Chapter 8 - The Rail Yards
The abandoned grain elevator rose out of the snowy flats like a cathedral built out of rust and frozen concrete. The wind coming off the lake whistled through the skeletal iron framework of the loading docks, blowing fine, stinging sheets of snow across the tracks where three generations of freight cars had been left to rot in the weeds.
The black sedan drifted to a halt fifty yards from the main loading platform, its headlights cutting two bright, parallel beams through the swirling white flakes.
Vincent stepped out first. He didn't wear an overcoat now; he wore a dark three-piece suit, his vest buttoned to the top, his shoulders squared against the sub-zero wind. Bruno stepped out on the passenger side, a snub-nosed Ithaca shotgun tucked under his heavy woolen arm, his eyes scanning the shadowed corners beneath the concrete ramp.
"Marcone!" Vincent's voice didn't echo; the wind swallowed it up, but it carried across the open yard with the cold, distinct clarity of a judge's gavel. "You wanted to talk about my accounts! Come out and settle them!"
From behind a rusted bulkhead near the third freight car, three figures stepped out into the glare of the headlights. Sal Marcone was in the middle, his heavy winter coat unzipped, a pearl-handled snub-nose held loosely in his right hand. Flanking him were two enforcers from the Cicero crew—big men with broken noses and hands that looked like hams wrapped in black leather gloves.
"You're a sentimental old fool, Moretti," Marcone called out, his breath pluming in white clouds against the dark air. "Running around the South Side playing guardian angel to waitresses. You think because you gave a kid a hundred bucks and some schoolbooks you're a philanthropist? You're a mobster, Vincent. Just like me. And mobsters don't get happy endings."
"Where are they, Sal?" Vincent asked, taking three slow steps forward across the frozen gravel.
"Oh, they're safe enough. For now," Marcone grinned, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Just tucked away in an old warehouse down by slip four. My boys are keeping them company while we discuss your new retirement plan. You hand over the South Side union contracts by Monday morning, and maybe—just maybe—I let the kid keep her yellow raincoat."
Bruno took half a step forward, his shotgun coming up from his side with a dry, metallic shuck-clack that sounded like a death rattle in the freezing wind. "Boss, give me the word and I'll turn him into road salt right here."
"Not yet," Vincent said, his eyes never leaving Marcone's face. He kept walking forward, closing the distance between them until he was less than fifteen feet away. "You made a mistake, Sal."
"Is that right? What mistake? Taking your little charity case?"
"No," Vincent said softly. "Your mistake was thinking that because I didn't kill people over paper anymore, I forgot how to use a ledger."
Before Marcone could raise his pearl-handled revolver, Vincent’s right hand whipped out from beneath his vest with a speed that didn't belong to a man who spent his days behind a mahogany desk. The flat, dark barrel of a silenced Walther PPK caught Marcone square across the bridge of the nose with a sickening crack of bone and cartilage.
Marcone staggered back, dropping his gun into the snow with a muffled thud, his hands flying to his bloody face as he went down on one knee.
The two enforcers from Cicero lunged forward, their hands diving toward their belts—
Boom.
Bruno’s shotgun roared, the muzzle flash lighting up the snowy yard in a blinding orange glare. The first enforcer took the buckshot in his shoulder and spun backward into a stack of rusted oil drums; the second stopped dead in his tracks, his hands freezing in mid-air as Bruno swung the heavy barrel level with his chest.
"Don't even think about it, pal," Bruno snarled, teeth bared in a cold, humorless grin.
Vincent walked over to where Marcone was kneeling in the slush, holding his bleeding nose with both hands, blood staining the white snow between his boots a dark, ugly crimson. Vincent stood over him, looking down with the absolute, terrifying detachment of a man auditing a bankrupt account.
"Where is the warehouse, Sal?" Vincent asked.
Marcone spat a mouthful of blood into the snow, looking up with venomous, watery eyes. "You're dead, Moretti. The Outfit's going to strip you down to your socks and hang you from the Michigan Avenue bridge."
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Vincent didn't raise his voice. He simply raised the Walther, pressing the cold steel barrel directly against the center of Marcone’s forehead.
"Where is the warehouse?"
