Junior was back on the street, he pretty much had zero eyes on him, but almost zero power. Of course, he still had more money than most third world nations, and he had the business know how, so he started to rebuild, and within five years of his father’s conviction, he may not have controlled half the United States anymore, but he did control Chicago, and for Junior, that was enough.
There’s your history lesson kids—Chicago Mob 101.
So you can probably understand why I wouldn’t want to be involved with a guy like Junior, because despite the loss of power, he’s still downright ruthless, and because of the betrayal he experienced at the hands of his lifelong best friend, he doesn’t give a damn about loyalty. If he thinks you’re going to rat him out, he’ll kill you. If he thinks you’re using dope, he’ll kill you. If he thinks you’re going to try and skip out on a hundred-thousand-plus dollar debt, yeah, you guessed it, he’ll kill you.
And me, I ain’t a fan of being killed, so when Sal told me he sold my debt to Junior, I decided right then and there I would try my damnedest to pay it off as quickly as possible.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do alright as a PI. It keeps a roof over my head, the refrigerator full, and a few bucks in my pocket for drinks and nice dinner or two with lady friends. But Chicago’s expensive, and it’s becoming pricier everyday, so even though I do alright, my extra bucks was only going to go so far in paying off my debt to Junior. In fact, it really only covered the interest, and just barely at that. So the fact was, I needed to make extra money, and a lot of it to get out from under Junior’s thumb, and the only way I know how to make that kind of extra dough is by gambling. But, of course, the issue with that is Junior owns or has a piece of every book maker in Illinois, so I had to find some other avenue, some other activity that Junior didn’t have a piece of and that wouldn’t put me in harms way or be arrested.
And I found it—or at least I thought I did—in cock fighting.
I know what you’re thinking, what kind of lowlife son of a bitch would fight chickens for money? Now, I should probably start by saying that I had nothing to do with making the chickens fight. There are owners and handlers for that, all I was was a spectator. But you know what? Every time I hear people gripe about having animals fight, it kind of gets under my skin. I mean, they’re animals, they’re bodies are basically designed to fight and defend themselves. That’s why they have beaks and claws. That’s why dogs have teeth, they’re made to rip and tear. But what really gets my goat is that the folks who complain about cock fighting or dog fighting the most are usually fans of boxing or mixed martial arts or pro-wrestling, and basically all those “sports” are is human cock fighting. If you’ve never seen a mixed martial arts fight, I actually think they’re worse than cock fighting. Two guys go inside a cage and then pound on each other until one of them is broken and bleeding on the ground, and the guy who comes out on top usually doesn’t look much better than the guy on the ground; his face and body is undercooked hamburger.
Yeah, you’re not buying this line, are you?
To be honest, I don’t buy it either. But it’s something every non-hispanic spectator of cock fighting tells themselves. The very first time I hit one of these things up on the southside, I heard a half dozen guys all say it, and say it with conviction. It almost becomes a mantra of sorts, a mental shield, a way to justify—or moderately accept—the carnage of seeing one living thing rip apart another, all the while cheering your cock on.
After the first time I saw a cock fight, I threw up out of the window of my car six or seven times. Sure, I didn’t mind the eight-hundred bucks I’d won, but all that blood, feathers, and suffering. The second time wasn’t much better than the first, the only
Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Jessica Fletcher, Donald Bain