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  My Kind of Town

  A Joe Buonomo Mystery

  JOHN SANDROLINI

  For my uncles, Emil Sandrolini,

  George Plumb, and Louie Esposito

  Giants lived here once.

  Hog butcher for the World,

  Toolmaker, Stacker of Wheat,

  Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

  Stormy, husky, brawling,

  City of the Big Shoulders

  —Carl Sandburg, “Chicago,” 1914

  I

  1

  CHICAGO, 1943

  We were throwing them back at the Vernon Park Tap, just Butch and me. There’d been some press earlier, along with the ubiquitous navy flack and a few overeager victory girls, but we’d managed to ditch them all along the way to my old Taylor Street neighborhood.

  Now the two of us were lining up the shots in our sights, dedicating them to lost comrades and knocking them down, one after another. So far, I had three confirmed, Butch, two and a probable, but there was little doubt we were both headed for ace that night.

  It felt good to be on the undercard with America’s biggest war hero as his PR tour swung through the heartland. But it was better still to have some time to talk with someone who understood, someone who’d lived it, someone who knew the value of talking about anything other than it. Tonight we weren’t navy poster boys pushing war bonds. We weren’t even fighter pilots. We were just two guys on barstools letting go of a little stress the old-fashioned way. And we were doing it alone.

  Or so I thought.

  There’d been an older gent down the rail from us for a while, but he’d gone off to the phone booth and then drifted out. Other than the tender, we’d been the only guys in the bar the last half hour. Butch had been telling me about his father, a man well known in Chicago before his murder in 1939, and far better after.

  About ten, a side of beef in a herringbone coat came through the door, shook off some weather, and threw his hat on the bar. He grabbed a seat two stools down and ordered a beer. He looked straight ahead. Mostly.

  Butch and I kept up our conversation, but quieter. Twenty minutes passed.

  Another man came in, sat at the far end of the bar. The big guy finished his beer then got up, put on his coat, and picked up his hat. He paused a moment, faced us.

  “Excuse me,” he asked, “but aren’t you Butch O’Hare—da fighter pilot?”

  Butch nudged my shoulder, gave me the “here we go again” wink.

  “Yes, that’s right. I am,” he replied.

  “Gee, imagine that . . . right here,” the big guy said. “The guy who shot down all them Japs. Can I shake your hand, mister?”

  Butch smiled, extended his arm. “Sure.”

  They shook. The big guy stood motionless, a toothy smile curling his purple lips.

  Butch matched his grin awhile, then said, “Nice to meet you.” He turned back toward me and began to speak again.

  “I . . . I heard you talking about your father,” our visitor interjected.

  Butch glanced back, a wary look on his face. “Yes, but it’s a private discussion with my friend here.”

  I took the opportunity to put some space between us. Spinning around on my stool, I held out a hand. “My name’s Joe. I’m home on leave. How’s about you just let us catch up quietly, please?”

  He wasn’t buying what I was selling, looking right past me toward Butch. “Yeah, yeah, I understand, Mr. O’Hare. But I knew him, see?”

  “I’m sorry,” Butch said. “I don’t care to discuss my father with strangers. That isn’t something we do back in St. Louis.”

  The big guy shrugged. “Okay . . . I was just hoping maybe you could tell me about him and Mister Capone—”

  “Hey,” I said, getting a little more Chicago about it, “he doesn’t want to talk about it—okay? Let it go, huh?”

  A fat guy in a wifebeater and a red-stained apron came out of the kitchen through the swinging doors, half a cigarette hanging out of the suet ball that passed for his face. He laid his big bare arms on the bar top, resting as close to the Formica as his Falstaffian gut allowed. I realized then that the tender had flown.

  “Sure ya won’t talk wit’ me?” the big guy chirped.

  “Hey—what is this?” Butch demanded.

  “Just a friendly conversation, pal—about your old man.”

  I got up, stood between the bruiser and Butch. The front door opened again, a jolt of cold air swirling in as another heavy stepped through. He grinned. Then he locked the door.

  The big guy leaned in, rested a hand upon the bar. I’d seen catcher’s mitts smaller than that hand.

  “Dis doesn’t have to be difficult, fellas,” he said, spreading his arms as if he were giving the benediction.

  The guy at the door stepped forward, hand in his pocket. I cut a glance at Butch. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Suddenly, I was grabbing a bottle from the bar top, slamming it down on the big guy’s forehead. He staggered backward in a shower of glass and Blatz, spewing obscenities. He was still wiping his eyes when I put him down for the long count with my barstool. I flung it at the other guys on my follow-through then and turned to shove Butch toward the kitchen, but he was already halfway there, his right arm buried to the elbow in the cook’s billowing apron.

  We flew through the swinging doors, stutter-stepped around a waiter, and shot out the back way, rigatoni dishes crashing down behind us as we bolted into the alley. Butch broke out ahead, spun, looked back at me. “It’s your neighborhood, Buonomo . . . which way?”

  Half a block away, the clang of a streetcar bell rang like a clarion through the gauzy air.

  “That way,” I shouted, pointing through the sleet. “Head toward Racine. We’ll jump that car!”

  “Check!”

  We tore down-alley, splashing through puddles, freezing water spraying up around our feet like shell bursts on the sea. Behind us, I could hear two of the hoods coming out of the restaurant, breaking into pursuit. The streetcar was just a few hundred feet away now, stopped dead on our side of the cross street.

  “Come on, Joe,” Butch shouted over his shoulder, his long, loping strides covering the last yards as the car began nudging forward.

  “Right behind you, Butch. Get on!”

  He leaped onto the running board, turned, extended a hand toward me.

  I stole one last look over my shoulder. We had a good lead but not good enough. It was a split-second decision.

  I took Butch’s hand then used his momentum against him as he pulled me, shoving him through the folding doors onto the floor of the car. I hit the street a second later.

  He staggered up, swinging on a strap and staring dumbstruck through the doors of the green-and-white trolley. He fought his way through them, started to jump off the rapidly accelerating car. I stabbed a finger toward him, bellowing, “You stay on that car, O’Hare! I can handle this!”

  He looked on, hurt, confused, into the growing distance between us.

  “Chicago’s not losing any Medal of Honor winners on my watch,” I yelled as the car rolled off across the intersection into the wintry night. “See you back at the Palmer House,” I promised, not knowing that I would never see him again.

  I turned toward the sound of charging feet, watched them close in, wondering if they might’ve been a little more careful about rushing headl
ong toward the men who just dropped two of their own. But those guys were never known for their grasp of the obvious.

  The toughs came on fast, legs pumping hard across the wet pavement. I dug in, squaring myself up in the boxer’s stance I’d learned in these streets, raising my fists before my face as the dark men converged on me, my lips parting in the faintest of grins as I leaned my first punch.

  II

  2

  THE GREAT PLAINS, 1963

  Tiny little squares of Nebraska crawled beneath me, the angled glass of the unheated cockpit window cool against my face, the O2 mask dangling from my hand delivering jolts of clearheadedness on demand. I was seriously hating life that morning, two hours into a cross-country flight and three hours into an epic case of the Old Crow shakes. The 100 percent pure oxygen was helping, but I’d been having more than a little trouble following the specification recitation from the test pilot. Somewhere in there, I’d drifted off, to a place I knew but long long ago, an old friend by my side.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder then, looked back with a start, caught a flash of the world’s most famous blue eyes.

  “Hey, paesan,” he said.

  I winched up half a smile through desiccated lips. “Hey.”

  He gestured with a hand. “What do you think of this little number, Joseph? Learjet makes ’em right down there in Bumfuck, Kansas, somewhere. They let me have this prototype all week for free just so I can see if I want one or not. Whatsay, Lindbergh?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Frank, you know I don’t know shit about jets. Better call Lindy.”

  “Lindbergh shmindbergh,” he replied. “A guy’s a great pilot, he’s a great pilot, and you’re the greatest goddamn pilot in the whole world.”

  I grinned at him. “You know how you can tell when a Sicilian is lying to you, Frank?”

  He smiled back, shook his head lightly. “C’mon. Stop it already.”

  Frank and I didn’t hang around much anymore, not after the way it all went down in Baja back in ’60. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but things could never be the same after that.

  So it came as no small surprise when that old bird Jilly Rizzo, Sinatra’s new number one guy, rousted me that morning on The Ragged Edge and declared without fanfare, “Mr. Sinatra would like that you should accompany him to Chicago today.”

  Now, Frank Sinatra was not a man many people refused, not without gulaglike consequences at least. The boy singer and the bow ties were long gone. Loved by millions and feared by thousands, Frank was a full-blown titan of the entertainment world: rich, famous, charming, magnanimous, and volatile. Very volatile. Infamously imperious, and inflexible to a fault as well, he was also genetically incapable of accepting no for an answer from almost any other man on Earth.

  There were three exceptions: Jack Kennedy, Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, and me. That was the list—in its entirety. And considering that Jilly had broken in on what would have been round two of my B-girl bacchanal, I had every reason in the world to tell the “Chairman of the Board” to go pound sand down a rat hole, but I figured I should at least say it to his face given all that we’d been through together.

  We barely had a chance to speak before departure. Frank had arrived, per usual, at the last minute by limo while I was going through preflight checks with the factory pilot. All I knew up till then was that Jilly had said Mister Sinatra needed me, which could’ve meant anything—including a pizza run—given Frank’s neediness. But when I buttonholed Frank at the boarding steps to interrogate him about the details, I found the look in his eyes deeply troubling. And when he said that he needed me needed me, I was in. A bond’s a bond.

  Then we were off for “the town Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down.” And as far as Sundays went, this weekend’s Bears–Packers showdown at Wrigley Field was shaping up as a battle for the ages—tickets to which, I decided on the spot, would be the compensation I’d be wringing from Sinatra for this impressment aboard ship.

  I had the virgin mother of a headache, and some very serious reservations about some things that lay ahead, but I also had seventeen thousand four hundred reasons of my own for being out of California for a few days anyway. And Chicago really was one helluva town.

  Besides, I hadn’t been home in a very long time.

  3

  The Chicago sky was steel gray with streaks of rain. Not bad for mid-November, really, but a little sketch for Meigs Field, Chicago’s pocket-size lakefront airport. The Lear pilot said he thought we had the numbers for a wet landing, but I knew his real precipitation concern was Lake Michigan, which bordered the field on three sides. I’d sat at bar tops longer than that runway—and seen too many friends go skidding into the Pacific off a carrier’s slick deck to tempt fate when we had better alternatives nearby. Sinatra pitched a royal bitch about it, but he capitulated when I went back into the cabin and pointedly reminded him that I, not he, was the “greatest goddamned pilot in the whole world.”

  Truth was, we probably would’ve been okay at Meigs, but taking foolish chances wasn’t something I got paid to do anymore. And since I’d already been shanghaied away from a beautiful brunette sunrise by Frank, I’d be damned if I was going to risk getting my feet wet just to save him thirty minutes on his drive time across town. There was something I needed to do at the other field anyway, someone I wanted to pay my respects to.

  “Okay, kid,” I said to the company pilot as we began our descent, “it’s settled. Let’s go take a crack at the world’s busiest airport: Chicago O’Hare.”

  We touched down just after two. Five minutes later, the kid taxied into Reiger Aviation and shut her down. We’d radioed ahead to Meigs to alert Frank’s limo service about the change, but they were still in transit. Frank and I killed time burning a smoke in the charter building while Jilly schlepped the bags down. Frank was edgy; he didn’t like waiting.

  “Lousy day,” he opined.

  “I dunno,” I said, “rain’s already stopped, and there’s better weather coming in—what we had most of the way. It’ll clear up by this evening.”

  “Good. ’Cuz I got a big night planned for us, and rain ain’t a part of it.”

  I couldn’t suppress a smirk. “I’m sure that you made that request with God himself, huh?”

  “Frank Sinatra is big, pal, but he ain’t that big. It still goes God, Kennedy, Sinatra, in that order,” he said, stepping down the rankings with his hand. “But I gotta tell ya, the last two are neck and neck anymore.”

  We walked toward the front doors, Frank acknowledging various employees with a nod or a wink as they stared from a cautious distance, then handing a twenty to the starstruck kid who held the door open for us.

  On the wall outside, I found the shining plaque dedicated to the airport’s namesake, whom I’d come to call on. I turned and walked toward it, a lump forming in my throat as I neared. It was heartening to see his image again, frozen in bronze though it was.

  “Who’s that, the farmer whose land got took here?” Frank cracked as he crushed out a Camel under his heel on the sidewalk.

  “Come and see,” I said softly, beckoning him with a head nod.

  He stepped over, put a hand on my shoulder, leaned into my back. Neither of us spoke as we scanned the memorial dedicated to the fallen ace.

  I glanced up. Frank’s face was frozen now, too. His eyes slid toward mine. “That was some man, Joseph,” he said quietly.

  “You bet he was. Did ya know the president came here to rededicate the airport to Butch a few months back?”

  “Butch? You knew him then?”

  Before I could respond, a fleet of black limos sailed up to the curb and dropped anchor. Several Guido types climbed out of the middle one, one of them entreating us with a sweep of his arm and a bow.

  “Welcome back to Chicago, Mr. Sinatra. Our friend sends his compliments.”

  Frank held up a palm. “We’r
e waiting for Jilly; he’s getting the bags.”

  Two men almost tripped over themselves rushing from behind the car. “We’ll get them, sir,” one of them said as they flew past us.

  I looked at the muscle, then back at Frank. “Really, Frank? This is your limo service? Outfit guys? I’ll get a cab.”

  “Give it a rest, Joe. Sam Giancana’s a friend of mine. Besides, I’m here to do ’ol Momo a favor.”

  “Like that favor he just did you by screwing you out of the Cal-Neva Lodge and your Nevada gaming license? Is it ever gonna sink in that these guys are playing you like a penny slot?”

  He burned me with his eyes. “Mother, please.”

  I threw up my hands, sighing.

  A silver-haired rake in a gray hat stepped forward, hand extended. His gold-link bracelet looked genuine, but the mile-wide smile was an obvious fraud. Between the fedora and the ivory exhibit glimmered a pair of disturbingly cold gray eyes that matched his charcoal suit perfectly. It was a fair bet that those orbs had presided over the closing of many others.

  “Vincenzo Bo’palazzo,” he announced in a husk of a voice. “Un honore grandissimo, Signor Sinatra.”

  Frank shook his hand. “Grazie. You’re the guy they call Vinnie Bop, right? I love that.”

  I made a face, felt my stomach churning. I didn’t think it was the Old Crow.

  The mobster smiled, sharp teeth glistening in the murky sky. “Vinnie’ll do,” he said, a hint of malevolence coming through his South Side whisper.

  Frank’s eyes widened as he sized him up anew. “All right then. Guess you’re moving up in the world then, Vinnie.”

  He shrugged his tailored shoulders. “Some guys move up”—he paused, flicked three fingers off his chin, watched them arc slowly toward the sidewalk—“other guys move down.”

  He smiled at his boys. The Sicilian chorus chipped in on cue with laughter.

  I leaned in toward Frank, whispered, “Nice company you’re keeping, Sinatra. I’m sure the Sons of Italy would be proud.”