cover, screaming their lungs out as if needing to be heard over the El, feet doing their stuff and it didn’t have anything to do with being colored. The blast went over my head into that window and I stayed down but shot the nine millimeter up and at the side of that truck, knowing that my bullets were probably too high, having to shoot across two empty lanes of State Street and over the Lincoln, but hoping against hope to get a piece of something, somebody…
Then the nine millimeter was empty and the truck was gone. So was the gray sedan.
Even the El had passed by. The street was silent, but for the occasional outbursts from the colored pedestrians, coming up for air, “Mercy!” “Judas Priest!” “Mama!”
That sedan, which turned right on Pershing, did have plates: Indiana plates, though neither Walt nor I had caught the numbers. Maybe one of the colored witnesses had. The truck was heading on south, gears grinding as it picked up speed.
Walt, who also was out of ammo, helped me up off the sidewalk, and then we were at the Lincoln, looking in, where James M. Ragen, gambling czar, was slumped behind the wheel, teetering between winning and losing, the front of him blood-spattered, his right shoulder and arm a scorched, red, sodden mess.
“Jim,” I said, leaning in the window.
He looked up at me and the little blue eyes damn near twinkled.
“Well, my lad,” he grinned, “you were right…I guess if they want you, they’re going to get you.”
And he either passed out or died.
At that moment I couldn’t tell which.
The year before, in May of ’45, I had taken on another job for Jim Ragen; it, too, had the taint of the Outfit. But it did bring Peggy Hogan back into my life.
I didn’t even know she was Ragen’s niece when he pitched me the job. We had just finished lunch at Binyon’s, a no-nonsense, businessman-oriented restaurant on Plymouth, just around the corner from the seedy building my growing private investigative firm was trying to escape from. He’d had the finnan haddie, I the corned beef and cabbage plate. We were sharing one of the wooden booths, drinking coffee.
“I made a mistake,” Ragen said, tiny blue eyes staring into the steaming black cup; he was the kind of man who could admit a mistake, but couldn’t look you in the eye doing it. “I trusted Serritella.”
“That does sound like a mistake,” I said. “He’d sell out God if the devil was buying.”
“I know, I know,” Ragen said, waving it off. Wearily, he said: “Couple years back, I went partners with the senator, on a tip sheet.”
“The Blue Sheet?”
“Yeah. I thought he was operating for himself, but he was playing his usual tricks, fronting for Guzik and company. I don’t mind doing business with those wops, but I don’t want to be
“A fine distinction, don’t you think?”
“Not at all, my lad. Not at all. As customers, I got ’em where I want ’em-putting their money in my pocket. As partners, I wouldn’t trust ’em far as I could throw ’em.”
“You think they’ve been using Serritella to worm their way into your business? Into Continental Press?”
“Hell yes. They’ve had their hand in my pocket ever since I went with Serritella; bilking me right along. Of course, I can’t lay my hands on the books to prove it. And that’s why I’m suing the bums. Serritella and Guzik both.”
“Suing them? Outfit guys?”
“It’s the only way I can get an accounting.”
