Chapter Seventeen

Eros

I park in front of a decent townhouse in the Pilsen neighborhood directly south of Little Italy and University Park. It's a vibrant place filled with murals, restaurants, cafes, and Italians. Lots and lots of Italians.

The Pavone Famiglia always had a presence in Chicago. Their roots went back generations, and they held on to the relatively small Little Italy for years and years. Mostly, their home base was Philadelphia, but they ran some rackets and made some books among their own people for the most part, and we ignored them for a long while. They didn't give us much trouble—we controlled better turf and outnumbered them ten-to-one—until the last few years. More and more of their members began moving out from the East Coast and putting down roots in Chicago, swelling their numbers, and pushing their borders in all directions.

The block is nice, shady, and quiet. It doesn't look like the kind of place a mobster would make a home.

But looks don't mean a goddamn thing in this busi