Chicago Typewriter

11.

After the flurry of confident actions by sure people in various uniforms faded, I found myself in a hospital waiting room. The chief was in surgery. I'd washed my hands, but his dried blood stained my sleeves, with spatters elsewhere on my suit. A couple of cops hung around. I was too tired to even try to remember their names.

We all kept watching the door to the operating room. But it was the other door that opened first. Millie, Ike, and a gray haired man with a cheek mole filed in, each face worried.

"Hello, Detective," Millie said. She tried to smile. I appreciated the attempt.

The gray haired man nodded to me. "Thanks for the phone call, Mr. Lucy. I'm Gary Patterson, principal at Central High."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Patterson."

"Any word?"

"No word, yet." They looked at me with wide, tremulous eyes. "It was only one bullet. Nowhere near his heart. I ain't worried."

So, I lied. I lie all the time. The chief looked all but dead already when they wheeled him in to get his bullet removed.

"Where's Buster?" Mille said. "Shouldn't he be here?"

I slid my eyes over to one of the cops. This was his answer, not mine.

His eyes shifted here and there, failing to meet Millie's. "Buster Largo is now wanted, ma'am."

The other cop added, "And Bianca Largo. And Deacon Largo. We're taking them all in."

Millie said, "Oh!" and her lips dropped open in an expression of wonder as if the sun broke through the clouds.

Ike's jaw dropped. He looked between the cops, finally fixating on me. "I'm scared of Buster. And Uncle Deacon, too. If they really do go to jail, well, that'd be great!"

I tried to hide my bloodstained cuffs behind my back. "The cavalry arrived. Late, but it arrived in the end. The boys'll bring 'em in. Right, boys?"

The pair of cops showed about as much enthusiasm for capturing a batch of Tommy gun-toting gangsters as I would have. But I was just a detective. Arresting gangsters wasn't my job, it was theirs.

The doctor came out then. He wore a relaxed smile.