Homecoming

Chicago is never what people expect.

Its skyline sparkles in the sunlight on a bright day over the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan like unspoken promise, Lake Shore drive tracing a lovely pathway along its blue waters as Chicagoans and visitors amble or ride bicycles along its adjacent walkways.

It has earned many names in the one hundred and ninety years since its incorporation: Windy city, Chi-Town, and Heart of America. It's all these things and more. My great 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 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.

On one especially cold January day, the trees glistening with heavy frost, his funeral procession drove slowly down Lake Shore Drive. The wind howled mournfully as we walked the cemetery grounds to the hole where they would bury Jimmy.

Old man Luck stood by the casket in an ill-fitting black overcoat. 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 refused to accept Erik's extended hand.

Jimmy's mother died giving birth to him. And 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.

Precocious, witty and wise: a smart ass and a born wag, Jimmy made enemies as easily as he made friends. The number of fights Marty fought to protect him were legion. 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.

Marty loved him more than his own flesh. But Jimmy would never enjoy his father’s affection or love while he lived. His father only ever saw in him the child that killed his wife. When Jimmy finally died it was as if the old man’s wife died a second time, his death in consequence impossible to live with. So, he didn’t. I stood with Marty at his father’s burial later that spring.

Jimmy and Marty lived across the street from my family, and we hit it off from our earliest youth. 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 asshole in school knew Marty had only ever fought to protect his little brother and the fear of him evaporated. Erik Empire 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.

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.

Marty 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 private investigator but never worked big enough cases to make any real money.

But mostly he walked the streets of the parts of Chicago where polite society never darken 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.

But ten years after he left the West Side for the mean streets of the city, he disappeared as if he had never existed at all.

Our old gang had gotten in the habit of ringing in the New Year at the saloon. But when he did not appear for our tenth celebration, I tried calling him, but his mobile no longer connected. Eventually I actually hired a private dick to try and find him. What I learned made me wish I hadn’t bothered.

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 twentieth, the temperature dropped below zero, icy bits of snow stinging the exposed flesh of those who braved its elements.

Other than Paul, Ron and I, the only other customer in the bar was a retired soldier for the Outfit known as Grinder. 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, till the door to the bar opened and a couple entered. The man slipped into a 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. I’ll have a bourbon sour, Evan Williams, if you have it.

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. Far too late for that. An old friend. But we haven’t seen each other in forever.

The door picked that moment to open, and the whited hair man who entered limped toward the bar. When the light over the bar illuminated his features he raised his finger 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.

Marty groused - It’s cold enough out there to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. 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.

Don’t do what?

It’s not safe, you being here.

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

Please 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.

Marty ....

If I had left Chicago after Jimmy’s funeral like I should have, this shitty feud would have ended then and there. I wouldn't 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 end.

Why come back now? she whispered.

Your father didn't tell you?

Tell me what? she said with a puzzled expression.

His eyes grew misty, his hand reaching for his drink. After swallowing half 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.

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

I need to talk to Erik, he whispered hoarsely.

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

Marty grunted. Who was he thinking of as his eyes glazed over? Rose? His wife?

When at last he spoke again his voice was quiet, barely above 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 whispered - How do you know she's my sister? You never met her. He pulled a faded 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.

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 muttered. 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.

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. She looked so sad that tears began to form in my own eyes.

I'll never forgive you for abandoning me to him.

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 hands trembling as they rested on the bar.

Well?

Marty slowly swiveled his seat around to face Erik.

Who the hell 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.

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.

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 hand 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 a hitman 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 at the floor.

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?

The shot sounded like a thunderclap, Marty‘s head and shoulders jerking backwards, my ears and heart pounding as I fumbled with the shotgun resting beneath the bar. I could not understand why Marty 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 and grabbed the bar to keep my knees from buckling under me.

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.

Eric was dead when the paramedics arrived and they evacuated Marty to Northwestern Memorial. The Police 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.

Rose spent the hospital visiting hours with Marty daily as he slowly recovered. 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.

The last time I saw him before he disappeared again, I asked him Have the sparks reignited with Rose?

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.

Lucina 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. I could see in her gaze that she had suffered loss just as I had.

She was the one, Jonny. His eyes blinked wetly as he spoke. I loved the sound of her laughter, just I loved the softness of her breath when she rested her head on my chest.

Something vital lived in her eyes, something sacred and pure. I worshiped her just as Jimmy once worshipped me. Every moment in her company was fresh and new, even after ten years together.

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 just as I did mine. The LA police only learned who she really was after she died.

She is continuously in my thoughts, and I expect always will be. I think I finally understand why my father drank himself into an early grave.

I knew then without a doubt that he came to the saloon to goad Erik into shooting him. I also surmised that Grinder had waited until Erik did half his work for him.

Pretty sure Marty knew it, too.

We never held another New Years reunion. Grinder did not return to the saloon for a full month 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 crap 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.