his days running the neighborhood known as Blue Hill.
The ASU, distinguished by their light gray uniforms, began a particularly brutal assault upon the White Gang at all levels from the block bosses to Tommy McFadden himself.
Though purportedly charged with the eradication of the gangs, rumor, whether founded or not, struck fear in the common citizenry. Even the reckless kept out of the way when the Grey Uniforms arrived.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Poole ran.
The officers gave chase but were losing ground. Poole thought frantically as he ran. Could he get to his car? Was his car even a safe destination if the ASU were searching for him? Were other cops in the area? Headlights cut through the rain, a couple of hundred yards down the street. Desperately, Poole veered left, heading for the warehouse that he had just visited.
He made the door twenty yards ahead of his pursuers, closing it hard behind him. His eyes needed time to adjust to the light. All he could make out were the glows of isolated fires. Unable to wait, he sprinted toward the back of the building, where he had seen a staircase during his earlier visit.
As he ran, he yelled, “Cops coming. Cops coming.”
The murmuring that he’d noticed on his first visit had stopped. A figure appeared in front of him, too close to avoid, and Poole ran him down, the man hitting the floor hard. Poole kept going. He reached the staircase and turned back to face the front of the building, holding on to the banister and struggling for breath. The front door was still closed. Poole guessed that the officers were waiting for reinforcements before entering the warehouse. He would have.
Seconds passed and the muted conversations began again. Poole climbed three stairs, continuing to watch the door. It opened, nearly a dozen ASU officers spilling in, staying in tight formation.
“Police! Police!” Poole yelled, then took the stairs three at a time.
At the top of the stairs he paused. The second floor was much like the first—groups huddled around scattered fires in oil drums. Gray light filtered through tall, narrow windows. There was silence downstairs, Poole picturing the officers moving slowly forward, scanning the indigent crowd for him. He had hoped that the antipathy toward the police voiced by the men he had talked to would translate into action once the police entered. This didn’t seem to be happening, and Poole wondered if it hadn’t been bluster after all.
Then a clanging noise came from below and a yell and all hell broke loose. Up from the ground floor came the sound of yelling and large things crashing against the floor and walls. The building shook.
Poole hurried to a group gathered around an oil-drum fire near one of the windows. He pushed two men out of the way, grabbed the lip of the drum in his left hand, and felt the hot metal sear his flesh. He flung the drum one-handed through a window. Shattering glass and the subsequent impact of the drum on the ground added to the cacophony from downstairs and, Poole hoped, would draw the attention of the officers that were surely posted outside.
Two indigent men angrily grabbed at Poole’s soaking jacket, shouting at him incoherently. Poole threw them both to the ground with little effort and raced across to the far wall. The commotion from below was working the second floor into a frenzy, and the volume rose as people began to bang on the walls with sticks or cans or their fists. People yelled unintelligibly, and projectiles of all sizes flew through the air.
Poole’s hand throbbed with pain. He moved with his head down in an effort to avoid flying objects. The sheer volume of the noise made it difficult to think. He found a scrap of two-by-four and used it to break a window and clear the glass shards from the sill. He looked down, the rain slapping him in the face, to find that no one was below. Hopefully, they had run to the other side.
He could hear people ascending the stairs now, so he sat down on the windowsill and swung his legs outside. The drop was twenty-five feet, and Poole took two deep breaths before pushing off. The ground came up fast, and he rolled with the impact, careful to keep his hand from hitting the ground. He stood and sprinted past the rear of the warehouse, then left down an intersecting street. Halfway down that block, he heard the pop of a pistol. He turned