The Undertaker

Louie, I've got you, you fat piece of shit. I've got you and I've finally have some leverage on Ralph McKinley Tinkerton, Esq., too. I have him by the short hairs.

I saved the de-crypted files, put in the second flash drive, and ran the “De-Crypt” routine again. He titled the spreadsheets in this one, “Rapier Imports.” That list was shorter, but the individual spreadsheet files were much larger and layered. I had no idea what “Rapier Imports” was, but I suspected it was a big part of the Santorini Family empire. At the bottom of the list, I saw a directory titled “Deposits.” I clicked on the title and saw a list with names like Grand Cayman, Geneva, Barbados, Bern, Lucerne, Basel, and Lichtenstein. Fantastic! I had a sneaking suspicion these were Santorini's offshore bank accounts.

I saved those too, and tried the third flash drive. This one was titled, “Amalgamated Construction and Building Products.” It was laid out like the others, and there were other files like “Florida Portfolio,” “South Carolina Land Deal,” “Dallas Buildings,” and Canada Oil Wells.” That was all I needed to see. The Godfather had become a conglomerate. I saved those files too, deleted the “Satan” program from Marty's laptop, and sat back in the seat, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

“You okay, son?” Marty eyed me with some concern. “You hardly touched them donuts I got you.”

“I will now,” I said, taking a big mouthful of the first one, quickly devouring it and three others.

“Get what you wanted off the laptop?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, I got that and a whole lot more.” From being down and out and on the run, I felt a huge adrenaline rush. This was power, real power, if I could figure out how to use it. There was enough here to take down Ralph McKinley Tinkerton and the rest of them, and be positively bulletproof in the process.

I looked up and saw we were leaving I-65, getting on the long entrance ramp to the Chicago Skyway. That was where the rust belt of northwest Indiana met the southern extremities of the City of Chicago. We rode up and over a tall, six-lane bridge that spanned the Calumet River. From the top, I saw the city's magnificent skyline laying in an arc ahead of us like a picture postcard. I saw the Sears Tower, the Hancock Building, and dozens of other skyscrapers in the clear, early-morning air twenty miles to the north.

“Where you want me to drop you?” the driver asked.

“Anywhere. I don't want to put you out; you've done enough already.”

“You're not putting me out. There's no traffic yet anyway.”

I pointed toward the big buildings. “Downtown, then. I can get a bus from there.”

“Downtown it is,” he smiled as we entered the city and rolled down the ramp to the Dan Ryan Expressway. Marty eased the big rig over into the Express Lanes. The Local Lanes were three lanes wide and the Express Lanes had another four. Next to us, running down the center of the big expressway was a big mass transit line.

“That's the El tracks,” Marty said, pointing out his window. “They're named for the old elevated railway that used to loop around downtown.”

It must carry a lot of people, I thought, because every half-mile or so a long, concrete station sat in the expressway median. It had a roof and a long flight of stairs coming down from the cross street up above. There were several dozen people standing on the platform waiting for the train. If Chicago was anything like LA, this was probably the safest time of the day. The pimps, drug dealers, and gang-bangers weren't early risers and never came out this early. The people who did were either very old or very young, mostly women, looking tired, expressionless, sullen, and all black.

On my side of the expressway lay block after block of dirty yellow, ten-story, brick apartment buildings standing like shoe boxes tipped on their sides. “That's the “projects,” the Robert Taylor Homes,” Marty announced glumly. “It's gang country, no man's land, like Beirut or Baghdad. They don't make the six o'clock news, because the Chicago reporters are too chicken to go in there. So are the cops.”

I looked closer. On the first two floors, all the windows had thick steel bars. On the higher floors, many windows were boarded-up and there were black smudges on the brick fascia above, where a fire must have gutted the apartment. The grounds were even more depressing. Trash lay up against the fences, the playground was little more than bare dirt, and the swing set had no swings. The chains made good weapons and no parent in their right mind would let kids play out there to begin with.

“Drive up State Street over there, you'll see fifteen year-olds with $500 Starter Jackets, $200 Nike's, Oakley sunglasses, cell phones, and a wad of green in their pants pockets the size of an apple, and every one of 'em are carryin'. They run the place, and it don't matter what color you are or they are; they're strictly equal opportunity thugs.”