by Tod Goldberg
“I don’t get a hello?” Sugar said now. “Know me since third grade, you can’t even say hi? Gotta come up here all tough girl.” He grabbed her up in his arms before she could stop him, hugging her, but really patting her down, around her shoulders, down to the small of her back, not rough, but she could feel his fingers on her skin, could smell his sweat when he pressed her against his chest. Could also feel the grip of his gun poking into her ribs. “Easy, sis,” he whispered into her hair when she tensed up. “Be real easy.”
He set her down a foot away, made eye contact with her for half a second before he launched into a story.
“You see that, Mike? This girl, she’s hundred-percent legit, but back in the day, let me tell you, this was the bitch you wanted, and her old man? He once walked up into the Viewpoint, kicked open that old back door, off the dance floor? The wood one? Kicked right fucking through it, cuz, see, he always wore these steel-toed work boots. What did he do, meat packing or something? Something hard, right? Union man, didn’t take a dime wasn’t on his paycheck. Anyway, kicks in the fucking door, where they’re banding cash from the book, and that motherfucker, he’s like, this is my local right here, you start doing your gangster shit in here, I got nowhere to drink, and that was it! Straight up. Everyone on the block knew you didn’t dick around with old man Frangello, and then he made sweet little Jennie Frangello and, boy, that was that.”
Jennifer didn’t know what the hell Sugar was talking about, and from the looks of him, he didn’t either. Her father had been middle management at Montgomery Ward corporate, working in catalog sales, first in tools, later in home appliances, was at his desk on the fifth floor of the Mail Order House building on the river when Jennifer’s mom died of a heart attack, was at the same desk when he died of pancreatic cancer, which was never even diagnosed. That whole Montgomery Ward building was going to be condos by the end of the year. Great view if you didn’t mind being haunted by the ghost of Leopold Frangello, who everyone in the neighborhood knew was the guy you went to when you needed a stove and had to put it on layaway, but didn’t want anyone to know, because gangsters were always broke.
“That’s right,” Jennifer said.
Sugar nodded almost imperceptibly, just a slight dip of his chin, then went on. “You know who she ended up with? The Rain Man.”
“For real?” Mike said to Jennifer.
“For real,” Jennifer said.
“Mad love,” Mike said. He had a slight accent, like he was trying to sound street but had actually grown up in Lincoln Park. Jennifer guessed he was maybe twenty-one; she was almost twice his age and she’d never had diamond earrings so nice. He wasn’t Italian, she could tell that much, which made Sugar’s deference even more odd.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Respect,” Mike said. “Like that I respect you for hooking up with him.”
“I didn’t hook up with him,” Jennifer said. “We got married and started a family. It’s what normal people do every day.” She tried to peer into Ronnie’s room, to see if Sharon was inside, but the door was only cracked open a few inches. She heard a man’s voice talking, so she tapped it open another inch with her foot, tried to get a wider look. “You know, like your parents?” She made out Ronnie in the bed, propped up, his head encased in a metal halo, keeping his neck in place. His black hair, usually combed and parted like a Republican congressman’s, stuck out wildly and Jennifer could see that his silver roots were coming through. His eyes were half open, as if maybe he was in a twilight sleep. How long had he been here? Papers said a week. She guessed closer to a month, judging from his hair alone. She didn’t imagine falling on a golf course would put you in a halo, either. She leaned forward, tried to make out the rest of the room, saw the coil of a phone cord stretched out across the bed, realized the man’s voice she heard was someone talking on the phone. Mike caught the door and closed it once he realized what was going on.
“Boss is in a meeting,” he said.
“Looks like your boss is in a coma,” Jennifer said.
“That’s not my boss,” he said, like they were doing that bit from The Pink Panther her dad used to love. Does your dog bite?
Sugar cleared his throat. “You here to see Ronnie, Jennie? Because no one was expecting you.”
“Sharon, actually,” she said.
“She’s out of town,” Sugar said.
“Since when?”
Sugar shifted from foot to foot. “She went to their place in the U.P.,” Sugar said, trying to give her that keep-your-fucking-mouth-closed look. Ronnie didn’t have a place in the U.P., far as Jennifer knew. “Cool out for a few weeks. Been so fucking hot here.”
“Kids, too?” Sugar cocked his head, confused. “She take them out of school?” she said, giving him some help.
“Yeah,” Sugar said, “yeah. That’s what she did.”
“And just left Cousin Ronnie here with that thing on his head?”
Sugar tugged at the lanyard around his neck, didn’t say anything.
“I had a thing happen to me at Mount Carmel,” Jennifer said. “One of your cops threatened me and my son.”
“Not our cops,” Sugar said.
“I’m sure,” Jennifer said. “Look, I don’t care what you people do. It’s your problem. But by rights, my son could have this whole family in a few years if he wanted it. So this bullshit? It needs to stop. I’m just trying to get by, okay?”
“I’ll tell Ronnie,” Sugar said.
“How?” Jennifer asked. “Telepathy?”
Nothing.
What the hell was going on? She looked at Sugar’s left hand. He still wore a wedding ring, so that was something.
“How’s Bonnie, Sugar?”
Nothing.
“She been to see Hannah lately? Weren’t they friends?”
“She don’t get down this way much anymore,” Sugar said.
“That’s good,” Jennifer said. “Being a wife in this family turns out to be a pretty dangerous job.”
The sound of laughing came from Ronnie’s room.
“Why don’t you come back next week,” Sugar said.
More laughing. Whoever was on the phone in there was getting some good news.
“Boy king and shit?” Mike said.
“What?” Jennifer said.
“Your son. He even walk across the street on his own yet? Or you still holding his hand?”
“What about you?” Jennifer said. “Who holds your hand?”
“Hey,” Sugar said. “Be easy, sis.”
Mike laughed in a queer way. “You think birthright matters? This isn’t the old ways, lady.” He waved her off with the back of his hand.
The door opened then and a man Jennifer didn’t recognize stepped out. He had on a white open-collared dress shirt, a cream-colored linen blazer, jeans, those slip-on shoes people with money wear with everything. He was in his early forties, black hair, smelled like that awful peach body spray strippers liked to douse on themselves. He gave Jennifer a cursory once-over, let out a little snort, maybe of approval, maybe of derision, Jennifer couldn’t tell. He slid on a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses, motioned at Sugar and Mike with a nod of his head, and they followed him back down the hall. Sugar gave Jennifer a sideways glance, but Jennifer didn’t know what it meant.
All these guys and their fucking sideways glances. Sal used to come home from work, lie in bed, and stew. It wasn’t about the job—he did what he did, he didn’t say shit to her about it—it was about what amounted to office politics. Everyone trying out moves they’d learned watching the same five movies over and over again.
Jennifer pushed open Ronnie’s door.
The room was empty, save for Ronnie and the litany of machines he was hooked up to, though she saw his hospital phone was back on the otherwise empty table next to him. No flowers. No pictures. The two sof
as at the far end of the room had no wrinkles in them. There were no magazines or books. The TV was off. No hint of Sharon and the kids in the least. Ronnie Cupertine, who’d run the Family for decades, who always had two or three guys with him wherever he went, was all alone. Jennifer could make a few calls to old friends who’d be very happy with this knowledge. Might even pay her for it.
She walked up next to the bed, examined Ronnie.
He was missing most of his teeth, his jaw wired up with an elaborate series of what looked like cables and pulleys. His nose was little more than two slits. He had pins sticking out of his cheekbones. It was as if his face had been split in two and all that was left from the original version were his eyes, but even they were wrong, encircled with deep bruising and swollen until the skin looked slick, so that they seemed to melt into his forehead, which was stippled and dented, never mind the contraption screwed into his flesh.
This wasn’t sunstroke.
This wasn’t a stroke at all.
This was a beat down.
And then whatever came next, maybe that was a stroke or a heart attack or a seizure or something, whatever had left him in this state, but it started with something hitting his face.
Who would do that? If someone was going to beat the shit out of Ronnie Cupertine, why wouldn’t they just kill him? Who was going to let him live? That wasn’t how it worked. People who owed money might get beaten up, lose a finger, lose an eye, but if someone came at Ronnie Cupertine, it would be to take over the Family. Even Jennifer knew that much.
And if someone had tried and failed to put Ronnie down, that person would now be dead. There’d been nothing in the paper about any new Chicago gangland business, no gossip, just old stuff dredged up because of that Miami guy in Las Vegas who lost his strip club to the government, dumb crooks getting exposed, which always seemed to be a good reason to dig up a photo of Sal and put it in the paper somewhere.
Jennifer hustled out of Ronnie’s room, found the men on the closed-circuit TV screen, loping deliberately down the corridor, just like they’d seen in the movies. The guy with the tortoiseshell sunglasses was on his cell phone now, Mike a step behind him, also on his phone, Sugar a step behind Mike, head up, looking directly into the camera, like he was waiting for her to notice him. Jennifer sprinted down the hall as the men turned the corner toward the main portion of the floor, the two new guys dipping into the men’s room together, Sugar left to stand guard, the Ronald J. Cupertine Physical Rehabilitation Center bustling twenty feet behind him.
Two nurses huddled over a clipboard.
An orderly pushed a cart stacked with meals, Jennifer smelling asparagus.
A doctor, barely thirty years old, sucking on a pen, another pen behind his ear, paced in front of a room.
Jennifer stuck her hand inside her purse. The first couple months after Sal disappeared, she kept a gun with her, as if she were the gangster. What would she do now if she had that gun? Get all of these Gold Coast assholes onto the news, everyone forced to explain why they were getting medical care in a hospital wing paid for by a crook and killer . . .
But . . .
Wasn’t that it? They were all part of crime families, in one way or another. Jennifer. Sugar. The university hospital that took Ronnie’s money. Even the nurses and doctors. How many gunshot wounds had they treated here? How many beat downs? All of them bound to confidentiality and a blind eye for what? All the lines were kinked in this place. The only legit thing here was the pain.
Sugar took his lanyard off, wound the cord around both of his hands, pulled it tight. “You gonna do something,” he said, “do something. Don’t wait on it.”
“I’m at sea here, Bobby,” she said. She put her hands up. “I’m not in this shit, okay? Stop making me a part of it. I want out. Tell that to whoever makes those decisions.”
“If I knew who that was,” Sugar said, “I’d be in Maui, sipping cocktails. Do yourself a favor, sis.” Sugar looked over his shoulder at the bathroom. “Change your area code.” Jennie heard two toilets flush. Sugar dropped his lanyard onto the floor, kicked it away.
“I thought we were family. Isn’t that the story? That we’re family?”
The bathroom door opened and out came Peaches, followed by Mike, both of them still on their phones. Peaches saw Jennifer standing there, said, “Hold on,” into his phone, then handed it to Sugar. “You have a nice visit?”
“Who did that to my cousin?” Jennifer said.
“Oh, now he’s your cousin?” Peaches said. When Jennifer didn’t respond, he said, “You got any ideas?”
“We don’t speak.”
“He don’t speak to anyone anymore.” This got Mike to laugh, but Sugar stayed quiet. “Your husband been around?”
“If my husband were here,” Jennifer said, “we wouldn’t be talking in a hospital.”
“You think that?”
“You’re not from Chicago,” Jennifer said, “or you’d think that, too.”
“My family has been here a long time,” Peaches said. That got Mike to laugh again. “I am new to the area, that’s true, yeah.” He got close to Jennifer. Close enough that if she had that gun, she could pull it out and pop him in the head, but she’d be dead in about five seconds, since she could see now that Mike had a bulge on his ankle. No one frisks men’s ankles in hospitals. Plus, if she was dead, who would raise William? One of these assholes? Them or someone like them. “But I’ve been paying attention for a while now. I don’t see you out working the streets, not that you couldn’t make a few dollars, for a couple years yet, my guess, so I figure you’ve probably got a little money tucked away. Maybe Ronnie gave you a few dollars? Maybe his wife slipped you some cash? That’s over now.”
“Ronnie has never given me a cent.”
“Except for your house, right? It’s a nice house. If it was me,” he said, “I’d get a security system. Fix that window that looks out back, too. One with all that rot in the pane? The screen just pops right off. How long until you were in her room, nephew?”
“Twenty seconds,” Mike said.
“Nobody talks to me like this,” Jennifer said.
“Your husband,” Peaches said, “has left you in this position. Do you ever think about that? He climbed into a truck and drove off without you. What kind of man does that?”
“The kind that knows I can take care of myself.”
“And yet here you are, looking for help.” Peaches leaned in closer now. “I know he talked to the newspapers.” Quiet now. “I know that was him. I know he killed that FBI agent. And, girl, I know he’s been in contact with you. So go back to your pretty pictures,” Peaches said, “you’re embarrassing yourself.”
•
It was after one when Jennifer finally made it back to the museum, her office mate Stacy already at her desk, eating a salad with her fingers.
“You’re late,” Stacy said. Stacy wasn’t Jennifer’s boss, but she spoke to her like she was.
“I went to see a friend at the hospital,” Jennifer said. She’d taken a few minutes to sit with Hannah, to talk to her, tell her she was sorry for ever pretending this bullshit was normal. According to the nurse, once they took Hannah off the feeding tube, she’d be dead in a week, probably less.
What had Hannah ever done to deserve this but love Fat Monte? And for him to do her like that? He didn’t need to do it. He could have driven out to the woods and shot himself. Could have done it in the front seat of his car. Could have done it on the fifty-yard line of Soldier Field, on a Sunday, during football season, while the Bears were calling heads during the coin flip. Could have just cooperated with the FBI, done his time, figured out how to survive in prison for the rest of life, let his wife go, let her have her own life. But he chose to shoot his wife in the side of the head and then shoot himself, as if he couldn’t imagine a way she could live without him, as if her only worth was bein
g his wife.
Or maybe Fat Monte thought that someone else would come and kill Hannah after he was gone, or would torture her for whatever information she might have about all the dark shit he’d done, and so therefore what he was doing was mercy. And yet he’d fucked that all up, hadn’t even bothered to check to see if Hannah still had a pulse before he turned out his own lights. Sal was always complaining that Fat Monte wasn’t detail oriented, and there, in that hospital bed, was proof positive.
Sal would have at least finished the job, Jennifer thought. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but there it was.
Jennifer set her purse down on her desk, where it made a heavy clunk, enough that Stacy actually looked up.
“Your phone has been ringing like crazy,” she said.
That was weird. Jennifer called her voice mail, hoping it wasn’t Mount Carmel, calling to tell her that someone had cut off William’s ear.
No new messages.
She checked her cell phone. Nothing.
“When did they start coming in?” Jennifer said. Stacy gave her a blank stare. The woman had three college degrees and frequently couldn’t muster even rudimentary language. “The calls. When did they start coming in?”
“I don’t know,” Stacy said. “Last twenty minutes or so.”
“But not before that?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Stacy said. “I only noticed when it started to bother me.”
A feeling began to niggle at her, like she’d missed some detail, too. She stepped over to the window, looked outside. She made it a point to pay attention to her surroundings, keep an eye out for that man with the long gray beard—or at least the big black RV he drove—who had once come with a message from Sal. But on the street today it was just the normal tidal flow of people working their way up and down Michigan Avenue.
