Lone Wolf #6: Chicago Slaughter by Mike Barry Page A

ask.”
    “All right,” the driver said, “I won’t ask. I won’t ask a godamned thing. I try to be friendly, I try to make conversation—”
    “Don’t be friendly. Don’t make conversation.” Wulff fought for control, almost saying
just drive and shut up
and held onto himself. “I’ve got things on my mind.”
    “Oh,” the driver said. “I can understand that. Having things on your mind, I mean.” He leaned over, tapped the valise which lay next to him on the front seat. “Important papers?” he said. “Or do you have some stash here?” Driving one-handed, he toyed with a clip. “Might as well take a look in, see what’s making you so unfriendly.”
    “All right,” Wulff said abruptly. He felt stunned. Were all the taxi-drivers this way or was this man a damned lunatic? “Get your hands off that valise. Just drive now.”
    “Just curious,” the driver said. He handled the car skillfully, weaving through traffic one-handed, his free hand resting on the valise. “I’d like to know what you have in here that you’re so distracted. Chicago’s a beautiful city, you should be able to sit back and enjoy it. Without having your mind bothered with strange thoughts.”
    “All right,” Wulff said again. “That’s it. Enough. Pull the cab over.”
    “I don’t think so,” the driver said very softly. He turned still driving one-handed, the wheel neatly balanced in a pocket of that enormous wrist and showed Wulff a gun, “I don’t think that I can do that you see.” He turned his attention back to the road, delicately shifted the cab into the slow lane and then with no unnecessary haste or lapse of control turned back toward Wulff and showed him the gun again. “I think we’ll just have to keep going,” he said.
    Wulff sat back in the seat, shoulders flat to the leather and confronted the gun. He found that there was no fear, only an odd detachment. This had been rigged cleverly, he had to admit that. He had to give them their due; they had set this one up very well. Coming out of the TWA exit he had gone into the nearest cab without a second thought, even tossing the valise on the front seat next to the driver before he had gone into the back, leaving the valise unattended for that perilous instant. He had been so sure of himself that it had never occurred to him until a moment ago that the level of attention concentrated upon him now was nationwide. It was no casual factor whatsoever. Did he really think that he could get in and out of the plane unobserved and over to the government offices so easily? Well yes, he had, he had indeed. That was his mistake.
    “I advise you to relax,” the driver said softly, back to the road again one-handed, the gun now withdrawn to a safer distance from Wulff. The man was good, no question about it; there was no way that Wulff could reach the gun before the driver had a chance to fire. And he was handling driving and gun at such a level of skill that it was obvious Wulff was dealing with a professional, one of the very few real professionals he had run into so far. “That’s fine,” the driver said, “you’re taking this the right way. I respect you and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t respect me. You know that I know what I’m doing. Now, you sit back and cooperate and we’ll get you where we want to go with no conflict at all, but on the other hand if you make things difficult we won’t. It’s up to you. It’s your decision.”
    The driver said nothing else. He slipped the car at high speed off an exit ramp and Wulff found himself on Michigan Avenue, driving quickly along the lakefront, the tires of the cab squealing just a little as the driver whipped it in and out of lane. It occurred to him as they pulled up to a stoplight that his way out of the cab was clear; he could jump free and evade the driver. There would be no shooting. But to jump clear would mean that he would lose the valise and he suspectedthat they wanted the valise as much