"The Third Rail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harvey Michael)

CHAPTER 2

I took the stairs two at a time, slid over the turnstile and out of the L station. A kick of wind hit me fat in the face, and snow fel sideways as I shouldered my way down Southport Avenue. A soft frat boy and his softer girlfriend stood stiff at the corner of Southport and Cornelia, wearing Northwestern and Notre Dame sweatshirts, respectively, and pointing their slack jaws and wide eyes east. Even if I weren’t a detective, it wasn’t hard to figure which way the shooter had run. I pul ed my nine mil imeter, held it low by my side, and turned down Cornelia. A half block ahead, a slip of dark fabric disappeared into an al ey. I fol owed, past a run of single-family homes, two-and three-flats, a block from Chicago’s Brown Line. At the mouth of the al ey, I leaned up against a graystone and took a quick look around the corner. The run of pavement was empty, save for a string of Dumpsters and a rat the size of a cat that, thankful y, took off for points unknown. I slowed my breathing and listened. The wind had fal en off and the cover of new snow deadened everything, including the footsteps of the guy who had just shot a woman on the platform of the Southport L. I crept up to the first Dumpster. A scuff of powder told me my guy had turned in to a second al ey that snaked off the first, running paral el to Cornelia. I pul ed my gun up to shoulder height and crept forward again. More footprints in the second al ey, headed east. Whoever he was, he had turned the corner and just kept moving. I slipped my gun back into its holster and took off at a run. I had made it a good ten yards before a body flew up from behind and to my left. I sprawled toward the dusting of snow and hard cement underneath. He kept his body weight balanced and center of gravity low. I tried to shift, but he slipped an arm across the back of my neck and ground my head against the pavement. I relaxed for a second, hoping my guy might as wel. Then I felt steel pressed against the base of my skul and stopped moving altogether. A gun wil do that to you.

“Easy,” the man said and backed off the pressure on his forearm a little. The gun stayed where it was. “Turn around.”

I turned my head just enough. The shooter wore a black overcoat with black buttons. A fine spray of liquid clung to the hem of his coat. Blood splatter from the woman as she fel. I looked up. He had a black knit hat on. A ski mask covered his face. I took al that in even as my brain processed the final piece of the puzzle, the dark hole of a. 40-caliber handgun, sitting six inches from my forehead.

“Ready to die, hero?” He said it more like he was curious than anything else. Real y, genuinely interested in my comfort level with impending mortality. I figured anything I might say would just kick off the festivities. So I didn’t say anything. Just looked at the mask and tried to fathom the face beyond. He lifted the gun a fraction and began to pul back on the trigger. You might think you can’t see that kind of delicate pressure on a trigger. Trust me, when you’re up that close and personal, you notice. So he squeezed back, a pound or two of pressure. Then he stopped, lifted the gun another inch or so, and brought it down, fast, heavy, and hard. After that, it was the rush of Chicago asphalt toward my face and darkness.