by Pete Lister
A whistle blew, and a voice through a bullhorn announced “Police! Everyone freeze!” Turning, the gangsters, black and white, realized that they were surrounded by strangers aiming guns at them, lots of strangers, lots of guns, including the middle-aged woman with the cane, now standing tall and looking intense.
Half a dozen yellow cabs from Lake Shore Drive vaulted the curb and drove up into the park, where they disgorged uniformed officers. A squad car, two blocks north of Soldier Field, had just pulled Shiv’s ride over to the curb, and the driver was bent over the hood with his hands cuffed behind him.
The actual artists manning their booths on the outskirts of the show, farthest from the action, looked on astonished, as the drama unfolded quickly around the fountain. It was over almost as quickly as it had started. The police closed in, cuffing the members of both gangs, and escorting them to Columbus Drive, where a police bus with steel mesh welded over the windows was just pulling up to the curb. Additional uniforms were rushing in from the surrounding streets. The sound of sirens could be heard coming from the direction of Soldier Field, as the police on Columbus Drive prepared to remove the barricades.
At the sound of Shiv’s shot, John and the girls, with a picnic lunch spread on a blanket under the trees, had launched themselves through the crowd to where Drew lay in the grass. Detective James, his face showing fear for the young man who had risked his life for this operation, ran to assist. As Drew was being rolled over by his father, he smiled and winked. “Pop, this vest was the best eight hundred bucks we ever spent.”
§ § §
The two couples responsible for his plight watched from the grass as Shiv Thompson was quickly transferred onto a gurney, never taking his eyes off them. The gurney’s legs folded as it slid into the back of the waiting ambulance for the trip to Cermak, the hospital for the Cook County Jail. In less than a minute they were rolling, siren and lights, one paramedic working on Shiv as the other drove the ambulance down the sidewalk and onto Congress Parkway, into the center of a rolling cordon of four Chicago squad cars.
Scott Lewis, Shiv’s wannabe successor, looking bewildered, stood next to the Buckingham Fountain, disarmed, handcuffed, and carefully frisked, his right hand and forearm soaked with Shiv’s blood. He was being Mirandized by a uniformed officer who came up to his shoulder, a pretty little blonde who looked about sixteen.
The police bus sat on Columbus Drive, loaded with twenty-one handcuffed gangsters, including Shiv’s last four and Lewis’ band of seventeen. As the bus pulled away from Grant Park with its integrated load of drug pushers, Chris was singing her heart out to the detectives who had gone to Shiv’s office, sealing the drug lord’s fate.
Chicago’s police chief was already drafting his notes for the press conference, excited about the demise of the city’s two most-wanted gangs, and the confiscation of eight million dollars worth of heroin.
It was a beautiful day on the Chicago lakefront. The breeze off Lake Michigan cooled the city, with just enough humidity to keep the air comfortable. The morning dew had kept the grass and trees green and the flowers in full bloom. Since they were in Chicago anyway, the Sherrys decided a long celebratory lunch at Morton’s was the best way to brainstorm their next project…
NOTE: Many of the locations and businesses the Sherrys visit in this book are real places. Most of the individuals’ names are real, they just didn’t always originally belong to the characters in the book. Some were filched friends and family. This was always done with the greatest respect for those who actually own those names, even when the fictitious characters upon whom I hung them bear no resemblance to the fine and upstanding individuals whose names I filched. Real names of living individuals so hung on strangers were used with the consent of those so named. The rest of the names were created from whole cloth. There really was a famous battle in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam during the war of the same name. As a military retiree and a Vietnam vet (although on a carrier off the coast and not in-country), I have nothing but the greatest respect for every single hero who fought there. The names of individuals related by John Sherry while telling his family about that battle are real people, their names culled from actual historical records. My characters, John Sherry, Paul Choaté, and Le Duan Trahn are fictional and do not represent anyone actually involved in that action. There really are Cadillac Escalades, and Chevrolet Monte Carlos. They are fine brands and their use herein should not be construed as suggesting that the actions of the characters driving them in this book reflect on their manufacturers. There really is a Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park, on the Chicago lakefront, but neither Shiv Thompson nor the Santini brothers are real. Where names I’ve used do represent real people, e.g. the wedding planners and photog in St. Croix, those real people have graciously consented to my using their names. Some of the places or businesses, e.g., the Ballinskelligs Inn and Private Jets Charter, are, in fact, real businesses, but the people I’ve inserted into those businesses are purely fictitious. If any of place or business I’ve used in this story sound interesting, please do an internet search and, by all means, patronize them. Feel free to tell them you read about them in a novel. If they look angry or offended, tell them you think it was a Grisham or Dunning novel. The yacht, Evie’s Song, is fictitious. That said, it’s a wonderful name, and if you own such a vessel and have used that name, I wasn’t referring to your boat. Honest. The inspiration for the name of this boat was my late mother-in-law. Ask my wife.
This is my first published novel. I deeply appreciate your reading it and hope you enjoyed it. Lavish praise, whether warranted or not, may be inserted in the reader’s review. Constructive criticism and obviously unwarranted negative comments may be directed to [email protected]. I think that will work well, don’t you? Thanks.
Further projects of the Sherry clan will be forthcoming. To be added to the publication notification list, please leave your name and email address at [email protected], using the subject line MORE, PLEASE. (That’s not original. I plagiarized it from old book about England.)
Thanks, again.
Pete Lister
