The Chicago night was as black, acrid, and steamy as Phillie's coffee. I entered the diner and sidled over to the the counter where both corners met and swung my bum leg over my favorite stool. When I had it straddled, Connie placed a cup of Joe before me.

"Nasty as it looks?" he asked. He wasn't referring to the coffee, but was gazing behind me out the huge plate glass windows that walled the place. If you hated looking like a goldfish to the Loop's street traffic, you didn't drop in at Phillie's. But in this wretched heat, even the late-nighters aboard the passing "El" wouldn't take notice.

I sipped my coffee before replying. "Bad, but this stuff's worse. How long's it been cooking? You ever clean those things?" I pointed to the metal urns behind him.

Connie ignored me, choosing to give the dark-windowed brick buildings and empty store fronts across the street his full attention. He was sixty, looked eighty, and wore a paper cap that somehow stayed atop his bald head no matter what he did.

As an elevated train rumbled by, the windows shook. Tired perhaps of a dim skyline, he tossed a glance in my direction.

"You're the first customer I've had in three hours, Johnny. This keeps up, I'll be outa business by the end of the year."

I knew the diner was struggling. So were all the merchants in that shabby neighborhood. I was now one of them, a self-employed shamus who'd leased a one-room office across the street. Lately, I'd taken to sleeping there, too, preferring to spend the bus fare to my apartment on Connie's bad coffee.

Ten months earlier I'd worn a Chicago PD uniform and walked a beat in this very neighborhood. One night like this I'd pulled the graveyard shift and caught one in the upper leg while investigating a B & E two blocks over. The shooter got away. I more or less recovered, but my limp kept me from doing the job effectively. Then my sergeant, leering like a street-hooker's pimp, took me aside.

"Athens," he whispered. I nearly gagged from his garlic breath. "We've got a nice desk for ya here at the precinct . . . or you can take the disability in a lump sum. I recommend the latter."

I chose to heed his advice, put up my shingle, and learned quickly why most private eyes starved.

"You wanna sandwich, Johnny?" Connie asked. "It's on the house 'cause I'd only be throwin' the ham into the garbage out back two hours from now. Lettuce ain't wiltin' yet and I got a coupla tomatoes I can slice."

"Nah. Got no appetite and--"

The door opened abruptly, and a couple entered. The woman almost stumbled as the guy pushed her forward. He gave Connie and me a Genghis Khan stare from shiny dark eyes that roved the diner quickly. Then he muscled her to a stool across from me. He took one nearer to me, but crowded the space between them. There was little doubt whose property she was.

Connie made no effort to welcome them and retreated to his sink. I stared over my coffee at them both. The guy never glanced in my direction, but the lady met my eyes. Terror in bold print was sketched on her pale face.

I allowed my gaze to drift to him. He was maybe mid-forties with a sleazy fast-money look. He wore a blue suit that hugged his broad shoulders and likely tailored by an old man and his wife in a sweat shop three blocks away. Both his dark tie and pale blue silk shirt looked like goods picked up on Maxwell Street. His black-banded fedora never came off. He was good-looking, like a fox, with a pale narrow face, long straight nose, and tight lips. The muscles in those shoulders were bunched, but he appeared harried, not angry.

The woman was stunning and much, much younger. Her smooth hair was red, a shade lighter than a ripe tomato and hung past slender shoulders. Her eyes which she seldom lifted from her long white ringless fingers were deep purple. Her skin was powder-milk white and lightly shadowed by Phillie's bright overhead lights. She wore a much darker red satin or crepe cocktail dress with a scooped but modest neckline. Both slim arms were planted on the counter near her purse, and her dark puffy red lips trembled. I wondered when he'd hit her.

Connie brought a coffee pot over to them.

"Got this or lemonade," he said to the woman.

"Cof--coffee please," she said. She pushed an empty cup toward him.

"You, sir?" Connie asked, making a half turn left.

"Nothing, thanks."

"Want a menu?"

"No."

Connie made no attempt to hide his frown as he shuffled back to his urns and sink.

The woman stared at her coffee.

"Drink up, Vicki," the guy said, leaning toward her. "Then clean up. We need to be getting back. Enzo's gonna be looking for us. Nobody scoots from one of his shindigs, babe. You know that."

"I don't want to go back," she hissed. For a moment those purple eyes flared.

"You don't tell me that," he said, grabbing the wrist closest to him and squeezing.

Her eyes fluttered upwards and I saw pain and panic. I was half a leap off my stool when she shook her head slightly, like a pitcher shaking off the catcher's signs. I lowered my ass and waited.

A long minute passed as the guy glared open-mouthed at Vicki, then me.

"Know that guy?" he growled.

"No."

She wouldn't look at me. He never stopped.

"You better not be lying, babe."

"I'm not."

"Why don't I believe you?" he snarled. "He why we had to come here?" He squeezed her small wrist harder until she whimpered.

This time I halted my leap only when Connie shouted.

"Don't, Johnny!"

I glanced at him and gawked. Holding a cleaver in both hands, he glared at Vicki's tormentor as if he were a steer to be butchered.

"Put that down, Pops," the guy sneered, "or I'm gonna hurt you, too."

"Pops" shook his head and took a menacing step forward.

The guy released his lady and slithered from his stool. An ugly leer crossed his face as his hand reached into a jacket pocket. When it withdrew, it held a switch-blade. He thumbed the button and a wicked eight-inch blade flashed. Then he was tossing it from hand to hand like a kid playing catch.

"No one threatens Rico Marchetti, Pops. No one! I'm gonna carve a little tattoo on you so's you remember that. And maybe your friend Johnny, too."

Suddenly, he catapulted over the counter and slashed at Connie before he could swing the cleaver. The cleaver fell to the floor as I leaped from my stool. Muscles tore and a bone snapped as my bad leg caved in. Then I heard two screams.

The first came from Connie as Rico's blade found more flesh.

The second from Vicki.

"Rico!"

From the floor I saw her standing, her eyes glistening with fury. Her arm was outstretched.

"In a second, babe. Just a little more--"

A shot. Then another.

Something clattered on the counter. Then I was gawking at Vicki as she raced past me out the door.

I grabbed the lower rung of my stool and pulled myself to my knees. Then I grasped the seat and slowly, painfully, stood. I leaned against the counter.

"Connie! You--?"

He swung toward me, teetering even more than I. Blood spurted from his left arm.

"Come here!" I screamed, tearing my belt off. "Fast!"

Somehow he got to me.

"It's an artery," I said. "Got to put on a tourniquet or you'll bleed out."

All that training in emergency procedures at the Police Academy paid off. I wrapped the belt around his arm and tightened it until his blood stopped spurting. Soon the counter was bolstering us both.

I glanced over the counter at Rico lying in a pool of blood. His body looked cold and stiff as if it had been injected with quick-drying cement. I saw two well-placed holes. One above his heart, the other between his eyes.

"The lady can shoot," I said.

"Thank God," Connie grunted. "Or I'd be good for nothin' but tomorrow's stew."

"We need to call this in," I said.

"Why?"

I stared at Connie who scowled at Rico's corpse.

"I know them names, Johnny, when they were speakin' about 'Enzo' and his party. There's only one 'Enzo' that dictatorial. Vincenzo Scarlatti, mob boss on the west side. He's one of Capone's men who managed to hold on to what he'd grabbed when Scar Face got taken down. This Rico's gotta be one of his boys."

"Okay. So we call the cops. Let them worry about--"

"No!"

Now I was gawking at him.

"That lady saved my life, Johnny. I aim to save hers. Enzo will find out soon enough what happened. He'll probably burn me down when he does. But I'll go on livin'. Vicki won't. He'll hunt her down . . . and . . . when he's done with her. God, I couldn't live with myself, Johnny."

"What are you thinking of doing, Connie?"

"Help me close up this joint, Johnny, and I'll show ya."

He grabbed my sleeve with his good arm and stared at me with watery eyes.

"Please, Johnny. I--I can't do this alone."

Johnny Athens, softie. Sometimes, though, a man has to ignore his sensible instincts and heed his heart. As I did that dark, steamy night.