The dead man lying in the alley behind the Anderson house was identified by the police as James “Tornado” Thompson, a lone wolf stick-up man from Gary, Indiana. After robbing the currency exchange on Ojibway Boulevard in Chicago, he had gone out the front door holding a gun in one hand and was confronted on the sidewalk by two beat cops who were shooting the breeze before one of them went off duty. A clerk from the currency exchange appeared in the doorway and shouted, “Stop that man! He just robbed us!” Thompson pivoted and shot him. The cops pulled their guns but the thief dashed next door into the Green Harp Tavern and ran through the bar out the back door. One of the cops followed him; the other called for back up and for an ambulance to attend the wounded clerk, who was lying on the sidewalk.
Tornado Thompson ran down the alley. Roy and Jimmy Boyle and two of the McLaughlin brothers were playing ball when they saw Thompson speeding toward them holding a gun, followed by a cop.
“Holy shit!” yelled Jimmy Boyle. “Get down!”
The cop shouted, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Thompson did not stop but stumbled over a crack in the uneven pavement and fell down, still gripping the gun. He twisted around and fired once at the cop, who stopped, dropped to one knee, aimed, and shot Tornado Thompson in the head.
“Stay down, boys!” said the cop.
He crept forward in a crouch, keeping his revolver trained on the robber. When he got to the body he determined the man was dead, then took the gun out of Thompson’s hand and replaced his revolver in its holster.
Jimmy Boyle got up and rushed over to the body.
“Wow,” he said, “you plugged him right in the forehead.”
Roy and Johnny and Billy McLaughlin stood up and walked over. The cop stood up, too. A patrol car entered the alley from the Hammond Street end.
“Move away, boys,” the cop said.
The car stopped and two cops got out. Another police car entered from the same direction and pulled up behind the first car. Two cops got out of it, too. They surrounded the body and the cop who’d shot Thompson told them what happened. A few neighbors, including Mr. Anderson, came out of the gangways of their houses. Three more police cars approached from the Ojibway Boulevard end of the alley. They stopped and six more cops joined the others.
“There ain’t been so many people in the alley since Otto Polsky’s garage burned down,” said Johnny.
“He was refinishing a rowboat he’d built,” Roy said, “and the shellac caught fire.”
A few minutes later, an ambulance, its siren off, drove in off Hammond Street, stopped, and two men in white coats got out. One of them removed a stretcher from the rear of the ambulance, then they both walked over. After exchanging a few words with one of the cops, they lifted Thompson’s body onto the stretcher, carried it to the ambulance, slid it in, and backed the ambulance out of the alley.
“What happened?” Mr. Anderson asked the boys.
“A guy come runnin’ down the alley,” said Jimmy, “with a cop chasin’ him. The guy fired at the cop, the cop fired back and killed him.”
“Hit him in the forehead,” said Billy.
“Who was the guy?”
“I heard one of the cops say his name was Tornado Thompson, from Gary,” Roy said. “He held up the currency exchange next to The Green Harp.”
“He was a black guy,” said Billy. “Why would he come all the way from Gary, Indiana, to Chicago to pull a hold up?”
The neighbors went back to their houses and all of the police cars left. Two cops remained in the alley, the cop who’d shot Tornado Thompson and the beat cop who’d stayed on Ojibway Boulevard.
“The detectives are at the currency exchange,” said the beat cop.
“How’s the clerk?”
“Dead.”
“You fellas all right?” asked the cop who’d done the shooting.
The boys all nodded.
“Come on, Dom,” said the other cop. “We got time to stop in the tavern, have a shot and a beer.”
“Why was he called Tornado?” asked Roy.
“He was a halfback at the University of Indiana, eight, nine years ago,” said Dom. “I saw him run back a kick-off ninety-four yards against Northwestern. It’s how he got his nickname. I wish I hadn’t had to shoot him.”
The two cops walked up the alley. They boys watched them go through the back door of The Green Harp.
“I think I’d like to be a cop,” said Billy.
The next afternoon, Roy’s grandfather read to him from an article in the Chicago Daily News about the incident. The basic facts were there along with the additional information that a four year old Negro boy was found alone in a 1952 Plymouth parked a block away from the currency exchange. The boy was Tornado Thompson’s son, Amos, who had been told by his father to wait in the car until he came back. A woman walking by had seen Amos Thompson sitting in the back seat of the Plymouth, crying. When she asked him what was wrong, the boy told her his father had been gone for a long time, that he didn’t know where he was. The woman told a cop about the child in the car and he took Amos to the precinct station, where he informed the sergeant in charge that his mother and both of his grandmothers were dead and that he and his father had been living in their car because they didn’t have any money. Amos was given over to The Simon the Cyrenian Refuge for Colored Children.
That’s awful, Pops,” said Roy.
“Yes, Roy, it is. And for Amos, it’s not the end of the story.”