My Kind of Town

by John Sandrolini

  Bo’palazzo showed all his teeth. “They aren’t all so old. Some of them are much younger,” he said, leering with clear intent. “So many poor little lambs out there in this dangerous world.”

  “Like who?” I demanded.

  The hired killer grinned again, cut right to Hecuba. “Like Miss Goldenthroat. Like that little kid sister of yours. That’s who.”

  I felt my face flush hot red, but I stayed cool, fighting down the urge to leap on him and beat his brains in with his own pistol on Miss Rutledge’s plush velour seats. I bit down hard and met his cold stare, but I let it ride. I let it all ride.

  Fully gratified, Vinnie stood up. The train lurched suddenly and he had to grab for an overhead railing to steady himself. I probably could have had him right there and taken his weapon, but it wasn’t the right time.

  He beamed at the development. “Not so quick to make a move without that bartender behind you, are you?”

  I looked on quietly, avoiding his gaze.

  Convinced that I was chickenshit, he declared, “I’m gonna go have a smoke. You go anywhere you want on the train, Buonomo—jump off for all I care. But you’re gonna tell us what we want to know first.”

  He extended an olive-colored finger toward my nose, almost touching it. “Or it’s off to Grandma’s house I go tomorrow.” Vinnie leaned down close, brazenly patting my hand as he snickered, “Ogni agnello ha un macello.”

  Then he turned and shimmied through the gently rocking car, his smug grin on full display in the window as he made his way aft toward the smoker.

  We had departed the state capital by then, city lights receding slowly in the darkness as the train rolled on through the ancestral lands of the Illiniwek. I remained rigid in my seat, sucking in shallow breaths as I steeled myself against the rising tide of fury within me, disturbing thoughts clouding my judgment.

  Or perhaps clarifying it.

  There were three ways to play it: The first was to tell Carpaccio what I knew, let him find the treasure, and spend the rest of my life waiting for two behind the ear. The second was to skip out on Bo’palazzo, score the treasure for myself, then use it to buy my way out of the bog in which I was slowly sinking. And wait the rest of my life for two behind the ear.

  The third option was more concrete.

  Bit by bit, the inevitability of where it was all headed became clearer. I debated it, grappled with it, rifled through the entire Why me? matrix. I didn’t want to be that guy ever again, but there didn’t appear to be anyone else standing in line for the job.

  I knew the answer all along, same as I had when the war had come: Some of us just get chosen. It didn’t matter what your life’s plans had been, whose fault it was, or whether you felt it was fair or not. Something far bigger and more important than you was dictating the terms and your number had been called.

  And the sooner you made your peace with that, the sooner you could go out and do what was necessary.

  The streamliner bored on. In the quiet land outside, the harvest was over, Indian summer a distant memory. The warm autumn days, with their hayrides and barn dances and pageantry of brilliant ochres and yellows, had given way to hoarfrost mornings, ragged lines of fleeing birds, and the endless brown expanse of the fallow landscape.

  I stood up, gazing out at the sere earth one final time. Barren roadways, darkened farmhouses, and row upon endless row of culled wheat fields flashed by outside like pages in a flip book, each image a portrait of rural solitude and emptiness.

  All of them foretelling the desolation of the coming midwestern winter.

  68

  It was after ten when I went looking for him. Most of the passengers were asleep in the darkened seats; a few others lingered over coffee in the dining car. None of them paid me any mind as I worked my way through the train toward the last car. When I reached it, I grabbed the chrome handle under the stenciled observation car sign and slid the door open. He was the only one inside.

  My thoughts were of my sister Francesca, and my brothers and their kids as I moved through the compartment. A face like Claudia’s beamed from the cover of a fashion magazine left on a tabletop, a flashback of her at my side blooming vividly in my mind.

  I walked past him, pressed my nose against the glass rectangle of the back door, and peeked out. Bo’palazzo grinned at me as I went by, probably still musing on what he had in store for his little lambs. The muscles in my jaw trembled as I thought about it.

  It would be nice to believe that the police could protect you from the Carpaccios and Bo’palazzos of the world. That was an understandable but dangerous fantasy. These were people who operated outside all boundaries of law and society, taking what they wanted from anyone they wanted, respecting only the rules of force and brutality. Pesce mangia pesce as they liked to say. Fish eat fish.

  Well, so be it.

  I grasped the metal door handle, pushed down, heard it click. In the glass, I saw Bo’palazzo regarding me quizzically. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

  Turning to face him, I made a smoking gesture, waited. He gave me a knowing nod and signaled me to go ahead.

  I stepped onto the metal platform and pushed on the heavy door behind me. The suction grabbed it, pulling it shut with a percussive thoomp. There was a din of rushing wind and the throbbing pulse of the big iron lady over the rails, but it was unnaturally calm in the vacuum of the slipstream. The night was jet black, the solid overcast shrouding the frigid skies like rolls of bunting. The pastoral air smelled faintly of fertilizer.

  Bo’palazzo, thinking better of his decision, burst through the portal, hand in his coat, and took up a station across from me. “Wouldn’t want you getting any crazy ideas all alone out here.”

  I leaned on the far side of the rail and turned toward Vinnie, pulling out my deck of Luckys. I shook one free, slid it between my lips, pulled out my Zippo and flipped the top open. “Me?”

  Bo’palazzo drew deep on his own cigarette. He glanced at the butt and then flicked it over the rail, out into the empty space behind the train to a resting place among the rails and ties, a prize for some hobo to unearth.

  “Cold out here,” I offered.

  “I guess,” he retorted, the long white cloud he exhaled resembling the steam that puffed out of the old locomotives that once crisscrossed the West. “Think about what I said?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You ready to tell me something now? We’ll be in Chicago in a couple hours and it’s better all around if I give the news to Carpaccio myself.”

  “Better for who?”

  He scowled. “You—and your little lambs.”

  A horn sounded down the tracks. Our engineer followed suit.

  “Ohh. The little lambs . . . of course.” I turned to the side, leaned over the rail next to him, inching nearer as I did. I took a drag on my cigarette, exhaled. “You know, Vinnie, it’s funny what you said back there.”

  “What?”

  “You know . . . ‘Ogni agnello ha un macello’—every lamb has his slaughterhouse.”

  “What about it?”

  “My father used to say that—picked it up in the old country. See . . . they had this old guy in his village, Signor Alighieri—”

  An oncoming freight train rushed up on the opposite tracks, the cars whizzing past like so many guillotine blades, mere feet away. I watched the mesmerizing blur of metal, felt the pull of the vortex as the rusty ore hoppers clattered by. Ten seconds later, they were gone in the night.

  Vinnie looked across at me as he reached for a cigarette, turned over an empty pack, threw that over the rail too. “Nuts, I’m out.”

  “Have one of mine. Those Chestys’ll kill ya.”

  He regarded me with suspicion. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Vinnie dug in his pocket for his matches, lit one, cursed as it immedia
tely flamed out in the wind. I extended my lighter, thumbed the wheel a couple of times. Bo’palazzo looked over skeptically, drilling holes in me with his stare.

  He thought it over several seconds then leaned over slightly, one hand in his coat, and put his face near the flame, his eyes riveted on mine. His features glowed reddish orange above his cupped hand as he drew on the coffin nail, the bright fire illuminating the scuffed old Flying Tiger logo on my Zippo.

  The train was approaching some other hazard. The engineer began tapping the air horn again, his signal blasting out in short staccato bursts as we neared the source of the caution.

  “So what about this old guy, Alizerri?” Bo’palazzo mumbled through clenched teeth as he straightened up.

  I put the lighter in my pocket, laid my hand casually on the grillwork above me. “Alighieri.”

  “Whoever the hell he was,” he replied tiredly. “Get to the point—what about him?”

  “Oh, not much. . . . He was kinda the wise man in my father’s village, that’s all. Quick with a quip, I guess. According to my father, he’d use that slaughterhouse expression whenever some big shot got taken down a notch. Hadn’t heard it in years, until you said it back there.”

  “Is that it?” he asked, exasperated.

  “No. He had others—lots of ’em. Wanna hear another?” I asked, a surge rushing through my veins as chemicals began to spike.

  He sighed. “Sure.”

  “Pesce mangia pesce.”

  He cocked his head, looked out blankly, working something over in his head. It seemed to click for him just then. “Hey, wasn’t he . . . ?”

  “Vin?”

  He looked up.

  “Say hello to Signor Alighieri for me.”

  Light gleamed in the matte gray eyes. His hands came up as I closed in, but he was far too late.

  The train rolled into a bend. We fell hard against the corner rail, our arms entwined in violence.

  The locomotive whipped through the turn, whistle blaring. There was a blur of winking red and the jarring of bells as the train crossed a rural highway. Bo’palazzo flailed hard for life, but my clutching hands found his tie, then his belt. I got him up on his back.

  The train slashed through the intersection and plunged back into blackness. I summoned all my strength and heaved, flinging him over the rail. Vinnie’s fingers tore at the empty space as he tumbled free, his mouth sprung wide in horror as yet another “soldier” gave the last full measure of devotion for his cause.

  Miss Ann Rutledge and her string of silver cars thundered on, oblivious to it all, even the plaintive wail that briefly eclipsed her horn. It rose sharply in the night, echoing deep into the starless sky, then fell silent, lost in the rolling field of black ties that played out endlessly in her wake, one after another after another after another.

  VI

  69

  The die was cast.

  All good resolutions were now gone, as were the fair. Only the shitty remained. But that’s the way it came down.

  At least I still had all the way to Chicago to figure things out.

  All ninety minutes.

  By myself.

  With the mob waiting for me at the station.

  In the end, I still had Sinatra, which gave me Giancana—maybe. Frank would have to find him first, of course. Old Sam sure as hell wasn’t going to be pleased that I’d red-lighted Bo’palazzo, but he’d be positively enraged if he found out that Carpaccio had been hunting around for Capone’s loot under his nose. So I had that chip. More importantly, I knew—or thought I knew—where the money was, and that was the best insurance policy I could get with either Giancana or Carpaccio. Nothing would bring Bo’palazzo back, but he was a small meatball at a big banquet; things could be set right if I got my hands on that stash. Nothing said “I’m sorry” at a mob funeral better than a briefcase full of greenbacks.

  •

  The train hit Chicago at 12:44. I got out at 12:43.

  With Vinnie gone, I was able to slip off the back of the observation car as the train slowed down during its approach to the station. Running low in the dark, I hopped four sets of tracks, then scampered up the far side of the platform and ducked into the station behind the two heavies waiting there. Allowing for some head scratching by the torpedoes, I figured Carpaccio might remain in the dark maybe five more minutes. After that, he’d be as hip as Kerouac.

  I dashed through the deserted Grand Concourse and broke into the Great Hall on the fly, my head on a swivel. As I headed for the staircase to the street, somebody behind me shouted, “Dere he is!” So much for the five minutes.

  I took the steps in threes, threw open the station door, and bolted out to the curb, needing that car to be there more than I’d ever needed anything. Spinning right, I spied a lone taxi already pulling out. I looked left, saw nothing.

  My pulse quickening, I darted into the middle of Canal Street.

  A pair of headlights winked in the darkness. A transmission clicked into gear. Then a muscle-bound Buick lurched forward, speeding my way. It was not the car I was expecting to see.

  The metallic green sled roared up and screeched to a halt between the station and me. Fifty feet away, I heard the echoing of hooves as the heavies thundered up the marble stairs. The Buick’s passenger window powered down. I peered inside at the driver.

  He gave me back my stare. I froze for a second when I made his face. Through his window, I saw two men hit the stair top and burst out of the station.

  The car door flew open. The man at the wheel looked up at me and asked, “You just gonna stand there all night admiring the car, or get in?”

  I dove in and he balled the jack, ethyl surging through that big 401 when the pedal came down. The Electra cut loose with a banshee shriek, fishtailing crazily down Canal as I fumbled with the door, the sprinting henchmen shrinking fast in the rearview mirror.

  The driver spun a hard left on Adams, downshifting in the turn as I slid across the vinyl into the door. The rebound put us nearly shoulder to shoulder. I leaned into him and gazed with disbelief into his dark eyes. “Thanks.”

  He nodded, checked the road, stuck out his hand. We shook. My brother Fabrizio smiled at me then and said, “Think you’re the only guy in this family who knows how to jock around big iron?”

  70

  We cut up Clinton then ran west on Madison a half dozen blocks before heading back downtown, zigzagging north and east to make sure we weren’t being followed. We caught a red light at the river. I thought about what lay ahead, had a sudden pang.

  “As long as we’re going by the back forty, Fab, can you swing by the Ambassador East for me?”

  He looked over at me. “Thought you wanted me to drop you by the lake?”

  “I know, I know, but I need to see Claudia.”

  “Sure you got time? It’s almost one.”

  “We got time.”

  “All right, but those guys might be watching for us over there. Not too many cars on the street at this hour.”

  “Not too many cream-and-green Sherman tanks like this one, that’s for sure.”

  “Sherman? Get with the times, brother. I drove a Patton in Korea.”

  I stared at him. “What the hell are you doing here anyway? I asked Sal to pick me up.”

  Fabrizio gave me the look. “Sal’s watching the house. Whatsa matter, army guy not good enough for you?”

  I shook him off, put an arm around his neck, kissed his cheek. “No, you’re fine, just fine, brother of mine. You did great, thank you. Now just get us uptown, Audie Murphy.”

  The light changed. Fab turned left on Clark and drove north.

  “Mom know anyth
ing?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nah. Sal’s over all the time. Brings another uniform sometimes. They drink coffee, bullshit with Mom and Cesca.”

  “Good. He bring anyone tonight?”

  “Yeah. Colored guy. Nice kid. Sal says he’s a good cop.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  He swatted my arm. “I told ya . . . times change.”

  “Yeah.”

  We hit the Ambassador just after one. Fab let me out a block away, and I slipped in quietly without detecting anything suspicious on the way. I hadn’t told a living soul Claudia was there, but my heart was still in my throat. I’d called her from Alton but, of course, we hadn’t spoken since. My nerves began jangling on the elevator ride.

  The floor was deserted when I got out, but the light was on in Suite 805. An empty room-service platter sat on the floor outside. I’d asked her to stay inside, so that was a good sign. As I approached the door, I heard a strange humming tone then smiled when I realized it was the TV. She’d probably fallen asleep watching the late show.

  I slipped in the key, turned it softly, opened the door.

  The room was empty, a test pattern glowing on the television screen.

  My heart rate pegged. I ran to the bedroom, checked the bathroom and the closets. Nothing.

  Maybe she went out for smokes, I told myself. Crazy broad.

  I went back to the sitting room, spun around, looking for anything. The previous evening’s dress and shoes were in the corner, so she’d gotten new clothes somehow. I didn’t like that.

  Then I spied something on the TV, speared on a rabbit ear. It was a piece of hotel stationery. I walked over, removed it, folded it out flat on the set top, praying it was from Claudia.

  Then all I could feel were my knees buckling underneath me as I read the words:

  Got your canary. The Lexington Hotel. Bring the key.