“What’s the rush?”
He tipped his chin toward the backseat. “Like I said-look behind us.”
I did. A white SUV sped after us, changing lanes when we did, closing the gap. Through the glare and shadow of its front window I saw two men. The one in the passenger seat looked like Finley. I wasn’t sure about the driver. He could’ve been the guy who took my pistol from me in Monroe’s office.
“Can this thing go any faster?” I said.
Rafael laughed and sped up. We shot toward the downtown lights, the SUV behind us. The tall, black-windowed apartments in Lake Point Tower loomed on the left. On the other side, our headlights flashed on a big American flag tied to the side of a construction crane. It rose in the air on the cold breeze and fell like a giant hand waving good-bye.
“How did you get into The Spa Club?” I said.
Rafael checked the rearview mirror again and said, “Raj called. He said you were in trouble. Said it was getting too deep and he wanted out. Said if I didn’t come get you, Johnson might decide to make you go away for good. You know, any time I can fuck up Johnson’s plans I’m going to do it. Anyway, Raj is an okay guy-or was. That was ugly, what that man did to him.”
“Peter Finley.”
“Whoever. I mean, with friends like him-”
I glanced at Rafael. The light from outside glinted in his eyes. None of the tattooed words on his bicep said KILL but the inked blades and guns meant it just the same. “What do you know about friends?” I said.
He checked the mirror, then looked at me. “What? I came and got you and I don’t hardly know your ass. I didn’t see your other friends coming for you.”
No, I’d left a friend behind. If Lucinda had managed to get to the fourteenth-floor stairwell, they had her now and I was riding away from her at eighty miles an hour. “Do you have a cell phone?” I said.
He looked at me like I was a caveman. “I got three. You need one?”
I said I did. He handed me a phone and I punched Lucinda’s number into it.
It rang three times and a man’s voice answered-Johnson’s.
“Let me talk to Lucinda, Earl,” I said.
He yelled into the phone, “Get back here-”
I hung up on him.
Rafael glared at me and said, “Gimme.” I put the phone in his hand, and he rolled down his window and chucked it out. “You gave my phone number to Earl Johnson,” he said and shook his head.
We crossed the river, went around a bend, and flew along the harbor. In front of us, a stoplight turned yellow, then red. Rafael hit the accelerator and we went into the intersection. I looked over my shoulder. The SUV followed us through, missing a crossing car by inches.
“Muy loco,” Rafael said like he admired the driver. He pulled out a second cell phone, tapped the keypad, and talked to someone in Spanish. He added in English, or mostly, “Sí, Eighteenth and Throop Street,” then laughed and hung up.
I kept my eyes on the SUV. Finley leaned out of the passenger window. He had a weapon in his hand. He leveled it so it pointed at the back window of Rafael’s BMW.
“Do you have a gun?” I said.
Rafael sounded annoyed. “You think I would bring a weapon to a club owned by cops? You got to be kidding.”
Finley shot, and the bullet thunked into metal behind us.
“Under the seat!” Rafael said.
I reached under the seat and pulled out a sawed-off Remington shotgun. Single shot.
“Loaded?” I said.
He nodded. “But only one shell.”
I looked at him like he must be kidding. He wasn’t. “What kind of thug are you with only one round?”
“A thug who’s got one more round than you, right?” he said.
I unrolled my window and leaned out, pointed the shotgun at Finley.
He didn’t know I had only one shot. He disappeared into the SUV.
I slid into the BMW.
The next stoplight was green. We flew through the intersection and along Grant Park.
Finley’s hand, holding his pistol, jutted out of the SUV window again. He fired the gun, missed, and fired again.
“Shoot the asshole!” Rafael said.
I leaned out the window again, aimed the shotgun at Finley.
He squeezed off another two shots.
I waited for the pain that would seep into me if he hit me. None came.
I looked down the sawed-off barrel until its tip lined up with Finley’s head.
“Shoot him!” Rafael yelled.
I couldn’t pull the trigger. I’d already shot one cop too many. Another cop-even Finley, who was gunning for me-was too much.
I lowered the gun a few inches, aimed at the front tire. If I blew it out, the SUV would stop and we would leave Finley behind. That seemed better than killing him.
I pulled the trigger.
The kick of the shotgun threw me back but I kept my eyes on the SUV. The right headlight went dark. The white paint on the front hood was flecked with black. But the SUV kept coming. The tire was still good.
I slipped into the car again, and Rafael looked in the rearview mirror. He made a sound that was half laugh and half howl. “You missed! You have a fucking shotgun! How can you miss?”
I had nothing to say so I said nothing.
“Jesus!” he said. “You don’t get no second chances.” He accelerated through the next intersection, glanced in the mirror, and added, “They’re coming.”
I looked. The SUV had closed to three car lengths. Finley’s arm stuck out of the window with his gun.
“Pretend to shoot again,” Rafael said.
It seemed like as good an idea as anything else, so I turned and stuck the shotgun out the window. Finley’s arm disappeared and the SUV dropped back a couple of car lengths.
“Here goes-” Rafael said, and, before I could ask, he whipped into the turn lane at Roosevelt Road and slid around the corner.
The SUV came after us, went wide, almost ended up on the concrete median, but corrected and slid in behind. Finley’s arm came out with the gun.
“Go!” I yelled.
The BMW shot forward, the SUV right behind, Finley’s hand steadying toward our back window.
I leaned out the window with the shotgun.
But Finley didn’t buy it. He stuck his head out too. He leveled his gun. He pointed the barrel at me. His face was serious. He took no pleasure in what he was about to do.
Then Rafael said, “Ahhh.” He said it the way you do for a doctor. Again I had no time to ask. The wheels of the BMW hit a lip in the road, the kind that would give the car a light jolt if we’d been moving at half the speed. The BMW lifted as high as the shocks would take it and came down again.
The SUV hit the lip too. I watched as Finley bounced against the SUV door frame. I watched as he dropped the gun. It bounced crazily on the pavement, glanced off the side of a delivery truck, and skidded across the concrete. Finley watched it too. He yelled something that I couldn’t make out. Then he pulled himself back into the car.
I slid inside and grinned at Rafael.
“What happened?”
“We just got a second chance.”
We flew west on Roosevelt, over the South Branch of the river, over a railroad yard, over the Dan Ryan Expressway. Twice, stoplights turned red and Rafael pulled into the oncoming lanes, hit the horn, and forced his way through. Twice, the SUV followed us.
We zigged to the south on Halsted and, a mile later, zagged to the west. We drove into Pilsen, the closest thing to a Mexico City neighborhood north of the Rio Grande. The yellow and red business signs were Spanish, no translation. We sped past the Tortilleria Del Rey bakery, past La Chamba-a storefront that doubled as a union office and a temporary worker business-and past the Casa Castañeda appliance store. Painted on the brick storefronts between the signs, murals showed the Virgin Mary, a leather jacketed ranchero, a mariachi player holding an accordion with a haloed picture of Jesus looking over him, women dancing, a hairy human skull in a blue baseball cap. Music poured from the open door of a tienda. We were in Rafael’s part of town.