Romeo of the Streets (2 page)

“Hey sis, how you doing?”

Lou leaned down to kiss my cheek as I rose to greet him, putting my arm around his muscular frame. “Hi Lou,” I said, “you look great, really.”

Crap, I hadn’t meant to say that, it just sort of came out and now it was too late.

Lou chuckled in his big gruff voice. “You telling me? Like I don’t know…”

Jerk.

I looked past him, letting my gaze linger on his friend, waiting for the introduction and hoping to hell that my uncertainty and agitation wasn’t showing.

“This is Romeo,” Lou said, “I know right? What a faggy name.”

“Oh!” Romeo protested immediately, although clearly in a humorous, obviously affected way, as if, not only was he being good-humored about the joke, but he was actually above the whole idea of being joked at anyway, merely pretending to play along out of his own private and untouchable goodwill. Or something like that… Man, I was really reading way too much into this guy. I hadn’t even said hello yet.

“Hi, my name’s Sandra,” I said, putting out my hand in what I hoped was a purely platonic way, “but most people call me Sandy.”

“Sandra,” Romeo smiled, “your brother’s told me a lot about you. I know he acts like an ass but he’s alright. Seems to really care about you too.”

His voice was slow and considered, tinged with the roughness of the street but also deep and rich and somehow sophisticated, as if it was also, like Lou’s, mainly a put-on. But somehow I couldn’t see this guy ever feeling like he had to pretend to be anything other than whatever it was he felt himself to be on the inside. It didn’t make sense and I felt kind of dizzy thinking about it, as if there was some crucial piece of the puzzle that I just wasn’t seeing here. Little did I know how right I was, but time would show me the error of my ways in that regard…

He took my hand firmly and shook it and I felt a tingle at his touch, despite the fact that I was sure the gesture was for him also certainly platonic. Even though that was how I had deliberately presented myself, I couldn’t deny now feeling a mild disappointment in the pit of my stomach at being treated by him in the same way.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, surprised at how small and girlish my voice sounded when it came out.

Across from us Lou pulled out Lisa’s chair for her to sit (chivalry? really? Who was this guy and what had he done with my brother?) and I felt my eyes travel automatically to Romeo’s face, startled to see his eyes coolly on mine with a wry little smile touching his lips. What—did I expect him to pull out my chair too? Of course not, I was the
chaperone
, wasn’t I?

“Please, sit,” I said, “welcome to Gino’s.”

“So you been to see mom lately?” Lou asked, taking his attention from my best friend for one solitary second.

“Not since last week,” I said, “she’s doing ok—as good as ever I suppose.”

“I saw her this morning,” Lou answered, “you should really get up to see her.”

That was rich, coming from him. I was the one who always looked out for her. Sometimes Lou wouldn’t go up to the nursing home for months at a time. And now, what? Just because he was trying some kind of new faux-grown-up attitude he was going to reprimand
me
? Where was he getting this from anyway?

I decided to let it go, not least of all because the presence of this cool, dark young man in the leather jacket was somehow, despite my best intentions, absolutely and completely dominating my emotional attention. I felt as if something was pulling me to him and I was afraid to even look at his face when I spoke. What the heck had come over me?

“So how do you know my brother?” I asked, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be anything other than some jerk-wad wannabe criminal stuff, so that I could hold that against him at least and somehow denigrate this near perfect image he was casting before me.

I noticed them share a furtive, private glance and thought: thank god! He
is
just an arrogant hoodlum. He almost had me fooled for a minute there.

“Oh,” Romeo shrugged, “this and that. We do some work together.”

“In the bar, you mean?” Lisa asked.

Lou worked part-time in the campus bar at Chicago City University (CCU) where me and Lisa were freshmen—which was why I avoided the place like the plague—although wherever he got the money to fund his lavish lifestyle from, it certainly wasn’t doing a shift or two a week there. Call it wishful thinking on Lisa’s part, then.

Romeo and Lou looked at each other again with that secret, conspiratorial man’s look and then he smiled. “Uh… no,” he said, “not the bar.”

Lisa pouted as if she wanted Lou to explain and I thought to myself: good, at least now you’ll have to admit to yourself what he’s
really
like.

Unfortunately, at that moment Gino appeared at the table and clapped Lou on the back before ruffling his scalp like he was still a little boy and I had that to enjoy, if nothing else.

“Hey Louis! Look at you my boy, you’re not a boy at all, eh? A man now!”

Lou was not pleased, he shook off Gino’s grip. “Yeah, whatever old timer,” he muttered.

“Lou!” I admonished. Gino was an old family friend and he deserved better than that, considering how he’d always been there for our family, first when dad left and then years later when dementia got the better of our mom. If I didn’t have the café job to support my studies and pay for mom’s nursing at the home I don’t know what I’d have done.

Gino though, to his credit, didn’t give a hoot. “Hey, Mr. Big now, huh?” he laughed, “It’s good to see you Louis. You kids want coffee, cannoli maybe? On the house.”

“Sure,” Lou said, “and Gino, it’s good to see you too.”

“Thanks Gino,” I said as he went to fill our order and I turned to Romeo. I wasn’t going to let Lou off the hook that easily.

“So,” I said, “not at the bar? Well how do you two work together then?”

I didn’t have to look at Lou to know he was probably fuming that I’d brought the subject up again, even after Lisa had seemed to lose interest.

Romeo looked to my brother and then shrugged. “Oh,” he said, “this and that, casual work.”

Right, as if that explained anything.

“It’s not something illegal, sweetie, is it?” Lisa purred and I cringed inwardly. I couldn’t believe the way she was acting over him.

Lou looked at her and smiled his tough guy smile. “Well so what if it is,” he said, “what’s the law anyway? Just some other fool’s idea of a way to control everybody else. I say fuck that. If it ain’t hurting anybody, then what’s wrong with it?”

“Ugh,” I said, “nice, Lou, real classy.”

Lou shrugged and then he and Lisa shared some private moment as she poohed and pawed at him in what was really and truly a most despicable way.

“Do you believe that too Romeo?” I asked, turning to my brother’s friend, “that morality trumps the law?”

He stared at me—far more intensely than I would have expected from the question. If I’d aimed to put him on the defensive something told me that I might have pushed him further than I’d intended to. I suddenly felt very small beneath his gaze.

“Sure,” he said, “why not.”

“But love is the most important thing,” Lisa said, still staring at Lou, “even more than law, or work or anything like that. Like, even a gang or whatever, right Lou?”

Lou smiled and just shook his head. Suddenly I wanted to be alone and I didn’t know why. I’d give Lisa five, maybe ten minutes tops, and then I was out of there. Romeo was playing with his phone now, apparently having lost whatever tiny modicum of interest he might have had in me in the first place. He probably had some slutty bad-girl-type chick on the other end of the line, offering him something that he would never get here, not in the company of Lou’s boring, down-to-earth sister.

Oh boy, why do I let myself get into these situations, I wondered? You can take the girl out of the Orange Grove, but you can’t keep her people from dragging her back…

The woman, a girl really, and stripping to pay her way through college, strutted seductively around the catwalk, one slender arm gripping the pole as she kicked out a naked leg towards the crowd in one whip-fast, smoothly fluid movement that belied none of the uncertainty or anxiety within. To the men hidden in the red dimness of the crowd, sipping drinks and blinking slowly in the seedy heat of the nightclub, she was a goddess, an unattainable Amazonian—a fantasy. To Salvatore Falcone, sitting at the head of the table on the VIP balcony above the main-floor, smoking a cigar despite the rules of the venue that he himself had set—Salvatore whose eye she would, to no avail, try to catch every few minutes while dancing—she was nothing more than a piece of meat. She was cattle, livestock, as much a part of the apparel of the business as the bottles of booze behind the bar, the illegal slot-machines in the back “member’s only” area, and the suitcases full of pure Columbian cocaine in the secret safe in the office upstairs. One of these nights he would probably sleep with her and then, if she became too attached he might have to let her go, maybe even introduce her to one of the brothel-owners downtown in an attempt at making one last buck from the girl before she passed out of his grip completely. It was only business was all. Nothing personal.

“Ace-high flush,” he smiled, laying down his cards on the table, “hearts again.”

Ferret winced in frustration but even that hot-tempered kid knew better than to let it show in front of Sal. There was a hierarchy that trumped all emotion to this thing. It was surprisingly effective at mood control.

“Wow, nice going Sal,” Ferret said, “you really had me. I thought straight maybe, but I never saw the flush…”

Salvatore chuckled slowly, his eyes self-satisfied slits. Someone with more smarts might have thought he’d been cheating, although if they had smarts they’d still know not to say. Ferret though, he had balls, but he wasn’t so smart. Sal looked beside him to Eyeball. Eyeball stared back and his solemn, cold face rippled with that sickly, strange smile of his.

“Impressive,” he nodded.

“Anybody’d think I was cheating,” Sal said, “but it’s just my luck—it’s been on the up and up all week. Not that I’d say, even if I actually really was cheating. Not to you schmucks anyway.”

It was true, he was playing fair, but only because it was also true that his luck
was
up and had seemed to be all week now.

“Good one boss,” the rat-faced Ferret grinned and Eyeball laughed strangely. His face was pale and skull-like and his eyes were black—his dark, lank brylcreemed hair slicked back tight against his temple in the usual style. Even to Salvatore, who was his “Capo” and therefore the be-all and end-all authority in the young “soldier’s” life, there was something about him that he found deeply unsettling. Eyeball, as though sensing this thought, let his face crinkle in good humor and then reached out to deal the cards again for his boss.

“Ok, so you all know why I called you here today, yes?” Sal asked, as on the catwalk below, Candy the dancer finished her display with a flourish and then glanced up quickly to the balcony to see if the nightclub owner had noticed, before reaching down to gather her flimsy underwear from the floor and then hurry away to make room for the next exotic performer.

Sal scrutinized the two younger men with a steady gaze and wrinkled brow. He was, at 32, still quite handsome and youthful in his dark Mediterranean looks, a fact of which he was only too well aware, and something that he used to his best advantage when moving among the harem of dancers in the pit-floor below.

“Sure,” Ferret said, “it’s about the college right, CCU? About getting some action up there, like you was saying.”

“Right,” Sal nodded, “and why not? There’s a whole community of people around that campus, most of em young and impressionable and—even better—with tons of spare cash to spend. My only problem is I can’t figure out why no other crew ever moved in up there sooner.”

“Who knows boss? Maybe it’s like you say, you’re just a…” Ferret paused to sound out the words, foreign to his crude lips, “
innovative
thinker
.”

Sal nodded grimly. “That’s right.”

Actually, he didn’t want to admit that he thought maybe the reason no other Mafia cell in Chicago, a city seeped in years of Mafia culture and history, had ever moved in on the university community was because even the Mafia was an institution founded on certain ground-rules and ethical guidelines. Or at least it used to be. Now, things were different. Honor was dead. Good riddance, Sal thought.

“Yeah, all we need’s somewhere to get started, a base of operations if you will, a hub for our little back-to-school adventure.”

“That’s right,” Eyeball said, speaking up for the first time in detail since he’d entered the club. Even Sal, his superior, knew to pay attention when the notoriously reticent Eyeball said anything more than a few words. “I was thinking about that and you know who works up at that campus bar up there—Chips’ or Chuck’s or something they call it?—Louie the Mouth. I hear he’s even doing a number on some little minx who goes to school up there. Joe Sacrimoni the baker’s girl I think.”