Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (23 page)

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.

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.