We wound up on the same block where the Ragen shooting had taken place not twenty-four hours before, parking not far from the drug store whose broken window had since been haphazardly patched with cardboard. We had plenty of foul sideways glances and suspicious looks from the men and boys loitering about the street, but, despite the unmarked car, we were so obviously cops that nobody said one word to us, as Drury led me to a hole-in-the-wall saloon a few doors down. The High Life Inn would have been an apt description for the place if you replaced high with low. The exterior was weathered brick with the peeling ghosts of various pasted-on political campaign posters from the fairly recent past; the words “judge” and “alderman” could still be made out. Above the remains of the posters was a big Coca Cola sign, suggesting a person “Pause…drink,” to which I mentally added “…get mugged.” Above it, smaller, was a wooden sign with the joint’s name on one line in stubby red capitals against yellow; fairly new sign, a trifle weather-blistered.
