I slowed to a stop at the garage, off the alley. The overhead door was swung up and open — Bill had backed the car in. Nobody was in sight, including Bill, but the Caddy’s windshield had four baseball-sized holes punched in it — in a neat row. As I approached the vehicle, the smell of cordite hanging in the air like foul factory smoke, I was careful not to step on the four shotgun casings on the cement... twelve gauge... and the single ejected shell from an automatic handgun... seemed to be a .45, but I didn’t bend down for a closer inspection. I was busy looking into the car, through the passenger window.
Bill was slumped in the front seat, still sitting behind the wheel, but the top of him draped across the rider’s seat. His well-punctured homburg was beside him, where it had fallen (or been blown) off. He might have been going for his glove compartment, where I knew he kept a .38, or maybe he’d just ducked down seeking safety when the assassins... two were indicated... stepped out of the garage where they must have been hiding, moving right around in front of his windshield, to start blasting, one with a shotgun, the other a .45.
But Bill Drury hadn’t made it to his revolver, or to safety — riddled with slugs as he was, blood streaming from a dozen nasty wounds in his face, chest, arms, and the reaching hand, the seat already soaked with glistening crimson. His eyes were wide and empty, but the surprise and fear were frozen on his pellet-ravaged face.
Probably the decent thing to do would have been to go up to the house and break the tragic news to his wife, so she could be spared discovering the body.
But in the few seconds I’d taken in the murder scene, I’d already decided to try to catch the sons of bitches, before they made their getaway from the neighborhood, and — nine millimeter tight in my fist — I ran back out of the alley, to where I’d left the Olds on Wolcott.
It’s what Bill would have done.
For me.
Since no getaway car was in sight down the alley, I figured the shooters had jumped a backyard fence to cut over to either Addison or Eddy, where their vehicle would be parked, possibly with a wheelman waiting.
As I backed out into Wolcott — catching a break: no cars in either lane — I craned around looking left and right, checking both streets and saw a maroon coupe, a Ford, go flying east on Eddy, the driver hunkered forward, like he was in a goddamn stockcar race.
That was good enough for me.
I swung the Olds around and took pursuit — twilight had faded fully into nighttime — but when I turned onto Eddy, the maroon coupe was not in sight. That was no surprise — after going under the El, Eddy dead-ended just half a block off Wolcott. I could see taillights glowing like red eyes in the darkness, about a block down Ravenswood, a deserted-looking street to my left, and that had to be the coupe, although I’d have to get closer to find out for sure.
I took the left onto Ravenswood, and followed the taillights, warehouses and factory lofts to one side of me, an embankment on the other. The maroon coupe — if that was the coupe up ahead — had slowed down, and I stayed back; unless I wanted a full-blown chase, I needed not to attract their suspicion, which on this desolate stretch wasn’t easy. I cut my headlamps.
Three blocks down Ravenswood, the vehicle turned right on Roscoe, as if tracing the path of the El tracks; in doing so, the coupe revealed itself definitely as the maroon Ford, gliding under a streetlight. The driver wasn’t sitting forward now, and the car was moving along at a legal twenty-five miles per hour. No sign that they’d spotted me...
Soon the coupe had turned right onto Lincoln Avenue, and we were no longer alone, or in the dark — this was a busy shopping district, rich with German bakeries and small shops of every stripe, dominated by a huge Goldblatt’s department store, the sidewalks crowded, the streets clogged with traffic. I put the lights back on, though I hardly needed them. This wide busy thoroughfare allowed me to put several cars between my Olds and the maroon coupe — they still hadn’t made me, it appeared — but when we approached the Lincoln/Belmont/Ashland intersection, I got worried.
This was one of Chicago’s patented crazy three-way intersections, with Lincoln cutting diagonally across Ashland and Belmont, the kind of crossing that can give a tourist an instant nervous breakdown... and even a veteran Chicago driver the shakes...
