Taking It on the Lam by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

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More than a tad disappointed with my partners’ choice of a fence, casting some aspersions upon them, but not finding the Jew’s immediate extermination a productive method of getting my cash, I decided to hang around Chicago for “a few days,” and watch Cohen’s activities, trying to convince myself that the prospect of getting scratch had not rendered me terminally cautious.

My tail, likely from the shadow authority of the Hoover FBI, continued to hound me. Whoever it was had been stalking me since I left rural Rockford, thirty miles back. This was becoming comically Wellesian, though I didn’t hear any laughter, not even a snicker; one of those “jokes” that just leave one staring

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while making a mental “Aha” in the fun house mirrors. But, I didn’t let the moving shadows disturb me anymore, as if they were planning to do me in, they would have done it already. At the same time I understood that if what I was trying to find was what they were trying to find, I would become reet expendable if and when I attained success. I recalled having somewhere heard;

“Beware what you want. You might get it.”

Cohen was a difficult person to clandestinely tail, as his gait was jerky. He’d traverse hectic ad harried State Street at speeds ranging from three to thirty miles per hour, often stopping to see what was behind him, when going back and forth between McConnell’s and where he lived in the Jewish quarter on adjoining Devon Avenue in declining West Rogers Park. I’m virtually certain that he detected my surveillance. He’d ankle up the stairs of the three floor brick walk up and after putting on the light behind him, would go to the window and flip any viewers a rude little bird. I found that funny as it was not exactly something one might confuse with a falcon or even a fake falcon; but the apparent best a half dick could do.

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