Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone

by John Kobler

  The Hotel Metropole was a landmark in the First Ward where Bathhouse John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna had long reigned. Capone reduced them to the status of satellites. Summoning them to his suite, he warned them that their continued prosperity would depend on their usefulness to the gang; without the gang's backing, they could not hope to win reelection and enjoy their old privileges. "We don't want no trouble," Capone said, using a favorite expression. The aldermen put up no resistance. "My God, what could I say?" Kenna told his followers after the meeting. "Suppose he said he was going to take over the organization. What could we do then? We're lucky to get as good a break as we did."

  How high Capone's stock rose under the new Thompson administration was patent on May 15, when the Italian flier Commander Francesco de Pinedo, circling the globe as Mussolini's goodwill ambassador in his hydroplane the Santa Maria II, landed on Lake Michigan off Chicago's Grant Park. The welcoming committee consisted of the Italian consul, Italo Canini; the president of the city's Fascisti, Ugo Galli; the collector of customs, Anthony Czarnecki; officers of the Sixth Air Corps; Mayor Thompson's personal representative, judge Bernard Barasa; and Al Capone. Capone was among the first to shake De Pinedo's hand as he stepped ashore. Some Chicagoans questioned the propriety of including Capone. This drew a sorry admission from the police. An anti-Fascist demonstration was expected, they claimed, and they were not sure of being able to prevent a riot. So they had asked Capone to serve on the committee, believing that he could quell any riotous anti-Fascisti. As it happened, the need never arose. The demonstrators were few and orderly.

  The month of June brought Capone a satisfaction of another kind. The third trial of Scalise and Anselmi, to whom he had been rendering moral and material aid ever since they had killed Detectives Walsh and Olson two years before, began on the ninth. The familiar problem of completing a jury-100 veniremen got themselves excused-delayed the proceedings a week. Taking the witness stand on June 22, Scalise admitted he fired a bullet-only one-at the detectives. The burden of Counselor Nash's summation was that his clients had acted in self-defense against "unwarranted police aggression." The jury voted "Not guilty." "There's nothing more to be done," said Detective Walsh's widow. "My husband and his friend were killed by these men who now have a crowd waiting to shake their hand. I give up."

  Capone gave a banquet to celebrate the acquittal. Champagne was the principal beverage, vintage champagne imported from Canada at $20 a bottle, and it flowed abundantly as toast after toast was drunk to the jury that set the guests of honor free. More than 100 celebrants jammed the dining room, among them the elite of the Little Italy underworld. The life of the party was a flip, strutting, bandboxical Sicilian gunman, a crony of Scalise and Anselmi, Giuseppe Giunta, called Hop Toad because of his nimbleness on a dance floor. The festivities reached a climax in a sham battle with popping champagne corks for missiles. Surveying the merry, drenched and drunken scene, Capone could hardly have imagined that three of his guests would soon join a conspiracy to destroy him. They were Hop Toad Giunta, Scalise and Anselmi.

  "The War of the Sicilian Succession," as one crime reporter called it, became inevitable when Tony Lombardo, with Capone's backing, attained the coveted presidency of the Unione Siciliane. The runner-up was Joseph Aiello, who with his eight brothers and countless cousins had replaced the Gennas as the kingpins of Little Italy's alky industry. He was a squat, black-browed figure, who lived regally in a three-story mansion. What appeared to be leather-bound volumes covered the living room walls from floor to ceiling. They were imitations, masking a store of arms and explosives. For years Aiello and Lombardo had been profitably associated both as powers in the Unione Siciliane and in the cheese import, bakery, brokerage commission, alky cooking and other businesses. Political contention within the Unione damaged the relationship, and it broke up alto gether after Lombardo won the presidential election. Bent upon eliminating his opponent as well as the gang chieftain behind him, Aiello formed an alliance on the North Side with the O'Banionites, now captained by Bugs Moran, and on the West Side with Billy Skidmore, Barney Bertsche and Jack Zuta.

  The word spread through gangland that the Aiellos would pay $50,000 to anybody who killed Capone. Between the spring and fall of 1927 four free-lance out-of-town torpedoes came to Chicago-Tony Torchio from New York, Tony Russo and Vincent Spicuzza from St. Louis and Sam Valente from Cleveland. Capone's intelligence network must have been functioning at top efficiency because none of the mercenaries lasted more than a few days after they got to Chicago. Each was found tommy-gunned to death, a nickel clutched in his hand-Jack McGurn's signature. During the same period four local Aiello adherents fell before the fire of a gunner, or gunners, never identified. A fifth victim, a barman named Cinderella, was trussed up after death, stuffed into a sack, and left in a ditch. For this killing the police arrested McGurn and a fellow Capone bodyguard, Orchell De Grazio, who had been seen near the ditch, but lacking any other evidence, they let them go.

  The Aiellos tried poison. Knowing Capone to be a frequenter of Diamond Joe Esposito's Bella Napoli Cafe, they offered the chef $35,000 if he would lace his minestrone with prussic acid. The chef agreed, then developed qualms, and betrayed the plot to the intended victim.

  Faced with eleven unsolved gang killings in less than six months, the new chief of detectives, William O'Connor, felt he should make some sort of reassuring public gesture. Accordingly, he announced he was organizing a special armored car force to wipe out gangsters. He said he wanted volunteers from the police ranks who had fought overseas in World War I and knew how to handle a machine gun. To the squad thus formed, he then issued an order of stupendous irresponsibility. "Men," said he, "the war is on. We've got to show that society and the police department, and not a bunch of dirty rats, are running this town. It is the wish of the people of Chicago that you hunt these criminals down and kill them without mercy. Your cars are equipped with machine guns and you will meet the enemies of society on equal terms. See to it that they don't have you pushing up daisies. Make them push up daisies. Shoot first and shoot to kill. If you kill a no torious feudist, you will get a handsome reward and win promotion. If you meet a car containing bandits, pursue them and fire. When I arrive on the scene, my hopes will be fulfilled if you have shot off the top of their car and killed every criminal inside it." Chief O'Connor did not say what he would do if they mowed down innocent bystanders.

  Tony Lombardo lived with his wife and two small children in a spacious suburban villa at 442 West Washington Boulevard, north of Cicero. Directly opposite stood an apartment building with flats renting by the week. On November 22 a stool pigeon's tip led O'Connor's detectives to one of the flats. They found an array of machine guns trained on the Lombardos' front door. The gunners were not around. The stool pigeon then suggested they raid a certain flat 10 miles away at 7002 North Western Avenue. There the detectives uncovered a cache of dynamite. The absent tenant had left behind a key to a room in the Rex Hotel, still farther north on Ashland Avenue. Making their third call of the day, the detectives burst in upon Angelo Lo Mantio, a young gunman from Milwaukee, Joseph Aiello and two of his cousins. They whisked the lot off to the detective bureau. Lo Mantio proved a frail reed who quickly broke under questioning and confessed that the Aiellos had brought him to Chicago to kill Capone and Lombardo. A second ambush, he added, had been set up for Capone on South Clark Street. Hinky Dink Kenna owned a cigar store at 311 South Clark, which he used as his political headquarters. Capone often stopped by for a chat. Across the street was the Hotel Atlantic. The windows of Room 302 framed the cigar-store entrance, and to the sills Lo Mantio had clamped high-powered rifles.

  It was probably some official on Capone's payroll who notified him that Lo Mantio and Aiello had been taken to the detective bureau lockup. Within an hour of their arrival, a fleet of taxis drew up before the thirteen-story building and disgorged a score of men. A policeman, glancing casually out of an upper-story window, took them at first to be detectives brin
ging suspects to the bureau for questioning. But none entered the building. They scattered, some to the street corners and down side streets, others into doorways and alleys. Presently, three men started toward the bureau's main entrance. One of them reached inside his overcoat to shift an automatic from holster to side pocket. As the policeman recognized Louis "Little New York" Campagna, a stubby, hook-nosed ex-Five Pointer, whom Capone had recently added to his corps of bodyguards, the incredible truth burst upon him: Capone gangsters, out to kill Aiello, had surrounded the detective bureau and were about to lay siege to it. His startled cry sent dozens of detectives flocking to the street. They seized the trio, disarmed and handcuffed them and hustled them to the lockup. They were lodged in a cell adjoining Aiello's, and a detective who understood Sicilian dialect, posing as a prisoner, listened from a cell nearby. This is what he heard:

  Campagna: "You're dead, friend, you're dead. You won't get up to the end of the street still walking."

  Aiello (terrified) : "Can't we settle this? Give me fourteen days and I'll sell my stores, my house and everything and quit Chicago for good. Can't we settle it? Think of my wife and baby."

  Campagna: "You dirty rat! You've broken faith with us twice now. You started this. We'll finish it."

  When his lawyer obtained his release on a writ of habeas corpus, Aiello did not venture into the street. He ran, quaking, to Chief O'Connor and begged him to provide police protection. Conscious of the newspaperman within earshot, O'Connor replied: "Sure, I'll give you police protection-all the way to New York and onto a boat. The sooner you go the better. You can't bring your feud ideas here and get away with it, so you'd better start back. You'll get no police protection around Chicago from me." Upon seeing Aiello's wife and small son, whom the lawyer had brought to the bureau, he relented and let a pair of policemen escort them all to a taxi.

  With his brothers Tony and Dominic, Aiello left Chicago that night. They went to Trenton, New Jersey, and, except for a surreptitious return visit or two, stayed there almost two years. But they never wavered in their resolve to exterminate Capone.

  After the Aiellos' departure Capone spoke expansively to reporters. With an air of kingly magnanimity, he said: "When I was told that Joey Aiello wanted to make peace, but that he wanted 14 days to settle his affairs, I was ready to agree. I'm willing to talk to anybody any place to bring about a settlement. I don't want no trouble. I don't want bloodshed. But I'm going to protect myself. When someone strikes at me, I will strike back."

  He reminded his interviewers: "I'm the boss. I'm going to continue to run things. They've been putting the roscoe [revolver] on me now for a good many years and I'm still healthy and happy. Don't let any body kid you into thinking I can be run out of town. I haven't run yet and I'm not going to. When we get through with this mob, there won't be any opposition and I'll still be doing business."

  What he failed to reckon with was Mayor Thompson's soaring ambition.

  "I do not choose to run for President in 1928," said Calvin Coolidge, and the Republican candidacy was up for grabs. Thompson, emboldened by his phenomenal political resurgence, saw no reason why it should not carry him into the White House. With a noisy retinue of press agents, advisers and drinking companions, he set out in the fall of 1927 on a cross-country train tour ostensibly to enlist support for flood control through the Mississippi Valley, actually to test the national reaction to himself. At each station stop the press agents touted him as the founder of the America First movement and distributed chauvinist leaflets and buttons, while a quartet sang "America First and Last and Always." William Randolph Hearst welcomed Thompson at his California ranch. When the mayor got back to Chicago, State's Attorney Crowe, now firmly reestablished in the Thompson camp, delivered an encomium: "He is a great American. He has done more for Chicago than anything that has happened in my lifetime. And he has, by this trip, reduced the prejudice that has existed in some localities, created by unfair critics of Chicago."

  As a Presidential aspirant, Thompson needed no adviser to tell him what a liability Capone's conspicuous, unfettered presence in Chicago would be. He passed the word to Chief of Police Hughes, and the treatment of the gang leader swiftly changed from indulgence to harassment. His henchmen were arrested on tenuous charges, his breweries, brothels and gambling houses were repeatedly raided, and he himself was kept under continuous surveillance.

  On December 5 Capone held a press conference at the Hotel Metropole to announce his departure for St. Petersburg, Florida. Ensconced in his armor-backed chair, his massive head wreathed by cigar smoke, he said: "Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best way they can. I'm sick of the job. It's a thankless one and full of grief."

  Misunderstanding and injustice, he complained, were forcing him into exile. "I'm known all over the world as a millionaire gorilla. The other day a man came in here and said that he had to have $3,000. If I'd give it to him, he said, he would make me a beneficiary in a $15,000 insurance policy he'd taken out and then kill himself. I had to have him pushed out. Today I got a letter from a woman in England. Even over there I'm known as a gorilla. She offered to pay my passage to London if I'd kill some neighbors she's been having a quarrel with. . . . That's what I have to put up with, just because I give the public what the public wants. I never had to send out high pressure salesmen. I could never meet the demand.

  "I violate the prohibition law, sure. Who doesn't? The only difference is I take more chances than the man who drinks a cocktail before dinner and a flock of highballs after it. But he's just as much a violator as I am."

  He digressed to express his contempt for dishonest politicians. "There's one thing worse than a crook and that's a crooked man in a big political job. A man who pretends he's enforcing the law and is really making dough out of somebody breaking it, a self-respecting hoodlum hasn't any use for that kind of fellow-he buys them like he'd buy any other article necessary to his trade, but he hates them in his heart.

  "I could bear it all if it weren't for the hurt it brings to my mother and my family. They hear so much about what a terrible criminal I am. It's getting too much for them and I'm just sick of it all myself."

  Concerning his police record, he said: "I have never been convicted of a crime nor have I ever directed anyone else to commit a crime. I have never had anything to do with a vice resort. I don't pose as a plaster saint, but I never killed anyone. I never stuck up a man in my life. Neither did any of my agents ever rob anybody or burglarize any homes while they worked for me. They might have pulled plenty of jobs before they came with me or after they left me, but not while they were in my outfit." He upheld Cicero as a model of civic virtue. "The cleanest burg in the U.S.A. There's only one gambling house in the whole town and not a single so-called vice den."

  His own business, he claimed-and he undoubtedly believed itwas a boon to his fellow Chicagoans. "I've been spending the best years of my life as a public benefactor. I've given people the light pleasures, shown them a good time. And all I get is abuse-the existence of a hunted man. I'm called a killer. Ninety percent of the people of Cook County drink and gamble and my offense has been to furnish them with those amusements. Whatever else they may say, my booze has been good and my games have been on the square. Public service is my motto. I've always regarded it as a public benefaction if people were given decent liquor and square games."

  Asked what a gangster thought about when he killed another in a gang war, he replied: "Well, maybe he thinks that the law of self-defense, the way God looks at it, is a little broader than the lawbooks have it. Maybe it means killing a man who'd kill you if he saw you first. Maybe it means killing a man in defense of your business-the way you make the money to take care of your wife and child. I think it does. You can't blame me for thinking there's worse fellows in the world than me."

  He said he did not know when he would return to Chicago, if ever, and he added with heavy sarcasm: "I guess murder will stop now. There won't be any more booze. You won't be able
to find a crap game even, let alone a roulette wheel or a faro game. I guess Mike Hughes won't need his 3,000 extra cops, after all. Say, the coppers won't have to lay all the gang murders on me now. Maybe they'll find a new hero for the headlines. It would be a shame, wouldn't it, if while I was away they'd forget about me and find a new gangland chief? .. .

  "I leave with gratitude to my friends who have stood by me through this unjust ordeal and forgiveness for my enemies. I wish them all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."

  At the last minute he changed his itinerary. Instead of St. Petersburg, he took his wife, his son and two bodyguards to Los Angeles. Their reception was unfriendly. Though he registered at the Hotel Biltmore under his favorite alias, Al Brown, he was recognized and his visit blazoned in the newspapers, rousing a storm of public protest. Barely twenty-four hours after the Capones arrived, the Biltmore manager ordered them to leave. "We're tourists," Capone objected and refused to budge. "I thought you people liked tourists. We have a lot of money to spend that I made in Chicago. Whoever heard of anybody being run out of Los Angeles that had money?"