Two strippers approached; one had a missing front tooth, the other an open sore on her right breast that resembled a bite mark. Debbie sat next to me, held my hand, suppressed a laugh as one stripper cut into my thigh with her butt bone and draped an arm around my neck.
“Get the fuck off me.”
“We were told we needed to make you feel better,” Santa apologized. “I know how much Butch meant to you.” His wife blinked at Debbie; she had the face of a catcher’s mitt.
“I told you he couldn’t be trusted,” Debbie whispered.
18
KARATE G-MAN
Mr. Happy’s clientele was vintage Cicero and included regulars like the Large Guy, high-ranking gangbangers, Outlaw Bosses, and frequently junkies and whores.
“I see the Feds are still here.” I motioned to the white van parked across the street at the Chevron station.
Mr. Happy smirked and finished selling a large-screen television to a clean-cut chatterbox who suspiciously resembled a cop.
“Where did he come from?” I lit a cigarette. I never purchased anything but meat from Mr. Happy’s shop. Food, at least, could be consumed and contained no traceable serial numbers.
“He was driving by and saw my poster in the window.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
The “poster,” which advertised an MMA competition involving Mr. Happy’s son, was the size of a sheet of paper. Cars whizzed by on Cicero and Roosevelt. No driver stopped on purpose much less slowed down to register a tiny-printed ad.
“What did he want?”
“He knows the dojo sponsoring my kid’s fight.”
I’m sure he does. I’m sure the Feds briefed him thoroughly on Mr. Happy’s son and the MMA studio situated across the street from the police station, the same department the Feds regularly monitored from a trailer they parked in the lot.
“I’ll introduce you next time.”
“No thanks,” I said.
But the following week Artie, a Berwyn cop, lingered in the back room, sucking down Marlboro Reds. I watched him, hidden in plain sight, as he smoked one after another, his eyes watery, his face puffy and slick. Afternoon shadows played across rows and rows of crates in the back room.
* * *
I asked Artie for a cigarette: a “cowboy killer.” He wore baggy clothes, perfect for hidden wires.
“Yeah, sure.” Artie fumbled for one and handed it to me, but never offered me a light.
“I don’t trust him,” I said to Mr. Happy. “Who smokes and doesn’t carry a lighter.”
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“I don’t like him.”
“He’s harmless.”
“He never shuts up.”
I tossed the unlit cigarette into the trash. “Stay away from him,” I said. “I mean it.”
* * *
That night I read my favorite parts of The Godfather again. And when I got to the scene about Michael wanting to kill the police captain I underlined the passage … specifically the unwritten rule that mobsters didn’t kill cops … unless they crossed the line.
“What if I feed him misinformation?” Mr. Happy said as he finished his can of Red Bull.
“You’re not the fucking CIA.”
Mr. Happy huddled regularly with Artie, whose laugh made me cringe. I never asked about their conversations, but I did continue to watch Artie, the way a child might study a scorpion trapped behind glass. His father was a made man in the Chicago Outfit. Artie’s default was to join the police department.
I stopped having lunch with Mr. Happy.
“I don’t think Karate G-Man is a Fed,” he said during one of my last visits.
“Why is that?”
“We hung out together last night, talked until six in the morning.”
That would certainly convince me.
* * *
When the call came from the Feds a few weeks later I wasn’t surprised.
“We have a search warrant for your clubhouse and would rather not break down the front door.” The Fed recited the signboard I had laminated requesting that the cops “call first” before destroying property.
Sign leading into the North Side clubhouse
My hands stilled on my laptop keyboard as I sunk into my large living room sofa.
“I understand.” I felt a little numb as I hung up and immediately dialed a few cohorts, sounding like Paul Revere: “The Feds are coming.”
“They’re already here,” Big Dog said. Papers shuffled in the background.
“What’s happening?”
“I never turned the fucking machines on.”
I called Ray Rayner next.
“We never plugged them into the wall.” For once, I found his stupidity a relief.
With heart pounding, I orchestrated the various support clubs to circulate and discard their video gambling machines.
* * *
“Do I need to worry?” Debbie paled on the couch.
“It’s not illegal to own machines,” I assured her. “They have to prove I’m paying out.”
Flustered, I left for the North Side and waved to the Feds parked askew at the curb. Some followed me into my office, grabbed an edge of couch or hugged the wall. I sat on my throne, perfectly aligned with the gold statute of Caesar’s head.
“How can I help?”
One whipped out a recorder and depressed the red button. “What do you know about the Double-O Alliance?”1
Nothing I was willing to share.
A news report later implicated “The Large Guy,” head of the Chicago Mafia’s video gambling rackets, and his enforcer, “Goldberg the Jew” (aka Mr. Happy), a “member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Gang and [The Large Guy’s] primary fence for stolen merchandise.”
Amusements, Inc., The Large Guy’s business, was referred to as a “criminal enterprise operating in and around Cicero” and responsible for distributing machines to local bars and restaurants.”
“These machines,” a reporter explained, “allowed customers to deposit money in return for virtual credits (legal so long as used for amusement only) which they redeemed for cash. The devices were modified to track money coming in and being paid out, so that the establishment owners and the enterprise could each take a cut of the profits.”
“What do you know about his competitor, C&S Amusements?” the Fed pressed.
Nothing I was willing to share.
C&S Amusements, Inc., undercut The Large Guy’s profits, offering greater percentages and supplying machines to a series of eateries and taverns that “belonged” to The Large Guy. After fair warning to “stay the fuck away” from Cicero, The Large Guy2 dispatched his enforcers with a message for his competitor: a firebomb.
“You’re the number two regional vice president of the Chicagoland chapters,” the Fed read me my resume. “We’re pretty sure you know things.” He glared at me, his eyes like blue cut glass.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“That’s entirely up to you.”
“Well, am I under arrest?”
“Not yet.” He smiled.
Wind blew through the open door, dumped garbage on the kitchen tiles, papers scattered like confetti. Foam chunks puffed from the couch. Bladed shadows of a ceiling fan clicked above us. I knew the Feds would find nothing. I never installed machines in my own clubhouse. The place was eerily empty, resembled gutted rooms in an abandoned warehouse.
“Then what do you want?”
“Help.”
“What kind of help?”
“We need information.”
A slow smile spread across my face. “You didn’t just ask me to be a rat, right?”
* * *
“People are freaked out,” I said to Debbie later. “We need to make some appearances. We need to tell them everything is going to be fine, business as usual.”
Debbie nodded. That’s what I loved about her. She never asked for details, never asked questions. She just accepted that we would spend the rest of the
night riding down dangerous streets, knocking on clubhouse doors, giving brief speeches (as any leader with a nation in peril would) that everything was going to be fine, that everything was fine, we were all fine.
“You sure?”
No—we were so fucked. The Feds confiscated the Christmas cards; I’d once made a big deal about the club never throwing any of them away. But the cards contained every member’s address.
* * *
Truth was, I thought about prison all the time, about inadvertently becoming King of Nothing, like Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle, with a stone for a throne overlooking a pond. Taco, the International Boss of the Outlaws, ruled a prison empire. He controlled things from his solitary cell, promised Ray Rayner and Santa status “beyond just Boss of an Outlaw chapter,” just as soon as he “got out of here.” They became his enforcers, his Luca Brasis, though I was pretty confident neither had actually read The Godfather. And I was pretty positive Taco, who was serving a double life sentence plus thirty-five years for murder and RICO convictions, was never being released.
“Peter, Peter.” Backlash grinned. “You’re learning fast.”
And though Taco had been officially “gone” since 1997, he was still a presence, like a lingering ghost. Brothers who never knew him loyally visited him, campaigning for his freedom, reveling in his stories from “back in the day” when he was a real gangster. He personified the price Outlaws paid to be Outlaws. He’d had a clubhouse like a fortress and once tossed a citizen off a balcony in Daytona Beach after he chipped an Outlaw’s tooth.
Taco wrote me letters, encouraged me to “enter his circle.” But his trustees included Ray Rayner and Santa, and I knew the truth about them. My resistance was no deterrence to Taco. He sent Debbie a purse.
19
GOD FORGIVES, OUTLAWS DON’T
“We need an emergency meeting.” Santa sounded frantic. I cupped the phone to my ear as I watched Jerry Springer slide down a stripper pole and wave to his audience. To the chant of “Jer-ry! Jer-ry!” he shook hands with spectators in the front row.
“Got a call from a guy in Milwaukee,” Santa said.
“You mean Jack?” The Boss?
A producer flashed a title card: “Show may contain inappropriate content.” Security waited in the wings, looking like thugs from the Outfit. The audience settled down as Jerry greeted his first guest, a broad in a tight miniskirt and midriff blouse. She wheelchaired onstage, waved to the crowd, and proudly displayed the two nubs she called “legs.”
“Ony was on Gangland,” Santa continued. “He said he was Out Bad with the Outlaws but was still allowed to keep his tattoos and all his property.”
This was serious. He could be killed for that kind of lie. Any Outlaw “out bad” never got to keep his property. Jerry ran through the audience with a chain saw; between buzzes he shouted, “She’s happy she cut off her legs.”
I stepped into the lobby so I could hear. “Tell Jack I’ll handle this.”
“Why you watch that shit?” Mr. Happy laughed. “Bunch of freaks wanting attention. You could see that here.”
I called Ony. “Meet me tomorrow morning at IHOP. Don’t be late.”
I arrived alone, an hour early so I would always have the advantage fully expecting Ony to pull a shine move and, in gangbanger fashion, try to pop me execution style. It would have been a desperate move on his part, knowing he had few choices left. I grabbed a seat by the window in full view of the nearly empty parking lot and flipped through the program guide on the TV for upcoming Springer episodes. Next week’s episode featured a “Transsexual Takedown.”
Ony pulled up at the agreed-upon time, waited a few minutes before shutting off his engine. He walked slowly toward the entrance, peering behind him, hands shoved into his front pockets. He paced, smoked a cigarette, crushed the ash with his boot, and sat for a few minutes on the bench.
I glanced at my watch; twenty minutes had passed. Jesus, Ony, I don’t have all day.
“I’ve always respected you,” he said as he slid across from me at last, removed his sunglasses, and clasped his hands in front of him. “You always treat people fair.” He ordered a stack of blueberry shortcakes. His voice cracked.
“Don’t kiss my ass,” I cut him off. “This is a onetime deal. Take it or leave it; but if you leave it you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.” A brother out bad who doesn’t cover up his tattoos can expect a trip to the hospital.
“What do I have to do?”
“Date your tattoos.”
“Date my…”
“This is nonnegotiable,” I said. “I’ll put you out good, but you have to date them.”
Ony’s breakfast arrived, and he poured syrup on top of the whipped cream. “Okay.…”
“You’re going to put my birth date on your tattoos—4/25/2007.” No one had ever proposed something like this before. But it was the only way I could think of to ensure Ony’s safety. At least this way he had a fighting chance. Brothers might still help him if he was “out good.”
Ony nodded; he looked relieved. His whole face relaxed. He shoveled a large bite into his mouth. Syrup dribbled onto his chin.
“You’re a gentleman, gangster.”
“I try to be at least fifty percent good.”
* * *
That’s why I practiced balance; for every evil act committed, it was critical that I did something good (Respect + Fairness−Ruthlessness=Happiness). So when Rose showed up like nightshade after parties, dressed in fitted jeans, stiletto heels, and impeccably sprayed hair, reeking of desperation, it was difficult to be cruel.
“Hi.” She waved her perfectly manicured nails. I noticed things like fingers and toes. Extremities reflected a person’s insides: If nails were cracked, chipped, or fungus-black, I knew the person was mostly dead.
Rose interrupted my conversation with Bastardo and unwittingly broke Club Rule #36: A citizen never interrupts when Outlaws are speaking. And so began “The Dilemma with Rose.”
Outlaw, Judas, immediately pounced, his hot breath in her face, voice booming, “Get the fuck out, skank.” Rose’s expression snapped. Dark lines smudged the creases of her eyes, a stray, fake lash stuck to her cheek. Her lips parted, quivered, and she began to cry.
I watched her shake, and something inside me snapped. I pulled Judas aside. “Why’d you have to make her cry?”
“She interrupted you.”
“Be ruthless and thoughtless. Be an enforcer Outlaw,” I said. “But don’t abuse the power. Don’t make girls cry.”
He looked dumbfounded.
“You’re just an ass,” I elaborated. “Be a badass.”
* * *
But not even I could be a badass all the time. Two years (or two football seasons) maximum—no matter the business: drug dealing, escort service—the Feds typically investigated criminal activity for eighteen months before initiating a raid. Unless, of course, murder was involved—then the Feds entered sooner.
With drugs, I didn’t really think about fallout; instead the image of Frank, hauled away in shackles, destined to live out his remaining years captive in a cold cell, sobered me. It could happen to me. Luck runs out. Time runs out. What once seemed so solid can slip away without warning. And one day you’re fixated on cockroaches surrounded by concrete. Life over.
After twenty-two months in the escort business, I hunted for a buyer: “I’m selling the little black book.” Pages and pages of names, services, numbers. Human beings. That detail bothered the margins of my conscience just a little. Nonetheless, I asked a substantial sum for the book.
“You don’t put a gun to the girls’ heads.” Mr. Happy facilitated the matches, ran the operation like a bookie.
True, but maybe it was the same thing in the end. These broads had kids they supported. If I shut down the operation, what would happen to them? Still, my decision to end my involvement impacted broads who had dedicated two years of good service. They had a limited shelf life, like quarterbacks
: old at thirty.
Angel managed the girls for me. It wasn’t fair to just leave her: “Thanks for the business, goodbye.” Who does that? Sociopaths maybe, but I wasn’t that kind of criminal.
I followed a felonious code of ethics—“Honor among thieves”—and strived to leave a person better off than when I first found them. Criminals didn’t have to be assholes; it was important to balance the good deeds with the bad. In her mid-thirties, Angel had no skills; she couldn’t compete with the hard bodies of twenty-year-olds.
“There’s nothing left for me.” She blew her nose. “I’m a used-up whore.”
“Nonsense, you’re just retired,” I said. “You need an investor.”
“For what?”
“Your 401k plan.”
I conceived of Enchanted Luna, a tarot “mystic” shop owned and operated by Angel and staffed by former whores and strippers. My friend owned space in Berwyn Township, a densely populated Hispanic suburb in Cook County.
“Mexicans love spiritual shit,” I assured Angel. “Guadalupe, candles, readings. You could make a killing.”
I “donated” a few glass jewelry cases to the shop and designed business cards for Angel that listed her as “Proprietor.”
I popped in frequently to check out my investment.
“Why aren’t you open?”
“I’m experimenting with hours.” Angel yawned. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the shop was locked.
“Customers aren’t going to drop in after dark,” I said. “You’re not a whore anymore—you’re reading people’s fortunes. If you’re closed you can’t make money.”
“I’m not sure this is really my thing—you know, sitting for hours and hours waiting to service people.”
“Are you disappointed she closed the shop?” Debbie asked me after a couple of months.
“I gave her an opportunity. It’s up to her to take it. I did my good deed.”
Angel was good for my conscience. And ultimately she got what she wanted: a welfare check. She found the poor sperm donor—a cop, no less—online, married and divorced him within a few months, and happily entered the system.
The Last Chicago Boss Page 13