R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

I went into the cinema after him. I walked to the counter and asked after the young man that had just entered.

‘And what the fuck business is it of yours?’ an overweight greasy-vested man behind the counter said.

‘Important business,’ I said. ‘I’m here on behalf of Gerry McGowan, and I need your assistance.’

‘Oh shit,’ the man said. ‘Oh shit, I’m sorry, mister… I didn’t know Mr McGowan was sending anyone down here tonight. I think we’re all paid up… in fact I’m sure we are… let me call the boss down and you can have a word with him. Hell, what the fuck am I thinking? Come with me, come through here and up the stairs and you can speak with him yourself.’

I followed the overweight guy as he heaved his vast girth up a narrow flight of stairs. We turned right at the top, and he knocked on a door.

‘Come!’ Someone shouted from within.

The fat guy went in. I followed him. We stood in a small but neatly decorated office, plain walls, a wide mahogany desk, behind it a smartly-dressed man with the same dark hair and bright eyes as Daniel Ryan.

‘Julie, what the fuck is this?’ the man behind the desk said. ‘I’m busy up here… you should be on the desk downstairs making sure those asshole kids don’t sneak in without payin’.’

‘Someone here,’ the fat guy said. ‘Someone from Mr McGowan.’

I stepped around Julie and faced the man behind the desk. He smiled. He came around and reached out his hand. ‘Hey, how goes it there?’ he said. ‘Name’s Michael Doyle… what can we do for you and Mr McGowan?’

‘I told him we were all paid up, Mr Doyle… soon as he said he was from Mr McGowan I told him we were all paid up,’ the fat guy said, nervousness evident in his voice.

‘Okay Julie, okay… you don’t mind yourself with this, you go on back down and tend to the desk, okay?’

‘Okay Mr Doyle,’ Julie said, and worked his width out through the doorway and thundered down the stairs.

‘Not so easy to find good help these days, eh?’ Michael Doyle said. He indicated a chair other side of the desk and asked me to sit down. I did so, and Doyle resumed his chair opposite. ‘So what can we be doin’ for you an’ Mr McGowan?’ he asked.

‘You have a customer here, a man by the name of James Hackley.’

Doyle shrugged. ‘Christ, I wouldn’t know… sure as hell ain’t my hobby to go associatin’ with the people that come here to watch this stuff.’

‘He is the son of a very important Chicago real estate developer called David Hackley. Mr McGowan needs your help to make something go away, and there’s a good possibility it may involve putting his son in a somewhat embarrassing position.’

Doyle laughed. ‘Well, I’d consider being found with your pants round your ankles in a joint like this somewhat embarrassing.’

I shook my head. ‘Something a little closer to the bone,’ I said.

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 toys and things for the babies, you know ? and I believed that here in Chicago – despite the bitter wind and often vicious rain from Lake Michigan, among the itinerants and stragglers, the Irish gangsters with their brogue and brash manner – we had perhaps found a home.

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.