The pub was low-ceilinged and paneled with dark wood, creating an atmosphere that was supposed to be cozy but that actually bordered on the claustrophobic.
The closed-in feeling was just what Owens wanted, he realized. He seemed safer, somehow, than being outside in the night, running for his life from Mack Bolan.
He settled into a vacant booth and lifted a finger to one of the bartenders; they knew him here, and he'd soon have his usual drink, Scotch straight up.
The place was busy, the after-movie crowd filling it almost to capacity.
That was good, too, thought Owens.
Bolan would not come in here and start slinging bullets around, not with the chance of hitting a lot of innocent people. Not everybody who came in here was Mafia, after all.
A waitress in a short skirt and low-cut blouse sashayed over to the booth with a drink on a tray. As she set it down, Owens drummed nervously on the table with his fingertips.
"How's about walking over a phone, babe?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Owens, this booth doesn't have a jack and all the other booths are full. You can use the phone behind the bar, though."
He picked up his drink, swallowed half of it, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"No, never mind," he said shakily. "I'll use the pay phone in a minute."
The girl gestured at the glass in his hand.
"Are you going to want a refill?"
He stared for a second at the amber liquid in the glass, then tossed it off.
"Damn straight," he breathed.
The liquor's fire warmed his insides and he suddenly felt a little stronger.
He didn't much like the idea of going into the corridor where the rest rooms were to use the pay phone there, but he didn't have much choice. He could hardly use the bar phone to call any of his friends, asking them to put him up under cover until this thing blew over. That would get ears listening and he didn't want that at all. He was paranoid, sure.
Owens could practically taste his own paranoia. He reminded himself that he had damn good reason to be afraid, on the run as he was from the meanest damn widow-maker to ever hit Chicago.
The waitress came over with his second drink and he disposed of it with one gulp.
Then, gathering what he recognized as alcohol-induced courage, he left the booth and made his way through the crowded, noisy bar to the corridor that opened up behind a curtain of beads on the left-hand wall of the bar.
This was actually the connecting corridor between Jimmy Kidd's and Sheba's. The rest rooms there served both establishments. Three pay phones adorned the wall.
He went to the first phone, dug in his pocket for change and fed coins into the slot.
The dial tone buzzing in his ear was a comforting sound.
He had just lifted his right hand to punch the digits of the number he wanted when strong, hard fingers clamped down upon his right shoulder.
Rush Street runs north of the Loop between Michigan Avenue and State Street and it is about as varied a thoroughfare as anyone could want: numerous bars and clubs, from the top-notch to the sleazy. A multitude of restaurants offered a diversity of ethnic foods. The term "melting pot" could have been coined for Rush Street.
Bolan drove the Datsun down Rush.
Traffic was heavy as he looked for Jimmy Kidd's and Sheba's.
The soldier had little reason to think fondly of Chicago, considering that this and his previous visits to this City of Big Shoulders, as Robert Frost had termed it, invariably tied in solely with his War Everlasting.
Still, there was about this city a vibrancy, a vitality, an immediacy that he found invigorating and quintessentially American, for Bolan recognized that the history of this one-of-a-kind metropolis squatting on the southern shore of Lake Michigan was a microcosm of the whole of American history and experience, mirroring a nation's greatness as well as its dark side; its dreams and its nightmares.
He knew something of the Windy City's past: how French explorers and trappers like Marquette and Jolliet had braved the hostile, uncharted interior of an expansive new continent, mapping the area as early as 1673; how Fort Dearborn was established in 1803.
Prosperity had first come to Chicago in the wake of harbor improvements, lake traffic and the settling of the prairies.
From the ashes of the fire of 1871 had risen a city of stone and steel that had not yet stopped growing, burgeoning into the free-wheeling big town of today, boasting a population of well over three million, a vital Great Lakes port and a busy rail, air and highway hub.
Rapidly growing industries had brought thousands of immigrants to Chi around the turn of the century, imbuing the metropolis with its rich ethnic diversity that continued to thrive.
The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 made Chicago a true city of the world, a major port for overseas shipping.
And if this wild and woolly, sooty, noisy, friendly town had gained itself a sometimes unsavory reputation, thanks to the likes of Capone, Accardo and Parelli, Chicago could claim equal fame for its symphony orchestra, its art institute, its civic opera and its natural history museum, barometers all of those heights of achievement in the arts and sciences of which the human spirit is capable.
The full array of the good, the bad and the ugly that Chicago had to offer were out in force along Rush Street this night.
The biting cold night wind snapped through the high, narrow canyons of this north-side district of clubs and restaurants. Shops attracted browsers, tourists, off-duty servicemen and down-and-out street people in droves around the clock, around the calendar, and this November weeknight was no exception.
Automobiles and human rabble made the night alive and slowed the Datsun's progress.
Bolan recognized the value of losing himself in the crush of people who clogged this multiblock stretch that is the principal Rush Street scene. He used the crawling pace to look for the establishments where he hoped to find Owens. As he cruised along in the traffic's flow, he thought of everything that had transpired during the short, roller-coaster ride since he had blown into Chicago earlier that night.
There had been intangibles about this mission from the beginning, but Bolan had vowed to take on the odds and deliver a strike against the Parelli empire in spite of those intangibles.
Parelli was worth Bolan's attention, damn right. The mobster had to be located and terminated.
Intangibles, yeah.
Bolan was convinced that there was more to this Chicago strike than he had first suspected. The warrior could sense a foul, evil undercurrent pulsing just beneath the surface, but time was running out too fast, and time was something Bolan had not had much of to begin with.
Bolan had never expected to survive his first assault on the Mafia those years ago when he had come home from Nam to avenge his family.
Vengeance, then, had quickly given way to duty, determination, when he fully understood the bigger picture. The Mafia was evil, sure, but it was only part of the problem.
And yet Bolan had lived his life since with the full expectation that every day could well be his last.
Thus far fate, luck, whatever, had seen him through mile after bloody mile, but Bolan understood that it could not last forever.
One day his luck would change and there'd be a bullet with his name on it. No matter.
Chicago was due for some cleansing fire.
He'd play Fate's game. He, too, had some aces up his sleeve.
He would not go to his death knowing that the truth had eluded him in Chicago.
Cold fury gripped his insides each time he thought of the sickness he had seen on Parelli's TV screen. He had to nail Parelli more than ever now, and he had to clear up this tangle before one more child came to harm.