Fred Pascente worked both sides of the law, busting rapists and gay bashers as a Chicago cop while serving as liaison between the Mafia and the department’s hierarchy. Before his death in 2014, he told his story to crime novelist Sam Reaves, who organized it into a nonfiction account, Mob Cop. “We like to think that the line is sharp between good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, cops and crooks,” Reaves writes. His real-life protagonist was a rough symphony in gray. Pascente’s memories of growing up in Chicago’s Italian neighborhood in the 1940s and ’50s—with locally owned shops on every corner and streets filled with people rather than cars—are a window to a lively, lost world.
