The blast that followed blew across the top of the Lincoln and shattered the window of the corner drugstore. The colored pedestrians were running for cover, screaming their lungs out as if needing to be heard over the El, feet doing their stuff and it didn’t have anything to do with being colored. The blast went over my head into that window and I stayed down but shot the nine millimeter up and at the side of that truck, knowing that my bullets were probably too high, having to shoot across two empty lanes of State Street and over the Lincoln, but hoping against hope to get a piece of something, somebody…

Then the nine millimeter was empty and the truck was gone. So was the gray sedan.

Even the El had passed by. The street was silent, but for the occasional outbursts from the colored pedestrians, coming up for air, “Mercy!” “Judas Priest!” “Mama!”

That sedan, which turned right on Pershing, did have plates: Indiana plates, though neither Walt nor I had caught the numbers. Maybe one of the colored witnesses had. The truck was heading on south, gears grinding as it picked up speed.

Walt, who also was out of ammo, helped me up off the sidewalk, and then we were at the Lincoln, looking in, where James M. Ragen, gambling czar, was slumped behind the wheel, teetering between winning and losing, the front of him blood-spattered, his right shoulder and arm a scorched, red, sodden mess.

“Jim,” I said, leaning in the window.

He looked up at me and the little blue eyes damn near twinkled.

“Well, my lad,” he grinned, “you were right…I guess if they want you, they’re going to get you.”