The Heights by Ray Franze

Welcome To The Heights

I took just a couple steps inside our house and flopped my suitcase on the floor. It was the summer of 1913 and The Heights, which resides thirty miles south of Chicago’s Loop, was booming. More than three thousand Italians made up twenty percent of the town’s bustling population.

I was twelve years old when I moved to The Heights with my parents and two younger sisters. We left the poverty and terrible unemployment plaguing Sambiase—part of the city of Lamezia Terme, in Italy’s southern region of Calabria—after hearing about opportunities in The Heights’s growing steel and railroad industries. But my father, Luca, had his eyes set on opening grocery stores to service the growing population. He had worked in his family’s stores and owned his own after getting married and starting our family in Sambiase.

After we settled in, I’d run through The Hill—my old neighborhood in The Heights—all day long. When I left each morning, my mom would call out, “Salvatore, torna a casa prima di cena!” Come home before dinner! Though it was called The Hill, we always referred to it as Hungry Hill for how hard the Italian immigrants residing there suffered and struggled at the turn of the century. Most of us settled close to those from the same region in Italy, predominantly on The Hill or the East Side because of their proximity to manufacturers. Nearly half the Italians in The Heights lived on the East Side, many along 16th Street. A lot of East Siders came from the seaside town of San Benedetto del Tronto in Marche, but those who settled along 16th Street and its immediate surroundings came from Campania and Sicily. Hungry Hill residents came from the areas around Rome, Naples, and Calabria. The Abruzzese, mostly from Sulmona, were some of the few who settled on the West Side.

Growing up in The Heights, you could be the nicest kid in the world but still have to fight, or have someone make it clear you were not to be touched. And there were always a handful who needed to be put in their place. Our neighbors a few doors down, the Fazio family—with five boys and three girls—had come from Stefanaconi, just twenty-five miles south of Sambiase. Those boys were always defending their sisters’ honor. I was helping my mom in the kitchen one day when I heard a commotion coming from the middle of the street. The oldest Fazio brother, Dante, was walking toward his house with some lady hustling closely behind, yelling and cursing at him in Italian. Dante was stone-faced and bloody handed as he made his way back home. We found out that the second-oldest brother, Tony, had found one of his sisters crying inconsolably after school. Tony had a reputation. Not as a fighter, but as a goofy, fun-loving kid.

That ends when you need to protect your family.

The bully had said something so horrible the Fazio girl refused to repeat it. He was a few years older, but Tony had a point to prove and they mixed it up for a few minutes before Tony’s friends stopped the melee. A week or so later, Tony told me he was fully aware that he’d end up on the short end in a fight, but he was so pissed off he had to exchange more than words. Tony was just happy to land a few good ones across the bully’s face and ribs.

Dante got home soon after the fight, and since word always spread fast throughout The Hill, he ran out of their house seeing red. Dante, who was the same age as this strunz, picked up a loose brick as he ran toward the bully’s house. He kicked in the front door and the bully flew down the stairs. The bully pulled a short skinning knife and slashed Dante across his forearm, but Dante landed a punch with the brick across the bully’s jaw. That was it. From that day forward, the Fazio boys had a reputation for not only being nice and sweet, but they were also not to be messed with.

Stories like this played out every day in The Heights. I learned quickly that no one looks out for your family like family, and I admired those who did the protecting. I also learned that respect must be earned, as the Fazios had done in one afternoon. Little did I know how intertwined our two families would become.

Though I enjoyed playing with the neighbor kids, I was naturally a serious young man. I took pride in my work ethic, and my parents needed my help when they kept having kids. Actually, they kept having daughters. I worked in my dad’s two grocery stores; mainly the one at 16th and Shields but occasionally at the one at 22nd and Wentworth. Dad’s patrons would often tell him about their daily struggles and working conditions. Small things like breaks, breakrooms, or even employee restrooms were almost nonexistent. Many of my neighbors worked at Canedy-Otto Machine & Tools, Inland Steel Company, and the National Brick Company. Italian women and children often worked the onion fields owned by Dutch farmers in South Holland, five miles north of The Heights. Most would ride the Chicago and Eastern Illinois train back and forth, and their fellow commuters would gripe about having to share a train car with smelly dagos on their way home from work. After hearing and seeing such struggles, I knew I wasn’t going to work in those conditions or deal with someone disrespecting me because I was Italian. My dad would say, “Son, when someone shows me kindness and respect, I’ll show them more. When someone disrespects me or my family, I’ll show them less.” That always stuck with me, and I would eventually follow that motto daily, knowingly or not.

Just a few months after moving to Hungry Hill, we heard a barrage of knocking on our front door during dinner. I pushed my chair back from the table at the same time as my younger sisters, and we raced. I barely stepped in front of them, our parents right behind us, then swung open the door to reveal my cousin Dominic Scalea, arms wide open and grinning ear to ear. We all screamed and hugged and kissed each other, and Dominic wasted no time in congratulating my very pregnant mother.

“Dom! What in the world are you doing here?” I screamed and yanked him by the sleeve.

Dominic was my mom’s nephew. Eyes wide from shock, she immediately made him a place at the dinner table, poured a glass of chianti, and scooped a plate of angel hair and meatballs. “It’s so good to see you,” she said, gently placing a folded napkin on his thigh.

“Yes,” Dad said. “This is such a pleasant but shocking surprise. Are you okay?”

The families had gotten together only a month before we left Sambiase for America, and Dominic made no mention of joining us.

“Auntie, it’s good to see you, too. My mom misses you so much. And yes, Uncle Luca, I’m okay. I just needed to get here. But let me tell ya, I almost didn’t make it.” Dominic twirled pasta around his fork, dipped his bread in gravy, and shook his head. “Madonna mia, Auntie, your homemade bread smells unbelievable!”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why did you almost not make it? What happened?” The story had to be good if Dom was involved. He was always fun and crazy. No fear.

“Almost drowned,” Dominic said nonchalantly, stuffing the last bit of pasta into his mouth.

Half the forks hit their plates in unison.

Dominic looked between my parents seriously. “I crossed illegally, on foot through Canada, near International Falls.”

“In Minnesota?” I asked, my pubescent voice cracking.

“Yeah, Minnesota. There were moments I didn’t think I’d make it. I tried to find a really dark area to enter and exit, and I had to make sure my eyes had adjusted. Then, with only starlight to light my way, I waded into the freezing Rainy River. I figured it was a couple hundred yards across, but it could’ve been more. The darkness was my friend and foe at the same time. I thought if I was a few miles west of the border patrol, I would end up in a secluded area, even with the current trying to dump me off in front of the border agents. Unfortunately, the area had storms the last few days, and the river was nearly flooded.”

He sat back and sipped some wine. “Nerves were setting in hard at this point. I realized that I’d underestimated the river’s conditions, but I was fully committed to going. I rolled my wrist and glanced down at the time. It was 10:40. I stared across the choppy Rainy to the U.S. side, took a deep breath, thought about my family in Canada and back in Sambiase, and waded even farther into the rushing river. About a quarter of the way across, the current took me by surprise. I was barely able to keep my head above the chop and not swallow water with every breath. When I finally made it across, I laid on the shore, panting for what felt like an eternity. I tried to check the time, but my watch was flooded, stopped at 10:44. I almost skipped it into the river, but at the last second I decided to keep it so I would always remember the journey. I hitched rides toward Chicago over the next week and found myself here, knocking on your door.”

As Dominic finished, we all sat there, silent, holding onto his last word with mouths agape.

My dad cleared his throat. “Well, we’re sure happy you made it, Dom. Welcome to The Heights.”

I was glad to see my cousin, but something was ominous about his sudden appearance. I was young, yes. But I was not naive. I knew the stories of certain men from Sambiase, some of which included my cousin. I knew that while these men carried great respect and influence within the town, they were looked upon unfavorably by the authorities for their unsavory activities. Many had records that would have prevented lawful entry into the country. At the same time, these characters could be beneficial to some of their amici in the United States. Things were coming to a head in The Heights between different Italian factions.

No, Dominic’s appearance was not unplanned. His illegal crossing was quite deliberate. I just wasn’t sure how he would fit in.

Over the next week or so, Dominic worked in my dad’s stores. Once in a while, I would see them talking quietly in the corner. Dominic seemed to be asking a lot of questions. One day, my dad told Dominic, “I have someone I want you to meet. Jon Allen.”

Jon Allen was born Giovanni Avellino. He got married in the Calabrian town of Cosenza in early 1912. He and his new bride left for America a few days later. They boarded the SS Hamburg in Naples and arrived in New York by mid-February, settling in Chicago Heights a week or so later. The young couple was exhausted but excited to start their new life together in the land of opportunity. After seeing the factories’ horrible working conditions, Giovanni wanted to open his own business. He believed that having an American-sounding name would help him better assimilate, so he started going by Jon Allen.

Jon would tell my dad stories about how he tried going to local banks for a loan so he could open a lounge. Every single bank gave him bullshit excuses for why he didn’t qualify for the loan. Jon’s wedding dowry would have been enough collateral if he’d been German or Dutch. Lack of access to legitimate loans often sent law-abiding businessmen to illegitimate sources, a common occurrence for Italian immigrants. “You never want to borrow money from gangsters,” my dad always told me. “If anything, you want to do the lending.” He was unknowingly planting the seeds in my head. Jon would eventually ingratiate himself with some of the local Italian—mostly Sicilian—politicians, as this would be the only way to start his business.

By 1915, Italians were becoming more influential in local politics. Jon had made enough connections to hustle his way into their circle and started making money from the little bit of gambling they allowed him to run. A few months later, he parlayed his earnings and marriage dowry into the purchase of the Lucky Lounge—a large, white, rectangular two-story farmhouse with black shutters.

You always knew when someone was walking around the Lucky because its floors were slightly uneven and squeaked. The ornate wooden bar, with large mirrors laid in the woodwork behind it, ran nearly the length of the room opposite the windows. It was fairly musty when you walked in because there was never enough cross breeze to clear out the cigar and cigarette smoke, even with the large windows. The bare wooden tables were scattered in the room with four wooden chairs around each one.

There were also a few large rooms down the back hall. Jon’s office was halfway down on the left. Shortly after he took over the Lucky, Jon began running his gambling operation in back rooms on the first floor and running girls on the second. The steep narrow staircase to the second floor was somewhat hidden by split-panel red velvet curtains acting as a door. The four small rooms the girls worked in had white linen curtains, a small vanity with a mirror where they could fix themselves, and a small bed along one of the walls. The rooms usually smelled of cheap perfume to help cover the smelly factory and railway workers who frequented them. Farther down the hall on the second floor was a small efficiency apartment. Jon’s building also housed a gym in the cellar for the boxers he promoted and trained.

The Lucky Lounge quickly became known as a one-stop shop where workers could gamble their checks away and have some fun with an easy gal. As Jon’s activities expanded, he needed help to manage the business and negotiate with the Sicilians. Dominic was all in, and he encouraged me to join and make some extra money to “take the girls out or help out at home.” I almost felt guilty if I didn’t go. And I did like the money.

Around this time, alderman Lorenzo Sanfilippo emerged as the first crime boss in Chicago Heights. Rocco Lambretta and Matteo Pacenti, both Sicilian, were his lieutenants. Lambretta and Pacenti became entrenched in the Unione Siciliana, which solidified their political reach. At this point, Chicago Heights was not part of the Chicago Outfit. Sanfilippo was The Boss of The Heights and had his own territory, completely independent from Big Jim Colosimo and Johnny Torrio’s thing up north. Jon Allen realized Sanfilippo needed help and enlisted his new best friend, Dominic, who leapt at the chance to be part of a Calabrian-based gang.

By mid-1917, Dominic was living in the apartment above the Lucky. I was nearly sixteen by then and spending more time helping out, mostly dropping off envelopes without asking questions. I still worked at the family grocery stores, but I wasn’t interested in being a shopkeeper. I was also spending a lot of time away from my five younger sisters, who constantly turned the house upside down. My parents enjoyed the chaos. Not me, though I loved my family unconditionally. Jon was always asking my dad if he knew where I was because he could see the path I was heading down. Yes, I was working at the Lucky Lounge and occasionally running errands for or with them, but I didn’t see it as my career. I saw it as extra work. I figured I would take over my dad’s stores when he was ready to retire because it seemed like the easy and logical choice. I could be my own boss and it sure as hell was better than working in some shit factory.

By 1918, gangsters from Chicago started pushing south and opening joints around The Heights. Johnny Torrio, acting in the interest of the Chicago Outfit for Big Jim Colosimo, opened the Shadow Inn in Stickney, the Roamer Inn in Posen, the Burr Oak Hotel in Blue Island, and the Coney Island Café and the Barn in Burnham. This wasn’t so appreciated by the Chicago Heights guys, who didn’t like Torrio moving so close, though those areas were technically anyone’s game. Jon and Dominic were bringing in pretty good cash, but the Sicilians didn’t give them the respect they deserved. They were one of the best-earning crews, yet they got brushed over as unimportant in meetings because they were Calabrese. This enraged Dominic, but Jon was cool. “Patience, paisan. Patience,” he would tell Dom. “We will have our day.” Dominic believed every word because Jon always followed through with fervor and unwavering determination.

This was also when I really started really working for Dom and Jon.

I was barely helping out at the family store and spending all my time with Marie—the girl who stole my heart—or at the Lucky. Dominic and Jon were no longer giving me that look to leave the room so they could talk in private, though. I never spoke unless spoken to, let alone offered an unsolicited opinion. But once in a while, if they couldn’t make a decision, they would ask me. I always explained my rationale. They’d smile and say, “This kid has a future.” I found comments like this a sign of their growing respect for me. To be honest, I found it intoxicating. Another thing they always told me was, “Don’t get cocky, kid, or we—or someone else—will knock you down.” This was nothing new. My parents had been telling me similar things my whole life.

However, there were some things Jon and Dom told me that I took to heart. Never discuss anything you hear here outside these walls with anyone. Be careful who you trust. Never let others know what you’re thinking. This allows you to not show your hand.

Some of the earliest conversations, when I actually sat down with Jon and Dominic, were to discuss building their gang’s political connections. And not just local politicians, but police as well. At what I felt was the right moment, I’d asked Jon for permission to ask a question like, “Isn’t that the guy we kick up to’s responsibility?” Jon would explain that, even though they were under Sanfilippo’s protection, the Sicilian-led gangs may not totally have their back. The Sicilians’ political contacts came through the Unione. Jon and Dominic were the only Calabrian-led gang in The Heights and knew they had to protect their own interests. I knew they aspired to be more than just a spoke in the wheel, and I wanted to be part of it.

But I also had Marie. Though I had been spending less time at my dad’s shops, that’s where I met the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I had been helping my dad stock shelves and literally backed into her as she tried maneuvering around the boxes in the aisle. I was utterly struck by her beauty and couldn’t get “scusi” out of my mouth. She had long, curly black hair just past her shoulders and brown eyes; the biggest, most beautiful round eyes God had ever given. She smiled at me immediately, causing my heart to beat out of my chest. I finally managed to get words to pass over my teeth and asked where she lived. She had recently moved about five blocks from where we lived.

“Can I come over and call on you?”

Before she could answer, a lady stuck her head into the aisle behind us and told Marie it was time to go. Her mom had obviously been eavesdropping on our conversation.

Over the next few months, I went to her house and took her on long strolls. Marie was stunning in the moonlight. I’d get lost staring into her eyes, totally mesmerized. We’d hold hands the entire time and I’d occasionally stop to kiss her gently, cupping her soft cheeks in my hands. I always brought flowers for Marie and her mother when I showed up on her doorstep, trying to prove I was worthy of her courtship. Her parents were always polite but cold. Her dad somehow found out I was spending time working at the Lucky Lounge and assumed I was a racketeer. Which I wasn’t. I mean, I was dabbling in that life, but it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted. It was good easy side cash. I knew Marie loved me, but I could see how her parents were starting to create a divide between us. I took it personally.

God, I loved her.

I was almost eighteen when I started hinting at marriage on our walks. She’d go a little quiet, and I could tell something wasn’t quite right. As we sat in her back yard one evening, I finally asked if she saw herself marrying me. She began to cry and told me she loved me, but her parents didn’t care for me. I tried explaining away my time at the lounge as just hanging out with my older cousin and cleaning up for extra cash. She started sobbing, saying it didn’t matter. Her parents wanted her to stop seeing me, and she didn’t have the courage to go against their wishes.

“Don’t say no just yet,” I argued. “We can give it time. I will prove to your parents that I am worthy of you. You make me whole. I will dedicate my life to making you happy. I will treat you like the principessa that you are. I need you!”

Marie paused but didn’t agree to wait, either. I’m not sure what came over me, but right then and there I drew a line in the sand.

“Marie, if you’ll be my wife, I swear I’ll be totally honest and legitimate. I’ll take over the family stores and we can start a family. But if you say no, I will go into that life because without you, I have nothing to lose.”

She wailed into her hands, unable to look into my tear-filled eyes. “I love you, Sal, but I can’t. I just can’t.”

I went straight to my parents’ house and cried for hours. My parents and sisters were equally as devastated as I was. Mom had said she loved how I acted when I was with Marie, especially the way I catered to her every whim when she came over for family dinners. She could see that Marie was good for my soul. My sisters were hoping for yet another sister. As if they didn’t have enough of those.

But I was true to my word and went to the Lucky Lounge every day and night after that heartbreaking evening, trying not to think about losing my true love. My parents weren’t excited about the path I put myself on, but I’m not so sure they were surprised. I still didn’t think this was what I would do for the rest of my life, and to this day I’m not sure if I committed to Jon and Dominic to spite Marie or myself.

I know I didn’t think it all the way through. I wasn’t considering the inherent dangers and stresses that come with the life of a racketeer. I wanted to be tough, like the neighborhood boys who fought for their family’s honor. I wanted to be respected.

But mostly, I wanted to make big money to help myparents raise my seven sisters.