Nick is a 55-year-old professionally trained musician. In this excerpt from my upcoming book The Eccentrics, we hear about how he got mixed up with the mob during his drinking days.
When he heard The Supremes for the first time, it was an earth-shattering experience. The year was 1965 and the song was “Stop in the Name of Love.” A 7-year-old Nick was blown away.
“When I heard that song, there was something going on with the minor chords and the xylophone, the bass line underneath Diana Ross singing a blue note melody,” he recalls. “All these things going on transported me to a place that was infinite power on one hand and infinite tenderness on the other. I had this safe place to go in my head that was warm and strong and loving no matter what.”
Later on, he would get the same feeling from The Beatles. It was like being high. And Nick was addicted. Addiction to drugs and alcohol would dominate nearly 30 years of his life.
Nick is a naturally talented musician who plays drums, guitar and piano. He could sing before he could talk and he now has a bass-baritone voice. Diagnosed with bipolar in 1996, he is 55 years-old with scraggly hair at the time of this interview, an olive complexion and a near-photographic memory. He remembers times, places and addresses perfectly and has vivid memories of events like the assassination of Martin Luther King and the riots that followed in his neighborhood growing up. Today, Nick believes his birth-mother is a bipolar alcoholic too.
He attended a mostly African-American grade school and got beat up at least two times a week because he was not black. He’s half Native American and half white.
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In 1993, Nick met a guy – we’ll call him Dante – who was connected to the mafia in Cicero, where Charles had grown up. Dante’s family had ties to the old Capone gang. Dante wasn’t interested in smoking pot. Booze was his thing – particularly whiskey and scotch. Nick had found a new drinking buddy.
One night in 1995 they were drinking at a bar called Capone’s on Roosevelt Road in Cicero. When the bar closed at 4AM, they were craving more alcohol. A couple blocks away, they walked over to a nondescript door. Dante knocked and a little door opened up with eyes peeking out. A modern-day speakeasy. They went inside, but before they did, Dante turned to Nick and said “don’t say anything, just drink your beer and don’t look at anybody.” He was scared.
Dante invited Nick to Sunday dinner to meet his family and he says it was exactly like The Sopranos. Nick met the grandfather. Dante was the heir apparent.
One hot summer night, Nick went to a bar with Dante, who had a proposition. He took Nick out back and said he had a kilo of pure cocaine. Direct from Mexico. He wanted Nick to sell it in Boystown – an area he was sure was somebody else’s turf.
“If I move in on this turf, everything dies, my soul dies for real,” Nick thought. “I am a murderer and a mobster. I say ‘I’m really drunk right now, can I get back to you when I’m sober.’” He turned around and never came back. That was the end of his friendship with Dante.
More excerpts from my book The Eccentrics can be found here.
