Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone

by John Kobler

  Like O'Banion, Weiss attended Holy Name Cathedral. He wore a crucifix around his neck and frequently fingered a rosary. Thin and wiry, with hot black eyes set far apart, tense, tempestuous, vindictive, he was the brainiest member of the gang and the cockiest. He once sued the federal government. A U.S. marshal, armed with a warrant for a violation of the Mann Act, broke into the apartment Weiss shared with a Ziegfeld Follies chorine named Josephine Libby. Weiss forced him to leave at the point of a shotgun. Returning with a raiding party, the marshal seized a bottle of knockout drops, handcuffs, revolvers, shotguns and a dozen cases of whiskey, brandy and champagne. Weiss brought an action in federal court to recover some silk shirts and socks which, he claimed, the raiders had also confiscated. Nothing came of either Weiss' civic suit or the government's criminal charges.

  On behalf of whichever political party happened to be sponsoring the gang during municipal elections Weiss would go swashbuckling from poll to poll with a revolver and hold off the officials while his fellow thugs stole ballot boxes. He had a tigerish temper. "I saw him only once in the last twenty years," said his brother Frank, who drove a newspaper delivery truck during Chicago's circulation wars. "That was when he shot me."

  Josephine Libby's opinion of her lover was practically interchangeable with Viola O'Banion's opinion of her husband. "Earl was one of the finest men in the world," she said, "and I spent the happiest time of my life with him. You'd expect a rich bootlegger to be a man about town, always going to nightclubs and having his home full of rowdy friends. But Earl liked to be alone with me, just lounging about, listening to the radio or reading. He seemed to me pretty well read. He didn't waste time on trash, but read histories and law books. If you hadn't known what he was, you might have mistaken him for a lawyer or college professor. He was crazy about children. 'I like 'em, Jo,' he said. 'I want a boy of my own some day. I don't amount to much, but maybe the youngster would turn out all right.'"

  On safecracking sorties O'Banion and Weiss usually took along Schemer Drucci and George "Bugs" Moran. Drucci's sobriquet stemmed from his imaginative but impractical schemes for robbing banks and kidnapping millionaires. He made his underworld debut looting telephone coin boxes. Bugs Moran had committed twenty-six robberies and served three prison sentences, totaling two-years, before his twenty-first birthday. A Pole from Minnesota, the Irish name notwithstanding, he married the sister of another O'Banionite, James Clark, alias Albert Kashellek, a full-blooded Sioux Indian. Moran was a moonfaced 200-pounder with a cleft chin, whom O'Banion tended to treat like a court jester. He had a certain rueful wit. His misdeeds often brought him for arraignment before judge Lyle, whose threshold of tolerance for gangsters was low, and he invariably requested a change of venue. "Don't you like me, Moran?" the judge once asked him. "I like you, Your Honor," Moran replied, "but I'm suspicious of you."

  Running into Lyle at a baseball game one afternoon, Moran remarked: "Judge, that's a beautiful diamond ring you're wearing. If it's snatched some night, promise me you won't go hunting me. I'm telling you now I'm innocent."

  As a killer Moran, too, had an innovative flair. He introduced the motorcade system-gunmen in half a dozen cars enfilading the victim's home as they sped past it.

  O'Banion's most devoted follower was Leland Varain, alias Louis Alterie. A product of the Colorado plains, he wore a ten-gallon hat and rejoiced in the nicknames Cowboy and Two-Gun. (Actually, like his leader, he always packed three firearms-two nickel-plated .38's with maple-wood handles and a blue-steel snub-nosed revolver.) Before coming to Chicago, Varain fought as a heavyweight in small-town prize rings under the pseudonym "Kid Haynes." In Chicago he doubled as O'Banion's bodyguard and as a slugger for the Theatrical and Building janitors' Union. With Hymie Weiss he perfected yet another widely imitated murder technique-the rented ambush. They would rent a flat within shotgun range of an address that the marked man frequently visited and keep vigil at the open window until they held him squarely in their gunsights.

  Two-Gun Louis had a predilection for blondes so pronounced that when he discovered a girl with whom he was journeying West to be a bleached blonde, he threw her off the train. The parting occurred en route to a 3,000-acre cattle ranch he owned near Gypsum, Colorado. He often hid out fugitive criminals there, and to Gypsum every autumn, during the open season on deer, he would invite O'Banion, Weiss et al. for a week or so of hunting. Among his favorite hunters was Samuel J. "Nails" Morton, one of the gang's few Jewish recruits. A war hero, he had risen from the ranks of the 131st Illinois Infantry to first lieutenant, and for leading a squad over the top despite two bullet wounds the French awarded him the Croix de guerre. On the Gypsum ranch Morton learned to love horseback riding. In Chicago he outfitted himself with jodhpurs, a red velvet jacket and a black derby, rented a spirited mount from a Clark Street stable, and began a daily program of riding through Lincoln Park. One day the horse threw him and kicked him to death. The O'Banionites demanded a reprisal. With Alterie at their head, they broke into the stable after dark, kidnapped the guilty horse, led him to the bridle path where Morton had fallen, and pumped him full of lead. Alterie then telephoned the stable manager. "We taught that horse of yours a lesson," he said. "If you want the saddle, go get it." OBanion celebrated the act of vengeance with a gala party.

  On the West Side, between Chicago Avenue and Madison Street, there were the O'Donnell brothers-William "Klondike," Myles and Bernard-and their all-Irish gang. They bore the Italians no love, least of all rank outsiders from the East like Torrio and Capone, whom they anticipated in the invasion of Cicero.

  On the South Side, in Little Italy, the Genna brothers, the six swarthy, jet-eyed, jet-haired "Terrible Gennas"-Sam; Vincenzo, or Jim; Pete; Angelo ("Bloody Angelo") ; Antonio ("Tony the Gentleman, "Tony the Aristocrat") ; and Mike ("Little Mike," "Il Diavolo," "Mike the Devil"). If you walked a block north from the Four Deuces, then west on Taylor Street for two blocks, you came to the heart of the Genna fief. Here the father, a railroad section hand from the Sicilian port of Marsala, had brought his brood in 1894 when Sam, the eldest, was ten and Mike, an infant. Both parents died young in squalor, leaving the boys to fend for themselves. They clawed their way up fast in the underworld. Through Black Hand extortion they built up the bankroll, and through service to the ward bosses the political connections needed to operate a gambling den, a poolroom, a blind pig, a cheese and olive import firm, and the biggest bootleg alcohol plant in Chicago. They were ardent family men and zealous churchgoers.

  In their proliferating enterprises each brother assumed a different function. Sam was chief organizer and business manager. Jim and Pete Genna saw to the technical aspects of moonshining; Angelo and Mike to the dirty work-the political assassinations, the reprisals, the chastisement of territorial invaders. Tony the Gentleman, thin, sharp, stylish in contrast with his gross, overfed brothers, a Dapper Dan who manicured his toenails, acted as family consigliere, helping chart every move they made from bootlegging to murder, but taking no direct hand in any. He occupied a suite in the Congress Hotel, remote from Little Italy, which he shared with Gladys Bagwell, from Chester, Illinois, a cabaret pianist and the daughter of a Baptist minister. The only educated Genna, Tony studied music and architecture and, eager to improve the lot of Chicago's poor Sicilians, built for them a low-rent, model-housing community at Troy and Fifty-fifth Streets. He maintained a seasonal box at the opera and loved to entertain the singers.

  The Gennas recruited several bodyguards of Sicilian origin. Samuzzo "Samoots" Amatuna was a professional fiddler, a member of the Musicians' Union, whose business agent he and three other members attempted unsuccessfully to kill with weapons concealed in their instrument cases. A fop, with a wardrobe containing 200 monogrammed silk shirts, Samoots, too, once wreaked vengeance upon a horse. When the horse-drawn delivery wagon from the Chinese laundry to which he entrusted his shirts returned one scorched by an iron, he pursued it through the streets, aimed his revolver at the driver, then, changing his mind, shot the h
orse dead instead. One of the Gennas' most dependable terrorists was Orazio "the Scourge" Tropea. Lean, swarthy, and hawk-nosed, he seldom required much muscle to enforce his will. Usually a single piercing glance sufficed, for Tropes was reputed to possess it malocchio-the evil eye. As ignorant as the poor Sicilian immigrants upon whom he preyed, Tropes believed himself to be a sorcerer. In his extortionary missions on behalf of the Gennas he was abetted by a small group of younger predators that included Ecola "the Eagle" Baldelli, a former postal van driver who served as his chauffeur; Vito Bascone, a wine bootlegger; Felipe Gnolfo; and Tony Finalli. Giuseppe Nerone, alias Antonio Spano alias Joseph Pavia, and popularly known as Il Cavaliere because of his courtly manner, had graduated from the University of Palermo and taught mathematics before he turned to crime, fled the Sicilian police, and escaped to America. After joining the Gennas, he came to consider himself a financial genius largely responsible for their prosperity, an opinion from which they dissented. They valued him chiefly as a torpedo. John Scalise and Albert Anselmi also left Sicily a step ahead of the law, and since they hailed from the Gennas' native Marsala, the family extended a welcoming hand. They were the Mutt and Jeff of murder, Scalise tall and lean, Anselmi short and fat. They subscribed to the curious belief, common among Sicilian assassins, that bullets rubbed with garlic would cause gangrene if they failed to kill the victim outright. Garlic has no such toxicity; but Scalisi and Anselmi so treated all their bullets, and the practice spread through gangland.

  Early in 1920 the Gennas' political pull enabled them to obtain a government license for handling industrial alcohol. They acquired a three-story warehouse at 1022 West Taylor Street, about 600 feet from the Maxwell Street police station, and started with $7,000 worth of denatured alcohol purchased legitimately from federal sources. They distributed a token quantity to legitimate users. The bulk they redistilled, colored and flavored to imitate whiskey, brandy or what's your pleasure and sold it through bootleg channels at $6 a gallon for 190 proof, $3 cut to 100 proof.

  Their manufacturing methods created dreadful dangers for the consumer. To eliminate completely the denaturants, chiefly wood alcohol, required not only a great deal more chemical knowledge than the Gennas possessed, but more time than they deemed it worthwhile to invest. As a result of ignorance and haste, the end product retained a poison which could, depending on the amount, produce excruciating pain lasting three or four days, cause permanent blindness, kill. The coloring and flavoring process increased the dangers. Good whiskey gets its amber hue by slowly absorbing the rosin and tars from the charred casks in which it is aged, a matter of years. The Gennas obtained instant color with coal tar dyes. For flavor they added fusel oil. This substance-the word "fusel" is German, meaning "bad liquor"-occurs naturally during fermentation, but aging removes most of it. Whiskey with a high fusel content, such as the Gennas marketed, was believed to account for a distinct new form of insanity characterized by sexual depravity, hallucinations, paranoia and homicidal impulses.

  However noxious the Gennas' liquor, their Taylor Street plant could not begin to supply the demand for it. Their solution to this problem convulsed the district economy. They persuaded hundreds of tenement dwellers and shopkeepers to let them install portable copper stills in their kitchens. They provided corn sugar and instructions on how to extract alcohol from it. The crude techniques they used had been developed by Henry Spingola, a young neighborhood lawyer and the brother of Angelo's intended, Lucille. The inducement was $15 a day, a fortune compared to what most inhabitants of Little Italy earned as laborers or peddlers. Not many rejected the offer. Those who did the Gennas either won over or put to flight with Black Hand terrorism. They also stimulated a minor immigration wave by guaranteeing a livelihood to Sicilians who would tend their stills. Alky cooking became the cottage industry of Little Italy. The tenement flats, houses and back rooms of stores with the required apparatus ran into the thousands, and over the entire community hung the stench of fermenting mash.

  The alky cooker shouldered no very onerous chores. He could fulfill most of them as he lolled beside his still, smoking a pipe or sipping a glass of wine. All he had to do for his $15 a day was keep the fire burning under the still and skim the distillate. The Gennas' truck drivers collected the alcohol in five-gallon cans. To be sure, the careless alky cooker ran grave risks. If he used gas for fuel, he might have to steal it by tapping a main, not because the Gennas wouldn't pay for it, but lest the abnormal consumption arouse the suspicion of the meter reader, who might then demand hush money. Clumsy main-tapping sometimes released a rush of gas that asphyxiated the thief. It sometimes happened. too, that a still would explode, scalding him to death.

  The physical conditions of the average tenement threatened the consumer with appalling health hazards. While the alky cooker dozed next to his still, vermin, drawn by the reek of fermenting yeast and sugar, would tumble into the mash. When Captain John Stege, a policeman who tried to uphold the Prohibition laws, confiscated 100 barrels of Little Italy mash, he found dead rats in every one.

  The Gennas' profits were enormous. A home still would yield on the average 350 gallons of raw alcohol a week at a cost of 50 to 75 cents a gallon, depending on the fluctuating price of corn sugar and yeast. After redistillation to eliminate the grosser impurities, the Gennas wholesaled the stuff at $6 a gallon. The retailer-the speakeasy proprietor-would reduce the alcoholic strength by half with water, thereby, doubling his reserves. Each gallon yielded 96 bar drinks, and he charged his customers 25 cents a drink. Thus, he realized a profit of $40 a gallon. The Gennas' gross sales climbed to $350,000 a month and their net earnings to $150,000.

  They earmarked a substantial part of their gross for graft. They paid off the Maxwell Street cops at the monthly rate of $10 to $125, according to importance and service. The payees eventually numbered about 400, not counting 5 police captains, scores of plainclothesmen and special detectives assigned to the state's attorney. The transactions were conducted so openly that the neighbors called 1022 Taylor Street "the police station." On the monthly paydays, all day, police in and out of uniform would swarm through the warehouse, some casually pausing on the sidewalk to count their graft.

  To foil police from other precincts who might try to misrepresent themselves as Maxwell Streeters, the police captains sent the Gennas a monthly list of the numbered badges against which they could verify the names of the deserving. Occasionally, a truckload of alcohol consigned to a distant part of the city would be intercepted by police en route. On the Gennas' complaint a protective system went into effect. Before undertaking a long haul through strange territory, the Gennas would notify the Maxwell Street Station. A uniformed squad would then convoy the truck through the danger zones. Not every home still in Little Italy operated under Genna auspices, but to avoid paying off an inquisitive cop, many of these competitors would claim that they did. The Gennas countered such imposture by distributing lists of every installation they owned to the Maxwell Street captains. Thereafter, when the police found an unlisted still, they destroyed it.

  The Gennas could not, however, maintain their dominion by bribery alone. They required the support of the ward bosses as well. This they won during the aldermanic wars of the Nineteenth Ward-the "Bloody Ward"-that encompassed Little Italy. Before those wars ended, thirty men died in the streets. They usually died after the killer, in a rite designed to shatter the victim's nerve, had tacked his name to "Dead Man's Tree," a poplar growing on Loomis Street.

  In the 1921 municipal elections the principal contenders for Nineteenth Ward alderman were Anthony D'Andrea, a nonpartisan candidate, and the Democratic incumbent, John "Johnny de Pow" Powers. Both men owed their public careers to a confederacy of crime and politics. Powers, a saloonkeeper and protector of criminals, gloried in the epithet conferred by his detractors, Prince of Boodlers. In and out of office he had ruled the Nineteenth Ward since 1888, when his constituency was mainly Irish. The Italians came to predominate and by 1918 composed 80 percent of
the voting population. Powers wooed a majority of the Italians as successfully as he had the Irish. According to the Chicago Times, "The only way he can get votes is by hypocritical posing as a benefactor by filling the role of a friend in need when death comes. He has bowed with aldermanic grief at thousands of biers. He is bloodless, personally unattractive. His demeanor is one of timid alertness and anxiety to please, but he is actually autocratic, arrogant and insolent."

  In 1914, when Tony D'Andrea entered politics as a Democratic candidate for county commissioner, he was one of Chicago's most prominent and popular Italians. As a lawyer he had accumulated a small fortune. Two of his daughters had graduated from the University of Chicago, and a third would shortly start her freshman year there. D'Andrea himself was a University of Palermo alumnus, a scholar and a linguist. During his early Chicago years he had privately tutored various Gold Coast ladies in Italian. When his brother Joey, Big Jim Colosimo's labor racketeering crony, was killed in a fight over city construction contracts, Tony replaced him as head of the Sewer Diggers' and Tunnel Miners' Union. (Another brother, Horace, was a priest.) He later succeeded to the presidency of the Macaroni Manufacturers' Association, then of the International Hod Carriers' Union and, finally, of the Unione Siciliane, offices which carried enormous prestige among Italian voters.

  During the 1914 campaign the opposition, rooting around in D'Andrea's past, came up with some startling revelations. The attorney, they discovered, was an unfrocked priest, a convicted bank robber and counterfeiter, who had served thirteen months in Joliet Penitentiary before President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned him upon the intercession of one of D'Andrea's Gold Coast pupils.