Chapter 5 - The Basement on Racine
I didn't shoot him. Not because I had morals—Chicago in the nineties taught you that morals were just expensive accessories you couldn't afford—but because a dead body in a public hallway brings the cops in ten minutes, and the cops ask about ledgers, and ledgers lead to things I couldn't afford to explain to a federal prosecutor.
Instead, I reversed the Sig and brought the heavy polymer grip down across the side of the man’s skull with a sickening crack.
He folded like an empty suit, sliding down the yellow wallpaper until he sat in a crumpled heap on the linoleum, out cold.
"Sarah, pack a bag. Now," I said, stepping back into the bedroom and pulling the heavy wool blanket off the bed to wrap around her shivering shoulders.
"Nate, I can't walk down three flights of stairs," she said, her eyes wide with a terror that wasn't about the man in the hall, but about what was waiting for us outside. "My lungs... they're finished. The doctor at the clinic said I have six months, maybe less if the damp gets into my chest."
"You're not walking," I said, scooping her up into my arms. She weighed almost nothing—just skin, bones, and thirty years of bad luck. She smelled of fever and old dust, but as her arms went around my neck, for one insane second, we were seventeen again, standing behind the old coal shed while the factory sirens blew at five o'clock.
"Lily, grab the yellow tin and hold my coat," I ordered, my voice dropping into the register I used when I was clearing a delinquent restaurant out by force.
The girl didn't hesitate. She grabbed the tin, tucked it inside her coat pocket, and gripped the hem of my jacket with small, ice-cold fingers.
We made it down the back stairs without running into the man's partner—who was probably waiting in a parked sedan down on the street. The rain had turned into a steady, freezing drizzle that plastered our clothes to our skin as we burst through the rear exit of the tenement into the alleyway.
My black Lincoln town car was parked three blocks down, tucked into the shadow of an abandoned brick warehouse where the parking enforcement officers didn't dare walk after dark. I bundled Sarah into the back seat, laid her across the leather cushions, and shoved Lily into the passenger side, locking all four doors before jogging around to the driver's side.
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"Where are we going, Mr. Moretti?" Lily asked, her voice eerily calm as she wiped a streak of soot from her cheek.
"Not home," I said, throwing the Lincoln into reverse and burning rubber down the greasy asphalt of the alley. "We’re going to find out what my old man left in the basement on Racine."
