A Beer, a Shot, a Mayoral Hopeful
DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Set in Chicago, December 1976, it aims to reflect the historical and cultural realities of that time. Language, social attitudes, and behaviors depicted by the characters do not represent the views of the author or publisher.
The two men screamed obscenities standing on the cold, wet sidewalk outside of Frogman’s Tavern & Packaged Goods. Anthony DeLuca was kicking and yanking on the locked door as if begging and brute force would grant him access. Billy Kowalski was throwing pebbles of hard mud at the apartment windows above the bar.
“Hey, Annie! Wake up! Open the goddamn door!” Billy barked. “It’s cold out here!”
“This motherfucking door… This mother— This door is never locked. C’mon!” Anthony said. He turned to Billy, “You think she’s dead?”
“Shut up, Meat. She’s not dead,” Billy said as he hurled a chunk of mud that maybe, almost, busted right through Annie Kaminski’s window. It’s Christmas. Maybe she’s, I don’t know, opening presents.”
“Opening presents?” Anthony said mockingly as he stopped fighting the door and walked over to Billy. You’re still such a fuckin’ kid, aren’t you. You figure Santa’s up there with her, too? Maybe they’re having a nice breakfast… some milk and cookies, maybe. Ma chi si babbu?”
“Am I stupid? I’m not the one picking a fist fight with a locked door, Meat.”
Everyone called him “Meat” because he worked for his uncle’s sausage company, DeLuca Meats. It was a nickname given to him by Frogman’s original owner, Alex “The Red” Kaminski, Annie’s late husband. Red opened the bar in Bridgeport on Chicago’s southside in 1949 because real estate was cheap and selling booze was his only profitable skill. He served as a U.S. Navy frogman in World War II. He enlisted right out of high school with no other skills beyond slinging drinks to his dad’s friends in their basement, swimming, and killing. Red earned his nickname in the war because of his red hot temper. He collected more kills than anyone ever guessed. He married Annie one month after returning home from the Pacific Theatre. They never had kids because of an infection Annie contracted when she was just a girl. She was less fertile than the bar rags she used to clean-up after the regulars. Regulars who were like family. Like those two idiots currently assaulting her little piece of Chicago. When Red was alive, he and Annie ran the tavern together; their chemistry forged of fury. They argued constantly. And in a way, that would be alarming to any newcomer. But the regulars knew that insults and gentle physical abuse was their love language. Annie was just as hotheaded as her husband.
Where Red never touched the sauce, Annie was a boozehound. One summer night in 1965, Red stayed home to watch the White Sox play the Cleveland Indians. Annie was furious that he refused to watch the game from behind the bar like usual and took her aggression out on her liver. After closing up at 2:00 a.m., piss drunk from slugging back a bottle-and-a-half of Tellamore D.E.W., she drove the three blocks to the house she and Red shared. Furious with Red, she didn’t bother to slow down as she approached their bungalow, purposely skipping the turn in their 1963 white Chevy Impala, which would take her to the alley and the garage behind the house. Instead, she plowed straight through the brown brick exterior, smashing through the living room where Red was sound asleep in his lounge chair, the TV playing snowy fuzz post-broadcast. Annie was fine. The Impala suffered broken headlights, a mangled bumper and a gently crumpled hood. But the living room was a disaster. And Red… both of Red’s femurs were shattered. He managed to walk again, but not without a noticeable limp and a cane, and because of a war-hardened physiology, unyielding stubbornness, and a desire to stick it to his wife, only a year of serious physical therapy.
If she was in a foul mood, you’d still end up on the street, but not before Annie smashed a bottle or a glass of whatever was within reach on the drink rail over your head.
After the crash, Annie never touched booze again other than to serve it to other alcoholics, laborers, and the beat cops who frequented Frogman’s. Red died from an embolism—likely related to his Impala injury—six years ago in 1970. After that, Frogman’s was all Annie’s responsibility. She might have hated having to tend the bar on her own that one night in ’65, but for the last six years, she was the sole proprietor, and she relished it. Many regulars started referring to Frogman’s as simply, Annie’s Place. Most of the patrons called her by her name most of the time. But when she’d get fired up, they’d call her Red. A kind of passing of the torch from her quick-to-anger-dead husband to the woman who was, in some way, responsible for killing him. She didn’t mind so long as you were among her inner circle. If you weren’t, and you called her “Red,” you’d find yourself out on the corner of Morgan and 31st streets with your hat in your hand and her handprint across your face—if you were lucky. If she was in a foul mood, you’d still end up on the street, but not before Annie smashed a bottle or a glass of whatever was within reach on the drink rail over your head.
“Why isn’t she answering?” Meat whined.
“Goddammit. Let’s just wait.”
“Wait? It’s cold out here.”
Billy reached into his thick chore coat pocket and pulled out a flask. “Here,” he said handing it to Meat.
“Thanks. But it’s still cold out here.”
“Just drink, you meatball.”
Meat was a big guy and could be overly physical with his friends. Accenting his jokes’ punchlines with punches in the shoulder or a big arm around the neck pulling them into a headlock. His favorite target, and closest pal was Billy. Hardheaded but small. Not a small guy by general standards, but small for a union construction worker. He was smart, friendly, and real good at taking shit from bigger, older guys, like Meat, as much as he was good at giving it. Everyone who met Billy liked him. And he knew everyone in the neighborhood.
Meat and Billy stood outside passing the flask of whiskey back and forth in silence like patient dogs waiting to be let in. Billy thought he saw a curtain in the window move.
“Annie!” he shouted.
“You see her?” Meat asked.
“No, but—” Meat began pulling and kicking and punching the bar’s door again. “Knock it off, man. Just relax a minute. Meat stepped back.
“We should just go home.” Meat said.
“And do what?”
“I don’t know, babbu, maybe go be with your new bride?”
“She’s at her parents’ place.”
“So married life is going that well, eh? You’re already banished from the in-laws’?”
“Nah,” Billy paused to light a cigarette. “Told Marie I had an electrical job to do for Mrs. Portchnik. Her heat is out.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“So…”
“I just... Her father and I got into it a few weeks back.”
“’Bout what?”
“You know, he’s an ad guy. Works downtown. Wears a suit. He doesn’t have much respect for what I do.”
“What, building the buildings he and his faggoty co-workers work in?”
“Something like that. But he’s sure-as-shit calls me real fast when he needs work done on their house.”
“The irony.”
“The idiocy.”
“This country was built by the hard work guys like you and me put in. Not what the ad dicks on Michigan Avenue do. Just tricksters convincing us to buy shit we don’t need.”
“Guys like us? You saying stuffing pig tits and assholes into casings built this country?”
“I’m saying I could crush your skull with my boot right now,” Meat said as he squared up to Billy.
“Back off, old man. Or gimme back my flask.”
“‘Old man’? I ain’t that old, kid.”
“You’re forty. You’re well past your prime, and by the looks of it, you’ve got one foot in the grave.”
“Because it’s fucking cold out here!” Meat slugged Billy in the arm.
“Ouch! Gimme that.” Billy snatched the flask out of Meat’s massive hands. He took a long pull from the flask then coughed harshly.
“Ah, yes. I remember my first shot of whiskey.”
“Shut up,” Billy struggled to say through the alcohol burning his throat. He handed the flask back to Meat.
“How ‘bout this Daley shit?” Meat asked. Five days earlier, Chicago was shaken by news that longtime mayor and Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Richard J. Daley had died. Daley was in Chicago’s DNA, essentially running the city and the county with an Irish fist. Crooked as he may have been, Chicago loved him. And the patrons of Frogman’s considered him royalty—a Bridgeport boy like them; a neighborhood hometown hero.
“It’s something,” Billy said. “I’ve never known Chicago without him.”
“City’s gonna go to shit, I’ll tell you what.”
“I was on the crapper this morning—”
“C’mon. I don’t need to know that, Billy.”
“I was on the crapper this morning, reading the Sun Times and they’re doing a whole lot of wheeling and dealing to see who’s gonna be mayor until a special election can happen.”
“Yeah, I trust those dipshits on the city council about as much I trust this door is going to be unlocked riiiiight… now!” Meat pulled as hard as he could on the door. Still locked. “Motherfucker. Annie!”
“What’re you saggy raccoon tits doing here?”
“I don’t mind Bilandic. They’re talking about putting him in the throne.”
“I dunno… He’s one of us, but he’s not really one of us.”
“Because he’s not Italian?”
“He’s not even Irish.”
“So what?”
“He’s not even married.”
“Neither are you.”
“Ah! But I was! Thinking he might be a homo or something.”
“He’s not a homo.”
“How d’you know? Because he wouldn’t kiss you?”
“Fuck off.”
“Your flask is empty,” Meat said shoving the empty container into Billy’s chest, causing him to fall back a step. As he caught himself, he noticed the lights inside the bar turn on through the dirty, small transom window. “Annie!” Billy shouted as the door unlocked and she pulled it open.
The men rushed toward it. “Not so fast, fuck-os,” she said. Annie was a small woman, no more than five-foot-three with most of her weight in her disproportionate breasts, of which she often complained gave her backaches. She was wearing a pair of dirty blue jeans and a red, cable knit sweater with white snowflakes across her chest. She stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and a freshly lit cigarette dangling from her lips. Her graying blond hair was disheveled like she had leapt out of bed in a rush. “What’re you saggy raccoon tits doing here?”
“What are we normally doing here?” Meat replied. “Let us in.” He tried pushing past her. She wouldn’t budge.
“It’s Christmas morning. Go be with your families.”
“Meat doesn’t know where his family is,” Billy said.
“I swear, Bill. I’ll walk right over to your in-laws’ house and rat your skinny ass out right now.”
“Shut up, Meat,” Annie said as she peered over her shoulder into the bar. She turned back toward Meat with a look that warned him not to be a bully today. “Come on, then.”
“What’ve you been doing?” Meat asked.
“Me? On Christmas morning? I was in bed.”
Just as Billy was stepping into the bar behind Meat, he heard a commotion coming from the side of the building. He craned his neck to have a look. A middle-aged man in a gray suit with salt and pepper hair stumbled from Frogman’s side door. He was struggling to simultaneously put his right shoe on and pull his beige trenchcoat over his shoulders. As he did, he stepped on the hem of his coat and tripped over his feet. He would have faceplanted if his shoulder hadn’t broken the fall.
“Hey, uh, buddy,” Billy called out. “You okay?”
The man looked back at Billy but said nothing. He got his shoe on, stood up, pulled his coat on, brushed himself off, and awkwardly jogged down the street.
Billy walked into the bar and took a seat next to Meat. Annie was already setting up another round of Old Style and a shot of Tellamore.
“What’re you having, kid?” Annie said to Billy.
“I think I just saw Michael Bilandic leaving the bar through the side door,” he said.
Annie coughed. Her cigarette shot from her mouth and landed right in front of Meat. “Ah, c’mon, Annie!” Meat said, disgusted.
She picked the cigarette up and put it back in her mouth. “No you didn’t.”
“I’m pretty sure that was Michael Bilandic.”
“Don’t you tell me who was or wasn’t leaving my bar,” Annie said.
“Well, if it wasn’t Bilandic, it was somebody.”
“So,” Meat said, curiously, “you were in bed this morning, huh? With Michael Bilandic?”
“The fuck you say, Meat. Both of you, I’m warning you now. You better knock this shit off.”
“Okay, so if it wasn’t Bilandic, who was the guy?”
“There was no guy, Billy,” Annie said.
“Annie. I just watched a man trip all over himself hurrying out of the bar from the side door.”
“I never use that side door! It’s always locked.”
“Is it locked now?” Meat asked, standing up.
“Sit your fat ass down, Meat,” Annie said.
Meat walked over to the door and checked it. Like a child testing his mother’s patience, he turned the handle and pushed the door open. “The lock must be broken,” he said. “Or, you left it unlocked for Santa Claus.”
“I think she unlocked it so the guy who’s probably going to be our next mayor could sneak out,” Billy said.
Meat closed the door and dramatically flipped the deadbolt on the door. “Are you ashamed of us, Annie?” He settled back onto his barstool. “We can’t meet your new boyfriend?”
“Look here, gnat nuts… You didn’t see anything. No one was here. That door was locked. I don’t even know who Michael Bilandic is.”
“Annie… Dear Annie…” Meat said as he gingerly took her hand. “We love you. We want you to be happy. But that was the biggest load of cazzata you’ve ever spewed out of your mouth.”
Annie yanked her hand away and slapped Meat across the face with a bar rag. “Fuck you, Anthony. What’ve I told you about throwing around your garlicy gibberish in here. And don’t you ever touch my hand like that again.”
“Why not? Is Bilandic a jealous guy?” She slapped him with the bar rag again.
The side door rattled. All three of them stared at it in silence. It rattled again. Annie and Billy slowly put fresh cigarettes in their mouths. Billy gently stretched his arm toward Annie to light hers. She leaned toward him, keeping her eyes on the door. Sixteen or twenty panicked knocks came from outside.
“You want me to answer it?” Meat whispered.
“Shut your hole,” Annie said quietly.
Billy whispered, “Are we hiding?”
Another array of knocks came. The door rattled again.
“Somebody really wants in,” Meat said. Annie blew smoke out of the side of her mouth directly into Meat’s face. He hated cigarettes.
The front door of the bar swung open. The man Billy saw fleeing from the side door just a few minutes ago entered. Meat and Billy stared at him. Annie’s head dropped in annoyed shame. “I’m, uh… I’m sorry, Annie,” the man muttered. “I, uh… Annie, I’m sorry, but I forgot my wallet.”
Annie let out a heavy, smoky sigh. “Goddammit. Go. Go get your fucking wallet, you narrow-assed moron.”
The man shamefully, politely walked past the bar and into the back where a staircase led to Annie’s apartment. The three of them sat quietly listening to the man climb the stairs. They looked to the ceiling and followed the sound of his footsteps with their eyes. He shuffled around a bit before making his way back down the stairs and into the bar.
“Got it,” he said with an aw-shucks attitude.
“Get the fuck out of here, Mike!” Annie screamed.
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed Billy. “You are Michael Bilandic!”
Annie whizzed the bar rag in Billy’s face breaking his cigarette, causing half of it to fall into his glass of beer. When he looked up, Annie’s face was an inch from his. He cigarette held tightly between her taut lips covering gritted teeth. “Say his name again, kid, and it’ll be the last thing you hear. You got me?”
Billy looked down at his beer. Defeated, he drank what was left in the glass. The half a cigarette washed into his mouth. He pulled it out with two fingers as Annie slid the ashtray closer to him.
Meat gagged. Billy gagged. Annie continued staring.
“I’ll, uh… see you later, Annie,” Bilandic said.
“Get the fuck out of here, Mike! If you want to live to be mayor, get the fuck out of here right fucking now!” Annie screamed without breaking her death stare at Billy.
Bilandic sheepishly walked out of the bar. Annie relaxed and leaned against the backbar. She took a long drag of her cigarette, burning almost all of it one go. “I might be in trouble, boys.” She said after a few moments of tense silence.
“Politically?” Meat asked.
“No, you nut hair. You know I don’t fuck with politics.”
“Apparently, you do,” Meat said.
Billy shook his head. Annie glared. “I’m in love with him. We’re in love.”
“Oh, shit,” Meat said. “That is trouble.”
“If this gets out, we might all be in trouble.”
“What do you mean, ‘all’?” Billy asked.
Annie reached down to the well, pulled up the bottle of Tellamore, and poured an ounce into a shot glass. She stood looking at it resting on the bar rail before finally picking it up and drinking it. Meat and Billy were astounded. Annie hadn’t had a drink in eleven years. She put the bottle back and turned to face the mirror on the wall of the backbar. She look herself in the eyes, then her head fell down as she said with a certain kind of fear in her voice, “All of us. This whole operation is in trouble.”
Himmel is the author of the books Hope Idiotic, The Last DJ, and A Camp Story. An award-winning journalist, he has contributed to several news outlets including POLITICO and The Atlantic. Leader of his two sons and their dog, he's a sailor who does not spend enough time on his boat. Subscribe to his Substack, The Autopsy .
