Doyle leaned back in his chair. ‘Something he wouldn’t walk away from without it dirtying the family name a little?’ he said.
‘A lot,’ I replied. ‘Something that could be held in limbo, something that could come out of the woodwork if the developer doesn’t see eye to eye with Mr McGowan.’
‘And if this could be done, then I’m sure it would mean a good word in Mr McGowan’s ear for me, right?’
‘And a good word in Mr McGowan’s ear is a good word to Kyle Brennan,’ I said. ‘I figure you might find yourself working somewhere a little more upmarket if this goes the way we want it to go.’
Doyle grinned. ‘I think we can fix something up, Mr-?’
‘Perez,’ I said. ‘My name is Perez.’
‘I think Mr James Hackley will be gettin’ a polite invitation to see something a little more colorful than whatever the hell he might be watching tonight.’
It was that simple.
Three days later James Hackley was arrested in the back room of a small cinema on Penn Street. Three other ‘clients’ were arrested with him. They were charged with ‘solicitation to view minors engaged in illegal sexual activities’. Michael Doyle had organized a private showing of some kiddie porn. James Hackley was arraigned and bound over, bailed for thirty thousand dollars, and scheduled to appear for further questioning on 11 December.
On 9 December a brief conversation took place between the captain of the Chicago Police Precinct where Hackley had been charged and two of Kyle Brennan’s trusted consiglieres. A deal was made. A contribution of an undisclosed sum would be willed to the 13th Precinct Widows and Orphans Fund within the week if the charges against Hackley were dropped for lack of evidence.
Two hours later, one of those same consiglieres met with a reputable and upstanding member of the Chicago Rejuvenation Council on a park bench near Howard Street. The conversation lasted no more than fifteen minutes. The men, one of them a crestfallen and dejected-looking David Hackley, walked away without a word.
On Thursday 16 December, 1982, David Hackley rose before the Chicago City Council Board Meeting and presented his case. He advised in the most determined and unreasonable words that planning permission to redevelop the northside of Chicago at this time be denied. He presented a good case, even issued an eleven-page proposal as to why such a move would be detrimental to the history and character of the city.
The Council came back with a unanimous decision on the twenty-second, three weeks ahead of schedule. Permission to redevelop was denied. Paul Kaufman was sent home with his tail between his legs.
The following day, 23 December, just in time for Christmas, all charges against James Hackley were dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence.
The Cicero Gang were joyous, as was Don Calligaris. We had an Irish-Italian party at a club on Plymouth Street on the northside, and I met Kyle Brennan. He gave Angelina five hundred dollars
For the subsequent eight years, as we watched our children grow, heard them speak their first words, saw them learn their first alphabet and write their first sentences, we stayed in Chicago. We kept the same house down the street from Don Calligaris and his own extended family. I cannot say that there weren’t times that I was required to go back to my old trade, to exercise my muscles and consign some miscreant to the hereafter, but those times were few and far between. It was approaching the end of the decade, the world had grown up also, and as I reached my fifty-third birthday in August of 1990 – as I stood at the doorway of my house and watched as Victor and Lucia, now eight years old, came running down the street from where the schoolbus had let them off – my mind turned to thoughts of where I would go when I became too old for such things. The world was changing. Influences from Eastern Europe were cutting across the family’s business in America. Streetgangs of teenage youths were killing one another with no more mercy than one would kill an insect. Russians and Poles and Jamaicans were all providing supply lines for weapons and drugs and hookers, and they had the manpower and artillery to command and maintain their place at the table. We were aware of what was happening, and we believed that the generation following ours would have to fight so much harder than we did to keep any part of our operations alive. But we also knew that, just as you could never resign from such a life as this, so you could not retire. You were permitted to see out your latter days in Florida perhaps, even California near the mountains, but you were always there, always remembered, and if there was some action that needed to be taken and your presence was required, then so be it.
Don Calligaris himself was close to sixty-five, and though Chicago had served him well I could see his thoughts also turning to where he might go and what he might become when working was no longer an option.
‘Time has closed up on us,’ he said one time. ‘It comes and goes in an instant, it seems. I can remember running down the street as a child, thinking that a day lasted for ever. Now most of the day has gone by the time I have eaten my breakfast.’
We sat in the kitchen of his house. Ten Cent was in front watching TV.
‘My children keep me thinking like a teenager,’ I said.
‘How old are they now?’
‘Eight last June.’
Calligaris shook his head. ‘Eight years old… I remember when Ten Cent used to carry both of them in one arm.’
I laughed. ‘Now my son Victor, he could probably wrestle Ten Cent to the ground. He is a tough little man, the head of the house as far as he is concerned.’
‘But his sister, she is smart like most girls,’ Don Calligaris said. ‘The men are the head of the house, but the girls, they are the neck, and they can turn the head any which way they please.’
I heard the phone then, and with it came a sense of foreboding. Business had been without trouble for some time, and there had been no calls for the better part of a month.
I heard Ten Cent shut down the TV and walk out into the front hall.
‘
‘Don Calligaris, it is for you, from upstairs.’
‘Upstairs’ was the word we used for the boss and his people; ‘upstairs’ meant that something was going to happen, something that would require us.
I listened for words I could understand in Don Calligaris’s conversation, brief though it was, but despite all my years with these people I had never taken the time to learn Italian. I tried to speak Spanish as often as I could, even to myself, but Italian, though similar in many ways, just seemed too difficult to manage.
Don Calligaris was no more than a minute, and then he returned to the kitchen and looked at me.
‘We have a sit-down,’ he said.
‘Now?’ I asked.
‘Tonight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Three hours from now at Don Accardo’s restaurant. He wants all three of us, and there will be a good few more, I think.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘I don’t know, Ernesto, so don’t ask me. We do not discuss details on the telephone. All I know is that we meet at seven at the trattoria.’
I went home to dress. I spoke with Angel, told her not to wait up for me. The children were away with some friends and would return later. I told her to say goodnight to them for me, to tell them I would see them in the morning.
I looked at her, a woman of forty-four, but still in her eyes that difficult and awkward young woman I had first met in New York.
‘You have made my life something of which to be proud,’ I told her.
She frowned. ‘What is this? Why are you talking like that?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I have been thinking the past few days that I am becoming an old man-’
She laughed. ‘There are few old men who have as much energy as you, Ernesto Perez.’
I raised my hand. ‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking that soon it will be time to make some changes, to find somewhere to live where the children will be away from all this.’
