Homecoming

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. - from Chicago by Carl Sandburg

Chicago is never what people expect. Its skyline sparkles in the sunlight on a bright day over the southwestern shores of mighty Lake Michigan like unspoken promise. Lake Shore drive traces a lovely pathway along the blue waters of the lake as Chicagoans and visitors amble or ride bicycles along its adjacent walkways. Unlike other great cities, Chicago's shoreline belongs to us, its citizen's. No gated mansions line its beaches, no massive hotel properties obscure its beauty, no Do Not Enter signs restrict its access.

Carl Sandburg called Chicago the city of big shoulders, its founders - mud city. Built on land that flooded virtually every spring, the resulting sludge pooled in the streets in a deep and pestilent mass that slowed horses to a laborious crawl as they sluggishly delivered goods and moved its citizens. In response, engineers miraculously redirected the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan and lifted the city's buildings with jackscrews roughly four to five feet, sometimes raising entire city blocks as business continued unabated above them.

It has earned many names in the one hundred and eighty-six years since its incorporation: Windy city, Chi-Town, and Heart of America. It's all these things and more. My grandfather, who emigrated to America from Bohemia in 1938, often called Chicago 'The land of big dreams,' and it was for him. For a long time, it was for us as well.

I was a member of the generation that grew up in Chicago’s West Side when good jobs were still plentiful and times uncomplicated. Even for blue collar stiffs like my folks and the parents of all my friends, upward mobility still held promise in America.

It wasn’t the Gold Coast to be sure, but it was our little slice of the American pie. At the time that was enough for us. Families knew one another and looked out for each other. But in the 80’s and 90’s when the last factories began to close, the life we had taken for granted began to slip slowly away. By the time I graduated high school, the dream of making it without a college degree had all but died and the West Side with it.

My friend Jimmy died with the neighborhood at the end of a twenty-one-year cycle of factory closings that began with the stockyards in 1971 and finished with the shuttering of the South Steel Works in 1992. In some respect, his death was the epitaph for the West Side we had known in our youth.

Walking along the sand and the seawall in Shoreline Park in the winter when the weather discourages all but the hardiest Chicagoan's from visiting, my thoughts often return to Jimmy's funeral and the tragic events that followed. The sky, especially when gray and desolate, appeals to me somehow, a reminder of the reflexive hardiness of those who call this city and its shores home.

On one especially cold January day, the trees glistening with heavy frost, his procession drove slowly down Lake Shore Drive. The wind howled mournfully as we walked the cemetery grounds to the hole where they buried Jimmy, a grave burner resting nearby that the diggers had used to thaw the frozen ground.

Old man Luck stood by the casket in an ill-fitting black coat. Even less sober than usual, he stood red-eyed next to Marty, his sole remaining son. Leonard Empire tried to bury the hatchet by making his son extend his condolences to the grieving family. But I still remember the daggers in Marty eyes as he stiffly accepted Erik's extended hand.

Jimmy's mother died giving birth to him. As if that was not bad enough, the doctors told his father that his newborn son had a congenital heart defect that would likely prevent him from living to adulthood. But Jimmy 's spirit and courage animated his life like a bright, unquenchable flame.

His brother loved him more than his own flesh. He would have done anything for him. It was as if their mother's spirit had merged with his own, the love she had daily demonstrated to Marty before she died reborn and renewed in him.

Jimmy was bright in more than just spirit. Precocious, witty and wise, a smart ass and a born wag, he made enemies as easily as he made friends. The number of fights Marty fought to protect him were legion. Marty's proficiency with his fists was legend.

The West Side is a tough place. Many of us who grew up there knew how to fight, even if like Marty we took little pleasure in it. But whenever Marty fought to protect his brother, the fights always ended the same way, because Marty only ever fought for love. To Jimmy his older brother was like a hero of old.

Chicago's history is filled with violence and savagery. Gangs have ruled its mean streets almost from its beginning. The number of soldiers now working for gangs in our fair city is estimated at over one hundred thousand. Organized into families and nations, drug trafficking is their primary business.

Let's be honest, whether Chicagoans like it or not, this city is not truly Chicago without the Outfit, the mob organization originally established by Al Capone. After the FBI completed Operation Family Secrets in 2007, the Department of Justice declared victory over the Outfit and have since busied themselves with more pressing matters.

Since thirty years of gangland assassinations brought about the trials generated by the FBI operation, the Outfit began to act according to the principle that less is more. Criminal investigations have since focused on street gangs and drug lords and left the Outfit largely unmolested. It is a business after all, and it has learned that a low-key approach, much of it even legitimate, greatly reduces unwanted attention. The saloon where I once tended bar is one of many above-board businesses it owns. Plus, gambling and sports betting is profitable, no matter who manages it.

If you think too hard about the potential for violence in a city like ours, especially in the broader context of mass shootings and other incomprehensible acts of modern violence, it's easy to retreat behind locked doors and imagined safety.

These were not things I had formerly concerned myself until witnessing a gangland hit while standing like a target in the line of fire. I had fired pistols at firing ranges on several occasions and participated in match rifle competitions as a teenager, but the sound of a pistol fired at a person rather than a target seems magnified a thousand-fold. It's even worse if he's a friend.

This is that story. A Chicago love story.

Jimmy and Marty lived across the street from my family, and we hit it off from our earliest youth. Had Jimmy lived, Marty would have moved heaven and earth to see him through college. But even though Jimmy had already lived longer than his doctors predicted, his death still came as a terrible shock. It destroyed Marty. If he smiled in the next few years, none of us ever witnessed it. Before, his life had a single purpose. Take care of Jimmy.

But after Jimmy's death Marty’s reason for existence evaporated.

A few weeks passed before the collective realization sunk in, but before long every bastard in school knew Marty had only ever fought to protect his little brother. They tried to tease and goad him into fighting, but Marty ignored them all. Erik Empire finally ambushed Marty after school one day, to avenge himself for the many poundings Marty had given him when Jimmy still lived. Erik beat him so badly that an ambulance had to take him to the hospital. Both Erik and Marty were suspended from school even though Marty made no effort to fight back. He never returned.

He worked a series of odd jobs over the next several years but seemed uninterested in finding anything more permanent. After graduation, my friends Paul, Ron and I eventually found steady work. I settled on bartending, eventually working my way up to the Auld Lang Syne Saloon, a tony bar on the Gold Coast. It had started as a speakeasy in the 1920’s, what they used to call a lobby bar for a grand hotel. It’s lit with hanging Art Deco chandeliers to make the saloon dark and intimate, ideal for romantic liaisons and clandestine meetings.

We started a tradition of ringing in the New Year at the saloon which Marty attended in the beginning. But after five years he stopped coming to the reunions. I tried calling him, but his mobile number no longer worked, no forwarding number provided. I actually hired a private dick to try and find him. What I learned made me wish I hadn’t bothered. Marty had done more than just odd jobs. He had worked for the Outfit and then fallen out of favor.

By then Erik worked as soldier for the Outfit, and we feared that their feud had finally caught up with Marty. However fervently I hoped that he would return, when midnight struck at the end of our next nine reunions, we were three instead of four as we raised our glasses to the new year.

For our fifteenth, the temperature dropped below zero, icy bits of snow stinging the exposed flesh of those who braved its elements. Despite the cozy warmth in the saloon and generous helpings of top shelf whiskey, our celebration was a bust yet again.

Other than Paul, Ron and I, the only other customer in the bar was a retired soldier for the Outfit known as 'Grinder.' I don't know how he got his nickname and quite frankly don’t want to know.

He came to the bar almost nightly. I would walk a bottle of Crown Royal to his booth with a glass and a bucket of ice on the house, and he would stay until the bottle was empty.

As we sat morosely nursing our drinks that night, Paul asked for the nth time, "Have you heard from him?"

"You know I haven’t."

Midnight passed with little more than our annual toast, each of us lost in our thoughts till the door to the bar opened and a couple entered. The man slipped into a dark booth across from the bar while the woman shed her coat. But instead of joining him she approached us at the bar.

"What’ll you have, Miss," I asked her.

Smiling wistfully, she replied, "No one has called me Miss in a long time."

I smiled back. "I find that hard to believe."

"Well …." she whispered softly.

She looked at me as if trying to remember my face, her soft brown eyes complementing a porcelain complexion that belied her age.

"I’ll have a bourbon sour."

"Would you like me to recommend a bourbon?"

"I’ll take Evan Williams, if you have it."

After she walked back with her drink Paul gave a low whistle of approval.

"I’d chase that all day."

"Don’t be a fool,” I said disparagingly, "her escort is Erik Empire."

"That asshole? We could take him if Marty was here."

"Marty could take him by himself," muttered Ron, "and did, more than once if memory serves."

Absently sipping my whiskey, I stared at the door to the bar as I wished for the fifth or sixth time that it would open, and Marty would walk in like he had in years now long past. With my thoughts fixated on the door, I failed to notice the woman returning to the bar.

"Excuse me," she said as I looked up in surprise. "Could I have a refill?"

Ron gave her a quick glance, but Paul turned and gave her a smile and an unabashedly admiring gaze.

As I passed her the drink, she added, "I’m expecting someone. Did anyone come in asking for a woman wearing a pink rose?"

"Blind date?"

"No. Not at all. It’s just that we haven’t seen each other in forever, and I’m not sure if we will even recognize one another."

The door picked that moment to open, the face of the man who shuffled in muffled against the cold. Removing his scarf revealed a mane of white hair. After stuffing the scarf awkwardly in his pocket, he walked with a limp toward the bar. When the light over the bar illuminated his face he raised his finger discreetly to his lips, but I did not fully recognize him even then. Even as Ron shifted open mouthed one stool to the left and Paul moved to the right for the woman with the pink rose, his return did not seem real.

Although he quietly thanked Ron for making room, Marty did nothing else to acknowledge any of us. Knowing Erik Empire sat a bare ten paces away made me physically ill. I don’t claim that I had any real idea of what might happen that night, but I knew without a doubt it wouldn’t be anything good.

Marty finally groused - “It’s cold enough out there to freeze the balls off a brass monkey,” his once kindly gaze as cold as a Chicago winter.

His was not a face easily forgotten, especially for those foolish enough to read weakness in his disarming smile and soft voice. The breaks his twisted and flattened nose had suffered were beyond counting even in our school years. Since then, he had earned a jagged white scar that stretched from the corner of his mouth to a cauliflower ear. He looked closer to sixty than the thirty-eight he really was, all of us stunned to silence at how time had savaged his features.

"Can’t believe I left sunny California for this white hell." Unzipping his jacket, he smiled crookedly. “Hi Rose. It’s been a minute. “

Without looking at him she answered, "A lot more than a minute." Her hand trembled as she lifted her drink.

I passed a glass of scotch to Marty, but he let it sit and sweat on the bar.

"Did you bring Erik like I asked?"

"Please don’t do this, Marty," Rose whispered.

"Don’t do what?"

"It’s not safe here."

He shrugged. "It’s not safe anywhere. And I know that better than most."

"Just don’t start anything."

He snorted. "Far too late for starting anything. This shit began when Erik beat my brother into the coma that killed him." As he spoke, his eyes grew red with a mixture of grief and fury. "I blame myself that I wasn’t there to stop him."

"Marty ...."

"If I had left Chicago after Jimmy’s funeral like I should have, this shitty feud would have ended then and there. I would not have fallen in love with you and given an even greater reason for Erik to hate me."

She sighed softly, a tear slipping down her cheek. Seeing the envy in Paul's face, I almost chuckled.

"I did not return to start anything, Rose," he continued softly, "But this shit has to stop."

Her hand shook in earnest, spilling some of her drink on the bar, and she set the glass down in exasperation.

"Why come back now?" she whispered.

"Your father didn't tell you?"

"No. Tell me what?" she said with a puzzled expression.

His eyes grew misty, his hand reaching for his drink. After swallowing a third of it, he slowly blinked, momentarily unable to speak.

"Lucina is dead."

Rose pressed a handkerchief against her mouth to keep from crying out in surprise as she reached for Marty's hand. Remembering Erik in the booth behind her, her eyes filled with terror and released it almost as quickly as she had taken it.

Marty, his eyes and face wet with tears, pressed his hand for support on the bar, the gold of his wedding band glinting in the soft light.

"I need to talk to Erik."

"You and Erik never talked," Ron replied quietly, "you only ever fought."

Marty shrugged. No one spoke for a long time after that. We all had questions, but even in good times had never pushed or prodded Marty for details. We all knew he would speak once he was ready. But in the moment, he simply looked far away. Who was he thinking of as his eyes glazed over? Rose? His wife? And why isn't she with him now?

When at last he spoke again his voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

"I'm so sorry, Rose. I should not have assumed that you knew."

Rose looked stunned as she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. She stared straight ahead for some time prior to speaking again.

She finally whispered - "How do you know she's my sister? You never met her."

He pulled a photograph from his pocket and placed it on the bar in front of her.

We all leaned into to look at it, and I recognized Marty in the photo the way I remembered him, still youthful, standing next to a woman in a creamy blue blouse. She wasn't nearly as attractive as Rose, but her gaze seemed contented and peaceful. Marty appeared stiff and uncomfortable in his gray suit and tie.

Rose stared hard at the picture, almost as if wishing it away. When she finally spoke, she muttered, "What were you thinking?"

"I didn't know she was your sister, Rose," Marty whispered. "When your father told me to leave Chicago, I could not imagine ever loving anyone other than you. But I could not cross the Consigliere of the Outfit and continue to live. I hoped that it would be easier for you to let me go if I abandoned you rather than dying."

"We could have run away. My sister did."

"The Outfit would have found us eventually."

"They did not find my sister."

"I'm not sure that's true."

Her eyes stared hard through the tears beginning to well in them before releasing the air from her lungs from her mouth, a little spittle landing on the bar in front of her. She looked so sad that tears began to form in my own eyes.

"I'll never forgive you," she whispered, "for abandoning me."

I was so engrossed trying to hear everything that I did not see or hear Erik's approach.

"Are you going to spend any time with me tonight, or just with strangers," he groused.

But Rose continued to stare straight ahead, her eyes filled with grief, her hands trembling as they rested on the bar.

"Well?"

Marty slowly swiveled his seat around to face Erik.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"You don't remember me, Erik?"

"No. Should I?"

"We went to school together. You don't remember? You even attended my brother Jimmy's funeral."

Erik pulled a pistol from a pocket in his coat and pointed it at Marty, his body still as a statue. I can't say the same thing for the rest of us.

"You have some gall, showing your face here. Have you forgotten that you cannot return to Chicago?"

"Nope," Marty answered quietly, his voice even and calm. "Funny thing, I went to see the Consigliere yesterday. He didn't tell you?"

"That doesn't mean he didn't tell another soldier to kill you."

Marty shrugged. "I went to the consigliere to tell him that his missing daughter was murdered. He was so upset, I thought he was going to shoot me himself. But he didn't and here we are."

Erik lowered his gun a little in surprise. I slowly reached beneath the bar for the shotgun I kept there. But my hand was trembling so greatly that I feared I would do more harm than good by picking it up.

Erik’s expression transitioned from rage to terror. "Lucina was murdered?"

"A botched hit. The bullet intended for me hit her. What I don't get is the timing."

"Timing," Erik echoed weakly, his pistol beginning to shake.

"Like you said, I could only return to Chicago under pain of death. And until now, I did not. So why ten years after I left would the Outfit send an assassin to kill me?"

"That's above my paygrade," he muttered.

"Are you sure? Lucina was my wife, Erik. Did the Outfit find out her new name and decide to eliminate me? The Consigliere was her father too."

Erik did not answer, his pistol now so low, it pointed only at the floor. His face a mixture of anguish and fear.

Neither of them spoke for several moments till Marty sighed. "I'm a good PI, Erik. I already identified the gunman, but I would like to know who hired him.

"I don't know anything," he whispered.

Marty sighed again. "Well ... it will all be over soon. I provided the LAPD enough evidence for murder one charges. California sent a governor's warrant to Illinois today for the killer. Do you understand what I'm saying Erik?"

But when Marty stopped speaking the damn finally broke, Rose's shoulders beginning to shake as she loudly sobbed, her back still turned away from Erik even after Paul and Ron had turned to stare in bewilderment at Marty.

The shot sounded like a thunderclap, my ears and heart pounding as I fumbled with the shotgun resting beneath the bar. Afraid to take my eyes off Marty to guide my fingers to its grip, I could not understand why he had not already slipped off his stool and collapsed to the floor.

Time seemed to slow to a standstill, the room beginning to slowly spin counterclockwise as I lost my trembling grip on the weapon. But no one else moved as I grabbed the bar to keep my knees from buckling under me. My confusion probably lasted no more than a handful of seconds, but in the terror of the moment, I'm still not sure what kept me from collapsing to the floor.

The second shot was even louder. I let go of the bar and reflexively placed my hands over my ears as Erik crumpled to a heap on the floor. Only after the big man fell did Marty begin his slow slide toward Rose, his head coming to a rest on her shoulder.

Marty was still breathing when the paramedics arrived, and they evacuated him to Northwestern Memorial. The police interviewed and searched all of us. Rose had a small pistol in her purse, but it had not been fired. They asked each of us if we saw who shot Erik, but due to the saloon's poor lighting and the noise and shock of the first shot fired none of us had seen the second assailant.

But I knew who Erik's killer was without witnessing the act. Happily, I had never told the guys about Grinder and now I never will.

After an emergency operation, Rose spent the hospital visiting hours with Marty daily. The three of us visited as we were able, but unfortunately in the workaday world there are bills to pay and work commitments to keep.

I did not get a chance to see Marty without Rose present until the day prior to his discharge.

"Have the sparks reignited with Rose?" I asked him.

"Fraid not." He looked at me steadily through half-lidded eyes.

"Still hasn't forgiven you?"

"It's not her, it's me. Her father would never approve in any event." He rubbed his forehead the way he used to when we were teenagers and Jimmy had said something exasperating. Jimmy teased his brother and the rest of us almost as unmercifully as he had the bullies at our school.

"Lucina wasn't anything special to look at but neither am I. She was the first person I met at the metal recycling factory in LA after they hired me. I still stung from leaving Rose and Chicago, but Lucina had compassionate eyes. She never told me her story and I never told her mine. But I could see in her gaze that she had suffered loss just as I had.

"Sometimes we would just gaze tenderly in one another's eyes and hold hands." His eyes blinked wetly as he spoke. He smiled softly at me, the kind friend from my youth reappearing as he remembered his lost beloved. "I loved the sound of her laughter," he whispered. "I loved the feel of her breath when she rested her head on my chest. I loved how the hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she arched her back when I softly caressed her."

"Something vital lived in her eyes, something sacred and pure. I worshiped her just as Jimmy once worshipped me.

"Everyone always says that the honeymoon phase of a relationship is short-lived. But the connection we made was so deep that our love continued to grow rather than fade. I suppose it's conceivable that one day I will want to move on, but for now I cannot imagine it. Lucina was the only person in my life after Jimmy died who made me feel like I mattered again. And now she is gone."

"What about Rose?"

"Rose is a Consigliere's daughter."

"And so was Lucina," I countered in exasperation.

"But I did not know that. I knew she had run away from something or someone and changed her name, and she knew I had done the same. The LA police only figured out who she really was after her murder."

"Whoa," was all I could think to reply.

Tears welling again in his eyes, Marty said - "She is continuously in my thoughts, and I expect always will be. It would be unspeakably cruel to expect any woman to try and fill the hole her death left in my heart."

I didn't ask any more about Lucina after that. I could no longer bear the anguish in his features as he spoke of her. I knew without a doubt that he came to the saloon to goad Erik into shooting him. I also knew that Grinder had waited until Erik did half his work for him. I'm sure Marty knew it too.

When he still lived in Chicago Marty had managed the apartment where he lived for extra cash as well as all sorts of menial odd jobs. He worked on and off as a PI, but never worked big enough cases to make any real money. Since he played the guitar and sang (badly), he even busked on the subways.

But mostly he walked the mean streets of Chicago and befriended a lotta people in the city’s underbelly: drug addicts, con artists and gang members. If the Outfit wanted to discuss turf issues with a drug lord, he was an ‘associate’, the guy that delivered and received messages.

Marty knew all of Chicago’s alleys and byways, the names of every player in its halls of power, and the boundaries of every street gang and drug lord. He knew the face and name of every soldier in the Outfit and every politician and judge in the city on its payroll and bore the scars to prove it.

Eventually he worked as a go between for the Outfit and a dozen different street gangs in an effort to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. That's how he met Rose and inadvertently reignited the feud with Erik.

After Marty's discharge I lost track of him again. He had told me that his hair turned white within days of her murder. One way or another those whom he loved were taken from him.

I do not know whether my friend is alive or dead. I only know that he thrice loved and was loved in return. I do not expect to see him or his like again.

We never held another New Years reunion. I left the Auld Lang Syne a month after the shooting to work in a different bar. The pay is not as good, but on the plus side no one was ever murdered there either.

Grinder did not return to the saloon for a full week after the shooting. But once he finally did and I brought him the usual bottle of Crown Royal he grabbed my wrist. I thought I was going to shit my pants.

"Did you see who shot Empire?" he asked gruffly.

"No, I replied, "did you?"

"Good answer, kid." I swear to God he smiled at me.

Chicago is never what people expect.