“I COULDA been a rich man,” Jimmy Gigante said to me. “And I coulda had something to look at and be proud of. I could say, ‘That’s mine. I put it up myself.’ That son of a bitch stole it from me.”
We were sitting in a small construction yard at one end of Cicero. A couple of front loaders, some trucks, a few workers polishing equipment, some lumber and bricks, not much else.
Nor did there seem to be much in the way of paperwork on Jimmy’s desk in his cubbyhole office inside a mostly empty warehouse. The Giant Construction, as he had called it, had been knocked off its beanstalk by a Jack named Seamus Costelloe.
“And now he’s going to make a fortune on it?”
“Can’t tell.” He ran his fingers through thick wavy hair. “It was a risk from day one. I’d had my eye on Ogden Avenue for years. I knew that gentrification was going that way and wouldn’t stop till it got to Hinsdale. Timing is everything.”
Jimmy Gigante was a genuinely handsome man, probably in his late thirties. He was not cute, not, heaven save us, pretty like the current chick-flick movie stars, but good-looking in a strong masculine style—lean, taut, athletic with long black hair and the face of a Roman prince or a character out of a Fellini film. He wore a gold bracelet and a gold necklace set off by a hairy chest. His formfitting black jeans and sport shirt completed the Hollywood effect.
“I owned the land. I had to wait till the right time. I moved a little too soon. Put all my money into it. Played golf with Seamus at the club. He asked me how it was coming. I told him fine, but I needed some cash to jump-start it. He bought in right away. He said that he found the combination of high-class stores and homes and cultural centers appealing. He even talked about launching a symphony orchestra.”
“Do you think he led you on so he could take over the project?”
Jimmy drummed his fingers on the torn desk blotter. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a predator who goes looking for projects that need money like the Elegance chain, gives them enough money to keep them going, and then moves in when the guy whose idea it is runs out of money. Or maybe he just picks out losers. Who knows?”
“You figure you’re a loser?”
“Sure looks like it, doesn’t it? I guess he saw me coming.”
“Isn’t he stuck with a potential white elephant now?”
“Maybe he is. It would serve him right. But Seamus Costelloe always comes up smelling like roses. He’s got contacts, big contacts. He won’t be so eager to get their money that he signs contracts like I did. Seamus is a winner, I’m a loser. That’s the difference.”
“If he were dead, would you get the development back?”
“No way. His heirs might figure it’s a lemon right now, sell the land and the infrastructure development we did, even sell it cheap. No way I could find the money to buy it back even at ten cents on the dollar.”
I wondered about that. The world was awash in venture capital. Still, would not the police suspect that Jimmy was involved in the murder, especially if the word was out that he was planning to buy the development back from Seamus’s estate.
“The police hassle you?”
He threw up his hands in dramatic protest.
“Sure they did. Look at me! I’m Italian, right. I’m a developer, right? So I have to be connected, right? I can find hit men, by picking up a phone, right?”
“Are there any grounds to think you’re connected?”
“My family was from Lucca. That’s northern Italy. The Boys spit on us. My operation is too small to interest them anyway. I don’t know any of them. I don’t think any of them could care less about me. I have four kids to send to college and the cops think I’m putting out contracts! Go figure!”
“What do you do for a living?”
“At first Seamus kept me on as manager of the project. I fought with him because I didn’t like him. My wife works, I do a few small jobs. Now he threatens to kill me.”
“What!”
“He sends a goon to warn me at the Baptism of my youngest kid that if anyone shoots him again, we’re all dead. Not only me, the whole family. I had nothing to do with the shooting. Now my life and my family’s lives are hostage to some idiot that wants Seamus dead.”
Bluff, I thought. Seamus is scaring all his enemies, figuring one of them is guilty. Does he plan mass murder or is he playing games with them all? The latter seemed to be a reasonable explanation, the kind of practical joke Seamus would love.
“Did you complain to the cops?”
“Sure. They just laughed. Said I was trying to embarrass Mr. Costelloe. One cop said he didn’t blame Mr. Costelloe for investing in a little insurance.”
There are bent cops in every police department. Yet I didn’t think a typical Chicago cop would have much love for Seamus Costelloe or make such a dumb remark. Jimmy Gigante was holding something back.
“Look, Mr. Coyne, I’m broke. If this goes on much longer I’ll lose my home, maybe my family too. I can’t afford an expensive lawyer or security protection. There’s not much point in staying alive. I’ve got a lot of insurance. I’m worth more to my family dead. Then they’d be safe if some goon took a shot at that son of a bitch.”
Did Seamus Costelloe know that his about-to-be daughter-in-law was setting up interviews with men who would report his threats to have them and their families killed? Was he sharing a huge joke with us? Or didn’t he care who knew that he was joking? Or was he really joking? Had he laid plans for an elaborate bloodletting if there was another attempt on his life? Strange man that he was, Seamus didn’t seem capable of that kind of evil.
Yet was it not evil to be tormenting weak and ineffective men like Gigante and Papageorgiou with terrible vengeance against their wives and children?
“Do your wife and children get to vote about your suicide?” I asked Jimmy Gigante.
He slumped in his chair and buried his head in his hands.
“I haven’t told Marci that I’m thinking about it. She’d become hysterical. Yet she didn’t know she was marrying a loser. She’s young enough and gorgeous enough to find herself another husband.”
“Would Seamus give you back the job if you asked him for it?”
His face still covered by those strong, manly fingers, he shrugged.
“I donno. Maybe. Certainly if Marci asked him. He likes it when women beg him. I’d rather die than have her do that.”
As I drove back on the Congress Expressway (as Democrats still call it), to our neighborhood I was afraid that I might have missed a question Nuala would have wanted me to ask. I couldn’t think of anything else. I had better be prepared for the accusation that I was a friggin’ eejit.
However, what do you expect from Dr. Watson?
Hey, I’m beginning to sound like a loser too.
IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU REALIZED THAT YOU ARE A LOSER.
No one who sleeps every night with a woman like Nuala is a loser.
THE KIDS ARE MORE IMPORTANT TO HER THAN YOU ARE. YOU KNOW THAT. ADMIT IT.
“I won’t.”
Our house on Southport was remarkably quiet. Danuta was polishing the silverware, which she did every week though Nuala had told her that once a week was too much.
“Silver not wear out,” Danuta had responded.
There were times when even Nuala was a loser.
“Mother nap on couch in office. Baby nap too. Redhead out jump rope. Boy in park with nanny. Dogs chase each other in yard. Never get tired.”
I tiptoed up to my wife’s office.
She was curled up on the couch, Ned’s diary on her belly, her sweatshirt cast aside, so she would be ready to feed Socra Marie as soon as she demanded food. Spoil the little monster. In repose her face revealed exhaustion that her always mobile waking face covered up.
I thought my heart would break. Couldn’t Ned’s story wait a little longer? Why were we messed up with Seamus Costelloe? We didn’t need a sick mother around the house.
In the bassinet next to the couch, the cause of my wife’s exhaustion was whining softly, the delicate cry that meant would someone please wipe the shit off my ass and give me a clean diaper.
OK, Dada, time to show once again that you’re a card-carrying feminist.
So, I said to her mentally, you are a troublemaking nuisance. You wear out my poor wife, you put me in a foul mood, you cause your big sister to act like a witch, you threaten your big brother, you upset the poor hounds, you disrupt the life of our family, and you lie there like all the attention is yours as a matter of right. You’ll be nothing but trouble for the next two years before you’ll catch up developmentally, then you’ll make up for lost time by becoming a terrible two. You’ll fight with poor Nellie and your dumb brother. You’ll drive your mother up the wall. You’ll try to manipulate me like you’re doing now and you’ll probably get away with it. Then you’ll become a teen and rebel against us and then go off to college, marry some jerk from across the continent and visit us maybe once a year. And all the time we’ll have to love you because we’re hard-wired, like my brother says, to love our children even when they don’t earn it, which they never do.
She grinned at me.
I know babies don’t grin, not for a couple of months anyway. Nonetheless, the little brat did grin at me as I put her back in the bassinet and tucked all the swadling clothes around her.
Already she was laughing at Da.
I admit that I grinned back.
Don’t worry, I won’t tell the ma that you smiled at me first.
A herd of thundering elephants rushed up the stairs and barged into Nuala’s office, which they were strictly forbidden to do without first receiving her permission. They sniffed my sleeping wife, presumably to make sure she was still alive and then sniffed the child who had closed her eyes once back in her bed, clean till the next defecation.
Nuala shifted on the couch, sighed, and murmured, “Dermot?”
“ ’Twas the beasts,” I pleaded.
She opened her eyes and saw Fiona’s face a few inches from hers.
“Fifi, girl, you really shouldn’t be in here.” She scratched the comically outsized head. “I love you anyway… Dermot! The baby!”
She sat up, startled and wide-awake. Ned’s book fell to the floor.
“Sleeping peacefully, despite Hannibal’s army invading us.”
“Her diaper!”
“Clean and fresh!”
“Och,” she said, collapsing back to a prone position on the couch, “brilliant altogether!”
She closed her eyes.
“Aren’t you the best husband in all the world?”
“Woman, I am!”
“What did your man have to say for himself?”
I sat on the edge of the couch and held her hand.
“He said he was a loser and he might commit suicide so that Seamus wouldn’t blame him if there’s another attempted hit. Figures that he’d save his wife and four kids from Seamus’s avenging hit men.”
“Will he kill himself?”
“No. Doesn’t have the energy.”
“Seamus is threatening everyone, is he now?”
“Same technique. A hooded goon shows up at a family gathering and makes the threat.”
“He’s bluffing, isn’t he?”
“Probably.”
“He knows how to pick his victims doesn’t he?”
“I think he puts money into things like Ogden Town and Elegance because he likes the ideas. Both of them seem pretty classy. Then he finds out that the guys behind the ideas are incompetent and weak. He has to get rid of them to protect his investment. Nick Papageorgiou doesn’t want to break his mother’s heart by dumping his crooked brother. Jimmy Gigante thinks he’s a loser and is too busy feeling sorry for himself to organize the development.”
“Umhum… How did we get mixed up with this Seamus Costelloe anyway?”
“A woman I know saw the mark of death on his forehead and figured we had to save his worthless life.”
“Friggin’ eejit… Well, I think we ought to look at the sex issue, don’t you? This O’Leary woman should probably be next on our list, shouldn’t she?”
“You going to trust me with a temptress?”
She laughed at me.
Our daughter stirred again. Nuala sat up, unhooked her nursing bra and reached into the bassinet.
“Hungry again, are you now?”
I noted with interest that Socra Marie did not grin at her.
After the child had been fed, appropriately burped, carefully wrapped up, and placed back in her bassinet, Nuala collapsed back on the couch. The wolfhounds, apparently in response to a silent signal, obligingly left the room.
“Dermot Michael, I’m so tired,” my wife murmured as she closed her eyes. “This little wisp will be the death of me.”
I closed the blinds, retrieved a coverlet from behind the couch, and wrapped it around her. She was already asleep. I kissed her forehead, glanced at Socra Marie to make sure she was still breathing (she was!), and slipped quietly out of the room.
“Your ma is taking a nap,” I told Nelliecoyne, who had appeared on the stairs.
“I wish that baby would stop crying all the time,” my elder daughter replied without a trace of sympathy for her sibling. “Doesn’t Ma have enough to stew about?”