She could hardly avoid Eliot on the top floor of the Transportation Building, south of the Loop, where the special agents had their offices. Working as Golding’s secretary meant taking dictation from other special agents, Ness included. And it was no secret she’d managed to catch his eye.
Another woman who worked in the office recalled a weekend that summer when the Prohibition Bureau secretaries got away to a rented cottage on Lake Michigan. They brought with them some bootleg liquor. Unannounced, Eliot appeared, and in his presence the girls “were afraid to break out the booze, since he was just the type who might arrest them.”
Except of course he wouldn’t, not with Edna there.
Even so, Ness took his time working up the courage to ask Edna out. The gossip around the office was she had another beau, a spiffy dresser among Golding’s top special agents. But there was never any real contest.
When Ness finally asked her out, Edna later said, she knew right away she wanted to spend her life with him.
Several new recruits joined the special agent squad around the same time as Eliot Ness. They, too, were young, honest, competent men who took their responsibilities seriously.
Unlike Ness, most were new to the Prohibition Bureau. This left them unspoiled by the agency’s patronage and politicking. Among them Ness would find a handful of dedicated and trustworthy allies. Several would stick with him all the way through his war on Capone.
Ness formed a close bond with Martin J. Lahart, twenty-nine, Chicago-born son of immigrant parents. Ladies’ man Lahart had blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and a square jaw like screen and magazine detectives. Before joining the Prohibition Bureau, Lahart had been a Pinkerton operative and a post office clerk, a job he found so dull he signed on as a special agent just to escape. The agent oozed personality, pegged by a future boss as a “tiresome and repetitive talker.”
But Ness, quiet and reserved, enjoyed this “tall, happy Irishman.” And Lahart appreciated the low-key Ness, who struck him “as a kind, conscientious, and considerate man.” They got along like gin and tonic.
Ness and Lahart shared an offbeat sense of humor. In July 1928, after hearing liquor was for sale inside the Shakespeare Avenue police station, Ness brought Lahart and another agent in as phony prisoners and locked them up. Once Ness had left, the undercover men got a hapless janitor to sell them moonshine. After getting sprung, the agents brought this evidence to Golding.
“Let us raid the raiders,” Golding declared, before marching in and seizing several bottles from the cops. Both Ness and Golding would forever relish the irony of getting a search warrant for a police station.
The bust had the same prankish quality as Ness’s earlier work. At heart, he remained a daring young college boy, playing detective. But with the promotion to special agent came new risks and new adversaries. That same summer, Ness got roped into his first major investigation, an attempt to break up a violent bootleg conspiracy south of the city.
He now faced real gangsters, men he couldn’t treat flippantly if he wanted to stay alive. But he blazed ahead as before, with all the brashness of youth, heedless or unaware of the danger he faced. He wouldn’t realize how much the game had changed until it was almost too late.
“This,” Ness wrote, “is where my connection with the Mafia began.”
The case had its roots in Kensington, Ness’s old neighborhood, with Frank Basile, a young bootlegger. Born in 1901 to Italian immigrants, Basile lived just half a mile from the first Ness bakery. He and Eliot, only two years apart in age, may well have known each other as boys. Prohibition took them down very different paths, on opposites sides of a law neither had any reason to believe in.
Basile’s friends called him “Burt,” but many knew the big, imposing man—at six foot, more than two hundred pounds—simply as “Fat.”
“No door could stand up against his fist or foot,” Ness recalled.
That Basile spoke fluent Italian he kept to himself; with the light skin and fair hair of northern Italians, he could easily hide his ethnicity. By posing as an Irishman, or just another American, he could listen in when other Italians whispered supposedly secret conversations.
After the dry law took effect, nineteen-year-old Basile became an “alky cooker” in Kensington. He soon partnered with Lorenzo Juliano, a Sicilian immigrant in Roseland and a rising star in the liquor business. Dead-eyed and rotund, the pencil-mustached Juliano had been a grocer before Prohibition, but nonetheless brought a cold, cruel efficiency to his new profession. Forming an alliance with Capone—a personal friend—Juliano helped the Outfit expand its bootleg empire south, until it covered a swath of territory from Kankakee to Kensington.
The center of this massive operation was Chicago Heights, a factory town about thirteen miles south of Kensington and thirty miles south of Chicago proper. The city hadn’t developed into the manufacturing hub its fathers envisioned, but it had become a bootleg powerhouse, stills dotting the flat, wet, industrial landscape like black squares on a chessboard. From farmers growing grapes, to plumbers building stills, to grandmothers cooking up white lightning for special occasions, everyone in the Heights seemed to have some stake in the liquor business.
The Outfit had a long, profitable relationship with the Heights, dating back to 1920. A rival Sicilian crew had moved in during the first half of the decade, seeking to take over the city’s bootleg operations. But a trio of Capone allies killed them off in the bloody summer of 1926, becoming the local kingpins, with Capone ruler by proxy. The Heights became Al’s safe haven when things got too hot in Chicago. Riding through town in his bulletproof Cadillac, he would toss silver dollars out the window for kids to scoop up.
Juliano ensured liquor cooked in the suburbs flowed north, without interruption, into Chicago’s thirsty speakeasies. He soon became known as a brutal enforcer who brooked no disloyalty. In the fall of 1927, one bootlegger passed trade secrets to a housewife he’d been sleeping with. She had sold the information to government agents, who used it to raid several of Juliano’s stills. Juliano had both lovers killed.
That same year, Basile managed to get on Juliano’s bad side after a violent quarrel. Juliano, just to close out the partnership, gave Schemer Drucci $5,000 to finish Basile off; but the cops killed Drucci first. Basile’s luck ran out soon after, when he greased the palm of a rare honest Prohibition agent, who ran him in on bribery charges. Facing a year in jail, Basile turned state’s evidence, linking Juliano to at least twelve bombings and eight murders, including the dead lovers in the Heights.
Basile’s testimony offered George Johnson and the special agents their first line of attack against Capone’s southern flank. With Juliano lying low, Johnson—with a single conspiracy case for the Kensington–Chicago Heights liquor racket in the works—ordered Golding to find him. The special agents fanned out in the spring of 1928, searching several of Juliano’s haunts without success.
In early April, Pat Roche of the Intelligence Unit tracked the gangster down, but Juliano held up under questioning. Meanwhile the gangster’s fifteen-year-old daughter defended her father. He never slapped her, she told the Tribune. This seemed insufficient praise, but so was what the government had on him. The agents let Juliano go.
Basile, now a marked man, signed on with the government as an informant and a chauffeur. For $5 a day plus gas money, he ferried Prohibition agents around the South Side in a massive Cadillac that had been impounded in a liquor raid. This dangerous duty brought Basile back into the territory of the very men he’d betrayed. And while gangsters generally considered it bad business to murder federal agents, federal informants enjoyed no such protection. Basile, just turning twenty-seven, with a wife and two children, a third on the way, had no choice—if he wanted to stay out of prison, and keep his family fed, he had to play along with the government until his parole ran out.
Johnson didn’t have to wait long for another shot at Chicago Heights.
In the late spring of ’28, after Golding and his spec
ial agents seized a suburban still, they “were immediately approached,” as Ness told the story, “by a representative of the Mafia.” John Giannoni, a small, slim mobster wearing “a diamond stickpin about the size of a lump of sugar,” served as the gang’s paymaster. He offered Golding a hefty reward to forget about the still.
Giannoni had the local cops and the regular Prohibition force on his payroll, but what about these new feds who spouted incorruptibility? Would Golding live up to his bluster, or was he just another crooked cop looking for a bigger handout? The paymaster decided to find out.
And for once, Golding played it cool, sensing an opportunity to work his way into the bootleggers’ confidence, agreeing to the payoff. Back in Chicago, he conferred with George Johnson and laid the groundwork for an undercover operation. They tapped Donald L. Kooken, “a rather short, stocky chap,” as Ness recalled, who “was an expert shot, and fearless, and spoke with a slow, quiet, Indiana drawl.”
On June 18, Golding and Kooken traveled to Calumet City for a meeting with four Heights bootleggers. There the special agents accepted a payoff of $75—the first link in their chain of evidence.
Over the next few weeks, Kooken built a relationship with Giannoni and other gang members, showing more interest in making money than pulling raids. The bootleggers were happy to oblige, paying Kooken two additional bribes of $100 each. Kooken made sure a different special agent witnessed each payoff—the more men who could testify, the stronger the conspiracy case. He stayed alert for details of the gang’s operations, where they had their stills, who they sold to, and who they paid off.
For the third such meeting, Kooken chose Ness as his latest witness. The young man brought a fresh pair of eyes, but also something more important—local knowledge. Ness knew the territory in a way the Indiana-born Kooken didn’t.
Also along was drawling Georgian Albert M. Nabers, a new recruit on the squad. Nabers had lied about his age to fight in the Great War and lost a big toe for his trouble, earning him the memorable nickname “Nine Toed.” With keen eyes under thick slashes of eyebrow, hair slicked back in gleaming waves, and pouting lips above a stubby chin, he had the look of a silver-screen gangster.
On July 7, Basile and the special agents piled into their confiscated Cadillac and took off for the Heights. Heavy summer storm clouds loomed as they rolled into the grimy little town of twenty-five thousand, “spotted with numerous saloons, abandoned houses, barns and garages.” They pulled up to the corner of Seventeenth Street and East End Avenue in front of the Monroe Hotel. A saloon known as the Cozy Corner occupied the ground floor, where bootleggers from Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri would drop off liquor destined for Chicago speakeasies.
“They would leave their cars with the bartender,” Ness recalled, “and the cars would be driven away by members of the Chicago Heights alcohol mob. The drivers from out of town would stay at the bar, drinking, or avail themselves of what the brothel located on the second and third floors had to offer.”
When the special agents walked into the Cozy Corner, the first thing they saw was a uniformed policeman at the bar. Kooken approached the bartender and explained who they were. Right away, the bartender fixed them a round and went to fetch Giannoni. The feds downed their cocktails before moseying into the back. When Giannoni showed up, he brought with him a short, swarthy man with a thick Italian accent. This was Joe Martino, head of the local chapter of the Unione Siciliana.
Martino was the lone survivor of the Sicilian gang that failed to take over the Heights. Although Capone’s men killed off his partners, they’d let Martino live because of his position with the Unione, whose control Capone so badly needed. Also, over the years, Martino had built valuable relationships with local law enforcement.
Whenever the cops knocked over a still in the area, Martino was the fixer who made things right. This made him an absolute prize for Ness and the special agents—a single crook who knew all the corrupt officials in the Heights.
The special agents and the bootleggers had another round of drinks and got to talking. Giannoni remained wary—a gangster first and foremost, he knew better than to let his guard down. Martino, on the other hand, was a businessman, even a community leader, willing to open up. Already under indictment for a bootleg conspiracy in another suburb, his place in the underworld precarious, Martino needed allies. He came on genial, eager to make friends with federal men who might help save his neck.
Ness, Nabers, and Kooken did their best to get on his good side and draw him in. They pressed to discover the extent of bootlegging in the Heights, making it clear the more liquor the gang produced, the bigger bribe they expected. Martino should share the locations of the “right” stills—why pay to protect any alky cookers who weren’t part of his organization?
Martino took the bait. If he didn’t have to worry about federal raids, he could run his business in the open, raking in more profits than ever. Readily, he agreed to tell the feds anything they wanted to know. Even Giannoni was convinced, delighted to have the special agents on his payroll, the local law enforcement situation seemingly all sewn up. As a down payment, the gangsters handed over $300.
Ness, Nabers, and Kooken returned to Chicago, marking the payoff and turning it over at George Johnson’s office. They now had Giannoni and Martino cold on bribery, but still hoped to make a much bigger case. They would bide their time and see how many others they could snare.
Soon, with Basile at the wheel, Martino was riding around the Heights with the agents like a gushing tour guide, showing them various stills and even introducing them to the operators. These bootleggers weren’t quite as friendly as their boss, eyeing Ness and his partners suspiciously. But once Martino made his introductions, they willingly shook hands with the federal men. In the process, they practically signed their names to the growing list of liquor crimes that would form the basis of an indictment.
Basile warned the special agents to stay on their guard—the rest of the gang wouldn’t be quite so easily fooled. Nor could the feds expect their badges to keep them safe—sure, gangsters rarely killed honest cops, but Ness, Nabers, and Kooken had stepped over the line, taking the syndicate’s money. If the agents went back on their deal, they’d be seen as traitors, and Basile knew all about what gangsters did to traitors.
But the special agents kept building their case. And they soon came up with another ruse to burrow deeper into the gang’s operations. One autumn night, the agents began searching the area around Calumet City for alky-cooking plants. As always, they relied, literally, on their noses: fermenting mash gave off a familiar stench. As they drew close to the source, they saw they were being tailed. They left town and tried again the next night, with the same result, two cars picking up their trail almost immediately.
Evidently, the bootleggers posted lookouts and followed any unfamiliar cars getting too close. If the special agents kept up their search, they’d blow their cover. Basile drove them to a saloon, where they kept up appearances, throwing down some drinks before leaving town.
The next night, they changed tactics. Shabbily dressed, the special agents came in by a back road, hid the Cadillac, split up, and sneaked past the lookouts on foot. Then they combed the area, prowling through the darkness as the powerful odor of mash led them to eighteen more stills scattered throughout Calumet City.
These bootleggers operated within Heights mob territory but didn’t pay tribute to the Outfit or the special agents. The feds carefully noted the location of each still and saved their notes for search warrants when the time was right for raids. When the agents returned to the Heights a day or two later, they went right to the Cozy Corner and asked for Giannoni.
“We told him that we had located quite a number of stills,” Ness recalled, “and asked him what he wanted us to do about it.”
If Ness could get them all together in one room, he’d have proof of a conspiracy. He suggested Giannoni round up the still owners for a meeting with the feds. Giannoni agreed and set a conference for
a couple of days later at a saloon in East Chicago.
Kooken had moved on to another case, leaving the younger men in charge. On the day of the meeting, Basile drove Ness and Nabers to the saloon on State Street, in an area notorious for its gin mills and strip joints. The bar’s tall, husky owner welcomed them into the back room, where they found Giannoni and half a dozen suspicious still owners. Off to one side sat a dark, gloomy gangster in a silk shirt. The special agents took little notice of him.
Ness, Nabers, and Basile sat around a table with the bootleggers, who tried to probe how much they knew. The feds assured them everything would be all right, for the right price. They insisted on a hefty bribe, one the gangsters would try to haggle down. The actual amount didn’t matter, since the special agents would turn the cash over to their superiors. The idea was to spark a debate—the more they negotiated, the more the gangsters might let slip about their organization.
Ness, more experienced than Nabers, took the lead. He became “the main objector and the hungry one,” insisting on a weekly payoff of about $500. Giannoni and the bootleggers balked at such a stiff sum, stirring up a heated argument. Ness carefully steered the conversation toward how many cops the gang paid off. But he overplayed his hand.
“If you don’t take the money,” Giannoni said, “we can handle this in another way.”
Ness knew exactly what that meant. Still, he held firm, fully embracing the role of a dirty cop. He had learned in previous undercover work to play his part to the hilt. Only he had misjudged these ruthless men.
The bootleggers conferred among themselves in hushed tones, some taking the special agents for the spies they were. These feds already knew too much; they needed to be taken care of right away. As the whispering went on, the silk-shirted gangster deliberately sidled up right behind Ness. So far the slick gangster had taken in the conversation in silence. Now he spoke to Giannoni in Italian.
Scarface and the Untouchable Page 14