Double Cross

by Sam Giancana

  He had a gift when it came to reading other people, becoming increasingly astute as he matured. He accurately evaluated Angeline’s vulnerability and was cognizant of how she brightened at even the tiniest compliment. His attentions were nourishment to the emotionally starved woman, and realizing this, he increased his efforts to make her feel pretty—and desirable—again.

  By early summer, Angeline sat in front of her mirror, adjusting a ribbon in her hair, looking forward to a visit from Mooney. She began to see that he might provide a way out, an alternative to the cloistered life of spinsterhood she imagined loomed in her future. He gave her more than presents; he gave her a new beginning. And he made her smile. To her friends, Angeline said she’d fallen in love. To his, Mooney smugly said she had fallen.

  In spite of the fact that their daughter’s sorrow lifted in Giancana’s presence, the DeTolves found acceptance of the hoodlum—now an ex-con—more difficult than ever. For Mooney, it was a challenge he relished, going so far as to command his father to visit the DeTolves in late July. Antonio took Lena as another representative of the Giancana brood. It was Mooney’s idea to let Mr. DeTolve see that Angeline would be marrying into a hardworking, humble family—“Whose only crime,” as Antonio put it, “is that our eldest boy has made good.”

  The DeTolves admitted that Mooney Giancana was the first person to come along since Solly who seemed to make Angeline happy. He brought her flowers and pretty little trinkets almost daily. And the young man did have an uncanny knack for laying his hands on money. A businessman himself, Francescantonio DeTolve told Antonio he liked that about Mooney, “no matter where it came from.” He halfheartedly agreed to give his daughter’s hand in marriage.

  As doting as Mooney was during his courtship, and continued to be throughout the remainder of that summer after their engagement, it didn’t escape Angeline that he was rumored to be seeing someone else—the same fast girl who’d waited for him to get out of prison: Marie Fanelli. Angeline told her friends it was all an ugly rumor; the idea of a betrayal so early in their relationship was probably more than she could bear to consider.

  Mooney was skilled at portraying whatever emotion suited his purpose and was so sincere in his affections that it would have been hard for any woman, let alone one like Angeline who was on the rebound, to believe he wasn’t the man he presented in the polite confines of her father’s parlor. She defended him to her friends. Perhaps in the past he’d sought out the companionship of loose girls; that was normal; all young men did. But seeing someone else? Now, at this time in his life? She refused to discuss it.

  Angeline had been correct in her assessment of Mooney’s relationship with Marie: He didn’t love her nor would he have ever wanted to marry her. Marie didn’t fit his idea of the marrying type. All he wanted from her was physical release. And when Marie wasn’t available for a little action, he stopped by Michigan and Twenty-second, as he told Chuck, to have one of the good-looking whores “cock his joint.”

  Mooney had a peculiar way of compartmentalizing his life, explaining to Chuck on a muggy summer afternoon in August why he was marrying Angeline. “A man’s gotta marry a virgin, not a slut. You don’t care how good a wife is in bed . . . you can fuckin’ buy that. You want a woman who’s well bred for your wife . . . remember, she’s gonna be the mother to your children . . . so you want a woman who knows how to behave, one who looks halfway decent and won’t embarrass you in front of the guys or out on the town in some swank joint. And if she doesn’t look so good, hell, you can dress her up real nice in a mink and some pearls and diamonds to give her style. . . . Money can give any woman class.” He nodded knowingly. “Now, remember what I’m tellin’ you. Bangin” is different, Chuck. A woman who loves to bang . . . well, that kind of woman is trouble when it comes to being a wife. Anyhow, nobody said a man can’t fuck more than one woman. Capisce?”

  Carnal pleasure—the kind Mooney reveled in—and the word wife just weren’t appropriate together; they were never used in the same sentence, and rarely found in the same bed.

  As Chuck saw it, Angeline DeTolve would definitely make a good wife, but Marie, from what Mooney said, was good for banging—even if she did have a mouth like a dockworker. People said she was beautiful; but everybody called her a tramp.

  Riding in the backseat of Mooney’s car, less than a month before his brother’s wedding date in September, Chuck listened to Mooney describe Marie to Fat Leonard as “the best fuck this side of the Mississippi.”

  Mooney laughed his gleeful laugh—the one he used when he beat somebody at poker—and went on to tell them how, after respectfully leaving barely the whisper of a kiss on the pristine cheek of his wife-to-be, he’d rush back to spend the rest of the night steaming up the backseat of a car with Marie.

  Over the next weeks, before going by the DeTolves to see Angene, Mooney continued to take Marie to the family’s flat for an afternoon in Antonio’s bed. One visit in particular stuck in Chuck’s mind, probably because it was so close to the wedding and Chuck had wondered then whether Mooney really loved Angeline—at least with the same passion Chuck saw in the movies.

  He watched the door to his father’s bedroom close and heard the two laugh, locking it behind them. His sisters simply shook their heads, going about their daily cleaning, and prepared to change the sheets on their father’s bed before he returned home for the evening.

  Chuck could hear the iron bed heave and creak with the weight of their bodies as they fought to breathe, gasping and clawing. A distinct squeaking came from the bedroom and his sisters paused in their relentless scrubbing. Chuck sat down at the table, pretending to read a tattered newspaper he’d scrounged from the alley’s garbage. When the obscene sounds began, he glanced up. His sisters were on their hands and knees, poised to obliterate some imaginary stain. Now distracted, they let their scrub brushes drip soapy water into iridescent bubbles on the floor as they listened intently to the slow, purposeful squeak, squeak, squeak, signifying each deep thrust of the two lovers. Antoinette caught her breath and put her brush to the floor, kneading it back and forth in unconscious rhythm. The other girls followed her example.

  The squeaking sounds came closer together. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Squeak, squeak—squeak, squeak—squeak, squeak. Their brushes moved faster up and down each plank and methodically the tempo of their scrubbing increased in harmony with the lovers.

  Chuck heard Mooney groan and Marie cry out in ecstasy, “Yes, yes, please, Mooney, please.” Chuck felt his face turn hot.

  The flat became still and Chuck’s heart was pounding; he could hear his sisters’ labored breathing. They sat trembling with their brushes, faces flushed and perspiration gleaming down their necks. “All done,” announced Antoinette. And they rose from the floor, carrying the clanking buckets and brushes to the kitchen.

  Certainly, a woman of Angeline’s impeccable reputation would not have stooped to please Mooney the way Marie did—so shamelessly, so readily. That’s what Chuck’s sisters said, anyway. But after Angeline and Mooney were married in a small ceremony in her family’s home on September 23, 1933, it became clear to Chuck that Mooney had a definite vision of what marriage would entail, and fidelity wasn’t on the list.

  His brother didn’t stop seeing Marie; he just seemed to think that his adulteries should be discreet—that a good husband would avoid humiliating his wife at all costs. And should he be caught in an indiscretion, he made sure that Angeline would think long and hard before leaving him. Such a feat, he bragged to Chuck, was accomplished by providing one’s wife with every possible material convenience and comfort. It didn’t hurt that Angeline was a devout Catholic. And that his cronies knew better, under the threat of death, than to breathe a word about his philandering habits. Nor did he underestimate the effect pride and a woman’s friends could have, and he used them to his advantage, setting out to make Angeline the envy of all.

  From the beginning, Angeline—Ange as Mooney called her—had a maid. He moved her to a plea
sant, spacious apartment over on the West Side and told her to furnish it as she pleased, with all the finer luxuries. To friends and family members, their standard of living was enviable, impressive, if in truth somewhat modest at first. But they had money in their pockets, beautiful, expensive clothes, jewelry to wear, and tasteful decor. Mooney brought home fine paintings and Oriental rugs. Ange began collecting such unheard-of amenities as porcelain, crystal, and sterling silver, which she proudly displayed while entertaining friends. It worked nicely; the men went outside to sip their scotch and talk Syndicate business while the women held lengthy discussions about children and the latest fashions over a game of gin rummy.

  But whatever three-dimensional quality there was to the young couple’s lives was an illusion. Angeline knew her husband continued to see Marie as well as pay for pleasure at the local brothel, and Chuck’s sisters said the infidelity deeply wounded her.

  As soon as he was married, Mooney started bringing Chuck over to spend the night, explaining to Ange that he was getting older—Chuck was eleven now—and needed a man around who wasn’t afraid to use the strap. Chuck believed Mooney was genuinely worried that he might get in trouble and that he somehow planned to prevent that by keeping him busy and off the streets.

  Mooney wasn’t concerned, however, about the moral fiber of the rest of his family. Pepe, he said, was a “good kid” and would never get in trouble. As for his sisters—who were fast becoming spinsters—he forbade them to leave their flat except in pursuit of such acceptable womanly duties as selecting cleaning powders at the market. “You know better than to let me catch you going out with some two-bit hustlers. . . . I’d kill them . . . and I’d better never see you dolled up in lipstick and brassieres like a fuckin’ slut,” he threatened. He didn’t expect any problems from them.

  But Chuck’s upbringing, as he explained to Ange, was another story: “I need to watch him like a hawk, and besides, he can help around the house and keep you company when I’m gone on business.”

  Mooney charged Angeline with the task of instructing the boy in the finer points of well-bred behavior. Here was an opportunity for his little brother to gain some class, to learn which fork to use at the table.

  In spite of Mooney’s thinly veiled intentions, Chuck loved his visits to his brother and Ange’s home that fall in 1933; there was always more food than he could eat at one sitting and he could sleep alone, without the prodding knees and elbows. At Mooney’s house, it was as if he’d died and gone to heaven. And he didn’t mind helping his brother’s wife; he truly liked Ange. She was pretty and, he thought, nice, even if she didn’t understand men. But most of all, he treasured the time he had with Mooney.

  Ange and Mooney were like a king and queen to people in the neighborhood. In December, with just a few days until Christmas, some of the little kids in the Patch caught sight of Mooney and Ange bringing Chuck home in their sleek new car. They rushed at them like beggars. “Can we help you, Mrs. Mooney?” one asked. “Do you need somethin’, Mr. Mooney?” said another.

  Mooney reached into the pocket of his double-breasted coat to retrieve a tightly wrapped wad of cash and handed them dollar bills as he shook his head. “No,” he said as he climbed behind the wheel of his shiny roadster. “Just give it to your mama for some Christmas turkey.”

  With that, Mooney and Angeline spun off down Taylor Street, leaving Chuck standing once again in the old, familiar world of poverty and hunger. He hated coming back to the neighborhood, but seeing the way other people—both children and adults—fawned over Mooney made him proud.

  By New Year, things had gotten so bad at Antonio’s home that many times they’d each just have a potato and a handful of beans for dinner. The comparisons seemed to make Chuck’s life in the Patch even more intolerable. And he couldn’t understand why his father didn’t do something about it—he couldn’t help but compare him to Mooney. In Chuck’s eyes, Antonio would never measure up.

  Despite the unspoken conflict early in their marriage, Ange and Mooney were popularly perceived as the picture-perfect postcard of a stand-up guy and doll. By mid-1934, the only thing that appeared missing was children. And Mooney didn’t intend to be childless; there was a man’s virility to confirm. Because of a heart condition caused by rheumatic fever as a child, doctors warned Angeline that pregnancy could be difficult, if not dangerous, both for herself and a baby. But her traditional views on childbearing and the insistent amorous encouragement from Mooney won out; she became pregnant before Christmas of 1934 and in June of 1935 gave birth prematurely to a three-pound baby girl. They named the frail infant Annette.

  After Ange and the baby came home, Mooney brought Chuck over to see little Annette. Looking at the tiny face nestled in Ange’s arms, Chuck felt old for the first time. He would be thirteen soon, not a man by any means—though he desperately wanted to be. But seeing the sleeping baby made him realize he wasn’t a little kid anymore, either. The days of rubber-band guns, orange-crate wagons, and tin cans on his heels had ceased to amuse him.

  Ange and Mooney celebrated their second anniversary by going out on the town in September of 1935. Had there been a contest among Italians, the Giancanas would have been voted “most beautiful couple.” Wherever they went, they made quite a splash. Considered the perfect pair, Ange and Mooney were stylish and fun. But little by little, in the harsh daylight of ordinary life, Chuck began to notice that they weren’t like other couples he knew. They laughed, but it was strained sometimes, hollow in a way.

  If her husband made it, she would spend it, he overheard Ange say angrily on the phone one day: “I’ll spend so much, there won’t be a dime left for him to spend on that tramp.” He was sure she meant Marie.

  For a while, Chuck thought about what Ange had said and it bothered him. Mooney had said that was the way men were supposed to be. He’d said it was different for them than for women. Sure. Ange had been sheltered by her parents, but his sister-in-law would have to come to grips with the real world if she was going to survive being married to someone as important as Mooney. Driving him home one night and mad as hell over something Ange had said, Mooney put it best, Chuck thought: “Ange needs to learn what her place is . . . and fuckin’ stay there.”

  When Christmas came in 1935, even the beautiful tree standing in the corner of Mooney’s living room, twinkling and sparkling, didn’t seem to have the same magic it once would have had. The only thing Chuck looked forward to was the holiday food: “Enough ravioli to feed an army,” they’d say at home in the neighborhood. He couldn’t understand why Mooney and Ange didn’t invite them over for Christmas; it was so much nicer at their house. And secretly, he hoped they would surprise them all with an invitation. But the holiday came and went without one, and he spent it sulking in the Patch.

  He really didn’t know how it came up, but all of a sudden one cold winter afternoon in January of 1936, Mooney began discussing politics. Everybody thought FDR was the finest man ever elected to the presidency, and, although just a boy, Chuck was no exception.

  “Yeah, he’s the perfect President all right. He’s on our side.” Mooney smiled knowingly.

  “On our side?”

  “The gang’s, Chuck . . . the gang’s.”

  “Oh,” he replied, still not understanding the full implications of Mooney’s comment.

  “If he wasn’t, he’d be dead . . . like Cermak. Like Huey Long. Plain and simple, we’d take him out.”

  Chuck was incredulous and yet pleased to be included in such an adult conversation. He wanted to act as if he’d been around, and he thought Mooney was pulling his leg. “No . . . come on, Mooney, you’re kiddin’ me, aren’t you?”

  “No, I’m not kiddin’ . . . Jesus,” Mooney snapped impatiently. “Read a little. Long . . . he was the senator from down south in Louisiana. The guy was on the take for years. Some of our friends in New York had him hit . . . worked it out with a New Orleans boss. They figured it out so it would look like a loony did it. All the papers picked it up
.” He laughed and then, a moment later, turned serious. “You know, Chuck, you’d think people would catch on.” He shook his head in amazement.

  Picking a nutcase—who was also a sharpshooter and in debt up to his eyeballs—to take the fall for a political assassination was “as old as the Sicilian hills” according to Mooney, who used the examples of Huey Long and Anton Cermak to prove his point.

  Anton Cermak had been mayor of Chicago and a Capone rival. “A real double-crosser,” Mooney said. For years, he’d waged war against Capone on behalf of another mobster, a rival named Teddy Newberry.

  After an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Capone enforcer Frank Nitti by Cermak henchmen in 1932, Paul Ricca, Capone’s successor, turned the tables, killing Newberry. Rightfully fearing for his life, Cermak fled to Florida in December of 1932. In further retaliation, Ricca enlisted what Mooney called “a real patsy,” a guy named Joe Zangara, to eliminate Cermak.

  Thirty-three-year-old Zangara had been sponsored by Diamond Joe Esposito from Sicily just five years before and was placed in Florida to work the sugar runs from Cuba. A sharpshooter in the Italian army and a heavy gambler, Zangara was deeply in debt and in real trouble with his Chicago bosses. He was given a choice: Hit Cermak or die.

  On February 15, 1933, while riding in an open car with President-elect Roosevelt in Miami, Cermak was shot and Zangara was quickly apprehended by the authorities. He immediately began spouting anti-capitalist political pabulum, claiming he had missed his real target, FDR. But in fact, Mooney said his political rantings were a carefully devised smoke screen; Zangara had no connection to communism or fascism but was actually “a goddamned registered Republican.”

  Zangara’s connections were to the Chicago Syndicate, something that escaped the attention of the press and was covered up by the paid-off coppers and investigators. Three weeks later, Cermak died. And as had been planned all along, Zangara was convicted of murder and sent to the electric chair. “Nice and neat,” Mooney grinned. “Nice and neat.”