For Jeronimo “JoJo” Skaggs, there were three advantages to wearing mink coats.
The first—and the most obvious—was that they kept you warm in the dismal Chicago winter. Under them, your body was an inferno and you never wanted for heat. You never blinked when the wind tried to tear through you.
The second was that it signaled to the world that you were a real man. Mink reminded him of earlier times when men were men. It was forgotten that mobsters wore mink—before the tracksuit came along and cut their balls off. Soldiers wore mink in the cholera-filled trenches of World War I. And, of course, pimps wore the animal’s hide, but even JoJo hated pimps.
The mink was a predator of the forest. A quiet, cold-blooded stalker who went wherever it wanted, whenever it pleased, yet everyone wanted a
