Chapter 10 - The Last Ledger and the Road West Out of Chicago
The sun came up over the western suburbs of Chicago like a smear of cold grease behind a grey flannel sky.
There were no reporters outside the gates of St. Margaret’s anymore.
The federal agents had come and gone, leaving yellow police tape fluttering from the iron gateposts where the hinges had been torn off during the midnight firefight.
My black Mercedes was gone, hauled away by a municipal tow truck, but Nico was waiting at the curb with a nondescript gray Ford sedan he had pulled from one of our secondary corporate fleets.
“Everything’s clean, Boss,” Nico said as I opened the rear door and strapped Sophia into the child safety seat we had picked up from a twenty-four-hour superstore off the Eisenhower Expressway. “Matteo’s federal cooperation agreement was signed at three a.m. The indictments hit the wire thirty minutes ago. Salvatore and twelve capos from Cicero are in federal custody.”
“And Matteo?” I asked, closing the rear door softly so as not to wake Sophia, who had fallen back asleep against the embroidered headrest.
“Federal witness protection,” Nico said, looking down at his boots. “New name, new state, somewhere out in the Pacific Northwest.”
I nodded slowly.
We had settled our ledger. Not with blood, and not with lawyers, but with the cold, heavy realization that some debts can never be balanced—they can only be left behind.
I climbed into the passenger seat of the gray Ford.
Nico put the car in gear, and we pulled away from the curb, leaving the old brick walls of St. Margaret’s behind us in the cold November mist.
Ahead of us, Route 88 stretched out toward the open plains of Illinois, cutting through the gray morning fog toward a horizon where the sky was finally beginning to clear.
Sophia stirred in the back seat, opened one slate-grey eye, and mumbled something about pancakes.
I turned around in my seat, reached back, and took her small, warm hand in mine.
May you like
“We’re going west, baby,” I said.
And for the first time in forty-one years, I didn't need an exit route, a margin, or an alibi to know we were going to make it.
