Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone Read online

  At sight of the raiders Torrio had smelled treachery. He was soon certain of it. From a police officer on his payroll, he found out, O'Banion had obtained advance knowledge of the raid and used it to swindle the despised Italians. By offering to help expedite the May 19 shipment he had hoped to allay suspicion of his betrayal. He knew that he, too, risked a heavy fine and possibly jail, but this seemed a paltry price to pay for such a double triumph.

  Chief Collins delivered the gangsters, not to police headquarters, but to the Federal Building because, as he announced next day, the federal authorities had promised their full cooperation. From a roll of bills Torrio peeled off $12,500 bail money for himself and half a dozen gang members. For O'Banion, Weiss and Alterie, who lacked the cash, he declined to advance a cent. Without a word, he left them to await their own bondsmen.

  Torrio continued for a while to swallow O'Banion's outrages in silence, but the offense to his self-respect was intolerable when O'Banion began bragging about how he had outwitted Torrio in the Sieben Brewery affair. He was reported to Torrio as saying, "I guess I rubbed that pimp's nose in the mud all right." Torrio and Capone now made common cause with the Gennas.

  O'Banion's relations with Angelo Genna hardly improved either. On November 3 the Irishman, accompanied by Hymie Weiss and Schemer Drucci, repaired to the Ship, in which Torrio had sold him a small share, for the weekly conference and division of spoils. On Torrio's side of the table sat Capone; Frank Diamond (born Maritote), captain of Capone's bodyguards and husband of his sister Rose; and two of the syndicate's crack triggermen, Frank Rio and Frank Nitti. As Torrio handed O'Banion his cut, Capone remarked that Angelo Genna had lost heavily at roulette during the week, leaving IOU's for $30,000, and he suggested, in the interests of general amity, that they cancel the debt. O'Banion's response was to spring to the telephone, call Genna, and give him one week to pay up.

  When they got back to the North Side, Weiss remonstrated with O'Banion. He deplored such needlessly offensive acts. He urged him to make peace with Torrio and the Gennas. O'Banion shrugged off the advice with the inflammatory words, the last straw, overheard and repeated throughout gangland: "Tell them Sicilians to go to hell."

  When next the Genna clan convened, they invited Torrio and Capone to sit in with them. Opinion on what to do about O'Banion was now unanimous. Torrio cautiously reminded the Gennas of Mike Merlo's injunction, but Angelo reassured him. Merlo was in no condition to enforce his will. He was dying of cancer and not expected to last the week. He died on November 8, a Saturday. Frankie Yale, the national head of the Unione Siciliane, who came to Chicago for the funeral, approved Angelo Genna as successor to president Merlo.

  O'Banion, the florist, was never busier. He and his partner Schofield spent all day Sunday and most of Sunday night weaving chrysanthemums, lilies, carnations, orchids and roses into wreaths, lyres, hearts and blankets. Capone placed an order for $8,000 worth of red roses, Torrio for $10,000 worth of assorted flowers. The Unione Siciliane had commissioned a sculptor to fashion a life-size wax effigy of the departed which was to precede the hearse, sitting bolt upright in an open limousine massed with flowers. Toward the evening of the ninth Jim Genna and Carmen Vacco, the city sealer, a title equivalent to commissioner of weights and measures, who owed his appointment to Merlo's political influence, visited the shop ostensibly to buy a wreath. They asked O'Banion to keep the shop open later than usual since many more of Merlo's friends would be dropping by with orders. Soon after they left, Angelo Genna telephoned and spoke to Schofield about another wreath. He said he would have it picked up in the morning.

  At about noon of November 10 O'Banion was in the rear of the shop, clipping the stems of some chrysanthemums. A swinging wicker door divided the main room and on the other side his Negro porter, William Crutchfield, was sweeping up the floral debris from the day before. Neither O'Banion's partner nor any of their assistants had come to work yet, having been up half the night filling orders. Presently, on the opposite side of State Street, directly in front of Holy Name Cathedral, a dark-blue nickel-trimmed Jewett sedan slid to a halt. The driver kept his seat, letting the motor idle. Three men got out. As they crossed the street and entered the flower shop, they were observed from a short distance by an eleven-year-old boy, Gregory Summers, a junior traffic officer, who was guiding some children through the intersection of State Street and East Chicago Avenue. He recalled: "Two of them were dark and they looked like foreigners. The other man had a light complexion."

  Inside the shop Crutchfield had just finished sweeping up and was moving to the rear through the wicker door. Over the top of the door he caught a glimpse of the visitors. The man in the middle, he said later, was "tall, well-built, well-dressed, smooth-shaven, wore a brown overcoat and a brown Fedora hat. He might have been a Jew or a Greek." His companions were "Italians . . . short, stocky and rather rough looking."

  O'Banion walked toward them, his left hand gripping the flower shears, his right extended in greeting. Though Crutchfield did not know them, it was obvious that his employer did, for O'Banion would never have offered his hand to a stranger. "Hello, boys," he said. "You want Merlo's flowers?"

  "Yes," replied the tall man, smiling, and took his hand. He held onto it tightly.

  That was all Crutchfield saw. "Mr. O'Banion called for me to close the back room door and I did. I didn't recognize any of the three men; never saw them before, so far as I recall. I shut the door between the back and front rooms of the shop, figuring that Mr. O'Banion had private business with the men." He flung it open again a few seconds later when he heard shooting and rushed out.

  O'Banion lay dead amid a chaos of torn and crushed flowers. In his fall he had knocked over several containers of carnations and lilies. His blood was dyeing a blanket of white peonies red. From his post at State and East Chicago the boy Summers, who had also heard the shooting, saw the three men streak across the street, pile into the blue Jewett and head west.

  As Chief of Detectives William Schoemaker reconstructed the murder, the tall man shaking O'Banion's hand jerked him forward and pinioned his arms. Before O'Banion could wriggle free, the other men fired six bullets. Two passed through his chest, the third through his right cheek, the fourth and fifth through his larynx. The sixth, the coup de grace, was fired into his brain, after he fell, at such close range that the powder scorched his skin. In short, a textbook gangster killing: the immobilization of the victim's arms, each shot aimed at a vital spot, the bullets through the larynx so that if he failed to die immediately, he would not be able to speak. . . .

  "It was," wrote judge Lyle, recalling the funeral, "one of the most nauseating things I've ever seen happen in Chicago." For three days the body "lay in state"-the newspapers' phrase-in the Sbarbaro funeral chapel, the powder burns and bullet holes disguised by the embalmer's art, a rosary clasped in the folded hands, "the soft tapered hands which could finger an automatic so effectively," as a sob sister pictured them. On the marble slab beneath the casket was the inscription "Suffer little children to come unto me."

  The press wallowed in bathos. Describing the casket, which had been bought from a Philadelphia firm and rushed to Chicago in a special express freight car carrying no other cargo, the Tribune drooled:

  It was equipped with solid silver and bronze double walls, inner sealed and air tight, with a heavy plate glass above and a couch of white satin below, with tufted cushion extra for his left hand to rest on.

  At the corners of the casket are solid silver posts, carved in wonderful designs. Modest is the dignified silver gray of the casket, content with the austere glory of the carved silver post at its corners, and broken only by a scroll across one side which reads, "Dean O'Banion, 1892-1924."

  Silver angels stood at the head and feet with their heads bowed in the light of the ten candles that burned in the solid golden candlesticks they held in their hands. . . . And over it all the perfume of flowers.

  But vying with that perfume was the fragrance of perfumed wome
n, wrapped in furs from ears to ankles, who tiptoed down the aisle, escorted by soft stepping, tailored gentlemen with black, shining pompadours.

  And, softly treading, deftly changing places, were more well formed gentlemen in tailored garments, with square, blue steel jaws and shifting glances. They were the sentinels.

  In the soft light of the candles at the head of the $10,000 casket sat Mrs. O'Banion, a picture of patient sorrow.

  "Why, oh, why?" the widow sobbed, clinging to her father-in-law's arm. Louis Alterie and Hymie Weiss were reported to have "cried as women might," and "many others had handkerchiefs to their eyes." To the Dead March from Saul, Alterie, Weiss, Bugs Moran, Schemer Drucci, Maxie Eisen, labor racketeer and president of the Kosher Meat Peddlers' Association, and Frank Gusenberg, a triggerman, bore the casket to the hearse. Close behind, with solemn tread, seemingly numb with sorrow, followed Torrio, Capone and their principal lieutenants. Once again stubble darkened Capone's jowls. Pious appearances, however, gave the police no sense of security. Lest hostilities erupt during the obsequies, plainclothesmen circulated quietly among the gangsters, confiscating their firearms.

  For many blocks in every direction, from the street, the windows of office buildings, the rooftops, thousands watched the cortege forming. A mile long, it included twenty-six cars and trucks to carry the flowers, three bands and a police escort. Chief Collins had forbidden any police under his command to join the mourners, but the authorities of Stickney were less finicky and furnished an honor guard of uniformed officers.

  As the cortege started for Mount Carmel Cemetery, about 10,000 people fell in before and behind it. Mounted police had to clear a path through the mob so the motorcade could advance. Every trolley car to the Mount Carmel area was packed. At the cemetery about 5,000 more people waited.

  In accordance with Cardinal Mundelein's strictures, no requiem mass was celebrated at Holy Name Cathedral, and the grave was dug in unconsecrated ground. A spokesman for the archdiocese explained: "One who refuses the ministrations of the Church in life need not expect them in death. O'Banion was a notorious criminal. The Church did not recognize him in his days of lawlessness and when he died unrepentant in his iniquities, he had no claims to the last rites for the dead."

  A section of Mount Carmel was reserved for lapsed or excommunicated Catholics whose Catholic friends and relatives wanted them buried as near as possible to consecrated ground. O'Banion had bought a plot there for members of his gang, and he was now the second to occupy it. Before the gravediggers threw on the last clod of earth, Father Malloy, formerly of Holy Name Cathedral where O'Banion had sung as a choirboy, who could believe no evil of him, defied the cardinal to the extent of kneeling at the graveside and reciting a litany, three Hail Marys and the Lord's Prayer.

  Five months later Anna O'Banion managed to have the remains disinterred and reburied in consecrated ground under a granite shaft inscribed "My Sweetheart." When the cardinal heard of it, he ordered the monument removed. He did not, however, order the eviction of the remains. A simple marker replaced the shaft. It stood within a few feet of a mausoleum containing the bones of a bishop and two archbishops, a proximity which led Police Captain John Stege to remark to judge Lyle: "Strange, isn't it? A murderer and he's buried side by side with good men of the church."

  The day after the funeral Two-Gun Louis Alterie threw down the gantlet to O'Banion's murderers. "I have no idea who killed Deany," he said in a newspaper interview, "but I would die smiling if only I had a chance to meet the guys who did, any time, any place they men tion and I would get at least two or three of them before they got me. If I knew who killed Deany, I'd shoot it out with the gang of killers before the sun rose in the morning and some of us, maybe all of us, would be lying on slabs in the undertaker's place." As a dueling ground, he proposed the corner of State and Madison streets, but no gangster cared to advertise his guilt by accepting the challenge.

  Alterie's braggadocio enraged Mayor Dever. "Are we still abiding by the code of the Dark Ages?" he asked, addressing himself to the community at large. "Or is this Chicago a unit of an American commonwealth? One day we have this O'Banion slain as a result of a perfectly executed plot of assassination. It is followed by this amazing demonstration. In the meanwhile his followers and their rivals openly boast of what they will do in retaliation. They seek to fight it out in the street. There is no thought of the law or the people who support the law."

  With naivete he concluded: "The gangsters are to be disarmed and jailed or driven out of town. Every one of the six thousand policemen is to be thrown into the fight and public opinion is counted upon to spur municipal and state court judges into cooperation."

  The police investigation of the murder shed no light. Capone, however, had a good deal to say to the press about motive. "Deany was all right," he set forth, "and he was getting along to begin with better than he had any right to expect. But like everyone else his head got away from his hat. Johnny Torrio had taught O'Banion all he knew and then O'Banion grabbed some of the best guys we had and decided to be the boss of the booze racket in Chicago. What a chance! O'Banion had a swell route to make it tough for us and he did. His job had been to smooth the coppers and we gave him a lot of authority with the booze and beer buyers. When he broke away, for a while it wasn't so good. He knew the ropes and got running us ragged. It was his funeral."

  Following the inquest, the Cook County coroner noted in the margin of the court record: "Slayers not apprehended. John Scalise and Albert Anselmi and Frank Yale suspected, but never brought to trial." Again, as in the Colosimo case, the police had questioned Yale, who was still in the city at the time of O'Banion's death, but both they and the O'Banion gang accepted his plausible explanation for being there. "I came for Mike Merlo's funeral," he told the detec tives who stopped him in the La Salle Street railway station a few minutes before the departure time of his train back to New York. "I stayed over for a fine dinner that my friend Diamond Joe Esposito gave for me." With the rest of the coroner's comment, the O'Banionites, who conducted their own investigation, agreed. Torrio, Capone and the Gennas, they were convinced, planned the murder. Angelo Genna drove the getaway car. Mike Genna was the one who shook O'Banion's hand. The actual shooting was done by the two recently immigrated Sicilian killers with their garlic-anointed bullets.

  Officially, the murder of Dion O'Banion entered the bulging file marked UNSOLVED.

  Hymie Weiss, assuming leadership of the O'Banion gang, swore an oath of vengeance.

  WITH the better part of valor Torrio fled Chicago. He and his wife, Ann, embarked upon an extensive tour of American and Caribbean playgrounds. They visited Hot Springs, New Orleans, Havana, the Bahamas, Palm Beach, St. Petersburg. . . . Wherever they went they were trailed by Weiss' gunmen, who never quite caught up with them, missing them usually by a day or two, sometimes by only hours.

  Torrio's absence prevented him from attending the underworld social event of the season. On January 10, 1925, Angelo Genna married Henry Spingola's sister, Lucille. A blanket invitation to the wedding reception, published in the newspapers-coME ONE, COME ALL -brought 3,000 people to the Ashland Auditorium. They goggled at the wedding cake which its creator, a sculptor named Ferrara, claimed to have based upon a recipe he brought over from Italy thirty years before. Four days in the making, rising in tiers to a height of 12 feet and weighing 1 ton, it consisted of 400 pounds of sugar, 400 pounds of flour, 2,520 eggs and several buckets of miscellaneous flavorings. Multicolored arabesques of frosting decorated the masterpiece, and to crown it, a balcony on which stood a miniature bride and groom. HOME SWEET HOME, read an inscription in icing. It took six men to carry the cake into the auditorium and six to cut and serve it.

  Capone stayed in Chicago and soon felt the sting of Weiss' ven geance. On January 12 Capone's chauffeur, Sylvester Barton, drove him and two bodyguards to a restaurant at State and Fifty-fifth streets. Leaving the bodyguards in the car, Capone stepped into the restaurant. The door was closing behind him
when a black limousine cruised slowly by. Inside were Hymie Weiss, Schemer Drucci and Bugs Moran, clutching automatics and shotguns. Abreast of Capone's car, they raked it with fire from taillights to radiator cap. "They let it have everything but the kitchen stove," a policeman said later. The bodyguards dropped to the floor in time, but a bullet hit Barton in the back.

  The close call led Capone to order from General Motors, at a cost of $30,000, a custom-built Cadillac limousine. Weighing seven tons, it had a steel armor-plated body, a steel-hooded gas tank, bulletproof window glass half an inch thick, a gun compartment behind the rear seat and a movable window enabling passengers to fire at pursuers. Capone seldom traveled in it without a small scout car ahead and a touring car full of sharpshooters behind. For even short distances of a few blocks he rode the Cadillac lest on foot he offer the enemy an easy target. When he had to walk to cross a sidewalk or hotel lobby, a covey of bodyguards moved with him, two or three deep on all sides. In the nightclubs he patronized no strangers were permitted to occupy the adjacent tables. At the opera, bodyguards filled the seats to his right and left, behind and in front. In his headquarters, as a defense against an assassin who might sneak past the bodyguards and shoot him from the rear, he used a swivel chair with a high, armor-plated back. He rarely kept an appointment at the agreed time and place but would send a messenger at the last minute to change them. (Despite these precautions no life insurance company would sell him a policy, as he discovered when he applied for one early in 1925.)