by Karen Abbott
His old Chicago colleagues were on board. Reverends and even a cardinal signed on. Capitalists—“the wealthiest men in this country”—pledged support. The former president of Harvard University volunteered his services. They would call themselves the American Vigilance Association, and the prosecutor created two prestigious roles for himself, executive secretary and general counsel.
On April 3, 1912, shortly after the AVA announced its inception, Roe submitted a sixty-one-page final report to Rockefeller detailing his work in New York City. “Until the public conscience has been aroused,” he concluded, “it is my opinion that it is quite impossible to obtain indictments or convictions of procurers of girls in New York City. The hypocrisy of the double standard of morals is also very evident here. The cases which have been set forth are such cases that would result in convictions in almost any other city in America.”
And with that, Roe returned to his city, Chicago, just in time to shape the escalating war against the Levee.
Even Europe seemed to regard the sisters with dark and suspicious eyes. The priceless paintings were leeched of color; the Seine appeared dull and unmoving, an uninspired slab of sheet metal. Paris—where the filles de joie were rarely insulted with pamphlets and prayers, where bon vivants and libertines outnumbered puritans and prudes—was a rude reminder of what Chicago would never be again. In Rome, they stared for hours at the magnificent Apollo and Daphne. Minna described the piece in a letter to a friend. “The Greeks construed Apollo’s loss of Daphne,” she wrote, “as symbolizing that all mortals shall be denied the Heart’s Desire, ever the unattainable.” Bernini’s masterpiece now evoked the sisters’ own sad circumstances.
They returned to Chicago in mid-April 1912, just as William T. Stead, the savvy reformer who started this whole mess, died, along with 1,500 others, when the Titanic sank in the frigid waters of the Atlantic. Moving back into the Club right away was out of the question, although they did ask Etta Wright to resume her duties as caretaker. No need to let the place fall apart. The sisters scoped neighborhoods where they might live in the interim and decided the West Side suited them nicely. A practical but handsome Prairie-style house at 5536 W. Washington Boulevard was perfect, with its gently sloping roof and bracelet of stained-glass windows. No professor, no stringed orchestras, no expensive automobiles crowding the curb—but, this being Chicago, everyone on the street knew the true identity of those two faux spinster sisters. Minna and Ada were courteous and kept to themselves, hoping they could make a “final stab” at reopening on Dearborn Street before the West Side evicted them, too.
They made discreet inquiries, letting only a select few Levee leaders, including Ike Bloom, know they had returned. His Freiberg’s Dance Hall was bombed in November. The explosion blew out the back door, and blame naturally fell on the reformers. Julia Van Bever had been released from prison and was once again gainfully employed as a Levee madam. Aside from that, the Chicago Civil Service Commission was poking around, but the investigators—at the moment, anyway—seemed concerned mostly with gambling among the Chinese factions. And another of those white slavery narratives was published, inventing some ridiculous “tragedy” at the Everleigh Club.
“This home of vice,” began the story about the Club, “is located in a three-story stone mansion. Around it radiates the elite of the district. It is owned by two sisters, immensely wealthy, who have made their fortune through the barter of girls’ souls.” The lie about the Club involved a pregnant girl. An elderly woman on a train told her she’d receive good care at 2131 South Dearborn Street, Chicago. Once the girl arrived, a doctor drugged her and aborted her baby. When she awakened, two harlots held her down while a strange man raped her. Shamed and ruined, she accepted her fate as a white slave. You had to hand it to those reformers: They concocted better stories than the ones at the nickel theaters.
Bloom was glad to have them back—the place was a pit without the Everleigh Club. Once things settled a bit, and he’d had a chance to consult with Chief McWeeny, he would let the sisters know the plan for their grand reopening.
In the meantime Minna and Ada kept busy doing nothing much at all. Avoiding the curious eyes of the neighbors, they ventured down to the Loop and lost afternoons perusing the stacks at McClurg’s bookstore (having a special affinity, naturally, for the “Saints and Sinners” corner) and slipped into theater balconies at night, clad in silk gloves and sedate strands of pearls, looking less like madams than the society ladies who disdained them. From the safety of a closed carriage, they toured the Levee, noting that the Club appeared to be in good shape—unmolested, windows intact, Etta razing the cobwebs inside, just waiting for its owners to bring it back to life.
But before that happened, before Ike Bloom or Big Jim or anyone talked them into unlocking the double mahogany doors, Minna wanted to replay the closing in her mind, to detect nuances that might have escaped her during that terrible, final week of October 1911.
There was a reason, she concluded, that she had not received the personal assurance of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink about the Club’s reopening. Suppose someone else in the Levee had influenced the aldermen, urged them not to expend themselves in efforts to save the Club? Suppose it was someone who had always undermined the Club? Not Vic Shaw, who was bumbling and obvious, but someone subtle and sly? Someone like Ed Weiss, owner of the brothel next door, husband of former Everleigh Club butterfly Aimee Leslie, close confidant of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink. The men would stick together in the end, wouldn’t they, despite the fact that the Club paid hefty protection and lured visitors to the Levee from around the world. Well, if Ed Weiss had acted preemptively and secured the aldermen’s loyalty behind Minna’s back, then she would take out an insurance policy of her own.
Over the following weeks, the madam who had been discreet for eleven long years loosened her grip on hallowed Levee secrets.
“In the days when the Everleigh Club was being openly conducted with huge profits,” she began, growing more resolute with each word, “all orders came from Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin through the persona of Sol Friedman, to whom the aldermen assigned the whisky, taxicab, groceries, and clothing privileges in the segregated district. Insurance had to be taken from Coughlin’s company and a choice of four provision stores was in force. After the Club was closed Ed Little, owner of ten resorts on Federal and Dearborn Streets, came and told me it could be reopened for $20,000. I refused to pay, and others visited me. I insisted I must have the personal promise of the aldermen, and this was refused.”
Minna paused, took a sip of wine. She couldn’t help fuming about the threat that was permitted to flourish next door to the Club, and the way the two most visible politicians in Chicago disappeared in the week after its fall.
“We were supposed to have real protection,” she wrote, beyond caring if she sounded whiny or peevish, and then recalled the instance of two disorderly hotels. “When the Ridgeway and Devonshire Hotels opened on Prairie Avenue, outside the Levee, complaints were made by the Levee keepers to Alderman Coughlin. The hotels were closed.” Ed Weiss, she added, violated the “Levee code” that no house should vie with the Club as long as she and Ada kept up with protection payments.
“Alderman Coughlin,” she continued, “telephoned me personally one time for $3,000 to help stop legislation in Springfield.”
The canceled check, she added, was still in her possession.
“I always entertained state legislators free in the Club,” she admitted in another letter. “George Little made the collections in the Club and took the money to the office in Freiberg’s Hall.”
What the hell, she figured. For the rest of her life, she would scrupulously decline to reveal the names of patrons, but now she divulged every last confidence of the men who had squandered her money and her trust, in equal measure.
The price for stopping an indictment on a charge of pandering was $1,000, she wrote. On the complaint of harboring a girl, $2,000. And on a charge of gran
d larceny against a client of a panel house, $500. She estimated that $15 million in graft had been collected in the Levee over the past dozen years, and the Everleigh Club alone had kicked in more than $100,000 in cash.
Minna tucked the letters away, waiting to see what happened next; she wanted to react, for once, rather than act. What happened next was a visit from Ike Bloom in late August. Would the sisters, he asked, be willing to subscribe $40,000 toward a pool to not only relaunch the Club, but stall raids and crackdowns in general? He was in complete charge of all the details. In fact, if it made the sisters feel any better, he was “acting on orders from Chief of Police McWeeny.”
The sisters told Bloom they would consider the offer and get back to him soon. They did not tell him, however, about Minna’s letters, folded and bound together, bombs with fuses yet unlit.
Just as cops questioned accomplices separately, so, too, did the sisters, calling Big Jim Colosimo for a meeting at a time when they knew Ike Bloom was busy elsewhere. Sure, he could bring his spaghetti and all the red ink he wanted. The West Side house wasn’t nearly as large or well appointed as the Everleigh Club, but it still had a kitchen. The big guy plodded in as he always did, whirling his arms around in the cabinets, making a horrific racket, emerging with two big boilers. Apron strings strained around his girth. Water boiled, sauce burbled, and Big Jim got down to business.
“What’s up?” he asked, but he already knew. “McWeeny has got Ike bluffed. I’d like to see the gent who could bluff me.” He paused, stirring intently. “I think you’ll like this sauce—I dug up a guy to raise mushrooms for me. Can’t beat ’em.”
Minna had doubts about the sauce, but she needed to keep him focused.
“A $40,000 shake to keep open,” she said, and tried her best to play dumb. She wanted to see what Colosimo knew and what he didn’t, what he withheld and what he offered too readily. “I don’t think Bloom has anything to do with it. We want your advice.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” Big Jim said. “I’ll tell you how to handle it. Tell the collectors that you’ll give ’em the dough in monthly payments of $5,000 a month. Stall ’em. After all, Johnny Wayman will be the guy in the big cleanup of the Levee if there is one. The idea is to get a fat pool together to square the North Side. But why should you ladies be the goat for the big end?…That’s a stiff touch—forty thousand. Them are numbers Bloom doesn’t know, you can bet your bottom dollar on that…five thousand a month or nothing, that’s the ulti, ultimat—”
“Ultimatum,” Ada said sweetly.
Interesting, Minna thought. Johnny Wayman was the state’s attorney and the “North Side” a reference to his office. Big Jim wanted their money as much as Ike Bloom did, though he was trying to soften the request. Still, he offered no promise that such a hefty contribution would placate Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink, that the Club could reopen and stay open. And she had never known the state’s attorney to be on the make—quite the opposite, in fact. He was the only honest one in the bunch.
“Take it or leave it, tell ’em,” Big Jim said, setting down enormous, reeking bowls of what looked like bloodied worms. “Pitch in,” he added, a faint warning now lacing his tone, and it was clear that he meant more than just the spaghetti.
The sisters choked down the pasta. Their guest filled the room with his hulking presence and cheery patter, but they felt very much alone.
Meanwhile, Roe’s old Committee of Fifteen—the foremost Chicago group of the new American Vigilance Association—took a cue from Bell and the Midnight Mission and began haranguing Mayor Harrison. The committee’s investigators discovered five girls “all under the age of eighteen, all of whom had homes in Chicago, and all of whom were being sought by their parents” trapped in the South Side Levee brothels of “Dago Frank” Lewis, Harry Cusick (manager, under Roy Jones, of the infamous Casino), and Louis Weiss, brother to the conniving Ed. On August 22, 1912, they sent a pointed letter to City Hall, asking the mayor when he might be available to discuss this travesty. To the committee’s surprise, they received a response the following day:
“I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter,” Mayor Harrison wrote. “I have revoked the saloon licenses of Harry J. Cusick. I have not yet located a license in name of Frank Lewis. I have given instructions to the Chief of Police to close, and to keep closed, until further notice from my office, the houses at 2033 Armour Ave., 2014 Armour Ave., 2117 Dearborn Street, 2127 Dearborn Street and 32 W. 20th Street.”
Within the week, Dago Frank, Harry Cusick, and Louis Weiss were charged with harboring minor girls, and Committee of Fifteen investigators hinted that evidence was mounting against Big Jim Colosimo, Blubber Bob Gray, “Jew Kid” Grabner, and Ed Weiss.
The Everleigh sisters monitored the developments with mixed feelings. While increased activity didn’t bode well for a grand reopening, it was delicious schadenfreude contemplating the demise of the Weiss brothers. But at 2034 South Dearborn Street, two houses down from Vic Shaw’s, Madam Zoe Millard barreled out her front door and embarked on one of her infamous, fearsome rages, pinwheeling her arms, pushing past bewildered errand boys.
“If there had been no Everleigh Club, there would have been none of this,” Madam Millard shouted. “The Everleighs were too damned exclusive even to be nice to the reformers.”
One of her inmates, Grace Monroe, appeared at the door. The former Everleigh Club butterfly called her new madam’s name, halting Millard in midrant.
“They are clean and good,” the harlot said, loudly enough for the neighbors to hear. She steeled herself for what she knew was coming next.
Millard turned, slowly, on the flat heel of a jeweled slipper and started back toward her brothel. Another madam, who was never identified, slipped in behind Millard and pulled the door closed.
Two of them were rampaging the poor girl, Minna heard, and she was already in the yellow automobile, racing down to Dearborn. Not even Ada could stop her. Eyes shrinking behind swelling skin, nose bloodied, teeth chipped, back crisscrossed with welts, wrists snapped like wish-bones. Minna barely remembered the drive, or screeching to a crooked halt outside number 2034, or pushing in the door to Zoe Millard’s and seeing Grace still cowering in the corner, the madam’s fat white fist raised and ready to fall again. She forgot her aristocratic airs. She forgot her disdain for crude language. She forgot her skill for talking clients out of fighting. She forgot her words, on the Club’s last night, that she was not a knocker. She forgot that in real birthday time, she had just turned forty-six, a butterfly approaching her final phase. All of that was replaced, in one spinning second, with the memory of every filthy hand on her skin, the ugly tumble of all those missing years. Minna stepped up to Madam Millard, curled her fist, and swung.
JUST
HOW WICKED
Big Jim Colosimo (left) with his attorney.
You can get much farther with a smile, a kind word, and a gun than you can with a smile and a kind word.
—AL CAPONE
“We’re getting nowhere,” Ike Bloom fumed. “You have the knack for making everybody sore. I’m surprised somebody hasn’t taken a shot at you.”
Minna bit her lip. Let him holler. She’d gotten the best of Zoe Millard, blackened both her eyes, but the police inflicted the worst injury of all—shutting down the madam’s brothel on September 5, 1912, the day after the brawl. The Friendly Friends—including Millard and Vic Shaw, but, naturally, no Everleighs—held an emergency meeting, but the largest kitty they could muster was a piddling $30,000. (“Pikers,” Ada scoffed. “It’ll take a million to grease the ring-leaders against vice.”) Now, in mid-September, a grand jury prepared to convene, and Levee leaders were growing desperate. Minna called Bloom to check in and feel him out, and she’d expected a furious lecture. His spittle practically shot through the receiver.
“The Levee has it in their minds that your obstinacy is the reason for the cleanup,” he continued. “Why don’t you see Bathhouse John, make a deal, be a good fellow
and play ball with the rest of us? We’re all in the same boat. We’ve got to organize our forces. Supposing I call a meeting? You make a speech, say you’re sorry—anything. They’ll be tickled to death to find you a regular. C’mon, what do you say?”
Minna laughed. Her obstinacy was the issue? She should be sorry? While Big Jim served up threats with his pasta, and the aldermen forgot which brothel made the Levee the only respectable district in the world? She could listen to Bloom now, accept his reprimands and borrow his optimism, but Minna knew, better than anyone, that not all lies were created equal.
“I could throw a party for some of these law and order leagues,” she offered. “But as for the Levee, I’ll go my way and the rest can go hang.”
Bloom was still muttering swear words when, gently, she lowered the phone. When she lifted it again, she dialed the numbers of several major Chicago newspapers and asked to speak to the city editors. It was time to take out her cache of weapons—all those letters composed by secret light, truth at long last dusted off and doled out.
She had prepared statements outlining every facet of vice in Chicago, Minna said, naming names and quoting prices and casting blame. Perhaps she might consider making them public, if the editors were interested.