Chapter 6 - The Soho Archive
The old garage on Fourteenth Street did not look like it belonged to the Chicago of the tourists. It sat in the shadow of the Dan Ryan Expressway, a low, brick bunker with three rusted roll-up doors and a roof that had partially caved in under the weight of the previous winter’s snow. The air smelled of wet soot, old iron, and the specific, greasy musk of rats.
Marco parked the sedan two blocks away in the lot of an all-night truck stop.
We walked through the sifting sleet, Dante ahead of me, his long coat buttoned to the chin, his hand never leaving his pocket. Marco stayed four paces behind us, his eyes moving smoothly across the dark space between the brick walls.
"The pump was in the back," I whispered as we slipped through a broken panel in the side door. My flashlight beam cut through the dark, showing piles of old tires, rusted oil drums, and a rotting wooden workbench covered in old spark plugs. "Near the small window."
"Here," Dante said.
He had stopped near a circular iron plate set into the concrete floor. The words STANDARD OIL CO. 1954 were cast into the metal, filled with sixty years of black sludge.
Marco produced a small pry-bar from his coat. He didn't make noise; he worked with the slow, heavy leverage of someone who knew exactly how much pressure steel could take before it shrieked. The iron plate came up with a wet, sucking sound, exposing a narrow, dark space four feet deep that smelled of old kerosene.
"Flashlight," Dante said.
I aimed the beam down into the hole.
Resting on top of a rusted steel cylinder was a small, square box wrapped in heavy, oil-soaked canvas. It was tied with thick copper wire that had turned green with age.
Marco reached down, his long arms clearing the lip of the hole, and pulled the box out. He set it on the rotting workbench.
"Don't touch the wire," Dante said.
Before Marco could answer, a shadow moved by the front entrance.
The light from a streetlamp outside caught the green canvas sleeve of a jacket. The guy from the diner. But he wasn't alone this time; there were four of them, their boots heavy against the broken glass on the floor, their weapons visible in the dim light coming through the caved-in roof.
"Dante," the guy from the diner said. His voice was louder here, bouncing off the brick walls. "You shouldn't have come into the city. The city belongs to the old men now."
Dante didn't turn around. He didn't reach for his gun. He just stood by the workbench, his hand resting lightly on the green canvas of the box.
"Your name is Silvio," Dante said quietly. "Your father worked for my uncle in seventy-two. He lost three fingers in the winch on Pier 4. My father gave him ten thousand dollars in a paper bag so your mother could buy the house in Cicero. Do you remember the house in Cicero, Silvio?"
The guy in the green jacket paused, his weapon lowering an inch. "The house is gone, Dante. The state took it for the highway."
"The state takes everything if you let them," Dante said. "But I don't let them."
He moved then. It wasn't the noise of a gun—it was Marco.
Marco had dropped the pry-bar, his hand coming out of his coat with a short, heavy submachine gun I hadn't seen him carry before. He didn't fire at the men; he fired a short, three-round burst into the rusted iron rafters directly above their heads.
May you like
A massive section of the rotting wooden roof—three hundred pounds of wet timber and old asphalt shingles—came crashing down between us and the Moretti boys with a sound like a small house collapsing.
"Run," Dante said, his hand closing around my wrist, his grip like iron as he hauled me through the broken side door into the freezing rain.
