A Handful of Chicles and a Custom Nine

By C.W. Blackwell

Richie Angeles had it all: a cakewalk job wrenching on classic cars for a Chicago loan shark by day, and a side-hustle running high-stakes repo jobs by night. But when a fling with the boss's wife, Gina, goes awry, Richie finds himself the target of every low-life goon and hustler in the city.

With his options dwindling and a bounty on his head, Richie and Gina must find allies in the seedy Chicago underworld in order to survive. But good allies are hard to find—and the ones that seem loyal may only be looking for an easy double-cross. With the infamous Mr. Rosko at his heels, and a trail of blood from Chinatown to the Indiana border, Richie must make a choice to keep running or confront the boss himself.

Will he be able to run the gauntlet and kill Rosko and his inner circle, or will the many hands of the Chicago criminal world get their hands on Richie first?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Sep 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005270971

Book preview

A HANDFUL OF CHICLES

AND A CUSTOM NINE

Guns + Tacos Season Four Episode 21

C.W. Blackwell

Series Created and Edited by

Michael Bracken and Trey R. Barker

Copyright © 2022 by C.W. Blackwell

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Handful of Chicles and a Custom Nine

About the Author

Books by the Author

Preview from the twenty-second episode of Guns + Tacos

Two Shrimp Tacos and a .22 Ruger by Adam Meyer

Gunshot.

A spark bloomed and died on the tracks, the metallic ping outlasting the sound of the shot itself. There were three of them, maybe thirty yards behind me—a knifeman and two shooters. The knifeman already plugged me twice with a four-inch stiletto blade, and I didn’t want to find out what kind of damage those janky street guns could do. The south branch of the Chicago River lay on my left, shining back the river lights, and a big orange moon had just wandered over the cityscape. It might have been romantic if I wasn’t running for my life, bleeding all over the tracks. A Tom Waits line wormed in my brain: what’s more romantic than dying in the moonlight?

I hooked onto a footpath that took me under the Santa Fe line overpass, spit me out into some tree-lined neighborhood with brick apartment buildings and outdoor grills chained in the front patios. An old man sat hunkered under a streetlamp with a brown bag between his knees. I went straight for him. He had veiny cheeks and a thin gray beard that fanned out over the lapel of his jacket. Mud stains on the cuffs of his trousers like he’d just been wading in the river. He didn’t react when I reached him, save for a slow tilt of the head.

I handed him a blood-soaked hundred-dollar bill, and he latched onto the end of it with shaky fingers. Tell them I went that way, I said, pointing south toward the Chinatown strip. There’s another one here if you help me.

There wasn’t time to make sure he understood—footsteps clattered down the path, voices barking at each other. I slipped through an open gate into one of the front patios and folded into a bramble of ivy, the sound of blood pounding in my ears loud loud loud. I spilled a few drops of blood leading into the patio and I silently begged the universe they wouldn’t notice it. Here on this four-by-eight slab of concrete there’d be no escape—nowhere to go but dead.

The old man croaked something to the trio and they began cursing at each other. They sounded angry and confused. After another moment of bickering and threats of violence, their footsteps went clapping down the avenue. I could still hear the soles of their shoes echoing against the brownstones when the old man wandered into the patio with his palm upturned.

They’re gone, he said. I fooled ’em. His eyes looked strange and nocturnal in the streetlight. I slowly got to my feet and fished another Benjamin from my pocket. This bill looked worse than the first one, but he didn’t seem to care.

There’s a taco truck somewhere on Wentworth, I said. Open real late. You know where it’s at?

Taco truck? He stuffed the bloody bill into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. Looks like you need more than a taco, man.

I couldn’t argue with that. They’d stuck me in