Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone Read online

  His rise in the Republican ranks was slow but steady, with an occasional minor setback caused by the exposure of some peccadillo, as when the Amateur Athletic Union suspended him and other CAA football players for professionalism or when, testifying in a separation suit brought by a woman against a friend of his, he had to confess that he used to frequent the Levee dives. He was forty-eight, running to paunch and jowl, his voice whiskey-hoarse, when the party elders began to see mayoral timber in him. "He may not be too much on brains," said Congressman Fred Lundin, their shrewdest strategist, "but he gets through to people." Lundin had once roamed the city as a medicine man, peddling nostrums of his own brew. He sold Thompson to the voters and taught Thompson how to sell himself. The Democratic opponent was a Catholic of German extraction, Robert M. Sweitzer.

  Practically every plank in Big Bill's platform invalidated some other plank. It depended where he was campaigning. The war overseas had broken out four month before, and in German neighborhoods, the Chicago American reported, he sounded like "Kaiser Bill." In the German-hating Polish districts, meanwhile, his campaign workers were circulating handbills deriding "Sweitzer, the German candidate," and in the Protestant wards they warned that a vote for Sweitzer was a vote for the Pope. In the Irish wards Thompson lashed out at the English. Addressing native American audiences, he would wrap himself in the Stars and Stripes and invoke the spirit of George Washington.

  He promised the reform groups strict enforcement of the antigambling laws, and he promised the gamblers a wide-open town. Speaking to the Negroes of the Second Ward: "If you want to shoot craps, go ahead and do it. When I'm mayor, the police will have something better to do than break up a friendly little crap game."

  He further promised the Negroes: "I'll give you people jobs. . . . Only a good cowboy like Jess Willard [who had just defeated the Negro heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson, in Havana] could beat a good man like Johnson. Tomorrow the cowboy will be on your side."

  To the wives and mothers of the silk-stocking wards: "I'll clean up this city and drive out the crooks! I'll make Chicago the cleanest city in the world! . . . I'll appoint a mother to the Board of Education! Who knows better than a mother what is good for children?"

  He promised the drys he would uphold the state's blue law prohibiting the sale of liquor on Sunday. He promised the wets he would oppose all Sunday blue laws, and he wooed the saloon owners by signing a pledge to that effect. "I see no harm in a friendly little drink in a friendly little saloon," he said.

  Big Bill Thompson won the 1915 mayoralty by the biggest plurality ever registered for a Republican in Chicago.

  Within six months he had violated every campaign promise but one. He did keep Chicago wide open. After a flurry of token arrests in the Levee and elsewhere, a live-and-let-live policy prevailed anew. Slot machines manufactured by Chicago's Mills Novelty Company clicked and clattered away all over the city, with the bigwigs of City Hall getting a cut of the profits. The Sportsmen's Club, a Republican organization, was used as a collection agency for the graft. Not only gamblers, but saloon- and brothelkeepers received solicitations for $100 "life memberships" on club letterheads bearing the mayor's name. The members included Thompson's chief of police, Charles C. Healey; Herbert S. Mills, president of the slot machine company; Mont Tennes, the gambling magnate; Jim Colosimo, whose liquor license the mayor restored.

  In preference to the big, easily raided whorehouses the principal vice mongers now maintained numerous discreet "call flats." The whores would seek their customers in dance halls, also owned by the panders, and take them to the flats. In an expose of the system Major Funkhouser put the total number of flats at 30,000. Thompson stripped him and his Morals Squad of all authority.

  The first eight months of the Thompson regime produced twice as many criminal complaints as the entire preceding year. "The police department is just a big sewing circle," said Alderman Charles E. Merriam, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and the leader of a reform faction. Chief Healey, who had begun his tenure with a declaration of war against the underworld, ended it exposed as the boss of the city's biggest graft ring, an associatee of malefactors like Mike de Pike Heisler. In January, 1917, he was indicted for graft *and bribery along with three other members of the department, four underworld magnates and an alderman. As its main exhibit at the trial, the prosecution introduced a notebook which had been found in the possession of a North Side police lieutenant. The first pages listed shady hotels and their weekly tributes of $40 to $150. Next came brothels, houses of assignation and gambling dives, some marked "the chief's places," indicating that all the payoff money went directly to Healey, others marked "three ways," which meant that Healey shared the loot with Police Captain Tom Costello, Heisler and one Billy Skidmore, a bondsman, gambler and saloonkeeper. A fourth list named the saloons the police allowed to operate illegally after I A.M. and on Sunday. A fifth list of gambling houses and disorderly hotels was headed "Can't be raided" and a sixth, "Can be raided."

  Healey retained two of Chicago's most successful criminal lawyers, Clarence Darrow and Charles Erbstein, and they won an acquittal. The jury, in fact, acquitted all nine defendants.

  "Chicago is unique," said Professor Merriam. "It is the only completely corrupt city in America."

  The contrast between Torrio's professional and private life amazed the few associates familiar with both. Catering to the vices of others, he himself had none. By temperament ascetic, he never smoked, drank or gambled. He ate sparingly. He eschewed profane and obscene language and disliked hearing it. He took no interest in any woman but his wife, Ann. With his small, dark, watchful eyes and thin, compressed lips, he seemed perpetually to be deploring the sinful ways of man.

  In his daily routine he observed a clocklike regularity. Early every morning, attired in a suit of sober hue and cut, wearing no jewelry save his wedding ring, he would tenderly embrace his wife and either walk the three blocks from their flat on Nineteenth Street and Archer Avenue to his office on South Wabash or drive to Burnham. Then, for the next nine or ten hours he would attend to the minutiae of the brothel business, routing the whores from house to house in order to ensure the regular customers a continual change of faces, cutting corners on the whorehouse food, drink and linens, calculating the previous night's profits. He ascribed no humanity to the girls he handled. He regarded them simply as commodities, to be bought, sold and replaced when worn out.

  Barring some crisis, Torrio would return home at six and, except for an occasional play or concert, not leave it again until morning. His wife would bring him slippers and smoking jacket. After supper they would play pinochle or listen to the phonograph. Torrio loved music and knew a good deal about it. He could follow a score and hold his own in a discussion with professional musicians. "He is the best and dearest of husbands," said his wife. "My married life has been like one long, unclouded honeymoon. He has done everything to make me happy. He has given me his wholehearted devotion. I have had love, home and contentment."

  Colosimo found Torrio exemplary as a business manager. Between his nephew's efficiency and the lenience of Mayor Thompson he had become top dog among Chicago vice kings. His political value extended far beyond the Levee. With his City Hall connections, he no longer depended on Aldermen Coughlin and Kenna for protection. The roles were reversed. They went to him.

  Garfield Place, Brooklyn, where the Capone children grew up.

  Johnny Torrio (right), at the age of twenty-nine, shortly after his Uncle Jim Colosimo brought him to Chicago. Big Jim's father sits between them.

  In its heyday, Chicago s plushiest pleasure palace. The second story was given over to gambling.

  Chicago Historical Society.

  Colosimo took up horseback riding to please his adored wife, Dale.

  United Press International.

  Big Jim, shot down by an unknown assassin in the vestibule of his restaurant.

  Above left: Dion O'Banion, flower lover, wearing a sprig of
lily of the valley in his buttonhole.

  International News.

  Above right: George "Bugs" Moran, third in line of succession as leader of the O'Banionites.

  Wide World Photos.

  Right: Leland Verain alias Three-Gun Louis Alterie.

  Below left: Vincent "Schemer" Drucci.

  United Press International

  Below right: Hymie Weiss, who succeeded O'Banion as gang leader.

  United Press International.

  O'Banion's flower shop at 738 North State Street where he was killed. A crowd gathers outside after the killers fled.

  United Press International.

  The Terrible Gennas dine en famille. Left to right: Sam, Angelo, Peter, Tony, Jim.

  The funeral of Angelo Genna.

  United Press International.

  The Capones' Chicago home, 7244 South Praire Avenue (center).

  Brother Frank-killed in a gun battle with police when he and his fellow gangsters terrorized voters in the 1924 Cicero elections.

  Frank Capone's funeral.

  Mama Teresa and Al.

  Chicago Tribune.

  Wide World Photos.

  Mae Capone, despair of press photographers.

  Left: Brother Matt.

  United Press International.

  Right: Brother John.

  Wide World Photos.

  Below left: Brother Ralph.

  Below center: Brother James.

  United Press International

  Below right: Brother Albert.

  Frank "the Enforcer" Nitti, treasurer.

  Machine Gun Jack McGurn, chief triggerman.

  Murray "the Camel" Humphries, robbery expert.

  William "Three-fingered" White, triggerman.

  United Press International. Al.

  I THE ORGANIZATION

  Charlie Fischetti, triggerman.

  Mike "de Pike" Heider, whoremaster.

  Frank Maritote, alias Diamond.

  Chicago Sun-Times.

  Accardo Giancova, bodyguard.

  Johnny Torrio, president emeritus.

  Sam Hunt.

  Tony "Joe Batters" Accardo, triggerman.

  Acme Photo.

  Phil D'Andrea, chief bodyguard.

  Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, business manager.

  United Press International.

  Ralph Capone, sales manager.

  Tony Lombardo, consigliere.

  Chicago Tribune.

  His pride and joy was his cafe, where he could truckle to celebrities and be flattered and fussed over by them. In his dedication to the resort he gave Torrio virtual autonomy in the management of everything else. This was his first grave mistake, for it emboldened Torrio to strike out on his own; it created a conflict of interest. The second mistake was a romantic one.

  One evening in 1913 a Chicago News reporter, Jack Lait, came into Colosimo's Cafe lyrical over a girl he heard singing with the choir of the South Park Avenue Methodist Church. She had, he told Colosimo, beauty and talent, and she deserved a better opportunity to display them. Why didn't he put her in his floor show? Big Jim agreed to audition this paragon, and the next evening Lait introduced him to a demure, slender brunette with blue eyes and skin like white rose petals.

  Dale Winter was nineteen, an Ohioan by birth, who dreamed of an operatic career. Her father died when she was five. After high school, where she shone in the glee club, her mother took her to New York. She auditioned for the producer George Lederer, who was casting a road company version of the operetta Madame Sherry, a smash hit, with its saucy song "Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own." He assigned Dale the ingenue role. Chaperoned, as always, by her mother, she traveled across country to San Francisco, where the tour ended. With another actress she then contrived a vaudeville sketch, sold it to a company about to take off for Australia, and went along to play the main part. In Australia the venture collapsed, stranding mother and daughter 6,000 miles from home. Borrowing money from a kindly actor, they got back to San Francisco. A booking agent sent them on to Chicago, where, he assured them, Dale would find work with a newly organized light opera company. They arrived penniless only to learn that the company had disbanded without giving a single performance. The South Park Avenue Methodist Church saved them from starvation by employing Dale as its soloist.

  Big Jim found Dale Winter as delectable as Lait had pictured her, and he needed no persuasion to hire her. She became his star attraction, enchanting the customers every night with a repertoire of light operatic arias. She did not want to leave the church choir, however, and she continued to sing hymns by day until the congregation discovered her connection with Colosimo's Cafe. The churchgoers were scandalized. They demanded her immediate dismissal. The pastor was more tolerant. As the text for his next sermon he chose John 8:7: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." But the congregation was unmoved. He had to let Dale go.

  The Levee was hardly a congenial environment for such a girl, and she promised herself she would quit the moment she had saved enough money to return with her mother to New York. Grand opera was still her dream. As the star of Colosimo's floor show, she encountered no dearth of better job opportunities. The Broadway impresario Morris Gest offered her a contract. So did the mighty Florenz Ziegfeld. She turned them both down, for by then Colosimo had fallen in love with her and she with him. Big Jim left his wife, Victoria. "This is the real thing," he assured Torrio. "It's your funeral," said Torrio.

  Under Dale's gentle prodding Big Jim acquired some slight polish. He learned to modulate his bull horn of a voice and to use politer language. He hired a tutor to teach him correct English. He dressed more conservatively, adorning himself with fewer diamonds. He neglected the politicians and underworld characters among his clientele in favor of the artists and the swells from uptown. Dale liked to ride horseback through the city parks, and Big Jim, attired in equestrian togs, would trot along beside her.

  Her ambition became his. He badgered his friend Caruso for an opinion of her voice. The great tenor pronounced it pleasing and asked Maestro, Campanini to grant her an audition. The conductor, too, liked her voice but felt it required retraining. At his suggestion Colosimo enrolled her in the Chicago Musical College.

  The irony was that Dale Winter, the only decent girl with whom he had ever had a close relationship, should be an instrument of his destruction, for in the pecking order of the underworld such emotional vulnerability was an invitation to rebellion. The word went around: "Big Jim's getting soft. Big Jim's slipping." The extortionists resumed their demands, but he no longer fought them. He paid up, probably because they also threatened Dale, and they plagued him to his dying day.

  Torrio, meantime, while continuing to administer his uncle's domain, slowly and quietly built his own organization. He prepared the ground for other outposts of vice besides Burnham. He found the officials of Stickney, a village eight miles west of the Levee, equally amenable. In the Levee itself, a block from Colosimo's Cafe, he took title to a four-story red brick building thereafter known as the Four Deuces because of the address-2222 South Wabash Avenue. On the first floor he installed a saloon and office, separated by a steel-barred gate. Solid steel doors led to gambling rooms on the second and third floors, and on the fourth floor he installed a brothel. It was at about this time, in late 1919, that Torrio sent for Al Capone.

  Capone's initial duties were varied and humble-bodyguard, chauffeur, bartender, capper for the brothel. "I saw him there [in front of the Four Deuces] a dozen times," the journalist Courtney Ryley Cooper remembered, "coat collar turned up on winter nights, hands deep in his pockets as he fell in step with a passer-by and mumbled: 'Got some nice-looking girls inside.'"

  The cellar had an unusual feature, whose purpose was revealed to Judge Lyle. "I got some first-hand information on the resort from Mike de Pike Heisler who bitterly resented the mob's invasion of his field," the judge wrote. "Shuffling into my chambers one afternoon, he told me: `They snatch
guys they want information from and take them to the cellar. They're tortured until they talk. Then they're rubbed out. The bodies are hauled through a tunnel into a trap door opening in the back of the building. Capone and his boys put the bodies in cars and then they're dumped out on a country road, or maybe in a clay hole or rock quarry.'"

  Years later a retired police lieutenant, who had once patrolled the neighborhood, took judge Lyle through the now-abandoned building. They came upon the tunnel and the trap door. The policeman said that at least twelve gangsters had been killed in the Four Deuces.

  Soon after Al Capone, or Al Brown, to use his favorite alias, moved to Chicago, there occurred a momentous event. The foresighted Torrio had long been planning for it. He had been urging Colosimo to marshal all his resources to exploit it. The profits, Torrio was certain, would dwarf everything they had ever made from vice. But Big Jim, torpid with love, could muster no energy for new ventures. Whoremongering and gambling had brought him a fortune. They were still lucrative. Why risk the unknown? Besides, this crazy new situation couldn't last. Torrio knew then that his uncle's sun was setting.