have found the right pedals because the Lincoln's engine roared and we sped away down the narrow street.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
With two, you get egg rolls…
“Turn left,” Parini snapped. “No, your other left.”
“I drive a little Toyota, not a damn battleship like this thing, and I've got short legs. You want to do this?” She sounded flustered as she spun the wheel to the left, narrowly missing two parked cars. “Then shut up and let me drive.”
“Okay, okay,” Parini answered. “But slow down, for Chris' sake. We've got enough people chasing us without you adding more.”
“Oh, now you want slow,” she snapped at him as she hit the brakes. “Make up your damned mind.”
“You two need a time out?” I turned in the seat and looked back through the rear window, but no one was chasing us. Parini told her to make a few more turns. As we drove farther and farther away from her apartment, I began to relax.
“Gino, you need a doctor.” I looked down at him.
“No shit, Ace. Hand me that phone up there.” Parini groaned as he lay back on the rear seat in pain. I looked around and saw that the Lincoln had a telephone built into the front console. “Punch Memory, then #3, then gimme the damned thing,” he said.
I did as ordered and watched his face as he waited for the other party to answer. “Joey,” he finally said. “It's me, Gino ... No, in Chicago ... Never mind that. Look, I need a doctor and I need one quick ... No, for me, you asshole, I got clipped in the leg ... Yeah, me! Stop laughin’ and tell me where. Yeah... Yeah... I got it... No, no, I'll find it. You just call and make damned sure they'll be there.”
He handed the phone back to me. His face was pale now, and he was in a lot of pain. “Sweet Pea,” he called to her. “See that console on the dash, above the radio? It's GPS . Push ‘Power’ and key in 832 West 23rd Street, Chicago, Illinois. No, on second thought, you do it, Ace.”
“Hey, I can do it,” she said, reaching for the buttons.
“You got enough to do drivin’ this thing. Let the brain trust do it.”
In seconds, a brightly colored map popped up on the screen with a red dot in the center. “That's in Chinatown,” Sandy said.
“Think you can you get us there?”
“Chinatown?” she asked. “Sure, why?”
“’Cause I've got a sudden craving for won-ton. Can you freakin’ get us there?”
“Yeah, I can freakin’ get you there! Sheesh, you're ornery. You want some aspirin or Tylenol for the pain? I know I got Midol and some codeine cough medicine in my purse. Maybe a joint to help take the edge off?
“She's a goddamned pharmacy,” he mumbled. “Tylenol, then.”
She pulled the big bag over and dug her arm down to the bottom, fishing around inside until it came back out with a bottle. She opened it with her teeth and handed the bottle back to him. Parini dropped a half-dozen pills into his hand, popped them into his mouth, and lay back chewing them. “Thanks, kid,” he said. “And I take back every ugly thing I said about you.”
“The name's Sandy.”
We drove west to Halsted Street and south through the city. It was mid-morning and big CTA commuter buses, semi-trailer trucks, and delivery vans clogged the streets and slowed us to a crawl. I turned around in the seat and looked back at him. He had lost a lot of blood and I was getting worried. “You okay, Gino?” I asked.
“I've been shot a lot worse than this.”
“Then you need to find a new line of work,” she commented.
Parini's eyes were closed, but I saw a thin smile. “Yeah, a new line of work. I'll write that down, so I don't forget.” We crossed the Chicago River and continued south through a series of ever more dilapidated commercial areas. “Okay, Talbott, who you really workin' for? Justice? Some rinky-dink local outfit? The Santorini people never heard of you. Who then? Rico Patillo?”
“I work for Symbiotic Software in Waltham, Massachusetts, Gino, or I did until you dragged me into this thing.”
“Yeah, and I'm the freakin’ Easter Bunny. You expect me to believe you figured all that stuff out by yourself?”
“I'm a rocket scientist, remember.” I smiled innocently at him.
“Yeah, right,” Parini opened his eyes and looked at me. “Back in Columbus, I saw you at the funeral home and then I saw you at that bogus accounting office down on Sickles. I didn't know what to make of those, but when you walked inside Tinkerton's office building dressed up like a delivery boy, the only thing I could figure was you were one of them and you were reporting in. Later, when you went strollin’ into Varner's fruit clinic and all the rest of them showed up, I had no idea what you were up to.”
“I was looking for proof.”
“Proof? What you almost got was dead. Tinkerton's a real head case, him and that Sheriff Dannmeyer.”
“He was,” I smiled.
“Yeah,” Parini laughed. “I saw you run over him with that ambulance.”
“A sheriff?” Sandy's mouth dropped open. “You ran over a sheriff?”
“Not me, the ambulance driver did. He was the one who helped me escape from the embalming room, before Dannmeyer shot him.”
“I don't believe this.” She smacked her forehead again. “You killed a cop?”
“That guy deserved it,” Parini answered for me. “And Dannmeyer was no cop. He was a stone-cold killer with a badge, like the rest of Tinkerton's people.”
“You could have helped me, you know.”
“I ain't your Fairy Godmother; you keep forgettin’ that.”
“Bullshit. You could have stopped him,” I said.
“Stop what? I didn't know what he was doin’ down there or how far he'd go. What I did know was you were flushing them out and doing my heavy lifting for me.”
“You really are a bastard,” Sandy told him.
“There goes that mouth again,” he chided her. “A nice Italian girl should know better than make negative comments about a gentleman's heritage like that.”
“You're a gentleman like I'm a “nice” Italian girl,” she quickly responded.
“Okay, okay, Gino.” I turned toward him. “So tell me what's really going on.”
“Me? Tell you “what's really” going on?” Parini chuckled.
“You've been using him for bait,” Sandy told him. “And you owe him one. You owe me one, too. Time to pay up.”
“Come on, Gino,” I tried to draw it out of him. “I know what they've been doing. I know who's doing it, and I even know how they're doing it, but I can't figure out why.”
“You wanna know why, huh?” Parini thought it over and finally relented. “You heard of the Federal Witness Protection Program, right?” I nodded. “It's run by Justice, all top secret and hush-hush. They say in the last twenty, twenty-five years, the Feds have taken maybe 6500 mopes into that program and maybe 8,000 dependents.”
Sandy eyed him suspiciously in the rear view mirror.
“That's right out of
“Yeah, I guess.” I frowned, still not getting the point.
“Think about it. Most of them cruds are small fish, but there's some big ones in there too, like sixteen “made men” from New York and New Jersey — Jimmy ‘the Bull’ Gravano, ‘Noodles’ Fortuno, Barty Marzini, and your pals Richie Benvenuto, ‘the Mole,’ Pauli Martucci, even that damned bean counter, Louie Panozzo. And I gotta tell ya, seein’ a bunch 'a bums like that sittin' on the beach in Florida, while a stand-up guy like Jimmie Santorini is bustin'
