The Outfit (5 page)

Snorky Capone also indulged his passion for music, and in doing so he unwittingly became a major architect of the American musical landscape. Al had always insisted that his speakeasies employ live musicians. In his own home he maintained an expensive grand piano. Now, flush with discretionary cash, the gangster without a racist bone in his body made a momentous decision: he would bring to Chicago the best jazz musicians in the country. The overwhelming majority of these were of African descent and were playing for spare change in the dives of New Orleans, forbidden from playing in the white clubs.

Whereas New Orleans invented jazz, Chicago legitimized it by introducing many soon-to-be-legendary black musicians into the white-attended clubs - and this seminal occurrence was largely due to the efforts of Al Capone.
⁶

But the good times were not to last, for the Syndicate’s weakest link, the North Side Irish gang, was under the leadership of a madman who decided to confront the Italians. Mayor Dever’s crackdown, which resulted in the confiscation of many alcohol stockpiles, had emboldened many gangs; some, like the North Siders, returned to the old days of stealing from one another. Poachings and hijackings began to escalate. But only one gang leader had the temerity to steal from Capone. His cretinous decision set off a chain of events that ruined everything for everybody; it would also precipitate the collapse of Capone’s reign.

Deanie - the Instigator

The disintegration of Torrio’s truce with the North Siders came as no real surprise, given the ethnic rancor that was always just beneath the surface. Even so, the admittedly fragile agreement might have lasted until the Eighteenth Amendment’s repeal a decade later if not for the ambitions of the Italian-loathing North Side baron, Dion “Deanie” O’Banion. Possessed of a venomous tongue, the reflexively hateful Irishman referred to Italians as “greaseballs” and “spic pimps.”

A living contradiction, Deanie O’Banion was a childhood choirboy at Holy Name Cathedral by day, a gang terrorist by night; he was a vicious racist murderer who was always home by five, where he stayed with his loving wife, Viola, for the rest of the evening. A gifted floral arranger, he owned a flower shop; as “the mob’s florist,” Deanie might spend his lunch break blowing a competitor’s brains out. A casual killer, O’Banion was said to have killed more than sixty people. When he branched out still further into bootlegging, he often made his beer deliveries in his florist truck.

Just as Cicero had its Capone, North Side politicians cowered at O’Banion’s terror tactics. While Torrio-Capone dictated Cicero’s election results, O’Banion matched them bullet for bullet in his district’s Forty-second Ward. The irascible Irishman was witnessed “electioneering” with his thugs at polling places, in direct view of election judges and clerks. “I’m interested in seeing that the Republicans get a fair shake this time,” Deanie wailed. He then made a show of checking that his revolver was loaded. Democrats were physically stopped from voting. In one election, his Republicans squeezed by with a scant 98 percent of the vote.

But O’Banion differed from Capone and Torrio in that he was most assuredly certifiably crazy. After his partner, Sam “Nails” Morton died in a horse-riding accident on May 13, 1923, O’Banion’s only moderating influence was gone. O’Banion began to make highly questionable decisions. Even to other gangsters, O’Banion’s behavior became frightening, since it often made no logical sense. First, O’Banion had his enforcer, Louis “Three-Gun Louis” Alterie execute the poor horse that had thrown Morton. On one occasion, O’Banion was nabbed for a safecracking because, after the hit, he and his escaping crew could not resist the temptation to ascend a stagelike Dumpster and belt out a popular song of the day. In his most infamous booze heist, the Sibley Warehouse robbery, he bought the pilfered hooch from the burglars with a fake certified bank check, marked with bank seals. What made the purchase so bizarre was that O’Banion had hired the same forger that the burglars had hired to make the warehouse withdrawal slips they had utilized to acquire the load.
⁷

As his behavior deteriorated, it became apparent that Deanie was the victim of some then unknown mental disorder, a condition that now steeled him to confront the Syndicate powerhouse. During prohibition, O’Banion of course maintained his own breweries, but he decided it was easier to hijack Torrio-Genna shipments. “Let Torrio make the stuff and I’ll steal what I want of it” was O’Banion’s famous battle cry. In addition to stealing the Gennas’ inferior hooch, he thought nothing of pilfering thousands of gallons of Capone’s best alcohol. In one heist he felt compelled to leave a humorous calling card, replacing Capone’s booze with water. Incredibly, the Capone organization often turned the other cheek. They could afford to. But the Genna brothers had never looked the other way in their lives. They spoiled for a fight.

Deanie’s hatred for the Sicilian Gennas was legendary. His innate abhorrence of Sicilians in general was further inflamed by the knowledge that the Gennas, with their rotgut booze, were able to drastically undercut O’Banion’s going price for hooch. Torrio, as per his style, attempted to mediate the rivalry, but O’Banion refused to cut a deal. Despite his own predilection for patronizing whorehouses, O’Banion was said to abhor Torrio’s vice trade, and the murdering florist drew the line at dealing with an immoral whoremaster. Torrio finally washed his hands of the entire affair, knowing full well that the volatile Gennas would whack O’Banion at their first opportunity. But that could only happen if Torrio and the all-powerful Unione leadership sanctioned such a move. It would be O’Banion himself who would guarantee such a consensus.

After numerous skirmishes with the Gennas, O’Banion was poised to create his gangster masterpiece: an imaginative double cross of Torrio himself. In the spring of 1924, Deanie informed Torrio that he was getting out of the booze business. He then offered to sell Torrio his interest in the Seiben Brewery, which was coowned by him and Torrio, for $500,000. Torrio jumped at the offer, further agreeing to attend O’Banion’s final beer loadout on May 19.

One has to wonder about Torrio’s mental state, accepting such an obvious Trojan horse from a man with O’Banion’s reputation. Nonetheless, in the early-morning hours on the appointed date, with their paid-off cops standing guard, Torrio and O’Banion observed the beer trucks filling their tanks at the Seiben warehouse. The operation was suddenly halted when squads of Chicago police converged on the scene, arresting everyone in sight. As they were taken to federal prohibition authorities to be charged with Volstead violations, O’Banion was seen whistling, singing, and generally looking like the cat that had eaten the canary.

When Torrio was booked, he gave his favorite alias, Frank Langley, to the police, knowing that if they discovered his true identity, there was no way to avoid doing hard time. The cheery O’Banion, on the other hand, knew that since this was his first prohibition arrest, he would only receive a puny fine. Laughing uncontrollably, O’Banion sent out for breakfast for all thirty-one detainees.

In fact, the crazy Irishman had been tipped off about the imminent raid and thereby set about planning his crowning masterpiece and ultimate practical joke. While Torrio’s lawyers set about stalling his trial for six months, Torrio and Capone now joined the Gennas in demanding O’Banion’s head. But Mike Merlo, the prestigious president of the Unione, wanted peace. When he died from cancer on November 8, the Syndicate wasted no time, quickly maneuvering Angelo Genna into the Unione presidency. They also set about writing the final scene in the life of the Irish pest.

Torrio customarily sent to New York for Frankie Yale. On November 10, 1924, fresh from muscling the Democrats in a North Side election, O’Banion was working overtime filling floral orders for the huge Merlo funeral. At eleven-thirty in the morning, two of Torrio’s most ruthless hitmen, Albert Anselmi and John Scalise, accompanied Yale into O’Banion’s Flower Shop. Believing the strangers were there to purchase flowers for Merlo, O’Banion extended his hand, effectively preventing him from grabbing his pistol when they shot him six times, point-blank. Typically, there were no arrests, but soon after O’Banion was hit, Scalise and Anselmi were seen sporting $3,000 rings. Like a Second City leitmotiv witnesses refused to come forward. (”Me? I didn’t see anything.”) Another recurring theme was the indifference of the police, who were happy to let the gangsters kill off each other. Chief of Police Morgan Collins said of O’Banion’s demise, “Chicago’s archcriminal is dead. I don’t doubt that O’Banion was responsible for at least twenty-five murders in this city.”

Deanie’s corpse was placed in a $7,500 bronze coffin, the best made, appointed with solid silver posts and encased in a solid copper box. Like Colosimo and Merlo, the Irish gangster was afforded a huge funeral; some ten thousand marchers followed the hearse to Mt. Carmel Cemetery. More than two dozen cars were enlisted to haul the flowers alone, including a tribute from Torrio and one in roses “From Al,” both of which were summarily placed in the trash heap outside. At the tense wake, which both Capone and Torrio attended, mourners checked their guns at the door. Torrio was given the silent treatment by O’Banion’s crew. Perhaps out of respect for O’Banion’s family, his crew refrained from icing Capone and Torrio on the spot, but the battle was now joined.

The Chicago Beer Wars

If you smell gunpowder, you re in Cicero.

Torrio and Capone braced their troops, numbering some eight hundred gunmen, for the inevitable bloodletting that was to come. With their leader dead, the North Siders were now led by second-in-command George “Bugs” Moran, who stepped up their attacks on the Torrio-Capone gang. The Beer Wars had evolved into an ethnic war, chiefly the Irish versus the Sicilians. The Irish were emboldened in their anti-Syndicate efforts by their acquisition of some newly invented Thompson submachine guns, or tommy guns, which unleashed a barrage of eight hundred rounds per minute. Not surprisingly, the gangsters had machine guns before the cops, who found them too expensive and inaccurate. Although the weapons retailed for $175, the cash-rich gangsters were happy to buy them for $2,000 on the black market, where they quickly earned an appropriate moniker: the Chicago typewriter.

There were now four or more gang-related murders per month in the Chicago area. One journalist noted, “Two thirds of the deaths in Chicago are due to the beer-running trade.” On January 24, 1925, Johnny Torrio himself was seriously wounded by North Side chieftain Hymie Weiss. Torrio was hit multiple times, with gunshots to the chest, stomach, and arm. It appeared that the attackers were trying to emulate O’Banion’s wounds, including the coup de grace to the head, which Yale had administered to Deanie. But the shooter ran out of bullets, then had to flee as witnesses approached. Still, Torrio suffered so many hits that the attackers must have believed they had accomplished their mission.

When he heard of the attack, Al Capone raced to the hospital, anxiously asking, “Did they get Johnny?” Capone moved into the facility, occupying the adjacent room and ordering thirty bodyguards to stand watch. “While I’m there, nobody will bother him,” Capone sobbed. Near death for two weeks, Torrio rallied to a remarkable recovery; however, after his convalescence, he still had to serve time for the Seiben Brewery raid. Torrio first attempted a futile, $50,000 bribe to the DA, but was sentenced to nine months in the Lake County Jail. While “away at college,” Torrio’s forced reflection time chastened the weary boss, who had once dreamed of a vast crime cartel. From his confinement, Torrio summoned Capone and, upon his arrival, told him, “Al, it’s all yours.” And so, at forty-four years of age, Johnny “the Fox” Torrio took his $30 million and headed back east to Brooklyn.

The Commission

If Capone believed that Johnny actually intended to retire, then he was just another of the wily Fox’s victims. Torrio guessed that Capone was a train wreck just waiting to happen and decided to bail out and hitch his wagon to an idea that dwarfed even the Torrio-Capone Syndicate: an affiliation with New York gangsters Meyer Lansky, Ben Siegel, and Lucky Luciano. Torrio was the first to realize that the entire substructure of the country was up for grabs, and if a national syndicate could be formed, all concerned would grow rich beyond their dreams while they ruled from the shadows. Soon after arriving in New York, the revered Torrio called a summit and presented his vision of “open cities” in which the combined forces of New York and Capone’s heirs in Chicago could flourish. In doing so, Torrio prophetically outlined the rest of America’s twentieth century.

What happened at the gangster conclave would have gone unreported were it not for a highly placed snitch who later reported what he had seen to the Brooklyn district attorney in a deal to beat a murder rap. Abe “Kid Twist” Reles was the top gunner in Lepke Buchalter’s Murder, Incorporated. During his career, Kid Twist was arrested forty-one times, but he was always able to dodge a murder conviction. From Twist, and a number of other sources, it has been learned that the meeting took place in a four-star Park Avenue hotel. Those in attendance with the then twenty-eight-year-old enforcer included Lucky Luciano, Lepke Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Joey Adonis, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky.

“Why don’t you guys work up one big outfit?” Torrio asked the New York contingent. He was initially met with skepticism, especially over which boss would take a backseat in such an operation. However, the Fox had all the answers: “Each guy keeps what he’s got now. We work as equal partners, but we make one big combination . . . It’s my feeling that a mixture of the legitimate and the other stuff is our strongest card.” The hoods finally grasped the concept and signed on to the plan. Costello said, “I’ve always liked Chicago as a market, but of course one guy doesn’t have the organization to work all the towns. A thing like we’re talking about is exactly what we need.” Joey Adonis agreed, adding, “It’ll cut a hell of a lot of fat from the bundle, and when the pols see they’re up against a united front, they’ll settle for what they can get.”