Death Sentence Read Free

parked, hungry, and went into a café and ate at the counter: he had discovered Mexican food in Arizona, where he’d got his first gun.
    The Centennial was a familiar weight in his coat pocket; he’d felt vulnerable the past few days, empty-pocketed in the city.
    The chili relleno was good; he washed it down with beer. He paid the fat woman and went back to the street. It was coming up on nine o’clock and getting colder. A Christmas banner across a drugstore said “ Feliz Navidad ” and three laughing men came out of a bar, one of them carrying a six-pack.
    He got back in the car frustrated: he didn’t know the city well enough. He drove in any direction, prowling.
    He had no idea where he was but there was a map in the glove compartment and eventually he’d consult it and find his way home; in the meantime he had to explore.
    It was a bar on a dark street somewhere a bit north and west of the center of things: through the window it looked like a boisterous drunk crowd and not far down the street two men in shabby coats sat on porch steps watching the bar. Paul had only a glimpse of them when he drove past but it was as if he read their thoughts and when he reached the corner he turned out of their sight and searched for a place to park the car. He found a spot a block away and locked the doors and circled the block on foot; he stopped at the corner and waited while several cars drove by. When he looked past the corner he saw the front of the bar and if he stepped out a pace he could see the two young men on the stoop; he did it once and then faded back because he didn’t want to alert them. They were still sitting there, passing a bottle back and forth between them—probably wine. But they were young and wiry under the tattered coats and the immobility of their features had given them away to him instantly: he knew them, he’d made a study of their kind and Chicago was no different from New York when it came to that subspecies.
    He fixed the plan in his head and then stepped out into plain sight on the curb. He walked as if he were a little drunk; he didn’t exaggerate it but he moved with slow deliberate care, a bit owlish, not staggering. He looked both ways and crossed the street briskly and tripped over the curb mounting the sidewalk; he made a show of gathering his dignity and went into the bar. He hadn’t had to look at the two men on the stoop to know they’d been watching him.
    There was a loud crush of celebrants. They were in shabby booths and three-deep at the bar. It was a plain saloon, at least fifty years old by the look of it and unchanged from its origins except for the blown-up photographic posters on the walls: Brendan Behan and Eugene O’Neill and someone whose face Paul didn’t recognize—probably an Irish Republican patriot from the 1920s; the room dripped with Irish accents and there was no mistaking the lilt of the ebullient shouts that exploded from the knot of fat men at the far end of the bar. A barmaid in a red wig elbowed past him with a tray of beers.
    He stationed himself near the window where the two men across the street could see his back. He ordered ginger ales and drank them quickly, three in succession, and was buttonholed by two loudmouths who demanded that he settle an argument about Catfish Hunter. He pleaded ignorance and was flooded immediately with information or misinformation about baseball. When he judged enough time had passed he went back through the crowd, waited his turn and relieved himself in the men’s room. He washed the sweat off his hands and threaded his way to the front door fighting down the fear inside him: he waved drunkenly to his two conversational companions and lurched outside, all but colliding with a laughing couple on their way in.
    He looked one way and then the other, a man drunk enough to have trouble remembering where he’d parked his car. Sweat slicked his palms and he rubbed them