Here is a preview from the third episode of the fourth season of Guns + Tacos, A Handful of Chicles and a Custom Nine by C.W. Blackwell.
Gunshot.
A spark bloomed and died on the tracks, the metallic ping outlasting the sound of the shot itself. There were three of them, maybe thirty yards behind me—a knifeman and two shooters. The knifeman already plugged me twice with a four-inch stiletto blade, and I didn’t want to find out what kind of damage those janky street guns could do. The South Branch of the Chicago River lay on my left, shining back the river lights, and a big orange moon had just wandered over the cityscape. It might have been romantic if I wasn’t running for my life, bleeding all over the tracks. A Tom Waits line wormed in my brain: what’s more romantic than dying in the moonlight?
I hooked onto a footpath that took me under the Santa Fe line overpass, spit me out into some tree-lined neighborhood with brick apartment buildings and outdoor grills chained in the front patios. An old man sat hunkered under a streetlamp with a brown bag between his knees. I went straight for him. He had veiny cheeks and a thin gray beard that fanned out over the lapel of his jacket. Mud stains on the cuffs of his trousers like he’d just been wading in the river. He didn’t react when I reached him, save for a slow tilt of the head.
I handed him a blood-soaked hundred-dollar bill, and he latched onto the end of it with shaky fingers. “Tell them I went that way,” I said, pointing south toward the Chinatown strip. “There’s another one here if you help me.”
There wasn’t time to make sure he understood—footsteps clattered down the path, voices barking at each other. I slipped through an open gate into one of the front patios and folded into a bramble of ivy, the sound of blood pounding in my ears loud loud loud. I spilled a few drops of blood leading into the patio and I silently begged the universe they wouldn’t notice it. Here on this four-by-eight slab of concrete there’d be no escape—nowhere to go but dead.
The old man croaked something to the trio and they began cursing at each other. They sounded angry and confused. After another moment of bickering and threats of violence, their footsteps went clapping down the avenue. I could still hear the soles of their shoes echoing against the brownstones when the old man wandered into the patio with his palm upturned.
“They’re gone,” he said. “I fooled ’em.” His eyes looked strange and nocturnal in the streetlight. I slowly got to my feet and fished another Benjamin from my pocket. This bill looked worse than the first one, but he didn’t seem to care.
“There’s a taco truck somewhere on Wentworth,” I said. “Open real late. You know where it’s at?”
“Taco truck?” He stuffed the bloody bill into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. “Looks like you need more than a taco, man.”
I couldn’t argue with that. They’d stuck me in the ribcage, and at first I thought it just glanced off the bone. But the blood wouldn’t quit. I felt it trickling all the way down my left side, sloshing in the heel of my shoe. I pressed my palm into the wound and held it as tight as I could.
“Just tell me,” I said.
“What’s it worth to you?”
“What’s it worth? I could ask you the same goddamn question.” I stepped toward him menacingly, and he shrunk back with his hands in the air.
“I thought we was friends,” he said.
“I paid you two-hundred to save my life. That ain’t friendship.”
“All right, take it easy. There’s a taco truck across from the park, just a block up.”
I gave a quick nod, shuffled out the gate and was starting down the road when he called after me.
“Why do those guys want to kill you so bad?” He said it loud—too loud for my comfort. A light blinked on in one of the windows overhead and a curious silhouette gazed down at us. Then another in the apartment next door. Somewhere a small dog started yapping and wouldn’t quit. No doubt the old man wanted another quick buck for staying quiet, his boozy brain slowly working the angles. What he didn’t know was the whole damn city wanted me dead. If he were well-armed and better informed, he’d be checking into the Ritz tonight with a fresh suit and an armful of top-shelf booze while I floated face-down in the Chicago River.
But I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him.
I found three food trucks lined up on Wentworth just past the 18th Street intersection. The first was an Asian fusion joint with a small line, maybe four customers deep. The second sold BBQ—and by the looks of it, they’d already called it quits for the night. I ignored them both and headed straight for the third, a plain-jane taco truck with no branding, no kitschy name dreamed up in some boardroom power meeting. Just a weather-worn trailer with a tattered awning and “Jesse’s Tacos” spraypainted on the side.
A middle-aged couple waited ahead of me, deliberating the contents of the menu. Out-of-towners, by the looks of it. They didn’t see me wander out of the darkness and press in behind them.
“Now what do you suppose a chimichanga is?” asked the woman. “Did I say that right?” She was rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers as if the pronunciation had caused her blood pressure to rise. I couldn’t place her slow-drawl accent, but I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. I was more interested in the three figures I saw heading up Wentworth in my direction with their hands in their pockets.
“Well, ain’t that where your cousin’s from?” the man said.
“Which cousin?”
“Ed Horley.”
“Naw, you’re thinkin’ of Chattanooga.”
I drew my hoodie over my head and pulled the drawstrings tight, trying to eyeball the group coming up the way without being seen. It was the men from earlier, I was sure of it now. They’d looped around the strip looking for me and now they’d come back. I knew by the way they were yelling at one another, their pockets weighted down with deadly things.
“Excuse me,” I said, and the couple whipped around like I was standing right on top of them. Maybe I was. I pointed my chin at the taco truck. “I know what I want to order. You mind?”
The man noticed the blood weeping through my fingers and he pulled the woman toward the street. “All the weirdos are coming out of the shadows,” he told her, backing away. “I sure wish that BBQ truck wasn’t closed.”
I staggered forward, the streetlights starting to play tricks in my periphery. My eyes watered and the lights made rays all around me. A young woman appeared in the window. Heavyset. Red polo shirt under a greasy white apron. A scar ran from her hairline down to the corner of her left eye. She wore a hairnet and little earrings that winked golden light.
One look at me and she knew my order.
Still, I needed to say the words.
“Jessie’s special. Extra sauce.” I handed her a roll of cash with a rubber band twisted twice around. “I need a hurry order, can you do that?”
She repeated the words ‘hurry order’ and tapped the counter.
The group crossed the street, coming straight for me. I shouldn’t have looked, but I did anyway. One of them already had a revolver out. The woman had the rubber band off the cash, thumbing through the bills. She disappeared beneath the counter, and when she appeared again, she set a heavy reusable grocery bag in the window and tossed a handful of square-shaped candy inside.
“Chicles,” she said. She grinned and her golden teeth matched her earrings. Then she saw the others coming up behind me and quickly closed the service window and shut off the lights.
I grabbed the bag and ran.
Click here to learn more about A Handful of Chicles and a Custom Nine by C.W. Blackwell.