My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  I stood there, drawn into the music, inching toward the musicians, snake charmed by the inexorable beat, by the woman next to me, by the night itself. As far as I was concerned, the whole room was empty except for us at that moment.

  The sax came back in then, followed by the cymbals, pulling the piece together as it closed like a receding tide, wave by wave by wave.

  No one else seemed to notice, but we both applauded loudly when they were done, gaining the acknowledgment of the players. It seemed like a pretty good time to try my new luck out. I turned toward Claudia, grinned. “Lovely,” I said.

  She smiled at me, and I thought I saw the first crack in the iceberg. Then she said, “Maybe your prostitute, she would appreciate this too? Or your Mafiosi over there?”

  That tore it. “Basta!” I said, throwing up my hands. “I just wanted to congratulate you on your show; I thought it was terrific. Jesus, lady, what did I ever do to you anyway?”

  “I’m sorry . . .” she began, but I was already gone, checking my tux for signs of burned wool as I stormed off.

  I went outside to get some air. The temperature had dropped enough that I could see my breath. Frank came outside a minute later, waving a Camel into the clean fall night.

  “How’d it go, Romeo?” he asked.

  I flattened my hand, rolled it upward then abruptly straight down.

  “Shot down? Really?”

  “Made a smokin’ hole in the ground. Right”—I paused, pointing toward the back of the Quonset Hut—“over there.”

  He leaned over, nodded once. “Hmmm.”

  “Like you didn’t know. That one kills ’em like Lucrezia Borgia—just for the sport of it. Heard she got you, too.”

  He flashed his veneers. “Yeah. Even me.”

  I waved a hand toward the hut. “Whaddya say we get the hell outta here, huh? The night is young and we’ve got some haunting to do.”

  “Way ahead of you, pal. Jill’s getting the car. Next stop Rush Street. Suntan Charley’s coming with, maybe some of the other musicians.”

  “Just musicians . . . ?”

  “Good guys only tonight—no bad,” he said. “Ohh,” he added, “speaking of that . . . I talked to Sam for quite a while in there. Everything’s all right.”

  I leveled a penetrating stare at him. “Sure about that?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “He says the take tonight’ll be north of fifty thou for the show and the Hut. That’s a lot of ‘all right.’”

  I made an exaggerated motion of my head, eyes wide. “Okay then. Well . . . let’s get to haunting then.”

  “Sure. Just let me say some good-byes.”

  That usually meant fifteen to thirty minutes and at least one more drink, so I headed back inside with him to keep warm. I saw Frank’s pianist, Bill Miller, standing alone, nursing a drink and holding up a post. Behind him, the four-man ensemble was regrouping after a quick break.

  I gave Bill a nod, pointed at the quartet as they went through a sound check. We talked music shop awhile, killing time. Claudia was still watching the musicians from across the room, too. The flower guy was with her now, leaning in like a rider on a crowded bus. She wasn’t having any of it.

  I watched from the corner of my eye as I spoke to Bill, enjoying it at first with a bit of sangue freddo. Then it turned ugly. The big guy slipped a paw around her back then whispered into her ear. She spun around quick, slapping his hand away and thrusting her finger in his face, hot Italian words spilling out. It looked like a great time to cut in.

  I excused myself and hustled across the floor, calling out a request to the musicians as I neared. Claudia and the masher were still squabbling when I arrived. She turned and looked at me, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.

  Before she could speak, I said, “Would you care to dance, signorina?”

  “Ma non c’e musica,” she replied, surprised.

  I placed a finger to my ear, bent the lobe just a little. “Listen,” I said in Italian.

  The gods were with me, the music beginning just then on my cue. Smiling, I held out my hand. She gave the big guy a nasty look then took it.

  We took the floor as the stornello began, Claudia glancing up at me in perplexed curiosity as we began to sway in cadence. I hadn’t danced one of those since I was a teen, but I was on the beat after a few bars. The jilted party fumed at the edge of the dance floor awhile before turning and stomping off. I knew the steps to that one too.

  We didn’t speak while dancing, just moved with the music, gliding over the parquet. I could feel the tension lessen in her with each step, the perplexed look on her face fading as she began to trust me. She was a wonderful dancer. I imagined she’d probably grown up in an entertainment family, performing onstage since she was a small child.

  By the end of the song, I felt a confidence in the way she looked at me, like I’d made an inroad. I realized that I’d been too hungry earlier, too much like Frank. How could I blame her for assuming I was just another rake?

  The music stopped. A solid round of applause followed from around the room. I held her for just a second on the floor.

  “Grazie. You dance beautifully.”

  “Grazie lei, Joe. Sorry I was so”—she paused, searching for the word—“rude . . . before.”

  I touched a finger to my lips, hushing the thought, then surprised myself by asking, “Will you be joining us out tonight, signorina?”

  She smiled at my repeated use of a term normally reserved for a woman a few years younger than her own midthirties. “Claudia is fine, thank you. . . . So is the signorina, grazie.”

  “Claudia then. And tonight . . . ?”

  Her lovely face wilted. “Credo che no. Mi dispiace.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Perhaps another time then?”

  “Perhaps.” The sadness Frank had spoken of seemed to be bubbling up to the surface. An awkward second or two passed, then she said, “Tell me something. . . . How did you know to request that song, ‘Strada Del Bosco’?”

  I held up a palm. “I figured if your boys could play a stornello, they would know that one too.”

  “Yes, but how did you know that one was my favorite song?”

  I grinned. What else could I do? “Just lucky, I guess. Buona sera, Claudia.”

  She nodded ever so slightly several times, the overhead light sparkling in her dark eyes.

  “Ciao, Giuseppe,” she said softly. “Buona notte.”

  Claudia and I had traveled quite a distance together in just a few hours. Between that, Frank’s new lease on life, and the forty bucks I’d cleared, it had been a pretty good visit to the Quonset Hut.

  I took one last glance at her as I headed for the door, that swing in my step almost a bounce.

  13

  Chicago is a saloon town and a late-night one at that. There’s a corner tavern in virtually every neighborhood from Edgewater to South Shore, and the lineup of heavy hitters along Lincoln or Rush is deeper than the Notre Dame bench. The nominal closing time at all of them is four a.m., but that’s subject to what might best be called caprice, especially if a shift of off-duty Chicago police officers is tearing one off. For the diehards, they start up at five in Cicero, making round-the-clock benders a demented possibility. Some epic runs were said to have lasted better than a fortnight.

  By West Coast time, it wasn’t too late for dinner, so we headed down to Gene and Georgetti’s to grab a steak. Frank, Bill Miller, and I climbed into the first limo, Jilly at the wheel. Three other cars full of musicians and hired help fell in line. We didn’t arrive until well past twelve, but they’d stayed open late just for Frank. The ribeye was to die for.

  We were cooking rather well ourselves when we left the steakhouse, but the burning of the city that followed made the sack of Carthage look like a wienie roast. Mr. Kelly’s, the Cloister Inn, the Gaslamp Club, the Coq D’Or—bing, b
am, boom—one after another we knocked ’em down, Frank holding court like the king of the city at each one as the fire rose higher into the night.

  We crashed into the Green Mill about three thirty, boilers stoked and making plenty of smoke. The joint was packed, the house band still laying down some serious action. It didn’t take long before Frank was hauled up onto the stage for a quick medley of songs, including an ad-libbed version of “My Kind of Town,” much to the delight of the crowd.

  The better part of an hour of glad-handing and monkeying around later, Frank leaned into me at the bar.

  “What’ll we drink now, pally?” he asked.

  I ran my tongue across my teeth, an odd thickness filling my mouth. “I’m thinkin’ maybe hemlock; that’s the only thing that’ll stop the hangover I’m gonna have when I wake up.”

  “Nuts. Let’s have us a Flame of Love—we’ve both been burned by that one.” He stood up and waved at the bartender. “Pauly! Hey, Pauly, do ya remember how to make the Flame of Love? Great.” Then his eyes fixed on something. “Say, Joe, take a look at this,” he said as he bent over the bar top.

  I looked over the rail, followed his finger to the trapdoor on the back bar floor.

  “Ya know what that is, chum?”

  “I think they call it a cellar.”

  He made a slurry grin, shook his finger back and forth. “Try again.”

  “How about you just tell me, Groucho?”

  “Okay. It’s a trapdoor, from Prohibition days.”

  “No shit?”

  He shook his head once. “None. This place was mobbed up from the word go. You know this is where Joe E. Lewis got his, courtesy of Jack McGurn, that rotten bastard.”

  He had my attention now. I leaned in.

  “Know what else?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “There’s tunnels down there. The Riviera, the Uptown, this joint—they’re all connected. They even have an entire underground club beneath the Aragon.”

  “Get the fu—”

  “It’s true; I’ve sung in it. Ask Pauly Sitko here, he’s been at the Mill since the thirties.”

  The burly bartender walked up, slid two cocktails in front of us, the burned orange-peel rub on the lip still detectable over the smoky air.

  “He’s giving it to you straight,” Pauly announced. “The boys could move anything around through these tunnels: gin, whores, guns, guys on the lam. Cops come in one joint, everything moves over to the next. Mr. Capone liked it, too—just in case.”

  “C’mon, Pauly,” I said, balking at his story. “Capone way up here? On the North Side?”

  “Lemme tell ya something, pal.” He pointed to his left, back toward the small exit door near the stage. “See that booth there, the first one in? That was Al Capone’s booth. I saw him sitting there many a night. He liked it so he could watch the front door, and two or three of his guys could watch his back at the exit there. Believe you me, when he was here, nobody got in or out of this place.”

  Frank banged me on the arm. “Show him the tunnels, Pauly. This guy, you gotta show him things. He’s a skeptic.”

  “Youse guys wanna go down there?” Pauly asked. “C’mon.”

  “How ’bout you just crack the hatch a little?” I said. “Tonight I’m not so skeptical.”

  Pauly took several steps, bent down, hauled up on an inset metal ring. As he raised the wooden trapdoor, a light activated underneath, revealing wooden stairs and shadowy walls far below.

  Frank was up and over the bar in a heartbeat. He stumbled on the landing, but Pauly caught him in big tattooed arms.

  “Okay, hero, you comin’ or what?” Frank taunted. He winked at me, then he was gone. Three minutes later we had better than a half dozen people in the dank, musty space, tittering girls clinging to our arms in the dim light.

  Pauly gave us a quick rundown, pointing out the different directions toward the other nightclubs and theaters in the area. “Dis one here goes to the Uptown next door. Dat one used to go to the Riv’, but it’s bricked up now.”

  “How about this one?” I asked, pointing to a darkened brick passageway crowned by a roman arch.

  “Never been down it, but I’m told it leads to the Aragon.”

  Frank hugged a honey, said, “Crazy, ain’t it?” Then he plucked a smoke from his gold case, added, “Well, Joseph, you always told me this was a connected town. Now you know how much.”

  I scratched my head, glanced around in the murk. “You think Ness got ’em for the taxes on these improvements?”

  “Ohh, that’s good, Joe, very good,” Frank said, cracking up so hard that he missed Pauly’s lighter twice, his demonic jag of laughter echoing off the subterranean walls in the flickering light. I had to blink twice then to be sure that it was Frank standing next to me, and not the king of the underworld, dread lord Hades himself.

  The surviving souls grabbed breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s then hit the hotel at sunup. I reminded Frank, as he staggered down the hall with two escorts, that game time was 1 p.m. at Wrigley Field, come hell or high water.

  Then I drew the curtains, brushed most of my teeth, and rigged for silent running. I was probably asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  14

  The knocking began about noon. I rolled over, tried to read the squiggles on the face of my watch, looked around numbly. The phone was stuffed under my pillow, but I couldn’t recall putting it there.

  Then I heard Jilly whispering through the door. “Wake up, Joe, it’s time for the game.”

  “Okay, Jill,” I managed as the pain began to coalesce. “Gimme a minute.”

  I slid out of bed, lay on the floor, rubbing my face repeatedly. After summoning the courage to stand, I lurched off to the bathroom, huffed down a horse dose of aspirin powder, and did the shower/shave routine in about five minutes. Normally, I might have thrown on a sweater, my dungarees, and boots, but that whole Sinatra “thing” about dressing gave me pause. Reluctantly, I went upscale, hopping around like a crippled crow when I caught my foot in the wool slacks. I slipped into the tweed blazer, grabbed a tie, and stumbled off for the elevator.

  Frank was waiting for me in the lobby, dressed smartly in a tan suit, brown hat, and orange muffler. He handed me a newspaper and a paper cup full of coffee, giving me the long once-over as he did while shaking his head in pity. “Jesus Christ, close your eyes,” he said, “you’re gonna bleed to death.”

  I fell into the back of the limo next to him and Jilly put her in gear, sliding niftily between a pair of police cruisers, blue lights whirling and sirens chirping out warning whoops. That was great for my headache.

  A block down Goethe Street, Frank said, “We made the paper, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Take it easy. There’s no photo, just a notice in Huser’s column about me being at the Pump Room with ‘local war hero Joe Buonomo.’ Nobody reads that shit other than housewives anyway.”

  “Actually a lot of people read that shit, Frank. Goddamnit.” I wrinkled up my cheeks and tossed the paper over the seat at the back of Jilly’s head.

  “Hey—I’m drivin’ here!”

  “Yeah, pal, stick to it—and leave the public speaking to Cicero.”

  I saw Jilly’s glass eye in the rearview mirror. The other one was out of sight. It looked funny; I couldn’t help but chuckle.

  “Feeling all right now, laughing boy?” Frank jabbed.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m fine. Let’s go see some football. Hit it, Jill!”

  That might have been a mistake. The Lincoln made a turn, then began speeding up well beyond the posted 30-mph limit, the engine winding up with a growl as Jilly’s foot went down, police sirens wailing around us. I took a long sip of the coffee while I still could, scrunched down into the back of the seat, and dropped my Ray-Bans over my eyes, trying to maintain my cool as the car
hit the on-ramp at fifty and began accelerating to takeoff speed down Lake Shore Drive.

  15

  Wrigley Field never looked so good, packed with fifty thousand Chicagoans just buzzing with excitement. It was a beautiful fall day, maybe sixty and partly cloudy. The air was crisp, the sky a brilliant cerulean blue.

  The entire nation would be dialed in today to see Chicago’s Monsters of the Midway knock heads with the Green Bay Packers for supremacy in the Western Division and the ticket to the NFL title game that bought. Both teams were eight and one and the Packers were defending champs, but the Bears were looking good and had already given Lombardi’s boys their only black eye of the season back in September.

  I caught what I could out west in the sports pages and the occasional highlight on TV: Atkins, George, and Fortunato punishing anyone who crossed the line of scrimmage; Marconi, Morris, and Ditka ripping off whole acres downfield with the football. It felt like one of those years—which made this one of those games. And with Frank’s troubles in the rearview mirror that made this one of those days.

  We slipped in the VIP entrance, shook a few hands, slammed a Bloody Mary, and headed down to the field, shouts of “Isn’t that Sinatra?” and “Hey, Frank!” trailing us as the Andy Frain man led us to our box along the third-base side of the field.

  The commotion that arose moments later eclipsed anything even Frank had generated as the Bears came running out onto the field, dark navy jerseys offset with orange stripes gleaming in the midday sun.

  The Bears dominated from the opening kickoff, leading thirteen to nothing after one. Spirits were running high, especially in our box. Fortunato couldn’t be contained, and neither could Sinatra.

  When the gun sounded at halftime, Frank, Bill, and Jilly headed for the press box, and I dropped down to the concourse to grab a dog. The ballpark ones only came with mustard, but they were classic in their own way. While I was standing in line, a man waddled by with an unmistakable gait—one I hadn’t seen in years. He was obviously older and slower, but there was no doubting who he was.