My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  “Florence Scala?”

  There she was again. Florence, and the fight against Daley and his minions. Good and evil. As clear-cut as a razor swipe.

  McBride conjured up a puckish grin, pulled a cigar out of his pocket. He bit off the tip and spit it on the Pump Room floor. I hit the Cuban with my lighter, watching the old man roll it over and over and over as he took several deep draws, the tobacco flaming brightly to life between us.

  He exhaled a dirty little cloud. “Buonomo,” he said avuncularly, “this is what you do, son. This is what you are. Stop running from your past—embrace it. You put your neck on the line for Uncle Sam a hundred times and what did you get? A couple tin medals. Then you did it for Chiang Kai-shek for a few yuan. Now you do it for Frank Sinatra for God knows what. You are a crusader—same as the Knights Templar—but even they got rich in the bargain. C’mon, Joe, get smart. Help the old Irishman out. Help your family out. Help . . . yourself out. Play for the money—just this once.”

  He paused, a smirk betraying the mirth he was suppressing. “Hell’s bells, why not? Right?”

  He laughed quietly to himself, took a long drag from his torpedo, and leaned back, hands behind his head.

  I stared long and hard at the Mephistophelian figure across from me in the booth, features obscured by the roiling smoke but that gold-flecked eye sparkling like a doubloon, that ancient face gleaming with its light as it broke into the long, deep curve of a very knowing smile.

  50

  Having just witnessed McBride’s Oscar-caliber performance, I scratched the movie off my list, electing to grab a quick bite instead after our drink. I went down the street, ducked into Skinny’s, eye-checked Marco Kabreros behind the glass.

  “Hey, how ya doing, vre?” he called out over the counter.

  I touched a hand to my bruised gut. “Been better.”

  “Ahh. Maybe it’s da weather. Turnin’ chilly out dere.”

  I glanced out the window. “Yeah. Looks like.”

  “Youse wanna coffee maybe? Warm ya up.”

  I thought it over a second, shook him off. “Just a dog. I got a belt in me already—startin’ early today.”

  He nodded knowingly. “I got somethin’ for dat,” he declared, as he reached underneath the counter. He checked the window then pulled out a bottle of ouzo, brandishing it proudly between us.

  I grinned at him. “Tempting. How’s da coffee anyway?” I asked, hearing the local dialect in my speech again for the first time.

  “Lousy. So . . . cup’a coffee, splash’a da good stuff then?”

  I pointed two fingers at the counter. “Hit me.”

  He poured some brew into a white ceramic mug, floated a slick of the Greek hooch on top, pushed it all toward me. Then he made himself one, too, sans java.

  He raised his cup. “Yamas.”

  “Salute,” I replied.

  We drank.

  He put his cup down, wiped his mouth. “Nice suit,” he observed.

  “Thanks. Guess who?”

  “Figured. You some kinda manager or somethin’?”

  I took another sip. “No. Just a face in the crowd.”

  He scoffed at me, waved his hand.

  “Say . . . this ‘coffee’ ain’t bad, Marco. How much?”

  “Who you kiddin’? You bring Frank Sinatra to my joint, he dukes me a centurion, and you wanna pay twenty-five cents for a cup of loaded coffee? C’monnnn! On da house.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Think nutin’ of it. Coupl’a more tips like that and I can get my fishing business up again.”

  I looked up at the many black-and-white photos of Marco and some other fellows on the wall. They were workingmen, smiling with pride at the large fish either in their hands or packed in iceboxes on an old trawler, their slimy aprons and grimy flannels proof enough of the hard work done.

  “Whaddya got there, coho?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Lake trout, too. Even chinook sometimes. Yep . . . those were soooome days.”

  His voice trailed off as he faded into a reverie.

  I left him out there awhile, then reeled him back, “That your boat?”

  “Yeah,” he said, returning to shore, “the Pelecanos. Good boat—damn good boat. She’s impounded now at Chicago harbor, just rotting away. I’ll get her back, though. . . . One of these days.”

  He started off into another daydream. I brought him back again just long enough to get a char dogs and fries then headed out to catch the Howard Line “L.”

  A familiar Imperial was idling out front on Division Street. It was getting so I expected it.

  I walked up, climbed in the front seat, shut the door. No one even had to show me a gun.

  “Where to?” Ronnie asked. “Mr. McBride said I should offer you a ride.”

  “Did he now?” I replied, only mildly surprised. “Well, take me to Uptown then,” I said. “Got a date with a lady.”

  51

  Traffic was already picking up. We started on Clark, jogged over to Lincoln. Ronnie said it was faster even though it ran farther west. I would’ve taken the Drive, but who was I to argue anymore?

  I enjoyed the sights, the neon warming to life as evening set in. Ronnie and I made some small talk as we wended north. He turned out to be pretty thoughtful for a guy who threw people off piers.

  Ten minutes in, we passed the Biograph Theater, forever linked to the demise of John Dillinger, a criminal less accomplished than Al Capone but perhaps even more adored by Depression-era America.

  We turned right on Ashland, caught a light. I took in the storefronts, the people, the cars, the pulse of the city. A battered facade a few doors up drew my eye. It was an easy seventy-five years old and none too well maintained. The Wigwam was painted on a small marquee in faded multicolored letters beneath a badly weathered bust of an Indian chief, his splintered gray eyes overseeing the liquor stores and pawnshops of his dominion. A sign in the glass said, “Big chief make war on high prices. Him declare nickel beer night at Wigwam every Tuesday! Heap good deal!”

  I looked back inside, caught Ronnie interrogating my face. There was an awkward silence. The light changed. Ronnie tapped the accelerator and we drove off, leaving the chief behind to his station. A guilt-edged pang of emotion rippled through me.

  “Ask you something, Ronnie?”

  He braked suddenly for a stoop-backed old woman who had darted into the street, glanced over at me, his eyes inviting the question.

  “Do you ever feel that—”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Every day.”

  “But still you work—”

  “For an organization that stands in living mockery of my people?”

  “Well . . . yes.”

  He looked across at me. “And yet I do their heavy lifting? Take out their trash, if you will?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  The Indian regarded me solemnly, pushed in the cigarette lighter in the center console, fingered his chin.

  “It’s complicated.”

  We rolled on another block without speaking.

  “McBride is a better man than you may think,” he said. “His family goes way, way back with mine.”

  “So you come from a long line of indentured servants?”

  The stare he gave me was cold and deep. “It isn’t like that. You know how this town works—you’re in or you’re out, and we Potawatomi have been out since 1833. No one gave a damn about anything we ever had except our land. At least the McBride family gave us a halfway decent buck for it—most of it was stolen in broad daylight. Need the history lesson?”

  The cigarette lighter popped up. I offered him a Lucky. He waved me off curtly, drew a hand-roll from a slender wooden case, touched the lighter to it.

  “I’m okay on the history, Ronnie; I went to school here.”

  He
took in some smoke. “You mean you’re okay on the white man’s version.”

  “Easy there,” I shot back. “We both know the story of this town begins with the boosting of the Potawatomi lands along the river. Even as a kid I could see through the mythology.”

  He exhaled, grinned ruefully. “Mythology. That’s good. Thought only we Indians had myths.”

  “You know what I mean—that Manifest Destiny horseshit. And knock off the self-pity. You don’t strike me as much of a victim.”

  He chuckled. “Touché.”

  We went back and forth awhile, the litany of broken treaties, lies, and outright theft laid bare. But Ronnie also took pains to point out how the Potawatomi, the Fox, the Sauk, the Algonquin, the Illinois, and other tribes had taken land from one another repeatedly in the preceding centuries. It was all part of one continuum to him. In the end, he was less concerned with the wrongs of history than the exigencies of the present.

  “It’s true my people have endured great hardships,” he concluded, “but still we have endured.”

  He swept a sinewy hand across the breadth of the windshield. “This is the world we’ve been accorded. I make my way in it as best I can.” Ronnie’s hand drifted farther back, a lone finger pointing directly at me. “Same as you.”

  There was another prolonged silence broken only by a honking horn somewhere. Then Ronnie added, “My family is none too particular about how I get the money I send them anyhow—they’re too busy trying to get through the day.”

  “Family?” I asked.

  He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, blew smoke through his nostrils. “Out west—Iowa. They put us across the river, where no one has to see us. Far from ‘civilized’ people, far from ‘Checagou,’” he said, an ironic grin twisting his mouth as he uttered the original name for the land upon which Fort Dearborn had been built.

  “Like it out there?”

  He gestured dismissively. “Ahhh. It’s okay—I go sometimes, but I’m more of a city guy. I was raised here. This place is in my bones.”

  “Even so?”

  He nodded. “Especially so.”

  We crossed an intersection, passed a city park, its withered grass choked with leaves from fallen maples, its small grounds deserted.

  “Get lonely much?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered softly. “But it’s funny you’d ask that.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I do have an Indian name, actually. Orphaned Bear.”

  “I’ll be damned. That some kind of prophecy? You all alone here?”

  “Oh no, never. We’re still here in spirit you know—Osceola, Mohawk, Winnemac, Washtenaw, Wabash,” he said, smiling as he ticked off street names on his fingers.

  I cocked my head, grinned wryly. “Planning on a comeback?”

  He shrugged. “Anything is possible. Chief Ottawa rose up once. Black Hawk, too. You want a prophecy? The way this country and the Russians are going at it, we could all be gone soon.”

  He had a private laugh with himself then mused aloud softly, “Who knows, maybe wild onions will bloom here again one day.”

  My Indian guide and I rolled on into the cool blue Chicago evening. He said very little the rest of the way, but that thin smile remained planted on his dark lips, a brief sparkle of vermillion glimmering in his faraway black eyes as the last flash of twilight extinguished in the west.

  52

  Ronnie let me out at Wilson. I had some time to kill before the first show, so I wandered up Broadway, peeking in storefronts. I passed a beat-up saloon called Ballinger’s, its shamrock-festooned signage proudly proclaiming the owner’s Celtic heritage. Back came McBride.

  I ducked in and ordered a shot and a beer, trying my best to drown away the Irishman and get back to thinking about Claudia.

  It took a little while, but the rye and the pilsner did what they were supposed to do. Soon enough, I was revisiting my brief interludes with Claudia, musing pleasantly over a Lucky on the promise of things yet to come. About the eighth time I checked my watch, I decided it was time to trade my barstool for one up the street at the Green Mill.

  Some no-neck at the door tried to tell me I was too early, but Pauly Sitko saw me jawing with him and eagerly waved me in, shouting for the bulldozer to ease up.

  Pauly greeted me with a solid handshake as I pulled up to the barstool closest to the stage. “Hi, Joe, what’ll it be, kid?”

  “Hey, Pauly.” I nodded back toward Mister Five by Five. “What’s with the talking gorilla?”

  He waved a hand like a ham hock toward the door. “Ahhhh. Some new guy, first day. He ain’t gonna get to be old around here, I can tell you that.”

  I puzzled over that one a second.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” he asked. “Flame of Love? Rusty Nail? Old-fashioned?”

  “I dunno, maybe a water. I got a couple—three—down already.”

  “Screw you, too, pal. Come on, whatcha drinkin’ already?”

  “Okay . . . Schlitz or something. I’ve got a date meeting me later and I don’t wanna get sloppy.”

  He chuckled at me. “Christ, you’re a grinder just like that Sinatra, aren’t ya? I shoulda known.”

  “Nah. This one’s a nice girl. From out of town.”

  He thought it over, shrugged his leathery face. “Sounds all right, I guess.”

  “She sings a little . . .” I added, throwing in a wink.

  He looked at me, cheesing up to his ears, “Get oudda here! Signorina Hubba Hubba? You dirty dago!”

  I minted a return grin. “Like you didn’t used to take ’em in threes, you old Polack hustler.”

  He spun a coaster onto the wood, slid a frosted schooner of Dorfer on top of it. “Try this. Best German beer in this crooked Irishman’s town.”

  I pulled my money clip out of my pocket, tossed it down on a bar top with the history of Chicago gouged into its nicked and burned surface. Pauly cut me off with a wave.

  “Your money’s no good here tonight, pal. The blue-eyed Sicilian tipped a gino on a three-hundred-dollar tab the other night. You’re home free, kid.”

  “That’s Frank for you.”

  Sinatra was out of town now, but it was shaping up as a Frank kind of night: a show at a legendary club, a date with a beautiful woman, the run of the bar, and the friendship of the tender. I smiled at my turn of luck. In just a matter of hours, I’d improved my hand from Four Deuces to four aces.

  53

  Claudia’s first set was little more than a rehearsal, but I got that lump when I saw her come out onstage. Those red lips parted sensuously when I gave her the high sign with my smoke hand, but I stayed at the bar, letting her concentrate on her performance.

  She tore it up—for the fifteen people on hand—but I had a feeling Frank would pack the joint with a “be there or else” commanded audience of friends for the ten-thirty show. Sure enough, they began to trickle in by ones and twos as her set progressed. By the time she closed with “Arrivederci Roma,” the place was close to half full.

  She took several bows and disappeared offstage. Pauly sidled up behind me, leaned down on burly arms extending beneath his rolled and braced sleeves, and said ever so gently, “She’s somethin’, brother. That kid could go places.”

  Leaning back, I gave a pat to his tattooed bicep. “Maybe with me.”

  I felt a hand on my own arm then. I turned, and an angel kissed me. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t melted since the fourth grade when Mia Di Laurenzo planted one on me behind the auditorium curtain, but I got pretty soft around the edges just the same.

  “Ciao, bella,” I purred. “You were great up there.”

  “Grazie,” she said, holding her smile awhile. She might not have melted either, but I’m pretty sure she blushed.

  We kicked it around a bit as a crowd filed in. I got so caught u
p chatting with her that I missed a chance at a good booth for the second show.

  “Mi dispiace, amore,” I said in chagrin. “Looks like I gotta watch this one with Pauly again.”

  “No, Joe,” she said, tugging at my hand, “I get you the best table on the side—so you can see and I don’t get too distracted watching you.”

  Claudia stood up and we walked toward the front of the darkened room, she unashamedly squeezing my hand on the way. She led me to the first booth on the right-hand side and proudly pointed out the handwritten reserved for joe buonomo sign on the table.

  “Okay, gotta go now. See you soon, okay?” she said.

  I wanted to smooch her one right there but thought better of it. Instead, I blew her a kiss and wished her good luck.

  She smiled, and then she was off. A waitress in fishnets and red satin came by a few minutes later with a cocktail I recognized from its sweet odor.

  “Pauly says you’d be wanting one of these,” she said above the gathering din. “He called it a Flame of Love. Smells like burnt orange or somethin’. Says to tell you that you are one lucky son of a bitch.”

  It was hard to disagree.

  People kept pouring into the place as we neared the appointed hour. By the time Claudia came on, they were two to three deep behind the bar. Frank had delivered as usual—and there were too many familiar faces from the Villa Venice for it to be a coincidence. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing considering the company.

  Her show came on as scheduled. I sat back in my private booth, taking it in: the flaming torch singer in the emerald dress, the captivated crowd, the Beaux-Arts paintings and the voluptuously curved woodwork in the smoky room, the bite of the whiskey I was now working over, the stirring sound of Claudia’s strong voice. It was a helluva scene. I was maybe drinking a little too much, but I needed to vent off a blast or two and I was a long way north of my troubles on the South Side of town.

  Claudia scorched the joint, closing out to a big ovation from the crowd. I couldn’t be sure about their sincerity but had no doubts about my own. After she took a bow and blew a few kisses, she came right over to my table. I stood and let her slide in, then took my place at her arm. She told me there wouldn’t be a third nightly show until Friday, but that she wanted to see the hard jazz quintet coming on next. I caught fishnet and satin’s eye and ordered a bottle of Prosecco for which, of course, I was not allowed to pay.