“Same place he saw me,” I said. “Ask him and I’m sure he’ll tell you, although I’d probably drop a plate of raw meat in front of him first, so as to keep him occupied.”
Bagby thought that was so funny that his laugh drew attention away not just from Scanlon, but even, briefly, the video games. “You’re all right, Warshawski,” he said, slapping my shoulder. “You’re all right.”
On our way out of the room, I stopped to look at the old photos of South Chicago. There was one that dated to 1883, when the Ninety-third Street Illinois Central station first opened, and a few from the early twentieth century, showing men going into the Wisconsin or U.S. Steel Works when those were new. Gripping lunch boxes, faces black with coal dust, skies thick with sulfur. My mother and I used to wash the windows every week but we never kept ahead of the dirt falling from the sky.
Bernie’s face was tight with worry. She wouldn’t admit that the afternoon had scared her in any way, but she clung to my arm in an uncharacteristic way.
I ushered her through the crowd of kids still waiting for time on the computers. When we got to the street, I froze: the Mustang’s tires had been slashed. The car was sitting on the rims.
“Someone down here doesn’t like me very much,” I said to Bernie. “We’ll take the train home and worry about the car in the morning. You leave anything valuable inside? Then let’s go.”
We were three blocks from the Metra station, the same one where I’d ridden back from the Guisar slip the other morning. There should be a train in ten or fifteen minutes.
The April sky was starting to darken. I picked up the pace on an empty stretch where storefronts had been bulldozed, pushing Bernie in front of me. That’s where they jumped us.
I kicked back, hard, hit the shin, felt the hands slacken and jerked away. Bernie was on the ground, a hulk of a kid on top of her. I jumped on his head, cracked it against the sidewalk, kicked his kidneys. Two punks grabbed me but Bernie wriggled free.
“Run. Get to the train!”
Passersby were scattering. No one wanted to be part of a gang fight.
Bernie took off down the street and I kicked, punched, shouted, took a heavy blow to the stomach, ducked one to the head. I was gasping for air, kicking, lunging. I was nearly spent. Keep fighting until there’s no fight left.
A spotlight swept the street, found us.
“Stop what you’re doing. Hands in the air.” A police loudspeaker.
The blows stopped. The two punks hesitated and then took off across the open ground. I leaned over, hands on my knees, gulping in air. My nose was bleeding and my left eye was swelling shut.
The patrol unit came over, guns out. Bernie Fouchard ran past them and flung herself against me.
ROAD TEST
“Vic, Vic, you’re okay.”
I stood, wincing as my wounds hit me, folded her against me. “I’m okay, better now you’re safe.”
“I was so scared, I was afraid they would kill you and find me and kill me. But I ran in the street and found a police car. You’re not okay, you’re bleeding into my hair, I can feel it.”
I kept her close to me, bleeding nose or not. One of the officers started talking to his lapel mike, the other shone a flash across the vacant lot, then at the punk whose head I’d jumped on.
“What happened here?” The officer knelt, fingers on the creep’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“Three punks jumped us. This one had my goddaughter on the ground. I managed to break free long enough to get him off her. Is he dead?”
“Nope. Pity. He’s an Insane Dragon, you can tell by the tattoos.”
Under his floodlight I saw the dragons circling the creep’s arms. He even had a dragon head on his neck, the tongue licking toward an ear.
“You need a doctor, but we need a statement, too,” the cop added.
Three more squad cars pulled up, half-blocking Commercial, their strobes pulsing like so many giant fireflies. Three officers picked their way through the rubble in the vacant lot. One of them stood in the road, directing traffic around the squad cars. Now that the police were here, passersby were starting to gather, to murmur versions of the fight to each other.
Two officers kept an eye on the growing crowd: there might be any number of Insane Dragons eager to take action against someone who’d brought down one of their own.
An SUV pulled up behind the squad car and Vince Bagby came over to the sidewalk. “Christ, Warshawski. You get involved in World War Three?”
“Sorry, sir, this is a crime— Oh, Vince—it’s you. Hey, man. You know her?”