Taking It on the Lam by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Showdowns in West Rogers Park

A week’s stay at the Chicago fleabag hotel had taken its toll on me. Well, it wasn’t exactly a week, but it sure felt like a month. The “fascination” with the monotonous and pedestrian street theater and the one short, and I would daresay unfinished book in the room didn’t exactly make time fly. Cohen did nothing worthy of note and neither of my former partners had paid him a visit.

This time I got more desperately aggressive. I followed him up the stairs, and as he was trying to close the door to his apartment behind him, I pushed my way in, roscoe drawn. Not entirely surprised, he said; “Hey” in a pitch slightly in excess of a note which could have been audible to a nosy neighbor.

Not wanting to attract any attention, I murmured; “Shut up, if you want to live.”

Cohen shrugged and grimaced, but said nothing.

“I want the rest of my dough right now.”

Cohen traced his lips with his forefinger, then held up his hand palm on top, with a questioning look on his puss which smelled of lunch in the beard and sarcasm in the gesture.

Taking It on the Lam Page 103

“Spill it! Where’s the rest of my dough?”

“Like I told you, it’s tied up in inventory.” With an air of disgust, he added a critical admonition; “We’ve all seen this movie before and they haven’t yet gotten around to changing the denouement.”

I didn’t know a denouement from the fat lady’s song, but pissed like hell and simultaneously not wishing to lose the momentum, I retorted; “No. YOUR scratch is tied up in inventory. Mine is in your safe right here. Get it!”

My semi-bluff worked. Cohen didn’t deny having a safe in his apartment, though he was still not showing the amount of fearful co-operation I’d have wished. Trying to move him toward a more copacetic state of mind, I got off the clam conversation and asked him; “Who the fuck is the asshole following me?”

“He’s a bag man for the Feds who clears his garbage through McConnell’s. Ask Hoover if you don’t believe me.”

I thought that he was still being too chesty for someone in his position, and I gave him a playful little crack on the yarmulke with the butt of my iron, which drew a reet minor degree of blood. Cohen stared at me.

Taking It on the Lam