My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  That was the second shot of the morning. That one drew blood.

  Somewhere along the way, Sal had gotten ahold of Frank’s limo, which put me in the back of a Lincoln Continental being driven by a twenty-year member of the Chicago Police Department. I’d been for rides in the back of police cars before but never in one with a minibar and cigar box.

  Bill Miller and Jilly went ahead to the airport in another car with the bags while Frank and I grabbed a coffee in the hotel. Sal refused an offer to join us, feeling duty-bound to stay with the car. He was solid, that guy, even with the jabs.

  I sat down across from Frank on a deep couch in the Ambassador’s lobby, squishing down in the rich, brown leather. Frank was wearing a killer Glen plaid sportcoat, the blue top pattern matching his tie and his eyes perfectly.

  Those eyes were just a touch rheumy, though, and I knew that the extended partying caught up even with him on occasion.

  “Nice jacket,” I offered.

  “Thanks. Yours are still upstairs, unless you’re just going to go on wearing that same outfit you’ve got there for the rest of your life.”

  I turned up my palms. “My mother washed the shirt and pressed the rest for me.”

  “Love that lady. Love your family, Joseph. Can’t believe I had to track you down over there like a missing person. Like you were ashamed of them or something.”

  Shaking my head, I set him straight. “Nah nah, it’s the other way around, Frank. I wasn’t sure I could ever face them again, not after what I’d become.”

  “Know what that makes you?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “A first-class imbecile. A man has a family that good, he can tell them anything.”

  I slugged down some coffee, replaced the cup on its saucer with a little click. “You’re all heart, Sinatra.”

  Frank checked his watch. “Eight o’clock. Time to make tracks. You comin’ with, or stiffin’ me again?”

  “Comin’ with. I’ve got a couple of questions for you on the ride over.” I made a couple subtle head turns, said, “Too many ears here. Just let me get my clothes and I’ll be right down.”

  A French-cuffed hand danced before my eyes. “Skip it. I got you the room for the whole week. I figured you might have some business here.” He flashed me a conspiratorial wink. “Lord knows I did.”

  “Thanks, pal.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s all comped anyway.”

  A few brief waves and handshakes later and we were in the Lincoln. The sun was breaking bright and clear above the lake as Sal turned the car eastward down Goethe, the morning chill’s hold over another very late Indian summer day slipping away.

  During the drive, I told Frank about my afternoon with Claudia, and also about how abruptly she departed. Then I asked him how much he knew about her. He said he knew very little actually, but he liked her and loved her talent. He also said he got a kick out of her refusing his overtures. That one he made confidential.

  I sat back in the limo, trying to get a read on her. My face must have given me away.

  “You’re hooked, aren’t you?” Frank said.

  “Like a marlin.”

  “Can’t say I blame you. There’s a lotta bait on that hook.”

  I nodded, grinning.

  He whistled low. “Some siren she is.”

  Shaking my pinched fingers together, I inquired, “Speaking of said siren, what goes on with her and that mammalucc’ Carpaccio anyhow?”

  Frank swooshed a dismissive hand. “Maybe he buys her nice things, maybe he reminds her of her father. Who really knows what goes on in a broad’s head, huh? But I know for a fact he hasn’t gotten his fat lips around that hook yet—she told me so.”

  That was heartening. And probably true based on what I’d seen. But Carpaccio was a problem still.

  The car came to a stop at a red light. Frank lit a smoke. I decided it was time to ask my second question, this one a little more involved. “Hey,” I said, “about this Carpaccio . . .”

  Frank dragged on the Camel, chin-signaled me while muttering a little “Uhh?”

  “I need a little favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “We met the other night. Didn’t go well.”

  Frank tilted his head. “How so?’

  “Carpaccio wanted me to help him with something.”

  “Ohh, watch out, he’s slippery—even Sam says so. Who do you think I was worried about the night we came in?”

  “I figured, but there’s nothing there.”

  He tapped the stations of the cross on his forehead and chest. “I know that now, thank you.”

  “And don’t worry, I told him I didn’t want any part of anything he was up to.”

  “So it’s settled then.”

  “Yeah. Except . . .”

  His eyebrows curved. “Except . . . ?”

  I fumbled with my hands a little, trying to get the words right.

  He whacked my arm with a quick finger flick. “What? Except what?”

  “Well, Carpaccio runs that neighborhood . . . and my family lives there.”

  “Did he threaten them? One phone call, Joe. It’s done.”

  I threw my hands up in protest. “Whoaaa—what kind of phone call are we talking about here?”

  Frank cut me a look. “Whaddya mean, what kind? Three days ago I was sweating my own funeral and now you think I go around ordering hits? Jesus!”

  “Mea culpa.”

  “Accepted. And I meant a phone call to Sam will get Carpaccio to heel.”

  “That I can use, thank you.”

  “As soon as we get to Meigs, I’ll call him. Carpaccio should know better. I’ll talk to Sam and that will be that.”

  I exhaled in relief. “I’d appreciate that. I’m a big boy; I can answer for my own sins. But my family has never been involved with that shit, none of ’em.”

  Sal pulled over into the turning lane, traffic zipping past us on the right side. Frank blew out some more smoke. “The rules are the rules, Joe. Families are off-limits. Especially yours.” He drummed his fingers on his vest. “Especially to me.”

  “I really appreciate that, Frank.”

  He just nodded and patted my hand, his chain-link gold bracelet pressing softly on my wrist, his eyes cold blue in the smoky morning light.

  The kid from Kansas had the jet opened and ready when we pulled up, Jilly muscling the bags on board when we walked into the small, clean-line terminal at the lakefront airport. Frank immediately commandeered a phone and called Giancana’s house, but someone told him Sam was out. Happens.

  Frank promised to call him again when he got to the desert. Then Sal and I walked out with Frank onto the ramp, past the watchful eye of a CPD sergeant and captain, no doubt special detail to see our famous friend safely off. The sergeant made a little hand wave and wink toward Sal as we went by, then pointed him out to the officer, who’d leaned over in apparent curiosity.

  I gave Jilly and Bill handshakes and waved to the pilot as Frank conducted a nice chat with Sal, pressing an embossed calling card into his hand and demonstrably ordering him and Gina out to the desert at their earliest convenience. He passed on the stiff American ritual of the firm handshake and gave each of us a hug and kiss on the cheek. His grip was tight as I thumped his back.

  •

  Sal and I climbed the stairs to the observation deck above the flight line and watched the Learjet crank up and roll off toward the far end of the short runway. While we hung over the rail, I motioned to the two police officers on the ramp. “You got noticed down there, pal.”

  “Don’t I know it. I took the detective’s exam again last month—third time. Think this won’t help me when the results come out?”

  “What? It’s not based purely on the score here in Chicago?” I quipped.

  Sal just r
olled his eyes at me then looked downfield as the Lear spooled ’em up for takeoff. I had some apprehension about the length of the surface since the little jet seemed long on vroom and short on brake, but they just flashed by at midfield, nose raked, gear folding into the belly as the shriek of the turbine engines whistled through our ears. The flash became a blur and then a speck.

  I turned toward my old running mate, bumped his shoulder, gave him a grin. “Pretty good show, huh?”

  He didn’t answer, just stared up into the sky at the dissipating trail of black smoke streaking up and westward, the look on his face that of a kid who’d just discovered that every impossible, hopeless thing he’d ever wished for could be his.

  IV

  38

  Sal and I walked back toward the Lincoln together. He was doing an ants-in-the-pants routine about having to drop the limo off and be somewhere else, but I wanted to walk around a bit—I had a lot of Chicago to reintroduce myself to and I wasn’t far from downtown. As a kid, I’d made sojourns around town that lasted from sunup to sundown, reveling in coming of age in such a wide-open playground, drawn by the lure of the sharpies, big shots, crash-outs, flimflammers, impresarios, street-corner emperors, and out-and-out bastards, all of whom flowed along on that relentless hustler’s tide that coursed through the city like the river that split her.

  I sent Sal off, telling him I’d catch an el train back home from the Loop. He impugned my intelligence then headed for the car. I wrist-flicked the Zippo and toasted a Lucky as I began my stroll, a wry anticipatory grin on my lips as I wondered how long it would be until I caught that first whiff of the eternal mystery and vice of the Midway and the boulevards.

  About ninety seconds as it turned out.

  The Lincoln was still easing around the corner of the parking lot when the window of an idling Imperial slid down next to me. A man in the driver’s seat looked up from behind black sunglasses and removed a hand-rolled cigarette from his mouth. “Need a lift anywhere, friend?”

  I kept walking. “No thanks, Mac, my mother told me not to take rides with strangers.”

  I took three more steps then stopped flat while my brain caught up with what I’d just seen. The Imperial coasted quietly alongside a second later.

  I turned and looked inside. The man had a dark face with strong features and piercing black eyes that stared at me above the frame of his glasses. He wore a fine maroon fedora on his head, but underneath he had thick dark hair—lots of it. One of his hands rested casually on top of the steering wheel, the numerous silver rings on his fingers studded with jade and turquoise. They were rather striking, as was his face, which I made for American Indian, but neither garnered as much of my attention as his dark brown suitcoat and the jet-black pistol at his side.

  “Why don’t you get inside?” he said.

  39

  “Maybe you’ve got the wrong party,” I offered, stalling.

  He smiled at my moxie. “Please get in, Mr. Buonomo. The gentleman I represent is quite interested in meeting you.”

  I gestured toward his weapon. “Alive or dead?”

  “He definitely wants you alive. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

  “Like the way you urgently chucked that fella into the lake yesterday?”

  His lips formed a flat line. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I shrugged. “Sure you don’t. Well, what’s with the gun then? All you can do with that thing is shoot me, and then—say what’s your name?”

  “Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie?” I asked, more than a little incredulous.

  He sighed. “We’re not all named Crazy Horse, you know.”

  “Sorry.”

  “If you only knew how often I get that.”

  I nodded. “I didn’t mean to offend. Okay . . . listen, Ronnie. . . . So I run away and you drill me . . . now what have you got?”

  “Seven more shots. How about you?”

  I grinned at his retort despite my circumstances, placed my hand on the back door’s chrome handle, pushed in the button.

  “Say, Ronnie . . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Buonomo?”

  “Joe.”

  “Joe then.”

  “Tell you what, you put that piece away and I’ll get in. But before I do . . . you tell me just exactly who I’m going to meet, and why.”

  Dark lips pursed in the side mirror as he debated the wisdom of my request. He took a chance, sliding his gun into his shoulder holster. Then he leaned out and said, “You’re going to meet his eminence McBride, Grand Chief of the Fraternal Order of the Potawatomi.”

  I stared straight ahead, utterly nonplussed. After some time I managed, “An Irish Indian, huh? Screw you too, bub.”

  “It’s on the level. He is one heavy fellow. Come along and see, won’t you?” He leaned farther out, goosenecked his head back and forth, then, whispering for no apparent reason, said, “He can make you stupid rich—beyond your wildest imagination.”

  That again. To think I’d spent my whole life jocking planes across the globe hustling sawbucks when every guy I’d left behind in Chicago was just dying to fill my arms with stacks of millions—fresh pressed, razor cut, and banded with ermine.

  But I found Ronnie rather enigmatic and his promise compelling, if more than a little absurd. I’d gone out looking for intrigue and gotten a box of it Special Delivery—I couldn’t really walk away from it now. Truth was, I’d probably have gone almost anywhere with him at that point, even Cleveland.

  I threw my hands up, climbed into the backseat, and pulled the door shut. “Hell’s bells, why not? Let’s go see the chief.”

  The drive was short, just over to where Michigan Avenue meets the Chicago River. The water was sparkling blue in the morning light as we drove across the bridge. It occurred to me belatedly that I might be bobbing in that water later if things didn’t go over so well with the Grand Pooh-Bah.

  Ronnie pulled over just north of the river, one building beyond that old crank McCormick’s gothic eyesore. I rolled my window down and stuck my head out, squinting from the glare cutting through the slits in the wall of high-rises.

  “This the place?”

  He nodded. “This is it.”

  “You coming?” I asked. “I think I like you, Ronnie. Besides, I may need that piece of yours if the chief doesn’t take a shine to me.”

  He shook me off coolly, but he appeared to be trying to repress a grin as he did it.

  I got out, balanced a hand on the car, and craned my neck up, scanning the amazing details of the sand-colored skyscraper as my eyes worked upward. Arabesque reliefs, carved warriors, minarets, and all manner of other embellishments stood out on a stepped-back ziggurat culminating in a magnificent gold dome high above me, glittering like a sultan’s cache in the bright morning sky.

  The old gal still packed the wow thirty-five years on. I remembered it being a big deal when they opened the building up in the late ’20s. The papers reported it to be some kind of opulent—rich carpeting, an amazing swimming pool, a bowling alley, and even a shooting range. But it wasn’t the sort of place working-class Italian kids ever entered—not the Medinah Athletic Club, no sir.

  40

  The pride of the Medinahs went up in 1929 to effusive praise and obsequious press, mere months before the stock market took the express car down to the subbasement, carrying a good part of the club’s wealth—and membership—with it. A building conceived to flaunt the position and power of its esoteric overlords had, in very short order, become an albatross around their necks. If memory served me correctly, it had been shuttered and sold off by the mid-1930s.

  Easy come, easy go.

  The ornate entrance and its gilded metal doors still looked imposing, but one of them opened easily enough when I pulled on its handle, as did the revolving door in the marble-clad entrance beyond.

&
nbsp; The lobby was deserted. No doormen, no receptionist, no passersby. Nothing. I puzzled over that a moment, then, recalling ­Ronnie’s directions, I moved on across the floor up to the second-floor landing.

  The reception may have disappointed, but the building did not. It began with an elegant curving staircase of gray marble that wended upward beneath colossal Corinthian pillars, then gave way to a carpeted landing with a bank of burnished brass elevators watched over by carved falcons on alabaster perches. It was an impressive entrance, but the exotica really hit high gear in the sitting room beyond.

  Stone reliefs of Abyssinian lions met me as I entered and stood before a beautiful Moorish fountain atop yet another plushly carpeted staircase, a stream of water gurgling down blue Spanish tiles into a stone catchbasin below. Medieval images of saints and kings in prayer graced alcoves and ceiling panels, wrought-iron chandeliers hanging down above them. I stood gaping as I took it all in: the marble benches inlaid with heraldry symbols, the detailed figures sculpted into the pilasters, the gilt crosses and crowns on the walls, the metalwork, the columns, the mahogany beams. The full weight of the power and wealth the Medinahs once possessed hit me then. Their former home commanded respect. Lots of it.

  I’d waited about two minutes when an elevator chimed. A little man in a doleful gray suit stepped out, looked over at me, and quietly said, “This way please, Mr. Buonomo.”

  I walked over and peered into the elevator. The jockey-size guy was alone. Stepping in, I took a place behind him and waited for the doors to close.

  “Quite the place the old Medinahs have here,” I ventured.

  “Had, sir. Had,” he corrected me without looking back. “Their profligate ways were their undoing. The FOP is now the rightful steward of this property.”

  “The ‘fop’?”

  “The Fraternal Order of the Potawatomi,” he answered with a measure of pride.

  “So you guys own this whole building?” I asked, as the car started its rise, trying to reconcile their Little League antics with the kind of money and power required to leverage such a property in the heart of Chicago’s business district.