Chapter 5 - The Gates of Pier Twelve
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At eleven o’clock that morning, a furious Arthur Sterling—with a hysterical, weeping Valerie refusing to leave his side in the back of a rented Lincoln town car because her credit cards had all been locked by Julian’s fraud injunction—pulled up to the massive iron gates of Pier 12 on the Calumet River.
Pier 12 was the beating heart of the Sterling underworld empire. Every container ship, every union stevedore local, and every armored freight truck moving through northern Illinois answered to the brick warehouse office at the end of this dock. For twenty-five years, Arthur’s word here had been the word of God.
"Stay in the car," Arthur growled at Valerie as the Lincoln stopped before the lowered steel security barrier at the gatehouse.
Valerie didn't listen. Desperate to see Arthur flex the terrifying mafia power he had bragged about in her bed for the last year—and terrified that without him she was literally homeless on the street—she scrambled out into the slush right behind him in her four-inch red Louboutins and white fur coat.
Four burly dock enforcers in heavy black Carhartt jackets and knit caps stepped out of the heated gatehouse, their hands resting near the heavy iron tucked inside their waistbands.
Leading them was Big Sal Castellano—a fifty-year-old union boss who had worked the cranes since Arthur took over the docks in the nineties.
"Open the gate, Sal," Arthur barked, marching up to the steel barrier with his chest out. "And get me the master keys to the terminal office. My sons are trying a little corporate boardroom stunt downtown, and I’m taking direct control of the pier accounts effective immediately."
Big Sal didn't reach for the gate switch. He chewed slowly on an unlit cigar, looking past Arthur’s shoulder at Valerie shivering in her white fur coat, and then looked back into Arthur’s eyes with flat, stony silence.
"Can't do that, Arthur," Sal said quietly.
Arthur’s eyes bulged with disbelief. "Arthur? Since when do you call me by my first name without a Boss in front of it, Sal?! I put you in that union chair fifteen years ago!"
"No, you didn't," a deep, calm voice rumbled from behind the stack of shipping containers inside the fence.
Twenty-eight-year-old Damon Sterling stepped out into the falling snow.
Built like a heavyweight prizefighter at six-foot-four and two hundred and thirty pounds of solid iron, wearing a black wool peacoat over a Kevlar vest, Damon walked up to the inside of the steel gate barrier with twelve armed dock captains fanning out behind him like a wall of granite.
"Grandpa Lorenzo put Sal’s father in that union chair in 1988, Dad," Damon said evenly, stopping two feet from the iron bars separating him from his father. "And for the last six years, while you were spending four afternoons a week at the country club or up at the Four Seasons with this piece of trash, I was the one down here at four in the morning settling strikes, bribing the customs inspectors, and bailing Sal’s nephew out of Cook County Jail when the feds raided the rail yard."
"I am the Don of this family, Damon!" Arthur roared, slamming his gloved fist against the steel gate bar. "Sal—open this gate right now, or I’ll have you and your whole local replaced by nightfall!"
Big Sal took the unlit cigar out of his mouth and spat into the gray slush at Arthur’s feet.
"Every man on this pier saw what happened at the Palmer House last night, Arthur," Sal said, his gravelly voice thick with old-school disgust. "Donna Evelyn was the one who paid my wife’s oncology bills at Northwestern three years ago when you told me the family slush fund was tight. Donna Evelyn never missed a single christening or wake in this parish for thirty years. And last night, you stood there with your hands in your pockets while your twenty-six-year-old side piece slapped the woman who built this house right across the face."
Sal tapped the heavy iron pistol in his belt and looked straight at Damon. "The Calumet docks answer to Damon Sterling and Donna Evelyn. You ain't welcome past this fence no more, Arthur."
Behind Arthur, Valerie let out a shrill, panicked cry as she looked at the twelve hardened killers glaring at her through the iron fence. "You can't talk to him like that! Tell them, Arthur! Call Lucas’s street crews on the South Side! They’re the ones with the guns—they’ll come down here and shoot these dock rats!"
Damon’s cold dark eyes shifted from his father to Valerie.
For five seconds, Damon didn't say a word. He just looked at the hand Valerie had used to strike his mother the night before.
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"You really want to go down to the South Side and look for my little brother Lucas right now, Valerie?" Damon asked softly. "Julian only took your shop and your car because Julian is the polite one in the family. Lucas spent all night sitting in the kitchen at Lake Forest looking at the bruise on our mother’s cheek."
Damon turned his gaze back to his father. "And before you waste your last forty thousand dollars driving down to the South Side clubs, Dad... you might want to check on the two-million-dollar cash vault you kept hidden under the floorboards of Valerie’s brother’s chop shop in Bridgeport. Lucas visited there at six o’clock this morning."
