Salt trucks were moving in both directions, but they made the road more dangerous. Drivers were hitting the salted spots and thinking they could speed up with the new traction, only to lose control when they hit the next slick patch. They went into the guardrails or, worse, other cars. Somehow, a thin trickle of traffic kept moving through it all, toward Chicago.
We’d just entered the city limits when a pair of taillights ahead suddenly shot across all three lanes of the expressway, headed straight for the vertical wall of a cement overpass. The hundred taillights between us lit up like gun bursts, their drivers slipping and angling to avoid being hit. Some made it; some didn’t. Cars crashed in all three lanes. The grandmother of all gridlocks was about to commence.
I couldn’t risk being stopped. The Racine Avenue exit ramp was ahead, to my right. I angled across all three lanes, half driving, sometimes skidding. High-beam headlamps flashed behind me; horns blared as I followed my reckless diagonal. Then I was there. The exit ramp loomed up. I downshifted. By some miracle, the Jeep slowed without breaking loose.
A red light stopped me at Racine. I looked over at Amanda. She seemed to be barely breathing, as though she were slipping into some deeper form of shock.
“You there, Wendell?” I shouted.
Some sort of crackling came back from my phone.
“Have a doctor waiting,” I yelled. “She’s deeper in shock.”
The phone crackled and went silent.
A pair of high headlamps was coming up behind me. The signal ahead was still red, but the headlamps behind me weren’t slowing. I watched them get larger. At twenty feet I recognized the burgundy paint and the Cadillac crest on the grill.
I ground the shifter into first gear and shot out into a hole in the traffic moving slowly along Racine.
The Escalade followed.
“Wendell, where’s your man?” I screamed at the phone on the dash.
“… to voice mail… after… rings.” Even though he was breaking up through the tinny speaker, I could hear the defensiveness in his voice. He must have heard the fear in mine. “Robinson?”
“He’s got a gun, Wendell.”
“I’ll… police!” he shouted.
“In this ice storm? Not even your clout will get them here in time.” An image flashed in my mind then, of alleys and garages. “I’m going to try to lose him,” I yelled. “Make sure people are waiting with guns.”
“They’re already-”
“Someone is following us?” Amanda asked calmly, more startling than the sound of any gunshot.
I glanced in the rearview. The big headlamps were fifty feet back. He’d not gained on us.
“A guy named Robinson. We can talk later.”
“A man was down in the basement, whistling. I could hear him through the door. Was that the man?”
“Did you see that canvas on the washtubs as we ran out?”
“I don’t know.”
“Robinson was beginning to sponge away the acrylics.”
“Leo’s.”
“Not Leo’s; mine. I made a copy.”
She inhaled sharply and began giggling, loud and hysterical. “Now what?”
“I know tricks,” I said.
Forty-nine
I didn’t know tricks so much as I knew alleys, from the years when investigating hinky insurance claims was a big chunk of my business. There were good alleys in the old neighborhoods west of the city. That day, I needed to find one that was perfect.
The salters hadn’t gotten north of the expressway. Hardly any cars were out. I zigzagged north on the ice-sheeted streets as fast as I dared, through gentrified blocks of dance and design studios, yupped-up fusion restaurants, and places looking to sell scarves, silk flowers, and anything else that would fetch a price greater than its utility. The sidewalks were barren, too. The young and fancy were taking an ice day off, staying indoors, sipping warm designer coffees and admiring their shoes.
I would have liked that, too, instead of being chased by a relentless lunatic with a gun.
Sometimes I gained a hundred yards and couldn’t see him at all for the drizzle and the mist, only to have his headlamps charge up bright in my rearview. It would have been ludicrous, a chase done at turtle speed, except for his intent. The painting propped on the washtubs must have gone up in flames, and he needed Amanda now for the two million she’d fetch.
I turned west, into the bomb-zone old neighborhoods that would never feel the golden brush of gentrification. Many of the old graystones were gone, torched for insurance and pushed over. Oddly, almost all the garages remained, and that might be enough.
I swung left, then right, then darted into an alley. Loose gravel and crumbled asphalt poked up through the ice like cleats on a golf shoe, good for traction for me, but good for him, too. Cars were parked parallel to garage doors, and garbage barrels were scattered here and there, also narrowing the way.
I breezed through. So did he, so close at times I could hear his huge tires banging in the potholes. Once I chanced a look back. His head was pure white. He’d grabbed a towel for his burns.
The alley was too wide. I popped out onto the cross street no farther ahead of him than I’d been. I needed narrower.
I swung right, too fast, and skidded, barely missing a car parked at the next corner. I looked back. He’d come out skidding, too, but he was gaining ground. His Escalade was heavy and more sure-footed. Less than twenty-five yards separated us.
Crazily, I’d forgotten about Amanda. I shot a glance over. Her body was rigid; her breathing had gone back to shallow. She’d slipped back into the safety of deep shock.
There was another alley. I turned in. Again I found traction in crumbling asphalt and potholes; again I blew past garbage barrels and parked cars. Twice I heard him strike things, sending garbage barrels banging into garages and cars, but he never slowed. His big Cadillac engine thrummed above the whine of my Jeep. He was gaining even more ground.
Something sparked off a cleat on a telephone pole ahead. I looked back. His hand was out his window. He was firing, despite the potholes. If he got much closer, he wouldn’t miss.
The alley continued on past the cross street. There was a vague, dark narrowing in the distance. I couldn’t slow; his engine was loud behind me. I hit the cross street. My wheels broke loose, sending me into a fishtail. I pressed down on the accelerator; somehow we shot into the next alley headed straight.
I got close and recognized the darkness. Several toughs in long black leather coats and watch caps stood warming themselves around a barrel fire they’d tugged into the middle of the alley. Just behind them was a shiny blue Chevy Caprice, set to ride high on oversized wheels.
I slowed for an instant. The barrel fire was there for warmth, but it was also there as a barrier, to warn off people from the high-riding masterpiece. Right-thinking alley users were expected to back up and find another place to park until the Chevy was no longer there. Such were the rules of the thugs who controlled that alley.
The Escalade roared loudly behind me.
I pressed down on the accelerator. Hearing acceleration instead of reversal, the long-coats turned to stare slack-jawed at the breach of reason that was bearing down on them. Hands jammed into the leather coats. They weren’t reaching for jellybeans.
I snuck a last glance behind me. He was close, and gaining fast.
I saw only fragments of what happened next, because I could only focus on the gap that was shrinking fast in front of me. A wrong twitch to the left and we’d slam into a garage. A wrong one to the right and we’d hit the barrel fire and be dead of gunshots by the time we crashed into the Chevy.
Their arms were raised. Their guns were out.
I twitched left, no more than a couple of inches but enough to show respect, and charged into the narrow opening. Incredibly, we were through in an instant, accompanied by no sounds of scraping metal, splintering wood, or guns. We’d gotten past clean.