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.
“We’ve got to play on hardwood floors,” the guy groaned, telling me to sit down.
“I can’t sit down,” I said. “I’ve been shot.”
“I don’t know if we can play on hardwood floors,” the guy said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”
14
When I opened my eyes, I was looking at a nine-year-old kid with thick glasses and black hair that kept falling forward. He told me he was a doctor and I was in the emergency room of Cook County Hospital.
“How long have I been out?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Mr. Peters,” he said, patting my shoulder. “You’ve been shot-we don’t think seriously, but-”
“Get me a phone,” I said. Something like pain was knitting a sweater out of my insides.
His smile was tolerant but put-upon.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’ll be plenty of time for that-”
I made it up on one elbow and spoke as quietly and clearly as I could.
“You get me a phone or you don’t cut me open.”
“You can’t-”
“Get me a phone or I cut you open,” I tried.
“I’m here to help you,” he said, turning pale.
“Good, then help me by getting a phone or getting me to one.”
“I don’t see how-”
This time he was interrupted by a Negro woman in white who outweighed him by thirty pounds and probably outexperienced him by the same number of years.
“I think we should let him make the call, doctor,” the nurse said. “Arguing with him isn’t getting us anywhere. Now Mister,” she said to me, “who do you want to call?”
The child doctor looked like he was going to protest, but settled for throwing out his hairless jaw and muttering, “What the hell?” as he stalked away.
“Don’t mind him,” the nurse said to me, pushing the cart I was on to a corner. “He’s been working for twenty-four hours.”
“He doesn’t even need a shave,” I said.
“Who do you want to call?” she said.
“In my wallet pocket, there’s a card with the name Daley on it.”
I wasn’t wearing my suit, but she fished my bloody pants out of a metal locker and found the card. She called the number and asked for Daley.
“This is Mr. Peter’s secretary,” she said and handed me the phone.
“Daley?” I asked. “This is Peters.”
“Yes,” he said. “You turned yourself in?”
“I did,” I said.
“You sound strange,” he said. “Hurt?”
“I’m in the hospital. I’ll be all right. I got shot by a crooked cop named Kleinhans, Sergeant Charles Kleinhans, Maxwell Street Station. Got that?”
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“Kleinhans is dead. Shot by a mob gunman. Kleinhans put away the three guys in the paper this morning and that guy Servi they found in the park. Servi was paying him off, and they were in on a caper to get $120,000 from the mob. Have someone check his car, his house, and his bank account. You should find a machine gun and more money than a cop should have. Check his hand against the bullet in Servi.”
“Got it,” he said. “I’ll tell the right people.”
“See you around.”
“Need anything?” said Daley.
“A new body and some blood,” I said, fading away. “I hope you make it to the White House.”