A Bloody Business

by Dylan Struzan

  Charlie hands the pamphlet back to McGurn.

  “Keep it,” Capone says. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  They float around the island before motoring gently down the Intercoastal waterway. When Capone tires of navigating the boat, he turns the wheel over to McGurn and sits down with the boys. Like a rat going at an ocean liner’s mooring rope, Capone chews voraciously on his cigar. His Floridian getaway is no secret. While he claims he is taking a break from business, the truth is the tension between him and the Bugs Moran gang grows daily. Al’s rage overflows. There was an attempt on Johnny Torrio’s life and he can’t let that go. The rot in Big Al’s paradise turns out to be his need for revenge on the Irish North Siders.

  Capone says, “I want those Irish fuckers dead. They’re pushing me hard. They stepped over the line when they damn near killed Johnny and they almost got Jack, too. Fucking cock-suckers. Ain’t they ever heard of capitalism? What do they think, we’re gonna lay down and wind up selling newspapers barefoot on the streets of Brooklyn? This is America, for Christ’s sake.”

  * * *

  On the train back to New York, Meyer says, “Al was a little strange, don’t you think?”

  “A little?” Charlie says. “A guy like Al believes his own bullshit. He’s got no common sense. You seen how him and Joe A. handled the Irish in Brooklyn. Big fucking showdown in a club. What is this, the Wild West?”

  “We should consider gambling in Florida, though,” Meyer says.

  “Who goes to Florida?”

  “Rich Jews,” Meyer says. “We can expand to Cuba. It could be a good move.”

  The problem with this idea is Al Capone’s presence. The local politicians in Florida want Capone gone but Capone is standing firm.

  * * *

  On February 14 all hell breaks loose in Chicago. A police squad car, gong clanging, pulls up to a beer-drop for Bugs Moran’s mob located at 2122 Clark Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side. Two cops and two men in plain clothes jump from the vehicle and take the garage by storm.

  “Up against the wall,” one of them shouts to the seven men in the garage. “Spread ’em.”

  The men scramble. Frank Gusenberg, one of the guys against the wall, senses something is wrong. He turns to look at the policemen. The cops have Tommy guns.

  A German Shepherd named Highball, leashed to a truck’s bumper, barks.

  “Shut up, ya lousy mutt,” one of the cops says.

  Just as things begin to click in Gusenberg’s mind, the guns go off. The men lined against the wall tumble to the floor like discarded flour sacks, cut down one by one. Highball howls from the blast of the guns.

  Frank Gusenberg looks over at his brother Pete but it is too late for Pete. The strike has been fatal. Frank closes his eyes. The would-be cops march out from the garage and load into the idling squad car. The driver clangs the gong and speeds away through traffic.

  Highball howls and barks and howls until a woman from the boarding house across the street sends a young girl over to find out why. The young woman nearly faints at the sight of the carnage.

  Again, a police gong clangs, this time legitimately. Scores of detectives turn the Clark Street garage into a hotbed of police investigation. Highball is removed from the scene. Frank Gusenberg, still alive, moans. He is rushed to the hospital and stabilized then prodded for information. Despite the fourteen bullet holes that riddle his flesh, he refuses to talk. Three hours later, he is no longer of value to the police, his corpse shuffled off to the coroner and subjected to forensic analysis.

  The examination of the bodies is routine. The police have little to go on but their suspicions. Their suspicions light immediately on Al Capone. Detectives interrogate witnesses. Six of the men are tied to the Bugs Moran mob. Police conclude the raid was a beer-distributors’ rendezvous. The seven were mowed down in a frenzy of Tommy-gun rage. If the killers meant to murder Bugs Moran, they missed. Moran was on his way to the rendezvous but was running late. When he noticed the police car just outside the garage, he disappeared into a café.

  Chicago makes the front page of the New York Times. Jack McGurn reads the list of dead men and fumes.

  “Shit!” he rails to Capone. “I told the fucking Purples not to give the signal until they saw Moran walk in! He was on his fucking way! Goddamn hebes. Can’t tell one gentile from another.”

  The Chicago Police Commissioner assesses the evidence and declares “a war to the finish.” Gangland has yet to believe the Commissioner will do much in the way of cleaning up the streets.

  Major papers pick up the story and run with it. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is big news. Meyer follows the investigation in the New York Times and the Daily News while relying on a bottle of milk of magnesia to appease the gnawing in his stomach. Unlike Capone, Meyer sees the impact of outrageous violence on their business…and more clearly the more he reads. This event isn’t going away any time soon. As days pass, the story gains momentum. Chicago police make use of the latest forensic techniques. Detectives are hoping for a break using the burgeoning science of ballistics. The story rises from the status of a war between rival gangs to that of public menace. Police everywhere are called on to enforce Prohibition with increased muscle.

  Five days after the event, Chicago’s Police Commissioner orders a strict ban on liquor.

  “The lid is on,” Commissioner Russell says, “and it is going to stay on.”

  The police car used in the massacre is discovered on February 22, when an accomplice to the crime tries to destroy the vehicle using acetylene. In the process of lighting the car on fire, he manages to badly burn himself and another man.

  Jack McGurn is named as the leader of the execution squad despite his blonde alibi, which leads the police to the Congress Hotel. They can trace a call from the hotel made half an hour after the murder to Al Capone in Miami. Jack Guzik, Capone’s fixer and trusted member of the “Outfit,” as the Chicago mob is known, is identified as the caller.

  February 27, Jack McGurn is arrested in Chicago. A sixteen-year-old kid is the witness against him. Newspapers relive the event with spectacular flourish with an aim to changing public opinion. Gangsters will no longer be shown journalistic mercy. They are proven to be stone-cold killers. They got what they deserved.

  Meyer and Charlie meet on the shores of Coney Island.

  Charlie says, “What are they killing, cockaroaches?”

  Meyer smokes and stares at the surf. Wind whips his hair. His pant legs wag like flags. He ponders the massacre and its consequences. His rage is deep. It isn’t the revenge but the way it was executed. The echo of Meyer’s warning rings in Charlie’s ears. No one will be able to walk the streets if the violence isn’t dealt with soon.

  Charlie says, “Al ain’t just another guy on the street.”

  “This is bigger than Al,” Meyer says.

  Bootlegging is big business, run by men with little more than eighth-grade educations who are known mostly for their street smarts and who lack any desire or need to cooperate with others. Capone’s blatant disregard for public decency casts a dark shadow across the entire nation. The guys that pulled off the massacre are known as “the American boys.” Capone has culled them from different cities, none of which is Chicago. Anonymity is a gangster’s lifeblood but this card has been played too often to remain a reliable disguise. Capone has put himself at the center of the government’s investigation on crime. Even Buckner’s man with a calculator couldn’t have seen this coming.

  Meyer lights another cigarette as his countenance drops and his mind wrestles with the question, “What now?”

  “Al is nuts,” Charlie says. “He’s always been off. When I heard Yale sent him to Chicago, I just shook my head. Yale didn’t stick around long enough to see the monster he created.”

  “He has to get out of the public eye,” Meyer says. “Politicians sweep corruption under the rug. Capone needs a P.R. agent.”

  “It ain’
t so easy to clean up the reputation of a guy like Al,” Charlie says.

  “He has to look like he’s reformed,” Meyer says. “The coroner in Chicago is putting together a commission with Calvin Goddard. He’s a ballistics guy that tied the bullet in a dead man’s body to the gun in Nicola Sacco’s possession. He’s smart. This new science…they can connect a bullet to a gun.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Charlie says. “Fingerprints for a gun. The boys need to make damn sure they deep-six anything used for work.”

  Meyer nods. The wheels are turning. The big picture expands and shrinks in fits of possibility. Their network is large, built on nine years of struggle and negotiation. Meyer hits the history books. He brushes up on Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points for settling World War I and then tackles the Treaty of Versailles. The Capone situation is tricky.

  The wave of publicity surrounding the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre grows. Capone bristles under the pressure and grouses over the lack of loyalty among those for whom he has done many favors. Charlie and Meyer make a trip to Capone’s Palm Island home. Al takes them to his favorite haunt, Joe’s Restaurant.

  “They’ve got the best pompano,” Al says.

  They eat. They talk, nothing heavy at first. The weather. Fishing. Johnny Torrio’s return to America.

  “That old Fox,” Capone mutters. “He took the easy way out, running off to Italy. I shoulda gone with him but I ain’t that kinda guy. Johnny left me to take care of business and that’s what I done.”

  They finish lunch and board the Flying Cloud. Offshore, they bob aimlessly on crystal-clear water. The soft chop that slaps the side of the boat, the balmy Atlantic breeze, and the memory of perfectly cooked fish calms Capone. Charlie opens the can of worms.

  “This thing just ain’t goin’ away,” Charlie says of the slaying. “We’re all in this, Al.”

  “It’s Loesch,” Capone says of the president of the Chicago Crime Commission. “He’s a reformer. Hoover put the pressure on him. He sent word. I gotta clean up my image or else.”

  Frank Loesch is an ardent crusader against, his words, the alliance between crime and politics. That puts him in league with President Hoover’s command to quell Capone’s influence and put an end to the kind of violence Prohibition has brought to American cities.

  “You have to get the heat off,” Meyer says. “Let the publicity die down.”

  Capone lets out a belly laugh.

  “The public is fickle,” he says. “They forget all the things I do for them.”

  Meyer says, “We’re businessmen. What we do now will determine whether we stay in business.”

  “We?” Capone says, standing at the stern of the Flying Cloud and staring down at the seaweed threatening to tangle the propeller.

  The massacre has changed Capone but not in good ways. He has nightmares. Something in his mind has snapped and that has him worried even more than the latest headlines that tell of police investigations tying the Yale and Marlow murders with shooters from Chicago.

  Charlie says, “The best thing you can do is lay low, Al. Let things cool off.”

  Capone turns on his heel, takes the cigar between his chubby fingers, and points to Meyer.

  “You’ve always been the brains,” he says. “What do you have to say?”

  Meyer says, “I have an idea but you might not like it.”

  “Spit it out,” Capone says.

  “Wall Street robs the people blind and nobody takes note. Brokers blend in to hide their crimes.”

  Capone bellows, “They got the lawmakers in their pockets! I got lawmakers, too.”

  Charlie says, “When the public starts squawkin’, the government’s got no choice but to step in.”

  “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know,” Capone says, once again putting Meyer under his gaze.

  “They’re looking for a weapon,” Meyer says. “Let them find one. Yours. A clean one, of course. We’ve got a judge in our pocket.”

  “Are you willing to do a year in the can?” Charlie says. “It would be easy time.”

  “Sounds like a lotta hogwash to me. The defense attorney called all that ballistic evidence tommyrot.”

  Meyer says, “They can match the weapon to the bullet they pull out of a body.”

  Capone says, “We need a crematorium.”

  Charlie says, “Who has time to load up seven bodies after they shoot them?”

  Meyer says, “We have powerful mobs. We set the example, act like gentlemen in public. Our guys toe the line. Let the other mobs run amuck. Let them take the limelight.”

  Capone’s mind sharpens to the task.

  Charlie says, “All those greasers that got pinched in Cleveland laid low. They didn’t make it into the papers after that.”

  Meyer says, “Loesch said you need to clean up your image, right?”

  “That’s right,” Capone says.

  “If you decide to take a year in the can, it looks like Loesch has cleaned up the city. Hoover can relax. Take the heat off.”

  “There’s more,” Charlie says, and turns to Meyer with a nod.

  Meyer says, “You control the press. People believe what you tell them to believe. You tell them that you’ve reformed, they’ll believe it. The common man just wants his booze. He doesn’t want to know how it gets to him.”

  Capone gives Meyer the eye. He rubs his chin. The can. What if someone hears his screams in the middle of the night?

  Charlie says, “We ain’t tellin’ ya what to do, Al. Just throwing around ideas. You spread goodwill around and in a year Valentine’s Day will be all hearts and roses again.”

  “Easy for you to say, Luciano.” Capone is tired of the discussion. “This ain’t like the time Frankie sliced my face and Joe the Boss told me to take it like a man.”

  Charlie says, “This ain’t nothin’ like that. This is a lot worse.”

  They motor back to the estate and sit beside the pool. Palms sway overhead.

  By morning, Meyer and Charlie are on their way back to New York.

  Charlie says, “What was with that ‘we set the example’?”

  Meyer says, “Al’s troubles are the tip of the iceberg. If the greasers in New York go at it, we’re gonna have our own trouble. The whole country’s been whipped up over the massacre. We’re criminals. This is not a holy war we’re fighting. When we have differences with other mobs, we need to sit down and settle them like businessmen. Why should we let this all go to hell? We’ve got booze. We’ve got gambling. We’ve got the wire. A year in the joint is nothing compared to losing what we’ve got.”

  “Easy for the guy to say who ain’t goin’ into the can.”

  “It’s not personal. It’s business. If we get Capone off the street, the public will rest easier,” Meyer says. “We’ll all rest easier.”

  Charlie gives him a look.

  Meyer says, “Owney Madden’s got connections with journalists. Al goes in. He gives a couple of interviews. Journalists will jump at the chance to make their career. All Al has to do is stick to the script. Then we bring everyone together. We can meet in Atlantic City. The place is empty in May. You can throw a rock and never hit anybody.

  “We solidify our alliances and show our strength. Capone will think these guys are behind him, too. We make a peace treaty. Capone likes that shit. Present it like a bootleg conference. Don’t tip our mitt. Bring in the top guys in the country. They can pat each other on the back. Then we’ll know who is with us and who isn’t.”

  “I gotcha,” Charlie says. “These are the guys who will back us up when we wanna put the dons six feet under.”

  Meyer culls the fourteen points of Wilson’s speech to Congress following World War I to fashion a gangster’s treaty.

  An end to all economic barriers between countries becomes the basis for maintaining open cities. With open cities, no mob becomes so strong that it can cut out all other mobs.

  A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of
nationality translates into, let the Sicilians remain a closed mob. Likewise, all mobs retain the freedom to organize themselves as they see fit without interference from any other mobs or families.

  In cities where territories are already defined, any mob that wants in must sit down with the controlling family and make their deal.

  When a dispute erupts, “Don’t walk out until you work it out.” Those involved will sit down and hammer things out peacefully. And though wanton violence will no longer be tolerated, criminal justice will remain. Appropriate measures for infraction of the agreed-upon rules will be determined by consultation among mob bosses.

  Articles of agreement begin to take form. Meyer and Charlie hammer out the details. Meyer travels to various cities asking each mob boss what he would need in an agreement if he were to sign. Mobs begin to line up. At the top of the food chain are Chicago and New York. Chicago becomes responsible for everything west of the Mississippi and New York everything to the east.

  Meyer and Charlie begin to strategize the demise of the dons. They agree that a purge is necessary to clean out the defectors, but not a massacre. Each mob has the right to clear out the dead weight in true Machiavellian terms: only this once and then the purging is done. The signal will be the death of both dons.

  “This is one hell of an undertaking,” Charlie says. “Can’t wait for it to be done.”

  “What makes you think we’ll live through it,” Meyer says.

  * * *

  Meyer calls Anne.

  “Have you seen Animal Crackers?” he says.

  “I’ve been busy,” she says.

  “It’s at the 44th Street Theatre,” he says.

  “I know where it is,” she says.

  “Do you want to go?” he says.

  After a moment, she says, “Why not?”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven,” he says. “We can have dinner afterward.”

  Despite the Marx Brothers’ antics on stage, Anne broods, mumbles under her breath. She does this more than once, which puzzles Meyer. Anne’s usual playful wit has gone silent and Meyer cannot crack the code. They step outside into the cold night air.