Page 6 of Powerful Deception

For nearly two days, all I did was stay in my bed, watch random shit on tv and drink. Eight bottles of merlot later, I knocked out and when I woke up the numbness was still there but so was something else.

There was this urge deep inside of me that told me that I needed to get to work. To start doing some research and find out who exactly killed my father. What exactly was he involved in that would cost him his life, or better yet what would lead to such a horrendous death?

I started with a simple search for Joseph Vitale in the Chicago Public Library database. I thought it was going to be a simple search, one that would take me through his accomplishments as one of Chicago’s finest, but that wasn’t the case.

I found countless articles that mentioned Detective Vitale and talked about the criminals that he had brought down and the good he was doing for the Chicago Police department. But in the last three years those articles went from being praiseworthy to downright disgraceful. There were so many opinion pieces talking about how Detective Vitale went from one of the most respected men in blue to being the most despised.

Something that just blows my mind because that wasn’t the man that I knew at all. That wasn’t the man that raised me and made me into the person that I am today.

What blew my mind even more was the fact that his name was being thrown around with those of thugs and known members of the Italian and Irish mafia. There is even mention of him being associated with members of the bratva in some way.

And now hours later, here I am with a headache and not anywhere near close to finding who could have gone after my father. It could have been anyone.

Instead of answers, all I have is questions as to who my father really was.

As much as I want to say that those women at the funeral were wrong, everything I’ve found so far has told me otherwise.

He was in fact involved with the wrong people, but why? What made him go from being one of the most respected men in the city to whatever he was at the end?

What was he digging into that he had to die for?

And how is it that the city of Chicago noticed that my father was changing into a different person and yet his own daughter couldn’t? Did I see things and just turned a blind eye to them?

My dad had always been the most loving man. He did everything that he could to give me a good life after mama died. He went to my school events and when I told him I was going into bartending after college because I had bills to pay, he supported me.

Never did I see the man that the articles, these opinion pieces, described him to be.

I know deep down inside me that the man described in those articles was not the one I knew.

The way he was acting as a cop had to go deeper. It had to go so deep that it was changing the way that he was conducting his cases.

But what could change him in such a way?

The only reasoning that I can come up with is that it all stems from who he was associating with. And through all of my research, one name keeps coming up wherever I read.

The Devil.

Never a real name, never what he looks like, just the stupid nickname.

A nickname that people came up with to describe the person they say is the one that runs the blood-filled streets of the city.

Whoever this person is, people seem to think that they are the one that called the hit on my father. That is, if they didn’t throw the fatal blow themselves.

But why?

In all the articles that I read through, there wasn’t a direct connection between my dad and the so-called devil. There were connections between the thugs that my dad was supposedly associated with and the devil but from what I can see, that was where the relationship ended.

As I sit here, rubbing at the pain in my temples, I realize something. Maybe I was looking for answers in the wrong places.

Maybe I shouldn’t be looking for articles mentioning my father to find his killer. Maybe I should be looking into the people he was said to be connected with.

Especially this devil person.

I open my laptop, closing all the tabs and start with a fresh one.

My fingers land on the keys and I hesitate.

I know Chicago may look like a great city, but I know what lies within the streets. There is darkness, blood and death everywhere even if the city tries to hide it. Some very powerful individuals run this city and the citizens just turn a blind eye to it.