those who stood shivering outside the soup kitchen and those who, enclosed in the covers of the police album, lay sprawled on the bare boards of matchbox rooms or crouched in the corners of taxis with their heads bashed in. For Al Capone is an ambidextrous giant, who kills with one hand and feeds with the other.”
Borden was making a connection that those in Big Al’s soup line didn’t want to think about anymore. To them, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre seemed like a very long time ago. Men who still had jobs and homes could worry about Mob violence and how gangsters preyed on the weak and troubled. The down and out could worry only about themselves. “Good-Hearted Al,” they mumbled when asked about the underworld boss. If Capone wanted to call himself a twentieth-century Robin Hood, that was fine with them, as long as his kitchen stayed open. On top of this new image of good-hearted Al, the economic immolation had brought back thesee-no-evil, hear-no-evil crowd in local political circles. Borden feared the situation had produced “a creeping civic paralysis, the spread of some moral intoxication or fever that, like the effects of certain drugs, will produce in time a complete immunity from the sensation of horror or disgust or fear.”
This much was certain: Johnson, Jamie’s Secret Six, and the incipient Capone squad were truly on their own. After being booted out of office in the mid-1920s by a reformer, Big Bill Thompson had returned to city hall. The gangs were running Chicago’s city government once again, including the police department. A socialite, trekking to a soirée on the roof of one of the city’s best hotels late in 1930, would recall the odd feeling she had as “we walked through the seething, smoke-laden lobby of the hotel; I suppose that the crowd of men who eyed us over their large cigars, their hats pushed back onto the backs of their heads as we stepped past in satin slippers and ermine coats, represented as tough a crowd of crook politicians and crook business men as any you could find in the world.”As she headed upstairs, along with her fellow “pretty, delicate girls, such nice, boyish men,” to a party that would be awash in illegal liquor, she grew angry at the state of official Chicago:
Suppose that crowd downstairs hadn’t chosen to let us have our party? Suppose they decided not to let these attractive people have any parties any more? Suppose they told them to clear out of the town altogether? Weren’t they helpless? Wouldn’t they quickly disappear? What could they do about it? Fight? Well, why didn’t they fight, then? Why wait? What actually were they doing in regard to the governing of this town of theirs? Nothing.
The socialite perfectly captured the conflicted angst of the city. Chicagoans high and low hated Prohibition, but their very own flouting of the dry law had helped make their lives—their entire world—scary, without order or reason. Increasingly, people wanted to be saved from themselves. The crook politicians and crook businessmen would continue to do nothing; no one expected otherwise. But that didn’t mean no one was willing to step forward and fight. The perfect moment had arrived, at long last, for the hated Prohibition Bureau to produce a hero.
CHAPTER 7
The First Step
T he Capone operation was a hydra: bootlegging, extortion, union racketeering, prostitution, gambling. A dogged investigator had myriad entry points to exploit, as well as many blind alleys he could stumble down. But not the Capone squad. Their focus, Eliot told his men, was the breweries—and only the breweries. They were going to find them and knock them out, one by one.The brewery business made for a prime target, Eliot said, “having the most capital invested . . . the most complete organization, the quickest turnover and the greatest income.” And it was especially vulnerable, he pointed out, because “their product was bulky and because they have the toughest
Borden was making a connection that those in Big Al’s soup line didn’t want to think about anymore. To them, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre seemed like a very long time ago. Men who still had jobs and homes could worry about Mob violence and how gangsters preyed on the weak and troubled. The down and out could worry only about themselves. “Good-Hearted Al,” they mumbled when asked about the underworld boss. If Capone wanted to call himself a twentieth-century Robin Hood, that was fine with them, as long as his kitchen stayed open. On top of this new image of good-hearted Al, the economic immolation had brought back thesee-no-evil, hear-no-evil crowd in local political circles. Borden feared the situation had produced “a creeping civic paralysis, the spread of some moral intoxication or fever that, like the effects of certain drugs, will produce in time a complete immunity from the sensation of horror or disgust or fear.”
This much was certain: Johnson, Jamie’s Secret Six, and the incipient Capone squad were truly on their own. After being booted out of office in the mid-1920s by a reformer, Big Bill Thompson had returned to city hall. The gangs were running Chicago’s city government once again, including the police department. A socialite, trekking to a soirée on the roof of one of the city’s best hotels late in 1930, would recall the odd feeling she had as “we walked through the seething, smoke-laden lobby of the hotel; I suppose that the crowd of men who eyed us over their large cigars, their hats pushed back onto the backs of their heads as we stepped past in satin slippers and ermine coats, represented as tough a crowd of crook politicians and crook business men as any you could find in the world.”As she headed upstairs, along with her fellow “pretty, delicate girls, such nice, boyish men,” to a party that would be awash in illegal liquor, she grew angry at the state of official Chicago:
Suppose that crowd downstairs hadn’t chosen to let us have our party? Suppose they decided not to let these attractive people have any parties any more? Suppose they told them to clear out of the town altogether? Weren’t they helpless? Wouldn’t they quickly disappear? What could they do about it? Fight? Well, why didn’t they fight, then? Why wait? What actually were they doing in regard to the governing of this town of theirs? Nothing.
The socialite perfectly captured the conflicted angst of the city. Chicagoans high and low hated Prohibition, but their very own flouting of the dry law had helped make their lives—their entire world—scary, without order or reason. Increasingly, people wanted to be saved from themselves. The crook politicians and crook businessmen would continue to do nothing; no one expected otherwise. But that didn’t mean no one was willing to step forward and fight. The perfect moment had arrived, at long last, for the hated Prohibition Bureau to produce a hero.
CHAPTER 7
The First Step
T he Capone operation was a hydra: bootlegging, extortion, union racketeering, prostitution, gambling. A dogged investigator had myriad entry points to exploit, as well as many blind alleys he could stumble down. But not the Capone squad. Their focus, Eliot told his men, was the breweries—and only the breweries. They were going to find them and knock them out, one by one.The brewery business made for a prime target, Eliot said, “having the most capital invested . . . the most complete organization, the quickest turnover and the greatest income.” And it was especially vulnerable, he pointed out, because “their product was bulky and because they have the toughest
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