Never a City So Real - Alex Kotlowitz [38]
Dave Boyle is a gadfly, a persistent, irritating, in-your-face critic of the powers that be in Cicero. I understand that this is a book about Chicago, about the city proper, but it’s impossible to talk about the city without speaking of the suburbs. Unlike New York, where the suburbs feel as if they might as well be on the other side of the Hudson River (which, in New Yorkese, means a not inconsiderable distance), or in Los Angeles, where the city feels like an illegitimate child left behind by the sprawl, Chicago’s first ring of burghs are, in truth, extensions of the city. The city moves outward from Lake Michigan, and as you venture north, south, or, in Cicero’s case, west, you seamlessly and unknowingly cross into these small towns which feel more urban than suburban. Indeed, the city’s transit line extends into a number of them. Street names often remain the same. (I live in Oak Park, four blocks from the city’s border, a block from the El, and down the street from a building that houses teachers from a Chicago elementary school.) Cicero, a town of small brick bungalows, narrow streets, and manufacturing plants, is almost indistinguishable from the city’s West Side neighborhoods, and this working-class community’s history is deeply intertwined with Chicago’s. But finally the story of Cicero is a story of Chicago’s tribalism: For years, it was a town run by insiders who successfully fought to keep the world at bay.
Dave and his wife, Nadine, bought a home in Cicero in 1983; Dave was a contractor and the town seemed to be on the verge of new development, so he thought it would be a good place to ply his trade. Within the first year of their stay, he was on his way to a job early one morning when he pulled out of an alley and saw a rough-looking crowd outside Mr. C’s, a local tavern frequented by the Chicago branch of the Outlaws motorcycle gang. It quickly became clear that someone had been murdered. Boyle could make out the chalk lines of a body, and the police were gathering evidence. As for the gang members, they were on the sidewalk, drinking beer and celebrating: There had been a fight and the best man, at least in the eyes of the surviving Outlaws, had won. Boyle pulled over, got out of his car, and asked what had happened. “The police told me that the guy had been stabbed inside, and while he was still bleeding from a gut cut from a buck knife, gurgling blood, these bikers carried him out of Mr. C’s onto the street so he’d die out there,” Boyle recalls. It became clear that the bikers had moved the dying man to keep the bar from getting shut down, even temporarily, and it also quickly became apparent that police had obliged them. Mr. C’s was still serving beer.
Boyle decided that Cicero would be a better place to live if Mr. C.’s, which had a history of wild brawls, was closed down, so he went to see the village’s deputy liquor commissioner. The commissioner told Boyle that there was nothing he could do about Mr. C’s, and that if Boyle knew what was good for him, he wouldn’t mention it again. But Boyle, who’s not easily discouraged, returned six days later, and this time the deputy commissioner was more blunt. He told Boyle that if Boyle did anything about Mr. C.’s, not only might they kill Boyle but they might kill him, as well. The “they” he was referring to was organized crime.
“I just basically thought, ‘Fuck you. I’m Dave Boyle,’ ” Boyle told me. “I walk upright, and I ask you to do the right thing, and you tell me the mob won’t let you do it. I thought, ‘What kind of pussy