‘Not so easy to find good help these days, eh?’ Michael Doyle said. He indicated a chair other side of the desk and asked me to sit down. I did so, and Doyle resumed his chair opposite. ‘So what can we be doin’ for you an’ Mr McGowan?’ he asked.
‘You have a customer here, a man by the name of James Hackley.’
Doyle shrugged. ‘Christ, I wouldn’t know . . . sure as hell ain’t my hobby to go associatin’ with the people that come here to watch this stuff.’
‘He is the son of a very important Chicago real estate developer called David Hackley. Mr McGowan needs your help to make something go away, and there’s a good possibility it may involve putting his son in a somewhat embarrassing position.’
Doyle laughed. ‘Well, I’d consider being found with your pants round your ankles in a joint like this somewhat embarrassing.’
I shook my head. ‘Something a little closer to the bone,’ I said.
Doyle leaned back in his chair. ‘Something he wouldn’t walk away from without it dirtying the family name a little?’ he said.
‘A lot,’ I replied. ‘Something that could be held in limbo, something that could come out of the woodwork if the developer doesn’t see eye to eye with Mr McGowan.’
‘And if this could be done, then I’m sure it would mean a good word in Mr McGowan’s ear for me, right?’
‘And a good word in Mr McGowan’s ear is a good word to Kyle Brennan,’ I said. ‘I figure you might find yourself working somewhere a little more upmarket if this goes the way we want it to go.’
Doyle grinned. ‘I think we can fix something up, Mr—?’
‘Perez,’ I said. ‘My name is Perez.’
‘I think Mr James Hackley will be gettin’ a polite invitation to see something a little more colorful than whatever the hell he might be watching tonight.’
It was that simple.
Three days later James Hackley was arrested in the back room of a small cinema on Penn Street. Three other ‘clients’ were arrested with him. They were charged with ‘solicitation to view minors engaged in illegal sexual activities’. Michael Doyle had organized a private showing of some kiddie porn. James Hackley was arraigned and bound over, bailed for thirty thousand dollars, and scheduled to appear for further questioning on 11 December.
On 9 December a brief conversation took place between the captain of the Chicago Police Precinct where Hackley had been charged and two of Kyle Brennan’s trusted consiglieres. A deal was made. A contribution of an undisclosed sum would be willed to the 13th Precinct Widows and Orphans Fund within the week if the charges against Hackley were dropped for lack of evidence.
Two hours later, one of those same consiglieres met with a reputable and upstanding member of the Chicago Rejuvenation Council on a park bench near Howard Street. The conversation lasted no more than fifteen minutes. The men, one of them a crestfallen and dejected-looking David Hackley, walked away without a word.
On Thursday 16 December, 1982, David Hackley rose before the Chicago City Council Board Meeting and presented his case. He advised in the most determined and unreasonable words that planning permission to redevelop the northside of Chicago at this time be denied. He presented a good case, even issued an eleven-page proposal as to why such a move would be detrimental to the history and character of the city.
The Council came back with a unanimous decision on the twenty-second, three weeks ahead of schedule. Permission to redevelop was denied. Paul Kaufman was sent home with his tail between his legs.
The following day, 23 December, just in time for Christmas, all charges against James Hackley were dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence.
The Cicero Gang were joyous, as was Don Calligaris. We had an Irish-Italian party at a club on Plymouth Street on the northside, and I met Kyle Brennan. He gave Angelina five hundred dollars for toys and things for the babies, you know? and I believed that here in Chicago – despite the bitter wind and often vicious rain from Lake Michigan, among the itinerants and stragglers, the Irish gangsters with their brogue and brash manner – we had perhaps found a home.
For the subsequent eight years, as we watched our children grow, heard them speak their first words, saw them learn their first alphabet and write their first sentences, we stayed in Chicago. We kept the same house down the street from Don Calligaris and his own extended family. I cannot say that there weren’t times that I was required to go back to my old trade, to exercise my muscles and consign some miscreant to the hereafter, but those times were few and far between. It was approaching the end of the decade, the world had grown up also, and as I reached my fifty-third birthday in August of 1990 – as I stood at the doorway of my house and watched as Victor and Lucia, now eight years old, came running down the street from where the schoolbus had let them off – my mind turned to thoughts of where I would go when I became too old for such things. The world was changing. Influences from Eastern Europe were cutting across the family’s business in America. Streetgangs of teenage youths were killing one another with no more mercy than one would kill an insect. Russians and Poles and Jamaicans were all providing supply lines for weapons and drugs and hookers, and they had the manpower and artillery to command and maintain their place at the table. We were aware of what was happening, and we believed that the generation following ours would have to fight so much harder than we did to keep any part of our operations alive. But we also knew that, just as you could never resign from such a life as this, so you could not retire. You were permitted to see out your latter days in Florida perhaps, even California near the mountains, but you were always there, always remembered, and if there was some action that needed to be taken and your presence was required, then so be it.
Don Calligaris himself was close to sixty-five, and though Chicago had served him well I could see his thoughts also turning to where he might go and what he might become when working was no longer an option.
‘Time has closed up on us,’ he said one time. ‘It comes and goes in an instant, it seems. I can remember running down the street as a child, thinking that a day lasted for ever. Now most of the day has gone by the time I have eaten my breakfast.’
We sat in the kitchen of his house. Ten Cent was in front watching TV.
‘My children keep me thinking like a teenager,’ I said.
‘How old are they now?’
‘Eight last June.’
Calligaris shook his head. ‘Eight years old . . . I remember when Ten Cent used to carry both of them in one arm.’
I laughed. ‘Now my son Victor, he could probably wrestle Ten Cent to the ground. He is a tough little man, the head of the house as far as he is concerned.’
‘But his sister, she is smart like most girls,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘The men are the head of the house, but the girls, they are the neck, and they can turn the head any which way they please.’
I heard the phone then, and with it came a sense of foreboding. Business had been without trouble for some time, and there had been no calls for the better part of a month.
I heard Ten Cent shut down the TV and walk out into the front hall.
‘Si,’ I heard him say, and then he set down the receiver on the table and he walked to the kitchen.
‘Don Calligaris, it is for you, from upstairs.’
‘Upstairs’ was the word we used for the boss and his people; ‘upstairs’ meant that something was going to happen, something that would require us.
I listened for words I could understand in Don Calligaris’s conversation, brief though it was, but despite all my years with these people I had never taken the time to learn Italian. I tried to speak Spanish as often as I could, even to myself, but Italian, though similar in many ways, just seemed too difficult to manage.
Don Calligaris was no more than a minute, and then he returned to the kitchen and looked at me.
‘We have a sit-down,’ he said.
‘Now?’ I asked.
‘Tonight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Three hours from
now at Don Accardo’s restaurant. He wants all three of us, and there will be a good few more, I think.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘I don’t know, Ernesto, so don’t ask me. We do not discuss details on the telephone. All I know is that we meet at seven at the trattoria.’
I went home to dress. I spoke with Angel, told her not to wait up for me. The children were away with some friends and would return later. I told her to say goodnight to them for me, to tell them I would see them in the morning.
I looked at her, a woman of forty-four, but still in her eyes that difficult and awkward young woman I had first met in New York.
‘You have made my life something of which to be proud,’ I told her.
She frowned. ‘What is this? Why are you talking like that?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I have been thinking the past few days that I am becoming an old man—’
She laughed. ‘There are few old men who have as much energy as you, Ernesto Perez.’
I raised my hand. ‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking that soon it will be time to make some changes, to find somewhere to live where the children will be away from all this.’
Angelina looked at me then. There was an expression in her eyes that told me she had been waiting to hear these words for as long as she had known me. She shook her head, perhaps with an element of disbelief. ‘Go to your meeting, Ernesto. We will talk about such things another time.’
I leaned forward, I held her face in my hands and I kissed her.
‘I love you, Angelina.’
‘And I you, Ernesto. Now be gone with you—’
Then I saw tears in her eyes, welling up in the corners. I brushed the hair back from her cheeks and frowned. ‘What?’ I asked.
She shook her head. She closed her eyes and looked down at the floor.
I lowered my hand and raised her chin. She opened her eyes and looked back at me.
‘What?’ I asked again. ‘What is it?’
For a second there was a flash of anger in her expression, and then it softened. She shook her head once more and said, ‘Go Ernesto, go now. I have things to do before the children come home.’
I did not move. I waited until she looked at me once again and I opened my mouth to ask her what was happening.
She shifted to the left and rose to her feet. I stepped back for a moment, puzzled at first, and then I recognized the fire inside her.
‘You know what it is, Ernesto,’ she said, and in her voice was the edge of defiant independence that had so attracted me when I first knew her. ‘You go to your meeting now. I will not question what you are doing, and when you come back I will not ask what you have done. You are a good man, Ernesto. I know this, and if I did not believe that there was more good in you than evil I would never have stayed. You are who you are, and I am wise enough to know that I will never change that . . . but I will not have you risk my life or the lives of our children—’
I raised my hand. I was shocked, not at what she said, for these were words I had perhaps been expecting for many years, but the vehemence and anger with which she uttered them.
‘Do not tell me to quieten my voice,’ she said. ‘I want you to say nothing, Ernesto, nothing at all. I don’t want to hear you explain or defend yourself or the people for whom you work. Go and speak with them. Go and do whatever you have to do, and when you are done I will still be here with your children. Whatever madness lies out there, I wish you to keep it from our door, because if anything happens that hurts my family I will kill you myself.’
I could not speak, I dared not say a word.
She crossed the room and took my overcoat from the back of a chair. She held it out for me and I walked towards her. She even lifted it up for me to put my arms into the sleeves.
I turned to face her and she raised her hand and pressed her finger to my lips.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘I have said everything I needed to say. I am empty, Ernesto.’
I started to think of how I should respond and she read my thoughts.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Go finish whatever business you have to finish and then we will talk of the future.’
I left the house and walked back across the street. My mind was like a hollow gourd.
We talked for a little while, Don Calligaris and I; we ventured ideas on what the sit-down could be about, but in truth we knew nothing. I could not concentrate. I could see Angelina’s face, the flash of anger in her eyes, the fear she felt for our children.
At six-thirty we left, and at the end of the street I looked back towards my house, towards where my wife and children would be while I was at Don Accardo’s restaurant, and I wished I could step out of the car and go back.
I had a premonition of something dark walking those sidewalks, pausing in front of my house. I swept such thoughts away. My wife and children were safe. There was nothing to be concerned about. I forced myself to believe that this was the truth.
The restaurant itself was packed to the walls every which way. We maneuvered our way between tables and chairs, waited while waiters performed circus balancing acts with antipasta and steaming plates of carbonara and made it through to the back behind the main room. Here we were greeted by Don Accardo’s men, heavy-set Sicilians with unresponsive faces, and were shown to a table where a good dozen men were seated.
We did not wait long for Don Accardo to appear, and as he entered the room everyone rose and clapped. He quietened them down with a gesture and then he sat also. A few minutes passed while people lit cigarettes, while introductions were made, and then Don Accardo spoke.
‘I appreciate that you have all come to see me on such short notice. I understand that you are busy people, you have families and things to attend to, and the fact that everyone I asked to come is here has been duly noted.’
He paused for a moment and took a sip of water from a glass to his right.
‘Were it not a matter of some importance I would not have called you here, but there is a matter of some grave concern to myself and others that will require our immediate attention.’
Don Accardo looked around the faces at the table. No-one spoke.
‘Some years ago, we dealt with a matter on behalf of our Irish cousins. Don Calligaris took some action which paved the way for a relationship which has grown from strength to strength these past years, and for this we are grateful to Don Calligaris and his people.’
There was a murmur of consent and acknowledgement around the table.
‘Now it seems our Irish cousins are faced with a more serious threat to their operations, not here in Chicago, but in New York, and they have asked for our assistance once again.’
The room was silent.
‘For several years there has been a relationship between the families in New York, specifically the Lucheses, and a man called Antoine Feraud from New Orleans.’
I looked up suddenly. I thought for a moment that I had imagined what I heard.
‘You have all heard of this man. You all know what he is capable of. We helped him with a small matter some time ago, a little difficulty we had with the Teamsters.’
Eyes around the table turned towards me. There were a few nods of respect, all of which I returned. I had not realized how many people knew who I was and of my history.
‘So now we have a situation with this Feraud. He has strong ties with the French and the Hispanics here in Chicago, and he is muscling in on Brennan’s northside territory. Brennan is a strong man, he will not tolerate such things, but with the French and the Hispanics behind Feraud he is strong in some areas. Feraud has no concern regarding who he works with . . . the Polish, the Eastern Europeans, and he will use these people to take whatever he wants. Brennan has again asked us for our help, and we are here to make a local vote on this matter.’
‘This will be a war,’ a man to the right of Accardo said.
Accardo nodded. ‘This is something we have to be aware of. A war it may become, and though I
am the last man in the world who would care for war right now, it is nevertheless a situation of loyalty and honor. For the past many years we have worked close with the Irish. They are not as strong as we are, and therefore we have the upper hand. There are concessions made for us that would otherwise be worthless, and it is not without its benefits that the vast majority of senior officials within the police department are Irish. This is a strong tie, a tie we do not have with the French or the Hispanic people, and I would be very aggrieved if we lost the foothold we possess in this city. This is, after all, Big Jim Colosimo’s city, and we would not want it taken away from him.’
Again a murmur of agreement from the gathering around the table.
‘So speak amongst yourselves for a little while. We will take a vote, and when we have decided, we will send word to Brennan and his people and wait for a strategy to be outlined.’
Don Accardo raised his right hand. ‘Proceed,’ he said.
I turned to Don Calligaris. ‘I cannot believe this . . . after all these years, these same people.’
Don Calligaris smiled. ‘It’s the way it works. These people put each other in positions of power, and then they work to keep all their friends where they are. This is a political arrangement that has been present since Machiavelli.’
‘There is no question,’ I said. ‘Our ties with the Irish are so much stronger than those with Feraud and his people.’
‘But Feraud has people in Vegas, also in New York. There aren’t many, but then it doesn’t necessarily take an army to win a war.’
I shook my head. ‘I know where my loyalties would lie,’ I said.
‘And I have my own view regarding Feraud and his politician friend.’
Calligaris nodded. ‘I think you will find the opinion here agreeable with yours.’
Don Accardo raised his hand again and the hubbub ceased.
‘So we have a vote to take. All those in favor of working again with Brennan and the Cicero Gang to oust these French and Hispanics, raise your hand.’
The vote was unanimous. No question. These people knew who they wanted close, and it was not Feraud’s organization.
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