Michigan-”
“No,” he said. “I picked him up at the Fireside and drove him to the New Michigan. I pulled up behind your cab. The kid wasn’t in it. I put one between Gino’s eyes, pried open the cab trunk, dumped him in, and followed you to the Ambassador.”
We didn’t say anything else for a minute or so. It looked as if everything had been said.
“You know what a cop’s home is like in Chicago?” he said.
“You’re not looking for sympathy, are you, Kleinhans?”
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m explaining. You know what it’s like to have a kid brother who’s up to his ass in money from business deals while you don’t make enough to pay the milkman? Ever been offered a second rate job by your own brother? I’ve had blood on my suit and had to scrape it off and douse it in cold water because I couldn’t pay the cleaning bill. I’ve got four kids. One in college. One who’s deaf. You know what all that costs?”
“Enough to make you kill four people?”
“Those weren’t people, Peters. They were garbage. Bistolfi was a cheap triggerman. Servi was covered in other people’s blood. Canetta was a knife who picked pockets. He got in the way. When Bistolfi told us you were on the train, I called Canetta in Jacksonville, where he was running an errand for Servi. He wanted to put a knife in you on the train.”
I remember being asleep next to Canetta on the train. Now I knew he had been dreaming of putting a blade through my only suit.
“What about Morris Kelakowsky?” I said. “He a killer, too?”
Kleinhans shrugged.
“He knew what he was getting into.”
“I doubt it,” I said.
“I’ve got a couple for you, Peters. What the hell did you go to the mayor’s for?”
“Something a smarter private cop wouldn’t have done. I wanted to put some pressure on City Hall with promises from Hollywood. I figured a right word would get you and the Chicago cops off my back while I saved Chico. It was dumb. Not the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, though. My ex-wife thinks I do things like that because I like to live dangerously. Makes me feel alive. That’s why she left me. Or one reason, anyway.”
“Maybe she’s right,” Kleinhans suggested. “Look what you just did. You walked right into my doorway. You could have gone to your local police station or to one of the guys who pulled the strings to get you time yesterday.”
“I’d rather think she’s right than I’m stupid.”
“I said I had a couple of things,” Kleinhans said, looking toward the street. “You want the other one?”
“Shoot,” I said. And he did.
The bullet ripped through the last piece of sandwich in my hand and hit me in the side. The sound wasn’t too loud. A few people looked toward us, but Kleinhans reached over and held me up like we were old pals. I was looking down at a bloody hot dog and a dark wet hole in my jacket.
“Some people get too clever, Toby,” he whispered. “Knew a guy who shot his brother in the eyes when he was sleeping. Small caliber gun. Then he closed the eyes and said he died in his sleep. Coroner almost didn’t open the eyes. It was a busy day, and he was ready to accept the family doctor’s statement of heart attack. I found the holes when I looked.”
“Very interesting,” I said, fighting back the taste of blood.
“Another time,” he said softly, “I went to a funeral. Suicide. Something to do with the Genna Brothers, back when I was in uniform. Bullet right in the head. You know what was funny? The corpse was wearing gloves. I pulled off the gloves and found bullet holes through both palms. He’d put up his hands when someone shot him. Someone was his wife. You see where I’m taking you, Peters?”
“Yeah,” I gasped. “Keep it simple.”
“Right,” he said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. I could feel the barrel of the pistol being pushed against my chest as he moved close to me and turned me away from the street.
I shoved the bloody hot dog bun in his face, let myself fall backward on the sidewalk, knocked over a pair of young winos, and rolled under a cart. My face scraped the street bricks, and my hand touched something soft. I kept rolling onto the street.
Kleinhans had turned in the doorway. He leveled the gun at me. A guy selling shoes in the cart saw the gun, muttered “shit” and pushed his fat female customer away. I was on my knees, my back against a Dodge stuck in traffic. A woman screamed. Someone shouted something in a language I had never heard before.
“You shouldn’t have tried that,” shouted Kleinhans. His second shot would have hit me in the chest if the guy in the Dodge hadn’t panicked when saw Kleinhans. He lurched forward, stripping gears, and sent me spinning ten feet down the street.
I made it to my feet and looked back. The street was crowded with people running out of the way and into each other. He might have hit one of them instead of me. I doubted if he cared, but I also doubted that he’d want to have to explain.
My side felt hot, but I knew I had something left for running. I also knew from our chase on the West Side that I was at least a little faster than Kleinhans. I knew I wasn’t faster than his gun, but I might find someplace to hide or a cop to give myself up to before he caught me.
I hit a cart full of sweet corn and crashed into a street sign that said I had hit the corner of Maxwell and Halstead. People scattered like the Red Sea when they saw me staggering down the sidewalk. They opened further when they saw Kleinhans behind me with his gun. A man in front of a store selling chickens must have been deaf and near blind. He grabbed my arm and said something about two live chickens for the price of one. He shoved two live kicking chickens in my face. I pulled away from him and lost a little distance between Kleinhans and me. I was also losing blood.
Over my shoulder, I could see Kleinhans shrugging off the blind chicken salesman. I pushed past a woman who looked like a gypsy and fell on my ass into a store, hoping I had lost Kleinhans. From the floor, I could see I was surrounded by cheap chalk statues of Christ on the cross. They hovered over me, shining and long. Chalk madonnas stood between them, looking past me with smiling baby Jesus’s in their arms. I inched back toward the walls, looking for shadow or cover. My head hit the feet of a big plaster Jesus crucified on the wall.
There was a heavy counter to my right. I scurried behind it like a de-winged beetle just as the door of the shop opened and closed. I could hear Kleinhans’ heavy breathing and see his body distorted through the counter glass.
“You left a trail of blood, Toby,” he said aloud.
I knew the trail led down the counter and around to me. I didn’t have the strength or the room to run. I got to my knees, trying not to breathe, when he came to the front of the counter. The next step would be for him to lean over and blow a hole in my head. My hand touched something smooth and waxy. I turned and saw a three-foot high wax candle of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There were four just like her in a row. As Kleinhans’ hand shook the counter to balance himself, I stood up with one of the wax candles in both hands and swung at his leaning head with everything I had. A bullet shattered the counter. The candle statue’s head flew across the room and Kleinhans, stunned, fell back against a display table.
What I needed next was enough strength to hit him again with something hard that would put him out. I threw the rest of the candle at him, but it missed. He was on one knee when the door opened. Kleinhans turned toward it with his gun up, but Costello was ready. From his pocket, he put three bullets in the cop.
“Where the hell were you?” I said, watching him go out of focus.
“You said Maxwell Street,” Costello said. “You didn’t say where on Maxwell Street.”
“Terrific,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, going right back out the door. He didn’t even wave his slinged arm as he pushed through the crowd. No one tried to stop him.
Kleinhans was sprawled with one knee out and his dead, surprised eyes examining a spot of blood on the floor. People crowded to the floor of the shop, faces pressed to the glass of the window. A few hundred eyes were looking at me and fogging the glass. I was getting smaller and smaller, turning into a trained flea in a bottle everyone was looking at. I had no tricks for them. The door was open, but none of them came in.
I think I remember a cop in blue pushing the door open and pointing a gun at me. I think I remember a guy from the crowd coming over to me and talking about the A amp; P basketball team.
