Allen kept the pedal down to keep up with Belik. A standard Packard could never match the speed of my Talbot, but they’d gotten the jump on us. Allen must have driven before, I thought, as the gears and levers ran like water under its metal hands, sending us down the alley the Packard had swerved into. The Packard hit trash cans and debris lining the sides of the small side street, forcing it to slow down and allowing us to gain on it inch by inch.
The Packard pulled a hard left onto 6th Avenue, where the traffic was far less dense than on 7th. But horns still blasted at us as we peeled through traffic, drifting between the lines and over lanes, forcing other drivers off the road.
After several blocks, Allen and I were right behind Belik’s vehicle. I grabbed the handle on the Talbot’s ceiling and hoisted myself up and out the broken window until I was sitting on the door. I levelled the Diamondback, pressing the lever forward to return it to its double-action configuration. I steadied myself as best I could and fired off a shot at the back tire. The bullet skipped off the pavement, missing its mark by mere centimeters. As I attempted to level to fire again, I heard a loud screech behind us. I looked back and saw that a second Packard had swerved into traffic behind us. And someone had the same idea as me. Except he had his gun trained on me, not on our tires. And his gun was a lot bigger.
I slipped back down into my seat as the familiar rat-tat-tat of a Thompson Typewriter unloaded .45 rounds into my bulletproof roof. I blessed my foresight months ago as the soft sound of Allen trying to chastise me for my actions was drowned out by gunfire and adrenalin. Allen cranked the handbrake, dropping us back behind a few other cars and almost hitting the other Packard as it swerved out of the way. The civilian cars that were now in front of us soon realized the danger and retreated from their positions on the road, opening an opportunity for the assailants to attack us again, this time from the front.
As this chaos ensued, Allen kept a firm eye on Belik’s Packard, which had taken a hard right, smashing into a parked Adler and pushing it onto the sidewalk. Miraculously, the Packard kept going. As we followed it into the turn, the second Packard swerved and tried to catch us on our right side. It missed and slowed down, falling behind by several car lengths, giving me a chance to poke my head out and test my luck. The silhouette of the driver was barely visible behind the dark windshield, giving me a good idea of where he sat as I levelled and fired. The bullet entered the window and the car immediately lost speed, tires screeching, horn sounding in a constant drone until it hit a parked car and stopped.
Turning my focus back to the other car, I could see that our target was making up in manoeuvrability what it lacked in speed. We were speeding down West 53rd, the subway suspended high above us on the left, when the Packard sped up to pass across Park Avenue. I was pretty sure I had two shots left, and I knew I needed to use at least one, so I brought the weapon up and squeezed the trigger. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much, as Belik’s car had sped up just enough to pass through the traffic coming from the north without incident. The bullet instead slammed into the front of a Marmon Sixteen, probably killing its engine.
Allen yanked on the brakes and the Talbot slid to a stop, but not before scraping against every car parked on the right side of the street, leaving a strip of paint across the front panels of my car.
“Fuck, fuck! We lost him. We goddamn lost him!” I kicked the glovebox in frustration, holstering the revolver as I continued cursing.
We were so close. We could’ve ended this case right here, right now. Instead, we had one dead Bruno and another one wounded, which equated to nothing in terms of progress. The car full of gunmen was probably vacant by now, the body missing, leaving the police and me with nothing to go on. Going back for the car would be the surest way to get thrown in the slammer.
Allen said nothing, but looked at me with both sympathy and disappointment when I told it to drive to my place. The one thing I needed now was something to drown my disappointment in. At least things couldn’t get any worse.
CHAPTER 14
ALLEN PARKED THE CAR in front of my building. What a goddamn night. Nothing had turned out right. Now I needed to get the car checked out; it had kept making concerning noises all the way back, now that there were a few new pellets and bullets in the frame.
Yuri was still selling his dogs, this time to the night crews that were getting ready for their shifts as the Plate lights prepared to go out.
“Good evening, Elias!” he said in his Russian accent. He flashed me that smile of his that could stop bullets, shook my hand hard, and nodded gratefully. “You come back earlier than you usually do. You might be first customer for once!”
“I … I suppose so. I’d be honoured, Yuri.” I smiled back and put a few coins on his little chrome cart — a little more than what the dog cost, but he could use the cash. We shared a little conversation, but I was all
