LOU AND THE CHICAGO OUTFIT

Late one slow Monday night at Mother's, a mob hangout on Chicago's Rush Street, three Outfit guys come crashing through the door and slide two heavy canvas bags across the bar. "Lou, hide this." No explanation. No questions asked.

The next morning, the papers are full of a quiet North Shore mansion robbery — millions in cash, gold, and jewels, no police report, no leads. Lou, the bartender who knows everyone but belongs to no one, is suddenly sitting on the score of a lifetime. He doesn't ask where it came from. He doesn't ask where it's going. He just waits.

But the men who pulled the job broke the only rule that mattered: they didn't ask permission. As the Outfit closes in — first with smiles and small talk, then with a knock from the FBI — Lou has to do the one thing that's kept guys like him alive for decades: see nothing, hear nothing, say less than nothing.

Told secondhand, bar-stool style, by a nephew who swears every word of it is true, Lou and the Chicago Outfit is a sharp, fast-moving slice of Chicago crime lore — about money too hot to touch, and the quiet men who knew better than to touch it anyway.

A work of fiction.