Flanagan's Run

by Tom McNab

  In this desolation Chicago was matched by most of the industrial cities of the north, but there was another aspect in which it was a clear leader, and that was the extent of its gangsterdom and civic corruption. One of the first results of Prohibition had been a massive increase in the consumption of alcohol. A second and more serious consequence had been the emergence of the bootlegger and the gangster, and in the centralizing of power on a small number of these men. One such was Al “Scarface” Capone who, shielded for years by corrupt policemen, judges and politicians, had by the late 1920s come to dominate the town.

  In 1930 local businessman Frank Knox, alarmed at the increasing power of Capone and his mobsters, had raised a fund of $75,000 and had formed a committee, “The Secret Six”, to challenge Capone’s authority. More important, Knox led a delegation to Washington to seek federal help in securing Capone’s downfall. The appointment, by a 191,000 majority, of Mayor Cermak to supplant “Big Bill” Thompson further weakened Capone’s position. Cermak had, however, agreed to honour Thompson’s commitment to Flanagan and his Trans-Americans. Indeed, he was glad to do so, for the arrival of Flanagan’s Trans-Americans was a ray of sunshine after the bleak winter of I931. Commentators predicted that the streets of Chicago would be thick with crowds to greet the runners and Soldier’s Field stadium was packed to capacity when the first competitors arrived at just after 6 p.m. that evening.

  The first stage to Chicago was a deliberately easy one for Juan Martinez, who finally finished in fifty-fourth position, the stage being won by “Digger” Mullins, with Doc, McPhail and Dasriaux close behind, and Capaldi well-placed in twelfth position. A temporary camp was set up in a rocky field by the roadside, just north of Plainfield, and the runners given three hours’ rest before the final twenty-seven-mile stage into Chicago.

  Martinez felt tired even before Willard Clay fired the gun that sent nine hundred and seventy-one runners on their way towards Soldier’s Field stadium at 3 p.m. that afternoon in bright spring sunshine. For the first fifteen miles, covered in two hours and fifteen minutes, Martinez stayed in the centre of the leading pack of twenty-odd runners, noting that Capaldi was always amongst the leaders.

  Even in the first half of the stage Martinez ached from ankle to hip, his legs feeling leaden and sore, his high, prancing action pruned to a low clipped movement. But he gained heart as runner after runner dropped away, leaving at twenty miles a knot of six runners – himself, Capaldi, Mullins, Dasriaux, Bouin and Eskola. They moved through the industrial suburbs of Chicago, the murky, grey Illinois and Michigan canal on their right. Ahead of them, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot blared the inevitable Whiffenpoof song while Flanagan or Willard Clay informed the growing crowds of the race positions from the Trans-America bus. Behind the runners, ignoring the police, cars threw up clouds of dust and heavy carbon-monoxide fumes. The leaders gradually moved into the final three miles towards Lake Michigan, near whose shores Soldier’s Field stood.

  With two miles to go, Capaldi and Martinez had shrugged off their four companions, who now ran in Indian file, forty yards or more apart, behind the two leaders.

  Capaldi seemed tireless. He was a stocky, crablike runner, his swarthy legs beating a constant rhythm on the soft tarmac of the road. For once the wind of Chicago was a relief, and fortunately it was behind them.

  Juan glued his eyes to Capaldi’s sweating back, a technique Doc had taught him back in Nebraska. He dreaded the moment when he might no longer be able to preserve that visual thread that bound the American to him, like some spider clinging to its web.

  As a small boy he had experienced the extraction of a tooth, without pain-killer, at a free dental clinic. He had never forgotten the blinding sharpness of that moment; it was as if some insistent drummer was pounding on a drum called Pain, gaining strength with each strike. Thus it was now, and Juan ran locked in agony.

  The stadium at last came into view, at the end of the long avenue, and together they ran oblivious to the crowds pushing against the chain of beefy policemen posted there to restrain them from spilling out on to the roadway. No contrast could have been greater: the hairy, squat Italian-American and the wraith-like Mexican; Capaldi expelling his breath in deep grunts and Martinez an octave higher in what was almost a sigh. Capaldi’s eyes were set under bushy, black eyebrows and his thin moustache dripped sweat on to lips flecked with foam. In contrast, Martinez’s eyes stood out in his head as if he were straining to catch sight of a stadium miles in the distance.

  Only half a mile to go. Then suddenly, like a ship slipped off its moorings, Juan Martinez was free. Capaldi was spent, and although Martinez did not dare look back he could sense that the American had broken and had dropped to a trot. The knowledge gave him added strength and unconsciously he increased his leg-speed, leaving Capaldi even further adrift. The following cars and motor-cycles cruising slowly on his right honked in response to his efforts, and he continued to pile on the pace, his breath issuing from him in small rhythmic screams. But Juan Martinez, running in a closed world of accepted pain, could not hear them. Nor could he hear his brother’s shout from the crowd on his left as he came within two hundred yards of Soldier’s Field, with Capaldi grunting over a hundred yards behind.

  On his right, a black Ford limousine which had tracked him for over three miles drew slowly in line with the little Mexican. The driver’s window descended revealing the swarthy unshaven face of Frank Nitti, a spent cigar was thrown out, to land just in front of the unheeding Martinez. Then, abruptly, the car swung in hard to the left, its rearside wing hitting Martinez with a sickening thud on the right thigh. Somewhere in the crowd a woman screamed – the last sound which Juan Martinez heard as he fell helplessly to the pavement, his head landing with an audible crack on its hard surface. As crowds burst through the police cordon to surround the stricken Mexican the limousine reversed, turned and accelerated back the way it had come.

  A few seconds behind, Capaldi, only dimly aware of what had occurred, chugged past into Soldier’s Field entrance. Five minutes elapsed before Doc and his following group heard the blare of sirens as they approached the scene and knew from voices in the crowd only that Martinez had somehow fallen.

  Ten minutes later Doc, Mullins, Morgan and McPhail ran four laps round the packed stadium to the roar of fifty thousand excited Chicagoans, as Capaldi, standing on a podium, wreathed in flowers and wearing a crown of laurel leaves, waved to the crowd. As Doc approached the finishing line in third position, followed some fifty yards behind by Mullins and Morgan, with McPhail fading a hundred yards behind them, he caught sight of Flanagan. The Irishman sat on a bench on the home straight, behind the podium, surrounded by flouncing majorettes dressed in his immaculate Tom Mix costume. His elbows were on his knees, his face cupped deep in his hands.

  It was common gossip in Washington that every week President Hoover would hold a “medicine balls” cabinet, an exercise session with the leading members of his government. Each time, as the session began, President Hoover would say, “Gentlemen, have you got that fellow Capone yet?” Fifteen minutes later, facing the red, perspiring members of his cabinet, he would stop. “Remember,” he would say, “I want that man in jail.”

  It was easier said than done, but treasury agent Pat O’Rourke was sent to work on the weakest aspect of Capone’s kingdom – his tax affairs. The first to be caught out was the gangster’s brother, Ralph “Bottles” Capone, whose only previous indictment had been for scaring a horse. “Bottles” got three years in the state penitentiary and a ten-thousand-dollar fine.

  Capone himself was to take longer. However, by the time the Trans-America hit Chicago, on 23 May, plans for his downfall were well in hand, and his indictment less than a month away.

  Doc Cole and Ernest Bullard approached Flanagan’s darkened caravan and knocked uncertainly on the door. It was a few moments before a light came on and Flanagan released the door-catch. The two visitors blinked in the bright light as Flanagan took a large white handkerchief from his
pocket and loudly blew his nose. They could see that he was red-eyed, though he turned quickly from them to pick up an almost empty bottle of whiskey.

  “Drink?” he asked gruffly.

  They both shook their heads and sat down slowly.

  “Hope you don’t mind if I do,” he said, pouring out the last of the bottle into a large glass before dropping it into the waste-bin beside his desk. He sat down on his rocking-chair, then sniffed again.

  “I’ve got one helluva cold,” he explained. “One helluva cold.” He sat back, fingering his glass. “And it’s been one godawful day,” he added grumpily.

  “Yes,” said Doc. “It’s sure been that.”

  Bullard spoke first. “The press boys have come up with some money for Martinez’s next of kin. It isn’t much – eight hundred and forty-seven dollars.” He placed a crumpled brown envelope on the desk.

  Flanagan summoned a smile. “Thanks. I’ll see that they get it.” He sat back in his chair. “Poor little guy. All this way, to be taken out by those animals.”

  “We think we know who did it,” said Doc.

  “Who?” asked Flanagan, sitting up.

  “Two of Capone’s boys,” answered Doc. “Names of Nitti and Guzik. They had a couple of thousand dollars on Capaldi, at good odds, and Martinez got in their way. That’s my guess.”

  Flanagan shook his head. “Two thousand lousy bucks. I would have given them the money.” He paused. “Do you think Capone had anything to do with it?”

  “Most unlikely,” answered Bullard. “He’s up to his neck in his own problems at the moment. In fact, Martinez’s death is probably an embarrassment to him. No, I’ve talked to some of the betting fraternity; Guzik and Nitti were just doing a little work on their own behalf.”

  “So what do we do about it?” said Flanagan. “Keep on the move to New York and just forget it ever happened?”

  “I know it sounds callous,” said Doc. “But we won’t do Juan any good by folding up now. Even from a practical point of view, if my group ends up in the money Martinez’s relatives will still get their cut, just as if he were alive. If we stop now, his family and his village both lose out.’

  Flanagan picked up his glass, saw that it was empty, and placed it back on the desk at his side. For a moment he rocked back and forward in his chair, head down, without speaking. Then he looked up at both men.

  “It’s just that I feel so . . . so goddam useless. After all, it was me who brought Martinez all the way from Mexico. And tomorrow we bury him in some unknown grave. So help me, I’ve got to do something or I’ll burst.”

  “Cole’s right,” said Bullard firmly. “We know how you feel, Flanagan, but it would serve no real purpose to fold up now.”

  “Okay,” said Flanagan thoughtfully. “So we go on to New York. But what do we do about the bastards who killed him?”

  “Now that’s where I come in,” said Doc. “You see, I have this lady friend . . .”

  At 11a.m. on the morning of 24 May 1931, nine hundred and seventy-one Trans-Americans, the entire body of Flanagan’s staff and the majority of the attendant press corps stood at Juan Martinez’s grave in the light drizzle of Chicago’s Oak Park Cemetery. To many of the Trans-Americans the scene was unreal. For two months the little Mexican had skipped across the dirt-roads of America, through the Mojave, over the Rockies, across the flat, dry plains of Kansas, seemingly indestructible. To many there it seemed inconceivable that he would not be with them again at the starting line at three o’clock that afternoon.

  Flanagan, head bowed, black armbands on his light summer suit, sprinkled moist earth into the grave, to be followed by Doc, Hugh and a score of other runners who had known the little Mexican well. Soon the gravediggers were at their task, scooping soil on to the brown casket below.

  Flanagan looked up and turned to Morgan at his side. He glanced at his wristwatch.

  “Five minutes past eleven,” he said. “About four hours to go.” He beckoned to Doc to join him. “But first,” he said, his voice hardening, “we have a little business with a certain Mr Capone.”

  Al “Scarface” Capone had always claimed that he received his scar as a machine-gunner in World War 1. The true story was less to his credit: he had got himself cut during a brawl over a whore at a Brooklyn dance hall.

  The Martinez affair had indeed come at a bad time for him, for the taxmen were closing in. It was ironic: ten years of bootleg booze, torturings and killings without a single conviction, and now he was about to be tied up by a load of pen-pushing tax inspectors.

  Capone himself was a bundle of contradictions. He was an excellent man-manager, but like many men who come up the hard way he possessed a narrow view of money. Even a few years back, in 1924, when the tax inspectors had first homed in on him, he could have easily bought his way out legitimately for a relatively small sum. The dollars had poured in faster than he could count them and were stashed away in safety deposit boxes all over Illinois; but in his view what was his was his, and the opportunity to go legitimate had passed, never to return. Now O’Rourke had penetrated his organization, and Capone knew he was only weeks away from an indictment.

  And those knuckleheads Nitti and Guzik! The Trans-America’s arrival in Chicago was big news; and two minor hit-men had managed to put the spotlight on the Capone organization, all for a few thousand bucks.

  Capone sat back in his black leather chair in his suite in “Camp Capone”, the Lexington Hotel, and prodded at his front teeth with a soft, medicated toothpick. He picked up the morning newspaper, which headlined Martinez’s death, scanned it, then wearily replaced it on the desk in front of him. It was essential that he lower the temperature on the Trans-America tragedy. He had bigger fish to fry.

  So the feds called him a bootlegger. Okay, so it was bootleg when it was on the trucks, but when your host at the country club offered it to you on a silver platter – hell, that was called hospitality. What had he done? He had supplied a legitimate demand. He called it business. They said he had violated the Prohibition laws. But who hadn’t?

  His reverie was broken by a knock at the door. Capone pressed the buzzer on his right.

  Frank Nitti entered the room. He was wearing an expensive black pin-striped double-breasted suit which sat uneasily upon his squat muscular frame. Nitti was known within Capone’s circle as “the enforcer”. A ruthless killer, he had been employed as muscle for the Capone organization for the last two and a half years, following an undistinguished career as a prize-fighter and speakeasy bouncer.

  “Flanagan to see you, boss,” he said apprehensively, his eyes on the thickly-carpeted floor.

  Capone beckoned in the Irish entrepreneur, who was followed by Mike Morgan, dressed in blue denims, a turtle-necked jersey and black leather jerkin. They sat down in front of Capone’s massive teak desk. For a moment even Flanagan was quiet, in awe of the most dangerous man in the United States; in contrast Morgan showed no signs of concern.

  Capone broke the silence first. “So what can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  “You know what happened yesterday,” said Flanagan. “It’s all in the newspapers in front of you. One of my runners, Juan Martinez, was killed.” The words poured quickly from him, uttered without any of his normal confidence.

  “I’d heard. I’ve been following your boys since way back in Los Angeles,” said Capone softly. “Real sorry to hear it. A bad business.”

  “We know who did it,” Morgan interjected. “It was two of your boys – Nitti and Guzik.”

  Capone smiled, withdrew a cigar from his desk and beckoned Nitti to light it.

  “You’re a brave man to come here and say that, Mr – ?”

  “Morgan.”

  “Mr Morgan. Or a foolish one. I suppose you have proof?”

  “You know we don’t,” said Flanagan, gripping the arms of his chair.

  “So what exactly do you want me to do?”

  The Irishman’s voice grew stronger. “First, we want ten grand sent to Martinez’
s next of kin. We want it in cash, and we want it right now.”

  Capone puckered his plump cheeks and whistled. “Ten G’s. For something I didn’t do, and you can’t even prove. You got plenty of gall, Mr Flanagan, I’ll give you that.”

  Flanagan opened his briefcase and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper from it. He pushed it across the desk to Capone.

  “Perhaps this might help you change your mind.”

  Capone picked up the paper and looked at it for a moment.

  “How did you get hold of this?”

  “That’s none of your business,” said Flanagan. “We’ve got plenty more, and it all goes straight to the treasury in Washington unless you follow our terms.”

  “Your terms?” Capone’s lips twisted in a scowl. “Flanagan, I just say the word and you guys end up in a marble ghetto.”

  “No,” said Flanagan. “Any harm comes to us and two files of these documents are on their way to secretary of the treasury, Mellon. When they do you’ll be travelling down a corridor thirty years long.”

  Capone took the cigar from his mouth and threw it into the wastepaper-basket. He placed both of his soft, plump hands on the table in front of him and leaned forward.

  “What guarantee do you give me that if I do what you want you still won’t hand these papers to the treasury?”

  “You have my word,” said Flanagan, simply.

  “Your word? The word of some jumped-up Mick, with a load of clapped-out runners? What the hell do you think I am?”

  “Well, that’s all you’ve got,” said Flanagan, reddening.“Take it or leave it.”