Chapter 15: The Cooler

By 7:30 on Tuesday morning, Honore Street held a funeral, a block party and a militia muster all at once.

The club's Silverados sat nose to tail across the mouth of the street.

The Racine set had parked three Tahoes and a sagging Impala behind them.

Two church vans from the Halsted set idled on the curb.

The Halsted shot-caller in her church hat rode in the passenger seat of the first one with her window down.

Eight old Buicks had come in from the West Side, from a set that had never once crossed 63rd Street for anyone.

Their young men leaned on the hoods with their arms folded and said nothing, because parking was their whole statement.

On the church steps stood twelve men of the Tuesday Men's Fellowship in suits and orange hunting caps.

Each had a deer rifle slung and a Bible in his coat pocket.

"Rifles stay on the step, Doctor," their deacon said as I went by.

"That's the rule of this house, and it has held through every Crack on this street."

Deloris walked ahead of me down the basement stairs, and Reiss came behind.

I had told the Marine and Reiss about the cooler, and I had told nobody else.

The thin man from Racine met us at the kitchen door and took off his Bulls cap.

"I owe you a thing, Doc," he said.

"The Ranger kid made one call at 5:50 from the Mobil at Gilman, while my boys were eating."

"I let him," he added. "He asked to use the lot's bathroom, and I'm not a man who follows another man into one."

So the Marine had told the Racine man about the cooler, in the truck cab.

The Racine man had told the kid by talking where he could hear.

It was nobody's treachery, only Del's patience.

The kid sat on a stool in the church kitchen with an egg sandwich and a mug, twenty-two, in a clean flannel.

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