The Old Neighborhood Read Free Page B

her children would get a chance at a better life in America. The negotiation took place as giant, black hornets swooped in to kill the tarantulas. The second-youngest was a little girl about to turn three, and somehow Ma convinced Dad, so they came home with not one but two little, dark-brown, frizzy-haired angels. They named the youngest Rose and the older one Jan, but they’d forever be known as Jan’n’Rose and have their names be confused by all of our family, even though Rose was much lighter skinned and taller than Jan, who was dark and small-framed with a fiery temper. I came into the picture about a year later. A “late-in-life baby” my Ma always said, but she was just twenty-seven. It was a different time.
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    LIL PAT BECOMING A MURDERER didn’t spark off out of the blue. We could feel it coming—in the family and in the neighborhood.
    The TJOs sprouted up in Edgewater in the ’60s. The original name was the “Thorndale Jarvis Organization.” They were a fairly organized stone greaser gang that hung out right under the Thorndale stop on the Red Line directly across from the huge dark brick armory where I took gymnastics as a little boy. Their real estate ran between there and the Jarvis stop on the Red Line. Under the leadership of Joe Ganci and Bob Kellas, the gang flourished, and membership skyrocketed to over 200 members in the early ’70s. At one point, there was a whole juvenile courtroom full of TJOs on a variety of charges. The judge’s name was Reynolds, and he was known for his hot temper and quick wit. After he’d sentenced the twelfth TJO to appear that day, he looked up and said, “What is this TJO crap anyway? These guys are nothing but a bunch of Thorndale Avenue Jag Offs.”
    The name stirred uproarious approval through the entire courtroom, and the gang forever changed the official name to the Thorndale Avenue Jag Offs.
    The older TJOs had slightly biker-ish leanings and at times called themselves “Thieves Junkies and Outlaws.” Eventually, they garnered the attention of Sonny Barger and his crew, and the Hell’s Angels would sporadically stop by and pay the neighborhood a visit while on their countrywide tours of wreaking havoc. It was around then that the TJOs began dealing heroin. Some say it was the Angels that biked it in, concealing it in their fuel tanks, but others say it was the Mob, who Ganci and Kellas started doing low-level hits for. Those hits eventually got the both of them pinched on a murder rap, but during the months-long trial, they both miraculously escaped from Cook County Jail in a week that saw seven inmates escape, including one who was in the county hospital for a stab wound and just walked out of the front door in broad daylight. Needless to say, it was a bad week for those friendly confines that the regulars lovingly called “California” due to its location on California Ave. Both men were caught within weeks. Ganci took the plunge and got natural life, and Kellas got ten on conspiracy to commit murder.
    Mickey’s big brother and Ryan’s dad, Rick Reid, took charge and brought the TJOs into the ’80s until he got in a traffic dispute on Clark, ripped a guy out of his car window, and beat him to death in front of his wife and child. In the process, he nearly exposed the long-running extortion ring the TJOs had going with the businesses on Broadway and Clark, between Thorndale Ave. and Foster Ave. Word was that Rick went into a bar across the street while the ambulance hauled the guy away, and the police began to question people on the sidewalk right in front of him. The entire neighborhood claimed they didn’t see anything. Mind you, the assault occurred in the middle of a busy Saturday afternoon on Clark. All the press brought on a big two-year investigation in an attempt to link heroin, extortion, murder-for-hire, and all-around Chi-town All-Star thuggery. The smart-ass