Chapter 9 - The Harbor Sit-Down
The three days following the battle at the Cermak bridge were a blur of antiseptic, surgical stitching, and the low, dangerous rumble of idling black sedans in the courtyard. Roman hadn't died on the vault floor—Clara had jammed her fingers directly into his pleural cavity to release the trapped air while Silas drove an armored Suburban across the frozen median of Lake Shore Drive at ninety miles an hour to reach the underground surgical clinic in Chinatown.
Now, Roman sat propped up on three goose-down pillows in his second-floor bedroom, his chest swathed in six layers of medical gauze, a drainage tube pinned to his side under his pajama shirt. His skin was pale, his voice reduced to a dry, rasping whisper, but his eyes were sharp as broken glass as he watched the four remaining harbor captains standing at the foot of his bed.
"The West Side is asking for terms, boss," Silas said from the window, where he was cleaning the bolt of his tactical carbine with an oily rag. "They lost eighteen men between the bridge and the warehouse yard. Julian Vance is sitting in a motel in Gary with a broken collarbone and three thousand dollars left in his pocket. He wants to know if he can buy his life with the titles to the Cermak shipping docks."
Roman didn't look at the captains. His gaze was fixed on the open doorway leading to the hallway, where Leo was sitting on the floor in his overalls, rolling his metal Brachiosaurus back and forth across the threshold while Clara folded clean linens on the landing.
"Tell Julian Vance he can keep the docks," Roman said softly, his chest heaving slightly with the effort of speech. "Tell him I don't want his brick, I don't want his money, and I don't want his territory on the West Side."
The oldest captain, a man named Caruso who had served under Roman’s father in the eighties, took a step forward, his brow furrowing in angry confusion. "With all due respect, Roman, we lost five good boys on that bridge! We have the Vance crew by the throat! If we don't take the Cermak docks now, the Italians from Milwaukee will move into the gap before the snow melts! A boss who leaves money on the table after a bloodbath looks like he’s losing his grip!"
Roman turned his head slowly on the pillow, his lead-colored eyes pinning Caruso to the carpet. "I didn't say I was leaving the money on the table, Caruso. I said I don't want Julian’s brick. I want his signature."
He reached to the bedside table, picked up a pen and a blank legal document that Arthur, the syndicate’s corporate lawyer, had drafted that morning, and tossed it onto the quilt at Caruso’s feet.
"Take that to the motel in Gary tonight," Roman ordered, his voice hardening with that familiar, absolute authority that brooked no debate. "Tell Julian Vance he signs over the complete, unencumbered legal title and custody waiver for Leo Hayes and Clara Hayes to my domestic trust by midnight. Tell him if he hesitates for one second—if he ever mentions their names in a tavern, a card room, or a church as long as he breathes—I won't send Silas with a contract. I’ll come down there with the drainage tube still in my ribs and feed him his own fingers."
Caruso looked at the document, then looked toward the hallway where Clara was standing still, her hands frozen on a stack of white pillowcases as she listened to a syndicate lord trade the most valuable shipping corridor in Chicago for the legal ownership of a maid and a four-year-old boy.
"You're trading three million dollars a year in harbor transit for a woman who cleans your toilets, Roman?" Caruso whispered, his voice thick with a mixture of horror and pity. "Your father would have put a bullet in your ear for even suggesting it."
"My father died in a federal penitentiary with no one at his bedside except a prison chaplain and a guard who stole his watch," Roman said coldly. "Get out of my room, Caruso. And if I hear a single word of complaint about this trade from the South Side crews by tomorrow morning, I’ll assume you've decided you'd rather do business with the Milwaukee people from the bottom of the river."
When the captains had filed out of the bedroom, their heads bowed in sullen, resentful obedience, Clara walked slowly into the room. She set the linens on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed and moved to his side, her fingers trembling as she reached out to check the tape securing the drainage tube to his ribs.
"You didn't have to do that," she whispered, her tears falling onto the white sheet covering his chest. "Julian is a coward, Roman. He wouldn't have come back for us. You didn't have to give up the docks to keep us safe."
Roman reached up with his left hand—his knuckles still scabbed from the bridge fight—and gently covered her small, cold fingers where they rested against his bandages. "He wouldn't have come back for you because he loved you, Clara," Roman said softly, his thumb tracing the blue vein on the inside of her wrist. "He would have come back because men like Julian treat women and children like property they can pawn when the dice turn cold. I wanted his signature on paper so that when the boy grows up, nobody in this city can ever tell him his mother was collateral."
He looked toward the doorway, where Leo had crept inside to stand by the bed, holding his three-legged green dinosaur up so Roman could see it. The toy had been scrubbed clean of blood with kitchen soap, though the plastic was still faintly pink around the missing tail joint.
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"He's clean now," Leo said brightly, setting Barnaby down on the goose-down pillow right next to Roman’s ear. "Martha said if you keep him on your head while you sleep, the holes in your chest won't make that whistling noise anymore."
Roman didn't tell the boy to take the toy off his pillow. He turned his cheek slightly until his rough, stubbled skin brushed against the cold green plastic of the dinosaur's snout, his eyes closing as a deep, shuddering sigh escaped his lungs—the first sound of genuine, unburdened peace that had been heard in the south wing of the Thorne estate in over twenty years.
