He vanished out the door. I only hesitated for a moment before getting my own coat and trailing after him. I may not have been thinking clearly, but I couldn’t help but feel Indro was about to walk into a heap of trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Indro
I headed out of Sophie’s office, trying to focus on the next time I could dive into her sweet muff instead of the fact I was literally putting my life on the line.
Despite my bravado, I wasn’t entirely sure Don Maloik wasn’t looking to sacrifice me to force the Loggia family into showing their hand. After all, if they rubbed me out, then he’d be killing two birds with one stone. No more worries about my squealing to keep my pretty ass out of prison, and he’d have an excuse to take on the Loggias at last.
Back when the six families worked up their deal to divide Chicago into neat little pieces, the Loggias wound up with the lion’s share of the Uptown district. Maloik was none too pleased about that development, but he had to throw the other families some bones, if you catch my drift.
Maloik’s trepidations about losing Uptown to the Loggias had nothing to do with his being a Cubs fan. Uptown is prime real estate, and the number one legit and money laundering enterprise the Sicilian mafia relies on for income is construction. They’re always tearing something down or putting something up in the Uptown district.
I thanked the heavens it wasn’t as blistering cold that day, because I expected to be walking for hours. In fact, my leather trench got kind of warm after a while, especially when I stepped out of the shadows thrown by the concrete towers.
Four trips around Loggia turf and all I had to show for it were sweaty pits and sore feet. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn my Bruno Maglis for extensive legwork. I couldn’t help wanting to look good for what may have been my last day on Earth, though, right?
The sun flirted with its zenith and plunged back toward the west by the time I had an inkling that I’d gotten on the Loggia’s radar. I passed by a bakery and saw two mooks in the reflection of its big picture window. I didn’t recognize them, but they were definitely tailing me.
I stopped to adjust my tie and smooth my hair in the reflection, all so I could get a closer look at them. They weren’t the most subtle bunch. The two mooks stared blatantly in my direction while they thought I was distracted.
My heart jumped into my throat. They were onto me, and a hit attempt could soon follow. Or, it could not. I tried to calm myself by thinking that just because they were keeping an eye on me didn’t mean the Loggias were going to take a shot then and there.
I even relaxed a little, figuring they’d decided I was laying a trap for them. I stopped into the bakery for a little nosh in the form of bagels and a steaming black brew. I put a little swagger in my step as I went, just in case it pissed them off and forced their hand.
Man, it must have, because I came around a corner and passed by an old foundry to discover my tail had gotten much, much closer. They were less than fifty feet away, following on the opposite side of the street. Now they didn’t seem to care if I saw them looking at me.
I guess my trepidation got the best of me, because I was overwhelmed by the desire to lose my tail. I ducked into an alley I knew let out on the opposite block and stuck my hands in my pockets, feeling the twin Beretta GXLs inside. If those mooks wanted a fight, I’d damn sure give them one.
And if I was going to go down, then, by God, I was going to go down swinging. For the fences, just like Sammy Sosa, baby.
I got about halfway down the alley, skirting around a stream of scummy water from the roof melt-off, when I heard the scuff of a shoe behind me.
I chanced a glance over my shoulder and saw the two mooks had entered the alley. They were definitely going to pull something.
That didn’t mean they were going to try and off me, though. It could have been that the Loggias just wanted to rough me up a little, or warn me about being on their turf. So I didn’t turn around and start blasting. I just kept walking on, natural-like.
A black shape loomed suddenly in the mouth of the alley before me. It turned out to be a van, gunning its engine as it surged through the stream of water.
I didn’t think, I just acted. Now, Chicago’s got a nasty history with fire, so each and every one of the older buildings has a fire escape. For security reasons, they keep the ladders on a spring-loaded system. They hover about nine feet in the air until weight gets put on them. That way, you can get down, but you can’t get up, see?
Fortunately, I’m a pretty damn good athlete, if I do say so myself. I sprang up onto a stack of pallets and leaped onto the edge of a dumpster, knocking the stack over in the process. I reached up and grabbed the edge of the fire escape landing rather than the ladder, on account of I didn’t want to sink back to the alley I had just so prodigiously escaped.
I hauled myself over the rail and lay flat as the first shots rang out. My glee at having triggered the ambush was somewhat tempered by the whole imminent death thing.
I drew my guns and fired back as the van screeched to a halt in front of the crashed pallets. The two mooks dove for cover, crouching behind a heat pump with just their fat heads and
