Opening Day, An Excerpt by Chicago Writer Ric Hess

X

“What’s up with this?” Sal snorted in disgust. “This is how we spend the night, sitting here while those assholes are inside, nice and warm, having a drink?”

“It’s part of the process,” Tommy said, “Relax.”

“Process? What fucking process? We’re in the middle of a blizzard for Christ’s sake.”

“I’m on this thing,” Tommy said, “You won’t be bitchin’ when it’s over.” He watched Russell move off, his black jacket speckling with the snow that swirled under the street lights. “See, I found out a couple a things about our pal Russell. Follow him.”

“You going to let me in on this big secret of yours?” Sal put the Lincoln in gear.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said, “With this attitude you’ve had lately, I’m not really sure I feel like sharing.”

Russell was stopped at the corner, waiting for the light. Sal eased the big car up next to him and tapped the horn. Tommy rolled down the window.

Russell looked over, confused as he recognized the car and the face. “Tommy…?”

Tommy leaned out his window, grinned. “Hey, Sal,” Tommy said, “look what we got here. It’s Mr. Baseball.”

XI

“Big night last night?” Mike was working on a pile of bills while I checked in deliveries.

“What do you mean?” I hefted a case of Stolichnaya onto my shoulder.

“I heard you come clomping up the stairs after midnight. I figured you must have been out on the town, sowing your oats.”

“Nah, just a couple of pops with Russell.”

“Ah,” Mike said, and turned his attention back to his work. I knew he was fishing and it grated. I’d spent too much time with someone looking over my shoulder twenty-four seven.

The night bartender, Big John Elsie showed up an hour later. I counted down the bank and started collecting my things, but it seemed I wasn’t done for the day.

“What say we have that talk?” Mike said. When Mike made a request like that he wasn’t asking. “Grab yourself a cuppa joe.”

He led us back into his office, a small room at the rear of the bar. He’d fitted it out with a gunmetal gray desk and a couple of old wooden Bank of England chairs for guests, shelves covered with wire mesh where he kept the backup liquor. A framed poster showing Wrigley Field at night hung from one wall and a door at the rear led to the alley behind the building.

Mike sank into his chair behind the desk and waved me into one of the others. “Now then,” Mike said, “Suppose you tell me about you and Tommy Minola.”

“I knew him in Florida,” I said, “I saw him around, here and there.”

“And you know the man he works for?” Mike was watching me hard. I read once where a good lawyer never asks a question he doesn’t know the answer to. Mike was no lawyer but that was just because being a lawyer wasn’t something that Mike ever wanted to be.

“Jimmy Capps?”

“The very same.”

“No, I don’t know him, not really. I saw him a few times around the hotel. And he owned this club where Roxanne worked.”

“And there we are. Now tell me about the girl.”

“She’s the reason that Tommy and I don’t get along so good.” I sipped my coffee.

“I said the girl.”

“I am. It’s a little… complicated. See, when I met her, Roxanne was kind of going out with Tommy.”

“She and Tommy were an item,” Mike set his cigar down on the ashtray. “And you stole her away.”

“Christ, Mike, it wasn’t like they were engaged or anything, she just hung around him a lot. And then she was with me and Tommy took it personally.”

“You pissed on Tommy’s turf. How is it then, pray tell, that you are still walking around, a glowing picture of good health?”

“Because, Roxanne asked Jimmy to get Tommy off my back.”

“And Jimmy did it,” Mike snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“Like I said, Roxanne used to work for him. She’s a dancer, you know, not the ballerina kind. Jimmy liked her, made sure she got good shifts, stuff like that. What does it matter anyway? We’re history.”

“You were.” Mike said. “I’m trying to determine if that’s still the case.”

“I went away and she dropped me cold,” I said. “No visits no letters, nothing. I haven’t talked to her in years.” Hashing out my failed relationships wasn’t a topic I was eager to explore.

It was something I’d thought about. A lot. Especially when I was lying on a bunk in a cell late at night, listening out into the dark where a couple hundred lonely men were jacking themselves to sleep. Looking at the stack of letters that I’d sent and that all came back to me, unopened, unread.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Mike picked his cigar back up, examined it and applied his lighter.

The question caught me by surprise. “Because I always work Wednesdays?”

“No, you dolt, here. Working for me in the first place?”

“I don’t know all the details, no,” I said. “You told me not to ask too many questions. That what was past was past and that we were going to leave it that way.”

“That’s true,” Mike said. “But things change.”

*

After processing through the system, the state of Florida settled me at Apalachicola prison. I was there for three years, two months and sixteen days. I slept in a drafty old Quonset hut with one hundred and thirty other inmates, long rows of single cots lined from one end of the room to the other. I stood in line when it was time to eat, I stood at attention five times a day for the population count. I asked permission to go to the bathroom, where I squatted on a toilet in plain view of everyone in the room. Finally, one morning, a guard shook me awake.

“It’s your day, Menary,” he told me. They put me on a bus again and shipped me back down to Lake Butler, where they processed my papers and turned me loose with a hundred dollars and a bus ticket.

I stepped out with a half dozen other ex-cons, all of us blinking and unsteady in our newfound independence. The Florida sun beat down and I stepped out onto long asphalt drive that stretched down to the bus stop a mile away.

My plan, if you could call it that, was to head back to Miami, to see if anyone had thought to save any of my stuff. I’d look around, find a job – and maybe I’d find out what had happened to Roxanne. But I discovered that there were other plans for me.

“You ever been to Chicago, kid?” A man with Ray Bans and a cheap suit stood slumped against a Cadillac.

I looked around to see who he was talking to.

“Yeah, you,” he said. “Come here.”

He handed me a ticket sheath from Southwest Airlines. “There’s a guy wants to meet you,” he said.

“Chicago?” I looked at the ticket. “What guy?”

“You want answers, write Ann Landers,” he said. “There’s a number in there.” He nodded at the ticket in my hand. “Use it.”

“What if I don’t want to go to Chicago?”

“It’s a free country,” he said, slapping the roof of the Caddy in time to the Isley Brothers crooning from the radio. “But it don’t seem to me like you got a whole lot else going on.” Sunglasses walked around the car and held the door open. “Come on. Get in.”

What the hell, I thought. He was right. It wasn’t exactly like I had a lot of options. And this guy seemed more bored than dangerous. I got into the car.

We hit the airport in Orlando and walked inside, went to the bar and my new friend bought me a beer, the first one in more than three years. The bitter hop bite caught my tongue, the cold freshet slipped down my throat and I suddenly relaxed, feeling the constant strain of the last years break like ice from a spring stream. I looked at the ticket: Orlando to Chicago Midway. I’d never been to Chicago before, but I didn’t have much left to keep me in Florida.

“What the hell,” I said, “Chicago.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sunglasses said, patting me on the shoulder.

I smiled. I ordered another beer. I was outside of that big cage and that was what mattered. I flew to Chicago and when I got off the plane I dialed the number I’d been given.

“I was afraid you were going to call,” Mike Connelly told me.

“Just following instructions, boss,” I said.

I listened, wrote down an address. And then I went out and hailed a cab and rode into Chicago. The cab exited at Addison and we drove down into the city, past the graceful arches of Wrigley Field to Connelly’s Tavern.

*

Mike smoked for a while, thinking. “A long time ago, Jimmy Capps and I did business together. We were… well not friends, but we got along. I never had anything to do with the drugs. I hate the stuff. But I took care of a few details here in Chicago, problems that he had.
“There came a day that I decided to retire. I got lucky; not many people retire just because they decide it’s time. But like I said, Jimmy and I get along. He lent me the money for this bar. I paid him back. It was expensive money but that’s over and done. The point is, I still hear things. From time to time I do favors for people it’s good to do favors for.” Mike watched to see if I was paying attention.

“I’m one of those favors.”

“Give the man a cigar,” Mike said. “Jimmy told me that there was a promising young man who’d caught a bad break. Asked me if I could find a place for you. I asked him why and he told me that that wasn’t important, just give you a shot and if it didn’t work out send you on your way. I didn’t see what harm could come, like I said, I’m a man who knows the value of favors. And I will say you’ve held your own. But now I think I’m starting to see the big picture.” Mike chuckled, and then, more to himself than to me, “Ah, Jimmy you cunning bastard.”

“What does that mean?”

Mike looked up, aware he’d said the last thought out loud. “Nothing, it’s just that I know our friend, Mr. Capps.”

Mike considered me for a long moment. “All right then, but mind you, this is nothing more than the idle meanderings of an aging mind.”

I waited while he chewed his cigar, lost again in his thoughts.

“Let’s speculate,” Mike finally said, “You tell me that Tommy Minola didn’t like the fact of your being with this girl. The girl works for Jimmy, Tommy works for Jimmy. For Jimmy it pays to keep the help happy. After what I saw the other evening, it seems to me that you and she had something of some significance.
“So, you get yourself in a bit of a fix and you say she dropped you like a bad habit. Not a kiss, not a call, not even a hearty fuck you? That doesn’t sound right. What if she made some sort of deal – she forgets about you and Jimmy tells her that he’ll do what he can to improve your situation.”

”Why would he do that?”

“It’s just a guess,” Mike said, “I’d bet that Mr. Capps was getting all the leverage he could out of the situation. Get you out of the picture, keep his favorite girl on a short leash and keep Tommy happy, all in one fell swoop.”

“Jesus…” I shook my head, “That’s Machiavellian.”

“Jimmy and I used to play chess,” Mike said, “He’s very good.”

I sat back in my chair, the past swirling around me like an unwanted guest, begging for attention.

“Anyway,” Mike said, “All that’s so much dust in the wind. The point is, the only things I’ve got in this world are this old building and this bar and I won’t have either placed in jeopardy. So whatever the case, forget about her Boyo, it’s over and she’s gone. Besides, she’s bad news. Look at the company she keeps. You’ve got a good girl there in your Meghan, stay with what you’ve got. Don’t go inviting trouble into my place.”

“I get it,” I said.

Mike sat back in his chair. “I truly hope that you do.”

I rose to go and Mike reached across his desk and caught my arm. “I’m sorry now I said anything, Danny. I let my mouth run without thinking. Some things are best left alone.”

Mike gathered his papers and I let myself out the back door. The wind outside was howling down out of the north, blowing across the frozen reaches of Lake Michigan, shivering and lonely.

Until today, I thought I’d put a lot of things behind me. Suddenly sitting with my feet up next to Meghan didn’t seem like such a bad thing after all. Be careful what it is you want, I thought.

I’d believed a lot of things, once upon a time. No matter what I’d told Mike, I knew I wouldn’t be able to let it go without kicking over a few rocks to see what I would see. I could imagine quite a few ways that this could turn out badly but that wasn’t enough to stop me. I sighed and let myself into my apartment, but I couldn’t suppress a little shiver and I wasn’t sure whether it was apprehension or excitement. I smiled at the goose bumps that raised along my arm. Whatever it was it was more interesting than sitting around watching movies on TV.

Maybe I was going to get what I’d wished for.

— Ric Hess, May 21, 06:42 AM

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