My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  I had to smile at him, tongue against my teeth. The old bird had made me but good. Either Ronnie was a much better tail than I’d given him credit for or someone at the hotel had tipped him off, but either way the chief had shown a significant acumen for discovery.

  “Okay, McBride, cards on the table.”

  “Now you’re talkin’, Buonomo,” he said, whisking his hands together rapidly.

  “I am not working for that miscreant Carpaccio, okay? But I did take a look at the Lex on a whim. There’s nothing in that old rattrap.”

  The glee in the old man’s face was irrepressible, the iridescence in his eye positively electric in the morning light. “Of course not! But that’s the first place everyone looks.”

  “And also my last.”

  “Oh, Mulligan stew! I know a freebooter when I see one. You aren’t giving up that easily.”

  “Well, I have no idea whatsoever where I’d look next.”

  The ram’s head cane cracked the marble. “But I do.”

  I threw my hands up. “But you must’ve scoured all these sites time and again over the years. What do I have that you and your men don’t?”

  McBride hefted the cane, pointed the horns right at me. “A crusader’s heart, a Chicagoan’s brass, and personal contact with Butch O’Hare within the confines of this very city.”

  “Look, Jack, I don’t know . . . Maybe there’s something to it, but I don’t want to get mixed up with Carpaccio or any other sewer dwellers. I just want to see my family for a few days before I leave town. That’s it. Just this once I’d like to be one of the good guys again.”

  McBride chortled derisively. “Not in this town, you won’t. There are no good guys here—only the corrupt and the less so. This is the City of Chicago—the hustler’s Valhalla—and we make no small plans here. Here we work, we brawl, we scheme, we grift, we rip things free with our bare hands, day after savage day. You want to laze about on the porch in the afternoon sun with a martini in your hand? Try Naperville. You want to elbow and claw your way to enough gold to make Solomon weep? Cast your lot with me—here—in the City of Big Shoulders.”

  While I was grappling with that Barnumesque pitch, McBride reared back and heaved another from deep left field. Lunging forward out of his chair, he latched onto my wrist and pulled himself toward me until we were face-to-face again, the booze on his breath as bracing as his words.

  “Joe,” he said low, “what might Florence Scala do with a million dollars? Is it blood money then if it saves your neighborhood? Your church? Your family home? You can do all that and more if you find that deed.”

  He was good, McBride. Really good. His smug grin said it all. He had me, and we both knew it. As the words sank in, I gazed deeply into that crystal ball of an eye, silently noting the glittering flecks of gold floating in the blue-green iris. Grasping his fingers, I pried his hand free, took it firmly in my own, and pumped it fervidly. “McBride,” I said, “you’ve got yourself a quest knight.”

  42

  There was, of course, zero chance for success. For starters, McBride’s hoping that Butch had ever told me anything useful was as completely insane as his desire to keep the Order alive. And everything that Carpaccio, Vernon, or McBride had told me cemented in my mind the infinitesimal chance that anything of whatever spoils there had ever been could have survived hidden for thirty-plus years with every Mafioso in town looking for them. But when he mentioned Florence Scala and my neighborhood, he hooked me up to the gills. Treasure hunts for mobsters were bunk, but home and community were other things altogether. Those were worth fighting for, worth bleeding for, no matter how lost the cause. And winning a place back in my family’s heart rated everything I had left to mortgage. Everything.

  Convinced of my earnestness, the old Celt produced a map of the city circa 1930 and proceeded to point out dozens of circled places on it known to have been speakeasies, safe houses, haunts, or hit spots of Capone and his lieutenants. Some of them I remembered from my youth. Most I had never seen.

  The Lexington Hotel was there, of course, along with the Metropole, the Hawthorne, the Alton, and the Drake. The baker’s dozen of speakeasies ran from the lakefront to Cicero and included Kelly’s, the Edgewater, and the Green Door, among others. The rest of the list consisted of a smattering of no-name pool halls, clip joints, cathouses, bungalows, and three Extra Edition headliners that stood out like a ball bat at a baptism: the flower shop on State where Dion O’Bannion caught a six-pack in the boutonniere, the Clark Street garage where seven men were famously shot to hell and gone on St. Valentine’s Day, and the bullet-scarred facade of old Holy Name Cathedral, where the boys literally blasted St. Paul’s epistle off the wall the day they took down “Hymie” Weiss.

  It was all there: the whole crimson, caterwauling history of Prohibition Chicago right at my fingertips—all her sins and secrets enticingly near, yet decades out of reach. As usual, the Italians and the Irish were fighting for the same prize, but for once, we just might have been on the same side.

  43

  As properly briefed as I could be for such an endeavor, I thanked Jack for the whiskey and told him I’d get started right away. He wanted to send Ronnie with me, but I told him I’d be going it alone. He raised quite a stink, but I insisted. Taking the map and his phone number, I offered McBride my hand and promised to be in touch. Then the jockey and I rode the elevator back down from the sky to the more concrete realms below. It really had been one hell of a morning.

  I began to walk down Michigan, still trying to grasp exactly what had just transpired up in the ether. The shrill sound of a car horn jarred me as I crossed over by the Wrigley Building and I realized, belatedly, that I’d walked against the light. I turned at the curb, glanced back at the Medinah building and the brooding cluster of Sumerian warriors on the parapets. Once again, at the staircase that led to lower Michigan, I stopped and gazed back at the enigmatic figures. They were only limestone carvings, but at that moment they seemed very much alive, sculpted eyes marking my steps, immutable lips letting slip indecipherable whispers that swirled around me in the brisk air as I took the metal stairs into the under-city below.

  Down on the substreet, I flagged a taxi and took a tour of the city as a precaution against another tail. Fifteen minutes later, I jumped out on North Avenue, slipped down Dearborn, and zigzagged through the Gold Coast to the Ambassador East.

  I went up to my room, kicked my shoes off, lit a smoke, and lay down in bed, reflecting on the escalating mess I was making of my life.

  I stayed in bed a long time. The radiator cycled on and off and the room darkened as cloud cover set in over the city. Newsreel footage of Al Capone flashed before my eyes: the smiling press conferences, the brazen admissions, the plain-sight audacity with which he throttled a major American city.

  New currents ran into my stream of consciousness. The O’Hare conundrum, its puzzling connection between a war hero’s father and a criminal overlord defying any reasonable explication, the cryptic IV MI C code daring me to crack it, taunting me when I failed. Images of American Indians emerged next, followed by conjurings of riotous frontier days I’d read about in school, then by myriad other fragments of this run-on weekend, all of it jumbling together like a Sunday crowd on Maxwell Street.

  Singers, mobsters, trapdoors, mysterious codes; a long-ago dustup in a tavern; a new beginning with my family; the raucous confines of Wrigley Field and the quiet alleys of Taylor Street; the black depths of the ruined Lexington and the shimmering heights of the Medina’s tower of Babel; O’Hare and Capone, Sinatra and Giancana, McBride and Carpaccio. None of it fit together much as I lay there, but all of it was so very Chicago.

  The late nights and the early whiskey caught up with me. Claudia’s face came to me as I drifted off. I only snoozed a few minutes, but all my dreams were of her.

  When I awoke, I decided it was time to start looking for connections.
I started by picking up the phone and dialing Claudia’s number. The landlady picked up and said she was out, but she took a message for me. After that, I changed into the dungarees and flannel shirt I’d worn over on the plane, gave my razor the day off, and then jumped the “L” back to Taylor Street.

  Sal was out, but I caught my mother at home heating some of Sunday’s leftovers for lunch. Properly sated and repeatedly kissed, I set out. Grabbing the clipboard and the latest petition that Florence had given me at the previous night’s meeting, I told my mother that I was going to knock on neighborhood doors and renew some old acquaintances. That part was absolutely true.

  What I didn’t tell her was that I was also going to be visiting some other locations outside the neighborhood, places on a map given to me by a mad Irishman.

  44

  I worked the neighborhood for a couple of hours, enjoying some wonderful reminiscences with retired shopkeepers, laborers, and housewives. Many of the doors closer to Harrison were opened by Hispanics, a few by Negroes. Every resident, whether they believed we had a prayer of succeeding or not, expressed their support. Some of the faces on Taylor Street had changed since my time. The soul of the neighborhood had not.

  By midafternoon I had worked my way back home and dropped the clipboard off. Then I poached a bicycle from the basement, pedaled south on Damen, and started crossing places off a map.

  It didn’t take me long to realize how silly it all was. No one was going to let some unshaven stranger on a bicycle into their home, so I concentrated on the businesses instead. But almost all the places I visited had long since changed hands. Of the few that hadn’t, only one had anyone present who had worked there during the Capone era. The septuagenarian bartender with whom I shared a beer didn’t tell me a damn thing that could help me, but I enjoyed watching his eyes light up as he recounted dubious anecdotes from the halcyon days. That was the extent of my success.

  By the time I left his tavern, the streets were getting dark. I headed home, pedaling slowly in the gloom despite the cold wind, reveling in childhood memories of trekking across the cityscape on whatever shit-box bikes we’d thrown together that week. At one point, I thought an old Cadillac was following me. Just to be safe, I cut down an alley to lose them, but I figured I was only seeing things anyway.

  I got home around six and flopped on the couch. My mother and aunt were busy in the kitchen, so I kicked my shoes off and relaxed, moving more pieces around in my mind, trying to make some sense out of Carpaccio’s and McBride’s wild dreams. Nothing really fell together and I chuckled a bit at the inanity of it all.

  “Whaddayou laughing about over there?” a familiar voice inquired.

  It was Zio Nello. He’d come quietly down the stairs in his slippers. I gestured for him to sit next to me, patting him on the thigh when he sat down. “Ciao, zio,” I said, taking the hand he offered me, holding it in mine.

  We looked at each other awhile, smiling gently.

  “Where you been alla these years, Giuseppino?” he asked me, “Your mamma, she missed you molto you know.”

  The question was rhetorical. “Mi dispiace,” I replied.

  A long silence passed, the ticking of the wall clock the only sound, our merged pulses and the rise and fall of our chests the only motion in the room.

  My father’s brother looked over at me. “You gon’ stay awhile this time, ceracatore?” he said, using an Italian word for “wanderer. ”

  “Sì.”

  He leaned over, kissed me on the forehead, squeezed my hand. We sat some more, still not talking. Just sitting, holding hands, enjoying our moment. Me, Zio Nello, and the ticking clock. It was nice.

  Sal dropped in after dinner. We made some patter in the living room with the family, then I steered him outside with my eyes. I flamed a smoke on the porch and hot-boxed one for him even though I still had my lighter in my hand. It just seemed like the thing to do, a nod toward long-ago days.

  We went for a turn around the block as I detailed the McBride encounter for him, his Are you kidding mes getting louder each time he repeated them. By the end of the fourth block and an espresso at Café Napoli, I had revisited the Carpaccio meeting as well, unconvinced that the mobster and the mick were cohorts, but flabbergasted by the apparently citywide notion that I was the missing link to Chicago’s long-dead capo massimo.

  Sal shook his head in disbelief at me when I was done. “Can’t you just come back home for an easy week or two without turning the whole city on its ear?”

  “I don’t know, buddy, these things just happen to me like this. I’ve learned to roll with it. I want nothing to do with Carpaccio, but the McBride thing intrigues a bit. Whatcha doin’ tomorrow—working?”

  He grinned in satisfaction “Uh-uh. I’m off. I already told you that, but you never listen.”

  “So you’re saying . . .”

  He sighed heavily, slapped his thick legs with his hands. “That I’m free to go treasure hunting tomorrow. Me and my long-lost crazy friend who’s come back to town to remind me how much fun I’ve missed out on in life by playing it straight.”

  I beamed at him. “Attaboy, Sal-ee pal. If we aren’t careful, we just might get rich.”

  Claudia had phoned while Sal and I were out. Francesca took the call. Her smile told me I had good news waiting on the other end of the line. It was all I could do to wait for the wheel to spin back from each digit as I rang up her number.

  This time, she picked up. She said she couldn’t make the dinner invitation I’d extended but offered me some great news instead: Frank had scored her a gig in Uptown at the Green Mill. She’d be doing several performances every night through the weekend.

  “That’s marvelous, Claudia. When do you start?”

  “Tomorrow night. Maybe you can come if you aren’t too angry with me? I’d like to talk with you. . . . I’m very sorry about the other day.”

  I swung a triumphant fist. “Yes, yes, I’d love to come. How about tomorrow? How about all of them?”

  She giggled. “Mille grazie, Giuseppe.”

  “My pleasure. Be great to see you.”

  We exchanged a few more nervous pleasantries then rang off. She seemed a little hesitant still, but I was delighted for the opportunity to see her again. I fully intended to catch every show if it was all right with her.

  That set the rest of my week: mornings volunteering for Florence, afternoons on McBride’s fool’s errand, and evenings at the Green Mill in search of something of real value. The old Irishman was definitely right about one thing: Chicago was a city for big dreamers. It was all there for the taking.

  But he never said anything about the price.

  45

  The mercury had dropped daily. Sunday had been downright balmy, Monday just a little less so, Tuesday things had turned cooler, and Wednesday morning was just plain blustery.

  I was up early enough to see Francesca off, same as I had when she was the student and not the teacher. She still looked like a kid to me as she trundled off in her long wool coat and scarf, dark hair trailing out beneath a knit cap, but my mother reminded me she’d had her share of suitors over the years.

  I lingered over coffee in the kitchen, my mother and I filling some of the gaps we’d papered over with hugs and kisses thus far. She foxed a little more out of me than I would have liked, but I managed to grab the clipboard and head for the door when things began to get sticky.

  “Giuseppe,” she said to me as I slipped away, “we’ve needed you around here alla these years with Papà gone. I need you. Understand?”

  I paused in the doorway, met her penetrating eyes. “Sì, Mamma. I understand.”

  I meditated on her words as I walked the once-familiar streets, weighing what I’d built in California versus what I’d lost in Chicago, as if there were some scale that would so easily balance out on one side or the other. Each solid step, each cold exh
alation, each newly familiar sight beckoned me homeward, but a growing freight business, the half dozen people who worked for me, and the ties I’d made on the West Coast all compelled me to return.

  At ten thirty I headed up to Café Napoli for a warm-up espresso, the morning’s business done. There, I waited for Sal and studied old Signor LoGuardio’s face between glances at my map, planning the afternoon’s lark that just might help me make it all work out.

  The first location I chose was a long way off, relatively speaking. 7244 South Prairie Avenue was a sixty-block hike, and although the Dan Ryan freeway Daley had just rammed through Bronzeville was finished, we took the side streets so I could reminisce a little. Logistically, starting at the farthest point south made sense because we’d be able to work our way back to Taylor Street throughout the day. Instinctually, it was even better, for 7244 South Prairie Avenue was the one place that Chicago’s famous crime boss had always returned to throughout all his years of roving, pillaging, and hiding out. It was the place Al Capone had called home.

  When Capone had first begun to make it big with Johnny Torrio, he did what any up-and-comer would do: He bought a home for his family. Through his many changes of headquarters, vacation homes, and the occasional stretch in stir, the one constant was the family residence where his mother, wife, son, and sister lived. The last member of the Capone family had packed up years earlier, however, and legions of fortune seekers had no doubt scoured their way through the unassuming brownstone in the ensuing decades. Accordingly, we went in with low expectations.

  They were met.

  The old Lithuanian gent who answered the door was actually quite informative and more than willing to give us a full tour of the property, including the basement, the attic, and the backyard. A kind request—and a flash of a CPD badge—worked wonders like that. He seemed to be quite proud of owning that piece of Chicago history, soiled though it was, and especially thrilled to be showing it to a police officer. We looked over, we peered into, we asked myriad questions. We got squat.