"Jimmy's Mafia" is a short story I wrote, and one which I am particularly proud of. It's a bit less stuffy than my professional work, but it's something I worked hard on, and revised until I was satisfied with a version.
Jimmy’s Mafia
By Mike Armstrong
The first words that I ever heard him speak were ‘Hi, I’m Jimmy, and I’m not an alcoholic, so I’m going down the street for a drink if anyone wants to join me.’ It always baffled me that every AA meeting I had ever attended was within throwing distance of either a bar or a liquor store, so I chalked it up to fate, ignored the disgruntled angst of the alcoholics whose meeting had just been disrupted, and took Jimmy Parker up on his offer. That was four years ago last week, and I still wish I could go back to that night and stay at that meeting.
My friendship with Jimmy, if that’s what you want to call it, didn’t begin that night at Deaner’s Bar & Grill. That night ended with one of us in the drunk tank and the other with two broken ribs and a two-inch gash on the upper-right bicep. No, our friendship began weeks later when Jimmy showed up at my apartment and apologized. Since joining the program I had tried to adopt the nature of forgiveness, so I told him that I was sorry too, and that I understood if he was going to press assault charges. Instead, he offered again to buy me a drink, and again, I agreed.
“It’s not the first time I put a friend in the hospital,” I said. “I guess that’s why we’re in recovery.”
“You’re in recovery,” He said. “I’m just doing what the Circuit Court of Cook County ordered.”
I suppose it wouldn’t be wrong to call us drinking buddies, but Jimmy and I did more together than just drink. Jimmy was there for me when I needed him, when I fell from top. He helped me move out of my high rise in Lakeview, and into my studio on the South side, he kicked down some cash for me when I couldn’t pay my rent, and he talked me off the ledge when the consulting firm fired me and my girlfriend left me all in the same week. It wouldn’t be wrong to call us drinking buddies, but for most of our friendship we were actually more like business partners.
He was always coming to me with odd jobs around the city, small plots and schemes to make a little extra cash. He always knew someone that needed a lawn mowed or a garage painted, I helped him sell a little weed from time to time, and it was Jimmy who hooked me up with my part-time job delivering pizzas for Geno Dante’s Pizzeria. That was how Jimmy got by—odd jobs and favors—and though he was never a rich man by any means, he did well enough. The problem was that Jimmy was spreading himself thin, and I knew he couldn’t keep going at that speed for much longer.
Jimmy first came to me with his grand idea in the summer of 2008. We were doing some yard work in the suburbs for Jimmy’s uncle, who had agreed to let us watch his house while he vacationed in Bermuda, but only under the condition that we trimmed his hedges and didn’t drink any of his private stock. The sweltering heat and hard manual labor were offset by the girl next door and her friend out sunbathing by their pool. Jimmy had been yammering all day about this and that, mostly steroids in the Major Leagues, and I had begun to instinctively zone him out.
“Al!” he said sternly as he tapped my rake with the blades of his hedge-clippers. “Did you hear anything I just said?”
I hadn’t. My gaze had been transfixed on the neighbor girl as she rolled over to her stomach and undid the clasp of her red bikini. I nodded in her direction for Jimmy’s benefit and he smirked and set down the hedge clippers.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about Al. The suburbs. Life is better out here. It’s less ugly.”
“Yeah. It’s a nice neighborhood.” I said, still not giving Jimmy my full attention.
“Nicer than Pilsen,” he replied. “Nicer than Englewood. We’ve got to find a way to get out here.”
I had never pictured Jimmy in the suburbs. He was the sort of creature bred for the city. As far as I knew, this was the furthest he had ever been from the center of Chicago, and he stuck out like a sore thumb. He was too skinny and unkempt. His left ear was pierced and his arms were spotted with tattoos. He didn’t own a clean shirt, and he damn sure wasn’t about to replace his tattered grease stained Levis.
“Ha!” I cried cynically. “Something tells me that these soccer moms and retired old people aren’t going to let a bum like you paint their houses and wash their Beamers, and even if they did, that kind of scratch ain’t shit out here Jimmy, these people have mortgages for Christ’s sake.”
“There are other ways to make money, Al.” He said without a hint of defensiveness.
“Yeah, and you didn’t go to college, you don’t know a trade, and you’re too damn ugly to find a woman who’ll support you. I guess you’d better start playing the lotto.”
“I guess I’d better.” He said. He picked up the clippers and put a branch between the blades. “What about something a little more,” he paused, “entrepreneurial?” He drew his arms together and the halved branch fell to the ground.
“Sure thing Mr. Trump,” I said, “Let me get out my check book and I’ll get you started. Twenty grand okay?” I continued to rake the hedge clippings into a pile on the lawn.
“I’m serious,” He told me, “Something not necessarily legal, but not too extreme.”
“Like selling dope, Jimmy?” I asked him.
“Like that, but a little more… organized.” He spoke with a kind of childlike innocence.
“I tried to get into organized crime once, but Visa rejected my job application.” I told him. I still didn’t believe that he was serious.
“I mean it Al. I need to get out of the city. You do too. We’re not going to take it any further than we already have the way things are going.” Suddenly he seemed on the verge of pleading.
“You can’t just decide to be in the mafia, Jimmy,” I said as I set my rake down. “Besides, you’re not even Italian.”
“I’m not talking about the mafia,” he replied, “I’m talking about a few normal guys, civilians, who are willing to bend the rules in order to help each other out. And for your information I’m a quarter Italian.”
“Alright. Fine. Except that you don’t know anyone like that. All of our friends are just as poor as we are. You plan to get rich from stealing doughnuts and sugar packets from Chet’s Diner?”
“What about the meetings?” He asked, “Some of those guys—Jackie Leibowitz, Leo Martin—They’re some pretty high rollers.”
I took off my sunglasses and looked him straight in the eye, “You want to start a criminal organization stocked with men in substance abuse treatment? Are you some kind of moron?”
“Oh come on!” He protested. “It’s not that bad. Most of those guys are probably dying for some excitement now that they’re sober!”
“Most of them aren’t sober!” I told him, “You’re not actually thinking about trying this are you?”
There had to be too many hitches in the plan, too much legwork. He would eventually lose interest once he saw how rough and fantastical his plan was, I thought.
“Don’t answer me right now,” he told me, “but I want you to be my number two. Just think about it okay?”
I shook my head as my only response. The whole idea was so hopelessly moronic that I figured I would never hear of it again. It wasn’t the first time Jimmy has come to me with an idea so ridiculous that I shut him down without thinking twice, and most of the time he abandoned them after less than a week of trying. I picked up my rake and began working again. The neighbor girl and her friend stood up and wrapped themselves in beach towels, then disappeared into the house. The man is both a fool and a lunatic, I thought to myself, but damned if I didn’t smile just a bit when I pictured Jimmy at the head of his alcoholic army.
I had forgotten how dark and quiet the suburbs got at night. I couldn’t sit still inside the house. Jimmy went upstairs in search of a change of clothes, and I wandered into the den. Jimmy’s uncle was a fairly wealthy man, and his den reflected it. The walls were elegant—wood paneled and full of pictures and awards. A glass coffee table stood between a leather sofa and a couple of expensive looking armchairs. The floors were hardwood, but mostly covered by a thick oriental rug. His desk was huge and made of mahogany. I glanced down at a picture of him and his wife at a party. They both looked happy and they both looked dignified.
As I scanned the rest of the room, something on the shelves caught my eye. It was a stereo that Jimmy’s uncle must have owned since the seventies. The receiver was matted steel with real wooden sides, I had always loved how old stereos looked. It must have been a high-end model, but I couldn’t really tell from looking at it. An outdated set of The Encyclopedia Britannica separated the turntable from the receiver, and on the shelf below was Jimmy’s Uncle’s record collection. Immediately, I began flipping through the records for something to put on. There were mostly old jazz albums by artists I’d never heard of. I came across an old Jeff Beck album and decided it was as good as I was going to find so I removed it from its sleeve. I placed the record on the turntable and placed the needle inside the record’s first groove. Nothing. I walked over to the receiver and started to press buttons randomly until I heard the sound of Jeff Beck’s guitar coming faintly through the speakers.
With pride, I began to turn up the volume when Jimmy strutted in wearing a baggy pinstripe suit with his tattered old white Nikes. He stood in the doorway, shot his cuffs, and looked pleased with himself.
“Turn that off Al, we gotta talk.” He said and strutted over to a cabinet on the wall opposite the stereo. He tried to open the cabinet without success, then picked a letter opener up off the desk and started to pry at the lock. The door creaked, receded, then creaked again before violently snapping open. Jimmy clapped once in triumph, took a bottle of scotch from the cabinet, poured a drink and then handed it to me.
“Jimmy.” I said. I tried to look concerned.
“What? Come on Al, when was the last time you had some top shelf shit?” He looked at the bottle. “Hell, this is even better, this ain’t even on the shelf.”
“Sixteen days, Jimmy.” I said to the glass as he thrust it toward my chest, “and I plan to make it seventeen.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, taking a sip from the glass. “Oh god, you’re missing out.”
Normally, this is where I would tell Jimmy to go fuck himself, but this time I didn’t. Maybe it was the ‘1960’ printed atop the scotch bottle’s label, or perhaps it was the genuine pleasure I detected in Jimmy’s voice after he took that first sip, but personally, I blamed the suburbs. What trouble could I possibly get into out here?, I thought.
“Fine,” I said, “but I’m having mine on the rocks.”
Jimmy clapped once, then rubbed his hands together mischievously. He picked up the bottle and followed me into the kitchen.
I glanced up from the armchair where I sat across from Jimmy in his uncle’s great room. We had drunk the scotch down past the label and I couldn’t tell if it was closer to the top or the bottom. The sun had set completely—it had been low in the sky the last time one of us had spoke.
“Time moves slower out here.” Jimmy broke the silence.
I nodded. The slow passage of time had occurred to me, but I blamed the liquor. I was drunk, and I was feeling pretty lousy about it.
“Have you thought about my offer?” Jimmy asked. He sat up and straightened his tie. “About being my under-boss?”
“Yeah,” I lied. I had actually forgotten all about our earlier conversation. “But I think I still need some time.”
“Well I need you for this. What’s on your mind, Al? What’s holding you back?”
There were so many answers to chose from that I froze up. I didn’t mention that I didn’t want to go to prison, that I thought the idea would fall apart before it even had a chance, or that I couldn’t place enough trust in an alcoholic to go buy me a pack of smokes let alone to keep their mouth shut about a criminal enterprise. What actually came out of my mouth was a product of alcohol and being caught off guard.
“I can’t take orders from you Jimmy. I won’t. If we went into business together it would have to be an equal partnership or nothing.”
“That’s it?” Said Jimmy. “That’s all of what’s holding you back? Consider it done Al. We’ll share the power, but I need one thing from you.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I need you to go to some meetings. Start reaching out to some of the guys. Can you do that?” He was still treating me like a subordinate.
“I suppose so. Lord knows I need to go to a meeting after tonight anyway. And Jimmy,” I said, “No violence. Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets in trouble. Or I’m out.” I fell asleep not long after.
Over the next few weeks Jimmy and I started canvassing AA meetings, looking for people who might fit into our plan. We split all the meetings in the area down the middle so we could cover twice as much ground. We were looking for people with money and power who could fund our enterprise, but we were also looking for street level guys, guys who wouldn’t mind putting themselves into harm’s way for an extra buck. Since our plan stopped short of any real ways to make money, it was next to impossible to get anyone to agree. I got thrown out of a couple of meetings—seriously recovering alcoholics don't like the disruption—but most guys just stared at me blankly while I tried to dance around the subject of a cooperative criminal movement.
By the end of my fifth meeting, I had given up hope of anything coming to fruition. I felt slightly defeated, but also relieved. I had drunkenly agreed to join Jimmy’s mafia, but I still thought it was a terrible idea. I had only gone along with the plan for this long because I couldn’t make my rent payments and the Chicago winter was looming in the very near future. I walked out the front door of The Olivet Baptist Church where the meeting was held and saw Jimmy leaning on a parking meter, grinning.
“How did it go tonight?” He inquired.
“One day at a time.” I said.
“I mean the other thing,” he said more quietly this time, “the business.”
“Great,” I told him, “that accountant with the coke problem called me a lowlife piece of trash, and Jackie Leibowitz told me to go fuck myself.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Jimmy replied. “Who needs ‘em?”
“You do if you want this plan to work,” I said, “Listen Jimmy, we’ve been trying for a while. We gave it a shot, but I really think…”
“You’re out?” He interrupted me. “We’re finally about to get this thing moving and you’re gonna to bail on me?”
“What are you talking about?” I was fed up. I wanted to move on, and I wanted Jimmy to move on as well.
“Just come with me.”
I followed Jimmy to a diner on Wallace Street. It was a dump, poorly lit and filthy. The patrons ignored the city-wide smoking ban and the air was filled with the scent of stale tobacco and bacon. Jimmy led me to a table at the back of the diner and motioned for me to sit down. I sat facing the door and waited for Jimmy, who kept glancing over his shoulder nervously. Reluctantly, he sat down across from me and started looking over the menu.
The waitress came up to the table holding a pot of coffee. She was older, probably mid-forties, and she looked as though she had stopped dressing for tips years ago.
“Coffee?” She asked, her voice was that of a life-long smoker.
I shook my head and Jimmy nodded.
“You boys ready to order?” She asked while she poured Jimmy’s coffee.
“Just the coffee tonight, hun.” Jimmy said and she sighed and walked off.
I was nearing my wit’s end. It had been a long, unsatisfying night and I just wanted to go back to my shitty apartment and sleep.
“What the hell are we doing here?” I asked impatiently.
“We’re waiting for someone,” he told me, and right on cue the door to the diner opened and in walked one of the sorriest looking men I had ever seen. His clothes were soiled and tattered, his bushy blonde hair was streaked with ash, and he clearly hadn’t shaved in several weeks. Silently I prayed that he would sit down at the bar, or ask for some leftovers and be on his way, but he walked up to our table and Jimmy jolted up to greet him.
“Al, this is Jasper. Jasper, Al.”
I stood up and shook his hand. The smell of cheap liquor rolled off him like the breeze coming off of Lake Michigan, if the lake was filled with peppermint Schnapps instead of lake water.
“Have a seat, have a seat,” said Jimmy.
Jasper sat down next to him and stared at me without expression.
“Jasper and I were talking at the meeting tonight,” Jimmy explained, “and I think he might be able to help us with something.”
Suddenly the idea of committing a crime with a drunkard had become all too real for me. It was one thing to envision an oafish man stumbling around at Jimmy’s command, but actually seeing, and smelling, Jasper was something else entirely.
“I didn’t realize we were just going to beg for change at the train station,” I said. Jasper seemed to take no offense.
“Give him a chance Al,” Jimmy said, then sipped his coffee, “Jasper?”
Jasper looked at Jimmy and shrugged. Jimmy looked at me.
“Jasper’s cousin is a night watchman at a warehouse on the West side. It’s full of shampoo and shit mostly, but next Friday they’re getting a shipment of, what was it Jasper?”
“Mach 3 razors,” Jasper mumbled.
“That’s right, Mach 3 razors. He says he can help us get a few boxes, and we can sell them at a discount to corner stores and whatnot. Says his cousin gives him free stuff all the time, right Jasper?” Jimmy looked excited. Jasper nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know Jimmy. Does it look like this guy has been getting free hygiene products?” I asked. Jasper still didn’t seem to mind my insults.
“Give him a chance, Al!” Jimmy slapped the table as he spoke. “This could really work! At least listen to the details!”
“Fine.” I said, and I let Jimmy and Jasper give me their pitch. The plan itself wasn’t terrible. We would go to the warehouse on Friday night. Jimmy’s cousin would leave a door open, and would distract the other security guard while we slipped in and grabbed a few boxes. Jimmy claimed we would be in and out in less than ten minutes, and Jasper assured me that he had done it many times. I agreed, but only because I needed the money, and I wanted to get out of that shit hole diner as soon as I could.
When I got home that night I couldn’t sleep. I spent a few hours lying in bed trying, but I eventually got up and started pacing around. Night’s like these are the hardest obstacle that my alcoholism knows, sleepless nights where my thoughts twist violently in my head and stab me in the chest at random. I wondered if I could really go through with it. I had never committed a crime that carried serious jail time before. What worried me most was that I felt it was my best option. It was either this or become homeless in November. I think it was at some point in the night that I decided I was in, but as I drifted to sleep slumped down in a lawn chair my last thoughts were of gin.
The night of the heist I couldn’t contain my nerves. Jimmy and I sat in a rental Van on 5th Street waiting for Jasper. I held up my hand and it shook wildly.
“Relax Al, have a drink.” Said Jimmy. He handed me a flask.
“Fuck you, Jimmy,” I said.
The van door slid open and Jasper climbed into the back. The cabin was instantly filled with the smell of booze and body odor.
“God damn it Jasper, are you drunk?” I asked.
“Just a little bit to take the edge off,” he said in a slow, low drawl.
“He’s good,” assured Jimmy. He started the van and we set off for the warehouse.
We parked on a side street close to the entrance. Jimmy and I got out of the van and waited for Jasper. After waiting for a solid minute, I open the van’s sliding door only to see Jasper slumped in his seat sleeping.
“God damn it Jimmy. I’m not doing this.” I said and began to pace around.
Jimmy shook Jasper awake and we all started walking towards the building.
“The South entrance should be propped open with a mop or someshit,” grumbled Jasper, and we walked around the warehouse to the back. Sure enough, a door on the South wall was cracked open, and Jasper approached with caution. He widened the crack in the door and peered inside. He let it close again slowly on the handle of the mop and turned to us with his eyes fixed on the ground.
“What? What is it?” Asked Jimmy, finally voicing some concern.
Jasper fell back and caught himself on the side of the building. He leaned forward and began to vomit.
“That’s it,” I said, “I’m out. Have fun Jimmy.”
Jimmy grabbed me by the shoulder as I began walking away, “We’re so close, Al. The razors are just behind that door. We’ll make Jasper stand guard so he doesn’t fuck anything up, oaky?”
“Fine.” I said, and I followed Jimmy into the warehouse.
The inside was unsettling. It was dark and quiet. There were long rows of high shelves full of boxes upon boxes. I followed Jimmy down an isle to the East wall, then left around a corner to another isle. We crept along examining the shelves until Jimmy pointed at a row of boxes marked with black, permanent marker.
“Here they are,” Jimmy whispered with glee, “Jasper’s cousin marked them.”
“Great, grab them and let’s get the hell out of here.” I whispered back.
Jimmy slid one of the boxes to the floor as quietly as he could, and then pried one of the corners up to see inside.
“What the fuck?” He said. He reached inside the box and pulled out a box of Just For Men hair dye.
I was about to start cursing Jimmy, maybe even strangling him, but before I could do anything I was interrupted by a large crash coming from the direction of the door we had used to enter the warehouse. Jimmy and I looked at each other wide-eyed and terrified and the warehouse lights shot on. I said nothing and ran as fast as I could for the door. I could hear Jimmy right behind me. When we got closer to the door I could see that one of the tall warehouse shelves had fallen over, and pinned under it’s base was Jasper.
“You’ve gotta help me!” He pleaded, and I hurdled his torso and kicked open the door.
Once outside I looked in either direction and saw nothing. Home free, I thought, and began to run to where the van was parked when I realized that Jimmy wasn’t behind me anymore. I felt a panic rush over me worse than I’d ever felt before. Do I go back in? Should I just run? Jimmy has the keys to the van. He’s lost. Run.
That was when I heard it. Two loud pops came from inside the warehouse. My heart sank so low that I thought it had completely stopped beating. He’s dead, I thought, Jimmy is fucking dead. But I was wrong. The door swung open and Jimmy came bolting out with the marked box under his left arm.
“Run man! What the fuck are you still doing here!” He screamed at me.
I took off. Jimmy and I reached the end of the property line by the time the security guard got outside and started shooting at us. Adrenaline coursed through me like morphine and I was disturbed by the fact that being shot at didn’t scare me at all. We got to the van and sped off into the night.
“What the fuck happened in there Jimmy?” I still hadn’t caught my breath. “I thought that was Jasper’s fucking cousin!”
“I don’t know. It must have been the other guard.” Jimmy was shaking wildly, “Fuck!” He punched the steering wheel a couple of times.
He pulled over to the side of the road and reached into the pocket of his black leather jacket. He took out a revolver, and started wiping it down with some napkins he took off the floor. He tossed the gun into an alley and started driving again. I was too shook up to ask him what had happened or why he had just thrown a gun into a random alley.
“Where are we going?” Was the only question I could muster.
“West,” Said Jimmy, as he took the on ramp to the Dan Ryan expressway.
The sun was peaking over the roofs of the houses when Jimmy parked the car. It was a beautiful sunrise. Jimmy was right, it truly was less ugly in the suburbs. I looked out the window at Jimmy’s uncle’s house.
“What happened in that warehouse, Jimmy?” I asked him finally.
“Jasper didn’t make it,” he said, “try and catch some shut eye. I’m going to go see if my uncle is awake yet.
As soon as Jimmy stepped out of the van, police cars zoomed in from both directions. Jimmy looked back at me, at first with absolute terror, but soon shifted to a grin. Officers with their guns drawn screamed at Jimmy from behind the safety of the doors of their squad cars. He put his hands on his head, and I put mine out the window of the van in compliance with the officers’ orders. They threw Jimmy to the ground and cuffed him. From the back of a squad car I watched Jimmy’s last stand.
“You’ll never take me alive!” He screamed, “You’ll never take me alive!”
He managed to break free from the policeman and ran down the street with his hands still cuffed behind his back. The officer tackled him from behind and he slid across the pavement a few feet on his face and knees. After that, Jimmy went quietly.