Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone Read online

  Tancl came over to their table just as O'Donnell threw a punch at the waiter. The ex-prizefighter stepped between them. O'Donnell gave him a shove. At this the enmity that had been building up for months between the two men exploded. They both drew guns, fired simultaneously, and wounded each other in the chest. Doherty joined the combat, firing wildly. Simet and Klimas rushed him and tried to disarm him. A bullet from O'Donnell's gun sent Klimas crashing hack against the bar, dead.

  O'Donnell and Tancl, still shooting at each other, fell, bleeding from several wounds, got up, resumed firing until their guns were empty. O'Donnell, pierced by four bullets, lurched out into the street, followed by Doherty. They ran off in opposite directions. Tancl, though mortally wounded, took another revolver from behind the bar and stumbled after O'Donnell, shooting as he went. His gun was empty when he overtook him two blocks from the saloon, and he hurled it at his head. The effort exhausted his last reserves of energy, and he fell to the street. So did O'Donnell. There they lay within reach of each other, but no longer able to move, the one dying, the other unconscious, when Simet arrived. "Get him," Tancl gasped. "He got me." They were his last words. Simet jumped up and down on the senseless O'Donnell, kicked him in the head, and left him for dead.

  Jim Doherty, who had also been gravely wounded, dragged himself to a hospital. There the police brought the mangled O'Donnell, and after weeks of treatment both men recovered. Assistant State's Attorney William McSwiggin prosecuted them without success.

  Such savagery earned Cicero a unique reputation. Mayor Klenha, injured in his civic pride, claimed it was grossly exaggerated. Cicero, he insisted, was no worse than Chicago; who could tell when one left Chicago and entered Cicero? A Chicago wag observed: "If you smell gunpowder, you're in Cicero."

  A week after the Hawthorne Smoke Shop opened its doors, Capone went underground, having committed murder in full view of at least three witnesses. Friendship partly motivated the deed, friendship for Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, the oldest of the three Guzik brothers. Capone used to call him "the only friend I can really trust." Their friendship blossomed during the early days of the Four Deuces, when Guzik, an old hand at brothelkeeping, joined the Torrio outfit. Thirteen years older than Capone, a short, penguin-shaped man, wattled, dewlapped and pouchy-eyed, he wore a perpetually plaintive air. Regarding the significance of his nickname, there were two versions. According to the first, "Greasy Thumb" alluded to Guzik's beginnings as a clumsy waiter whose thumb constantly slipped into the soup. The second version has it that his thumb was always greasy from counting greenbacks.*

  "I don't know why they call me a hoodlum," Guzik once complained. "I never carried a gun in my life." He never did, or indulged in any violent deeds or language. His forte was accountancy, which he applied with brilliant results first to the brothel, then to the bootlegging business. As business manager of the Torrio-Capone syndicate and its No. 3 member, he reorganized it along the lines of a holding company. When Mayor Dever's police closed the Four Deuces, new headquarters were quietly set up two blocks away at 2146 South Michigan Avenue, a doctor's shingle-"A. Brown, MD" -nailed to the door and the front office furnished to resemble a doctor's waiting room. On shelves in the adjoining room stood row upon row of sample liquor bottles. Retailers prepared to place a large order could take a sample and have it analyzed by a chemist. In this way the syndicate built up a reputation as purveyors of quality merchandise.

  The rest of Dr. A. Brown's office accommodated Guzik, his clerical staff and records of all the syndicate's transactions in six different areas. One group of ledgers listed wealthy individuals, hundreds of them, as well as the hotels and restaurants buying wholesale quantities of the syndicate's liquor; a second group of ledgers gave all the speakeasies in Chicago and vicinity that it supplied; a third, the channels through which it obtained liquor smuggled into the country by truck from Canada and by boat from the Caribbean; a fourth, the corporate structure of the breweries it owned or controlled; a fifth, the assets and income of its bordellos; a sixth, the police and Prohibition agents receiving regular payoffs.

  The syndicate faced catastrophe in the spring of 1924, when, during a raid on 2146 South Michigan ordered by Dever and led by Detective Sergeant Edward Birmingham, these ledgers were seized. Guzik dangled $5,000 in cash under Birmingham's nose as the price of his silence. The detective reported the offer to his superiors. "We've got the goods now," Mayor Dever announced. But the rejoicing proved premature. Before either the state's attorney or any federal agency could inspect the incriminating ledgers, a municipal judge, Howard Hayes, impounded them and restored them to Torrio. Not a scrap of evidence remained on which to base a case.

  On the evening of May 8, 1924, during a barroom argument, a free-lance hijacker named Joe Howard slapped and kicked Jake Guzik. Incapable of physical retaliation, the globular little man waddled off, wailing, to Capone. The outrage to his friend gave Capone additional cause to hunt down Howard, for the hijacker had also been overheard to boast how easy it was to waylay beer runners, including Torrio's. Capone found him half a block from the Four Deuces in Heinie Jacobs' saloon on South Wabash Avenue, chatting with the owner. At the bar two regular customers, George Bilton, a garage mechanic, and David Runelsbeck, a carpenter, were guzzling beer. As Capone swung through the doors, Howard turned with outstretched hand and called to him, "Hello, Al." Capone grabbed him by the shoulders, shook him, and asked him why he had struck Guzik. "Go back to your girls, you dago pimp!" said Howard. Capone emptied a six-shooter into his head.

  After questioning Jacobs, Bilton and Runelsbeck, whose accounts of the slaying substantially agreed, Chief of Detectives Michael Hughes told reporters: "I am certain it was Capone," and he issued a general order for his arrest. The next day readers of the Chicago Tribune beheld for the first time a photograph of the face that would become as familiar to them as that of Calvin Coolidge, Mussolini or a Hollywood star. The newspaper, however, still hadn't got the name quite right. "Tony (Scarface) Capone," ran the caption, "also known as Al Brown, who killed Joe Howard. . . .

  During the hours between the murder and the inquest two of the main witnesses underwent a change of memory. Heinie Jacobs now testified that he never saw the shooting, having gone into the back room to take a phone call when it occurred, and Runelsbeck claimed he would not be able to identify the killer. Bilton was missing.

  The police held Jacobs and Runelsbeck as accessories after the fact and the inquest was adjourned for two weeks. With Capone still lying low, it was adjourned again. Then, on June 11, he sauntered into a Chicago police station, saying he understood he was wanted and wondered why. They took him to the Criminal Courts Building, where he was told why by the eager young assistant state's attorney, William H. McSwiggin, sometimes referred to, because of the numerous capital sentences he had obtained, as "the Hanging Prosecutor." For hours McSwiggin questioned Capone, who said he knew no gangsters and had never even heard of such people as Torrio, Guzik or Howard. He was, he insisted, a reputable businessman, a dealer in antiques.

  The third and final session of the inquest took place on July 22. Jacobs and Runelsbeck, visibly terrified, added nothing to their pre vious testimony. The jurors' verdict: Joe Howard was killed by "one or more unknown, white male persons."

  Torrio and Capone, faithful to their preelection promises, brought no more prostitutes to Cicero, but in the contiguous communities of Stickney, Berwyn, Oak Park and Forest View they instituted several brothels which, together with those they had established earlier, brought the total to twenty-two and the combined annual gross eventually to $10,000,000. The economics of these brothels were later revealed by records confiscated during a raid on the Harlem Inn in Stickney. They included day-by-day entries for each girl during a period of three weeks. The page reproduced on the next page covers twelve of the girls who were working on April 21, 1926.

  When the customer had indicated his choice, a downstairs madam handed him a towel. The girl got another towel from an upstairs ma
dam, who also assigned her a bedroom. The customer was charged $2 for every five minutes, or any fraction thereof, he spent with the girl. After the first five minutes the upstairs madam would knock and demand additional payment. If the customer was too absorbed to respond, she would sometimes walk in and thump him on the back.

  Capone-led mobsters so thoroughly infiltrated one village on the Cicero border that it became known as Caponeville. Forest View was originally a farming community with a population of about 300. The idea of incorporating it as a village occurred to a Chicago attorney, Joseph W. Nosek, after he had spent several pleasant days there conferring with a farmer client over an impending lawsuit. A World War veteran and an official of the American Legion, Nosek described the bucolic charms of the place to a number of his fellow Legionnaires with a fervor that made them want to live there, and they agreed to support his project. Papers of incorporation were issued in 1924. A preamble to the village constitution dedicated Forest View "to the memory of our soldier dead so as to perpetuate their deeds of heroism and sacrifice." At the first village meeting Nosek was elected police magistrate and his brother John, president of the village board. For chief of police they chose one William "Porky" Dillon, who claimed to be an ex-serviceman. From the Cook County board the enthusiastic new villagers obtained enough free materials to pave their streets.

  Soon after, Chief Dillon informed Magistrate Nosek that Al and Ralph Capone wanted to build a hotel and social club in Forest View. "I saw no harm," Nosek recalled later, "because I didn't know just who the Capones were. It looked like a good chance to improve our village."

  Column I lists the girls' names; column 2, their gross earnings; column 3, earnings after the 50 percent house deduction; column 4, the 10 percent charge for towel service: column 5, the balance; column 6, the girls' commissions on liquor sales; column 7, net earnings.

  Nosek was appalled when the Capones appeared with their retinue of thugs and harlots. He ordered Dillon to get rid of them. The following day Nosek ran into Ralph Capone, who said that if he ever uttered another word against him or his brother, they would throw him into the village drainage canal. Nosek, thinking Ralph was joking, replied: "If I go into the canal, you'll go with me."

  At four o'clock the next morning, two armed thugs called at Nosek's house and marched him to the village hall. Seven other men were waiting there. "They told me they were going to kill me. They beat me over the head with the butts of their guns and though I was streaming with blood and dazed from pain they kicked me over the floor. I'm not ashamed to admit that I got down on my knees and prayed that they let me keep my life."

  They agreed on condition that he immediately leave Forest View. "I moved. Others were forced to move. There was our village clerk, for instance, Thomas Logan, who had bought a little place for himself and his widowed mother. Eighteen or twenty of the respectable men in our village were slugged and beaten and driven away. . . ."

  At the next election all the successful candidates for president of the village board, trustees and police magistrate were Capone's cat'spaws. Porky Dillon continued in office as chief of police. He turned out to be an ex-convict whom Governor Small had pardoned. The Torrio-Capone syndicate then proceeded to erect its biggest brothel, the sixty-girl Maple Inn, popularly known as the Stockade, which yielded average gross weekly profits of $5,000 and also served Capone as an arsenal and a hideout. An immense old stone-and-wood structure on a country back road, it contained a maze of secret chambers installed behind walls, under floors, above ceilings. The largest, innermost chamber served as a hiding place for the girls when a raid threatened. For a fugitive gangster there was a room beneath the eaves soundproofed with cork lining. The inhabitant could communicate his needs through a speaking tube. A dumbwaiter brought him food and drink. Holes pierced in the eyes of figures painted on the ceiling of the room below afforded a view of the customers crowding the bar and the gambling tables. Throughout the house sliding panels concealed compartments full of guns, cartridges and explosives.

  "All the beautiful ideals that my associates in the Legion and I had have been swept away," Nosek lamented. "The streets that we built with so much arduous effort but with such happiness and hope are now little more than thoroughfares for the automobiles of gunmen, booze runners and disorderly women."

  IT was perhaps the most unfortunate outburst ever to escape a gang leader's lips. By "Sicilians" O'Banion meant all his Italian confreres, but when it reached the Gennas' ears, they took it as a mortal affront for which only blood could atone. The wounding words capped a series of offenses O'Banion had committed not only against the Gennas, but against other gangsters with whom he was supposedly friendly. As a result, the alliances cemented through Torrio's carefully wrought treaty began to crumble and, crumbling, foreshadowed warfare that would rage for years and cost hundreds of lives.

  Aside from his ethnic antipathies, O'Banion had been nursing a number of specific grievances. During the Cicero elections he had lent Capone several of his most practiced terrorists without receiving any compensation. Torrio later appeased him by ceding the beer distribution rights, worth about $20,000 a month, to a sizable section of Cicero. O'Banion increased these profits to $100,000 by underselling the Sheldon, Saltis-McErlane and Druggan-Lake gangs. He persuaded fifty Chicago saloonkeepers who had been buying beer from those gangs to move to Cicero, where he provisioned them at lower cost. Thus, they presented severe competition to the Cicero saloons operating under Torrio-Capone auspices. Torrio demanded a percentage of this new revenue. O'Banion refused to give him any. Though inwardly seething, the prudent, patient Torrio would risk no breach of the underworld peace. He did not press the point, and he kept Capone from attacking the Irishman.

  O'Banion's relations with the Gennas deteriorated when they began to flood his North Side territory with their rotgut whiskey at $3 a gallon. For his own whiskey he charged two to three times as much, but the quality was superior. He warned Torrio and Capone that if they couldn't hold the Gennas to their treaty obligations, he would use more persuasive means. Torrio smiled and nodded and promised to remonstrate with the Sicilian brothers. He may even have tried, but the cut-rate liquor continued to flow through the North Side.

  As hijackers, O'Banion and his gang had brought off the two boldest coups since Prohibition became law. One night, early in 1924, they invaded a West Side railroad yard and transferred $100,000 worth of Canadian whiskey from a freight car to their trucks. Not many nights later, they broke into the Sibley Warehouse, trucked out 1,750 barrels of bonded liquor and, to conceal the robbery as long as possible, left in their place an equal number of barrels full of water. Lieutenant Michael Grady of the detective bureau and four detective sergeants in O'Banion's pay convoyed the trucks to his storage depot. They were later indicted. No trial followed, and after a brief suspension they were restored to the force.

  O'Banion now determined upon an exploit that would both teach the Gennas a lesson and show his scorn for Torrio. He hijacked a $30,000 shipment of Genna whiskey.

  In family council the Gennas voted to kill him. Their hand was temporarily stayed by the president of the Unione Siciliane, Mike Merlo, whom not even the Gennas dared disobey. Like Torrio, Merlo was an underworld strategist who abhorred violence and advocated peaceful negotiation as the surest road to riches. He also happened to like O'Banion, and O'Banion looked upon him as his only Sicilian friend. Thus, as long as Merlo reigned, nobody under his control was likely to attempt O'Banion's life. Yet the Irishman's murderous impetuosity was a constant threat to the general welfare.

  Chief of Police Collins maintained a tap on O'Banion's telephone, and one night an extraordinary conversation was recorded. Two West Side policemen had intercepted an O'Banion beer truck and were demanding $300 to let it proceed. The driver called O'Banion. "Three hundred dollars!" the Irishman exclaimed. "To them bums? Why, I can get them knocked off for half that much." Collins, never doubting him capable of it, dispatched a squad of detectives to prevent the slaughter
. The beer runner had meanwhile consulted Torrio and was next heard over the tapped wire telling O'Banion: "I just been talking to Johnny and he says to let the cops have the three hundred. He says he don't want no trouble." Reluctantly, O'Banion obeyed. By the time Collins' rescue squad reached the spot the two policemen had vanished with their payoff.

  In May, 1924, O'Banion approached Torrio and Capone with a proposition that astonished and delighted them. The three gangsters (with Joseph Stenson, a silent partner) ran the Sieben Brewery on the North Side, one of the biggest in Chicago. For three years it had been producing quality beer under the protection of the precinct police. Now O'Banion wanted to sell out. He was, he explained, quitting the bootleg business and retiring with his wife to Louis Alterie's Colorado ranch. He admitted to fear. If he didn't clear out, he said, the Gennas would surely get him in the end. He asked half a million for his share. His partners were happy to pay it. Upon receipt of the money O'Banion offered, as a parting gesture of goodwill, to assist in the delivery of one last shipment. He specified May 19 as the date most convenient for him.

  On the night of the nineteenth thirteen trucks stood in the Sieben Brewery yard, taking on capacity loads of beer barrels. The operation, which involved twenty-two drivers and beer runners, took place under the supervision of two precinct policemen, Torrio, O'Banion, Hymie Weiss and Louis Alterie. Capone, who had killed Joe Howard ten days before, was in hiding. None of the trucks got as far as the street. The brewery was suddenly swarming with police. Led by Chief Collins, they confiscated the beer and herded everybody into patrol wagons, including the two North Side policemen, whose badges Collins ripped off then and there.