The Undertaker (30 page)

I put the accelerator to the floor and tried to focus on the traffic. On my left lay a fenced, railroad embankment filled with trash, broken bottles, and tall weeds. On my right was a long row of ugly, yellow-brown apartment buildings. My God, I groaned, that was “the projects,” the Robert Taylor Homes. I had spent two days in Chicago only to come full circle to the same south side public housing I passed on my way in.

I glanced over at Sandy. She had her Pentax out, snapping pictures as I drove. “The camera?” I said. “I don't believe you.”

“Believe what you want. This is me.”

Yeah, and you're still there
, I thought as I looked into the mirror. We had a nice lead, but the two gray sedans were already closing the gap. I pressed the accelerator down again and the Lincoln responded with a throaty roar, but up ahead the traffic was already backing up at the next red light at 28th Street. The on-coming lanes were filled with cars, but there was no way I was going to wait for the light to change. I cut the wheel and drove the Lincoln up on the sidewalk. There was just enough room between the parking meters and the fronts of the buildings for the Lincoln to squeeze through, so I hit the horn, sending pedestrians scattering into doorways as we roared past. The car's left fender struck a newspaper box and sent it cartwheeling high into the street, scattering the newspapers in the wind as we blew through the intersection.

“I hope Parini has good insurance on this thing,” Sandy laughed.

Clear of the traffic again, I cut back into the street and floored it. On our right, the cruel ugliness of the projects gave way to the modern black steel buildings of the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology. I drove on past 30th Street and 33rd Street, weaving in and out, with one eye on the traffic and one on the rear view mirror. We were running out of options. I could never pull very far away from them and they could never quite close the gap. Ties might work in horseshoes, but when angry men with guns are chasing you around, eventually you're going to lose.

Tinkerton must have realized that too. By the time we reached the big intersection at 35th Street, he had had called for reinforcements. Another sedan, dark green this time, sat sideways across the southbound lanes ahead of us, blocking our way, and there were two men with guns standing behind it, already taking aim. The car might be a different color, but their expressions were as murderous as their pals coming up behind.

“You got any ideas?” I asked. The only choice was 35
^th
Street, so I didn't wait. I spun the wheel hard right and took the corner on two wheels. The Lincoln rode up onto the sidewalk and fishtailed out into westbound 35th Street. As we accelerated away from the intersection, a bullet punched a fist-sized hole in the rear window of the Lincoln and exited through the left front windshield.

Sandy's eyes went round as saucers. “What the hell?” she exclaimed as she swung the camera back on the blue car and began clicking away. “They shot at us! When I get this stuff printed, my photography class will never believe it.”

“Get down!” I shouted at her but she wouldn't listen, so I put my hand on the top of her head and pushed her down below the top of the seat again. “I mean it this time.”

“Hey, I'm into soft and tender now, Talbott, enough with the rough stuff.” She tried to squirm away as another bullet punched through the rear window.

“They've got more, you know.” What was left of the rear window broke up in a lacy pattern and a thousand shards of broken glass crumbled into the back seat.

“Okay, maybe I'll stay down here for a while.”

Up ahead I saw LaSalle Street, the service road that ran along the east side of the Dan Ryan Expressway and I knew exactly where we were. The green car, the two gray cars, and Tinkerton's big LTD were turning into 35
^th
Street behind us, coming up hard and fast. We were quickly approaching the Dan Ryan, but Tinkerton and the cops already knew that. Coming straight at us down 35th was another of Tinkerton's gray sedans accompanied by two Chicago police cars, their sirens screaming and blue and white light bars flashing, blocking our way, while two other police cars had the entrance ramp to the Dan Ryan shut down. Bad form, Ralph, you brought in the locals. That means he's getting desperate. Maybe he's worried I might actually get away again.

That only left LaSalle Street, a three lane, one-way service road that ran back north along side the Dan Ryan.

“Right, turn right,” she screamed. I reached the intersection before the white sedan and the two cop cars, but the Lincoln's speedometer was topping one-hundred as I hit the brake and spun the steering wheel. The tires squealed. The big sedan heeled over and slid through the intersection on two wheels, leaving a black arc of shredded rubber behind us as we swung north onto LaSalle. Not bad driving for an amateur, but Tinkerton's goons were closing fast and they were probably a whole lot more experienced at this than I was. They had chased us east, south, west, east, and now back north in an ever-tightening circle. No matter how fast I drove or how much rubber I laid, it was only a matter of minutes before they brought cars in from that direction too, blocked the road, and had us trapped.

Sandy pointed down at the expressway median. “Hey, there's the El. If we can get down there.”

On the other side of the curb was a sidewalk, a six-foot high chain-link fence, and a long grassy slope. It ended at a three-foot tall concrete barrier next to the Dan Ryan's three northbound local lanes. Beyond that stood another concrete divider and the four express lanes, followed by a third, even taller concrete divider, that separated the expressway from the gleaming El tracks and then the 35
^th
Street Station. I remembered passing it on my way into town. It was a long slab of elevated concrete with a roof and a covered staircase that led to the 35
^th
Street overpass high above.

“No problem,” I answered, without a whole lot of time to think about it. “Hang on.” I spun the steering wheel left. Parini's white Mafia war wagon hit the curb, bounced up, flew across the sidewalk, and hit the fence. Chain link and a couple of metal posts were no match for a ton and a half of Lincoln Town Car. It flattened three sections of the fence and roared down the grassy slope toward the expressway. I hit the brakes and let the big car slide sideways downhill, its radial tires digging into the soft turf like a battleship turning in molasses, leaving four deep furrows behind us and bringing the Lincoln to a halt six feet from the first concrete barrier. I pushed my car door open and grabbed Sandy by the hand. “You staying or coming?” I asked.

“Oh, I'm coming, God, am I coming!”

“You're sure.”

“Oh yeah, I'm sure,” she laughed. “Miss this? You gotta be kidding?” She held onto me with one hand and her camera and shoulder bag with the other and scrambled out the car door after me.

Behind us, Tinkerton's blue LTD and two of his gray sedans slid into the intersection from the east, following my skid marks, just as the other gray car and the Chicago police cruiser came racing in from the west. Unfortunately for them, they had all been watching the white Lincoln, not each other, and we heard the crash of metal and the sound of breaking glass as they all collided in the middle. The LTD made it through unscathed, but one of the gray sedans hit a cop car and flipped. It slid across the street on its top while another cop car careened away and bounced off a telephone pole and another slid into the side of a Budweiser delivery truck.

“Jeez, they hit a beer truck,” Sandy laughed. “There's gonna be hell to pay in the ‘hood tonight.”

We reached the concrete barrier as the shrill sound of still more police sirens came screaming in behind us. I remembered seeing grainy news footage in school about the 1968 Democratic Convention. Hairy-knuckled Chicago cops in baby-blue riot helmets, short-sleeved shirts, nightsticks, German Shepherds snarling, cameras and hand-held floodlights bouncing, as the cops chased longhaired hippies through Grant Park on a hot summer night. I was sure the Chicago Police Department had changed a lot in forty years, but there was no way I was going to stop and plead the subtleties of my case to an angry cop with a riot gun. The last of those 1968 Neanderthals may have retired years ago, but if the LA cops are any example, the new generation was even worse. We ran across the remaining grass, climbed on top of the first concrete barrier, and looked down on the mid-morning traffic racing past us, thick and fast.

“Who was the idiot who thought this one up?” Sandy asked as three lanes of cars whizzed by us at sixty-five miles per hour, weaving, changing lanes, and honking.

“You are. You wanted to come along, remember?” There was no turning back now. “Pretend it's touch football,” I screamed over the loud roar of the traffic. “We're going to run between them and you don't want to get touched.”

Koo-bee Bryant hits a trey…

A
s
we stood on the divider, about to begin our mad dash out into traffic, I looked back over my shoulder. Tinkerton's blue LTD came careening sideways down the slope at us, digging itself axel deep into the mud until it slid to a halt behind the Lincoln. Tinkerton sat behind the wheel and one of his goons rode shotgun. In their case, the goon probably did have a shotgun, but I tried not to think about that. When Tinkerton spotted us standing on the expressway barrier, he pounded his fist on the steering wheel in angry frustration.

“You know, you have a real talent for pissing people off,” Sandy quipped.

“Years of practice, honed to a fine edge,” I fired back as I took a firm grip on her hand. “Stay with me, one lane at a time.” I turned and searched the onrushing flow of northbound traffic for a break, but I didn't see much of one.

“Now!” I yelled as I jumped off the barrier and ran between a black BMW and a big moving van, and stopped on the first white line. An Atlas Van Lines eighteen-wheeler roared behind us and tight line of cars swept past in front of us, horns blaring, buffeting us with their back drafts. Four cars later, I saw another break coming and squeezed her hand again. “Now!” We sprinted in front of a red Dodge mini-van with a wide-eyed soccer mom behind the wheel, through a gap in the third lane, and jumped up on the relative safety of the next concrete divider that separated the local lanes from the express lanes.

“What a hoot!” Sandy screamed as she clutched her leather shoulder bag to her chest with one hand and me with the other. “God, they ought to put this on “The X-Games”, Talbott,” she said as we wobbled precariously on the divider.

“You wouldn't listen, would you?”

“What fun would that be?” She grinned from ear to ear.

Up ahead, a four-car El train pulled out of the station on the southbound tracks, taking most of the waiting passengers with it. Behind us, Tinkerton and the goon had gotten out of the LTD and were standing on the other side of the first divider, three lanes away, pointing at us, screaming. Two Chicago cops ran up next to him, pistols out, with expressions of total confusion. No doubt, they had never been in a high-speed chase quite like this one. Without a whole lot of thought, I smiled at Tinkerton and flipped him the bird, holding my finger high over my head. That completely unhinged him. His face turned red and he looked ready to have a stroke right then and there. He ripped a large automatic pistol from his shoulder holster and took aim at me. He would have shot me too, if one of the Chicago cops hadn't pulled his arm down.

“That's real smart,” Sandy shouted. “Why don't you get him good and pissed?”

“He didn't shoot did he?”

“Not because he didn't want to.”

I could almost read the cop's lips as he yelled at Tinkerton and pointed at the cars whizzing by on the freeway. I doubt it was compassion or concern for us that motivated the cop. More likely, it was the mountains of paperwork and the lawsuits he'd find himself buried in if Tinkerton missed and hit the wrong people. Frustrated and even angrier, Tinkerton surprised me by climbing over the divider and following us out into the fast-moving local lanes. He still had the gun in his hand, but at least it wasn't pointed at us. His goon followed, most unhappy about it, and the two Chicago cops took up the rear.

“I don't know about you.” Sandy's hand tightened on mine. “But I don't want to share this divider with anybody that big and angry, especially not one with a gun. Let's go.”

Together, we jumped down into the express lanes and I saw this was the big leagues. There were four lanes rather than three and the stream of cars was thicker and faster than in the locals. We could see panic on the face of almost every driver who flashed by us, and I'm sure they could see it on ours.

“Now!” I screamed and we cut behind a delivery van and kept moving through a gap between a Honda and Cadillac. We stopped, halfway there, toeing the white line as we waited for a break in the third lane. Behind us, I heard loud honking of horns and a sudden squeal of brakes followed by a sickening “Thump!” I looked back in time to see a blue-clad Chicago cop bounce high off the hood of a Toyota in the local lanes. He cart-wheeled through the air, arms and legs extended, followed by a loud series of sharp crashes as a half-dozen cars rear-ended each other trying to avoid the cop and the careening Toyota. The, all Hell broke loose, with more crashing metal, more squeals, and more loud horns.

“Well, that ought to slow them down a tad,” she yelled, wide-eyed.