by Sam Giancana
Crying, Campo opened his mouth.
“That’s more like it. Yeah, that’s better. Taste it. Taste the gun, Tony. It’s cold, isn’t it? But it gets hot when you pull the trigger. Can you taste the lead? It’s in there. Can you taste it, Tony? Can you?” Campo’s eyes were wide with terror. Mooney pressed it farther and Campo started to gag.
“How’s it feel? Huh? You like bein’ fucked over? Naw, not much. I didn’t think you would. Well, that’s how my sister feels. And it’s gonna stop . . . or you’re gonna die.”
He took the gun out of Campo’s mouth. “You hear me, Campo? You hear me? I don’t wanna ever hear about you layin’ a hand on my sister. Got that? Capisce?” He pointed the gun directly at the man’s head.
“Uh-huh.” Campo nodded.
“Well then . . . fuckin’ answer me.” He moved the gun closer again.
“Yeah, I understand. I won’t ever hurt Lena . . . ever.”
“That’s more like it. Now get the hell outta here before I change my mind and blow your goddamned head off.”
Campo rushed out the door, past Chuck and Lena.
In the car later, Mooney was quiet.
“Why didn’t you just kill him, Mooney? I mean, the guy deserved it,” Chuck said.
“You think I’d do that in front of my sister and her children? Goddamned animals act like that. If I was gonna kill him, he’d be nowhere around them. Besides, Campo’s a fool . . . he’s not fuckin’ worth it. And worse, he’s a goddamned two-bit gambler. I got no respect for drunks or gamblers. Liquor and gambling control people, Chuck. Weak people. And when you know that about a guy, you know you’ve got him. And there’re millions of dumb sons of bitches just like him . . . on every goddamned corner. They’re sheep. And they’ll never be anything else. You can own them . . . they’re weak. Remember that.”
“I still would’ve killed the bastard, anyway,” Chuck said angrily.
“Oh you would?” Mooney retorted. “Well here, smart guy . . .” Mooney reached in his pocket and pulled out the gun.
“No, no. That’s okay, Mooney,” Chuck quickly replied. “I don’t want the gun.”
“I didn’t think so,” Mooney said, and shoved it back in his pocket. “Do you know what it’s like . . . to kill a man?” He laughed. “No, you don’t. It’s not like you think . . . sometimes you don’t even know the dumb bastard. It’s not like you’re mad at him or nothin’. Sometimes you know the guy like he’s your own best friend.” He lit his cigar and took a long drag. “You stalk him, so you get to know his habits . . . where he and his wife and kids live . . . where he keeps his girlfriend. And you know who his friends are, who can beat him at poker . . . and who can’t. You know everything and nothin’ about the son of a bitch.”
Chuck watched the way Mooney’s eyes lit up as if they suddenly had come to life. There was a pleasure in his voice, a pride in his skill.
“So you wait it out, ’til the time is right to make your move. Sometimes it’s the dead of winter. You can feel the cold metal of the gun against your skin . . . your feet are cold. You can almost hear your heartbeat. You’re alive, really alive. More alive than in your whole fuckin’ life. You stalk him like a cat. You get so close, you can smell his cologne, and if you’re out in a field somewhere . . . the air . . . well, it’s cleaner. You can breathe, Chuck. And the hair sticks up on your arms and the back of your neck.” He sighed. “You feel hot like you do in the backseat of a car with some bitch you’ve been dyin’ to fuck . . . but better. Sometimes you want it to last, so you just play with a guy, toy with him a little bit. They always act the same . . . they beg you not to do it to ’em. When you finally do hit the bastard, he drops like a sack of potatoes right there at your feet. Sometimes,” he said, chuckling, “you push a guy and you look down later at your new suit and see how he bled like a stuck pig all over you . . . and it makes you so mad, you wish you could fuckin’ kill him all over again.”
As Mooney talked, Chuck’s throat went dry. His heart pounded in his chest and he felt sick to his stomach. He thought about the whistling man. When Mooney mentioned about his hair standing up on his arms, the little hairs up and down the back of Chuck’s scalp had tingled with anxiety. It scared him. He was afraid all right. Of his brother, as much as his story. He knew Mooney was cold. But he’d never heard him talk about it. No thought for the other guy—it was all business. And that was what made it all right. But what about the guy’s wife? What about the guy’s kids? He sat in silence, stunned by the realization that, to Mooney, they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, nothing at all.
Less than a month later, on January 17, 1939, the Giancana family got some bad news. Treasury agents had raided the still in Garden Prairie and arrested Mooney along with his cohorts.
Chuck was with Ange when she got the call and he thought she might go into a swoon; her knees crumpled as she put the phone down and turned to him, sobbing. “Oh my God, what will we do without Mooney?”
He couldn’t reply at first; the idea that Mooney might be caught by the coppers and sent away to prison again hadn’t crossed his mind in years. Everything had been going along so well. Mooney was starting to treat him like a man, as if he was somebody other than just a little brother. If he left, their lives and all their plans for the future—his as well as Ange’s and the kids’—would be swept away. He looked at Ange slumped across the table and simply shook his head, saying, “I don’t know what will happen if he goes away. I just don’t know.” Ange began to cry.
When the trial came up in May of 1939, the judge went light on the locals who had provided the barns and mash, but he let the wrath of the law come to bear on the Chicago punks. Convinced he would receive a lighter sentence, Mooney reversed his “not guilty” plea and was sentenced on nine counts, receiving four years, with fines and court costs of over three thousand dollars. By October 1939, Mooney was on his way to Leavenworth, Kansas.
Like Murray Humphreys, Mooney referred to his upcoming stint in prison as “school.” But unlike Humphreys—who’d told reporters as he’d left for Leavenworth back in 1934, “While I’m down there, I intend to study English and maybe a little geometry”—Mooney would learn something he hadn’t yet dreamed of. Something that would change the face of Chicago, and his own life, forever.
CHAPTER 9
“I used to think all shines were stupid . . . stupid and lazy, that’s what I thought,” Mooney said. Just a few weeks out of prison, he breathed in the cold air with seeming relish and turned to face Chuck. “But man, oh man, was I ever wrong.” He shook his head and continued, lowering his voice to a husky whisper, “Chuck, there’re shines on the south side . . . you wouldn’t believe it . . . shines who make millions . . . more than you can imagine. . . .” He paused as if he didn’t believe what he was saying himself.
“How?” Chuck asked. There was a light covering of snow on the steps and it crunched under his feet as he shifted back and forth to stay warm. He wasn’t wearing a coat, he never did; it was a habit that was a holdover from his childhood when they couldn’t afford any winter clothes.
“Policy, Chuck, policy.”
“Policy? Really?” Chuck was incredulous. “I thought that was just nickel-and-dime shit for the colored people. . . .”
Mooney laughed and grinned. “So did I . . . but Chuck, it’s more than that . . . a hell of a lot more. Dutch Schultz out of New York knew that back in the thirties. . . . The guy made a million dollars a day on policy.”
“Shit. I’m not even sure how policy works, Mooney.”
“It’s real simple. It’s a kind of lottery. You pick some numbers and bet on ’em. With a nickel bet, you could win five bucks . . . as much as two thousand dollars on a two-dollar bet.”
“Jesus Christ. . . .” Chuck whistled, impressed. “That’s a dollar on a penny.”
“That’s right. But the real beauty is anybody can play. Everybody’s got a nickel to spare. And there isn’t a soul on the south side who doesn’t play. . . . They all do. It’s
not the big-buck, heavy-gambler shit . . . it’s for the everyday people. And they’ve got a lot more dreams than the big guys. A nickel could buy them their dream . . . and poor people live on dreams.”
Chuck knew the colored weren’t alone in that; every person he’d ever met in the Patch had a dream. As a kid, he’d thought he was the only one who dreamed of being somebody, of commanding respect. But as he’d grown up, he realized everybody in the neighborhood had a dream—it’s what kept people going, the reason they got out of bed in the morning.
“Policy isn’t the big, one-time score . . . it’s volume, Chuck, volume. Like I said, everybody plays. But the percentages are always with the house. Volume. And Chuck, pennies make nickels, nickels make dimes, and goddamn it . . . dimes make dollars. Millions of dollars.” He paused and continued: “You’d think somebody would’ve heard about this before now in Chicago . . . but it belongs to the shines . . . and who the hell pays any attention to them? Even Capone didn’t. Years ago, Capone had his chance and turned it down. . . . He didn’t see the profit in it.”
Mooney leaned on the rail and gazed out into the street. “Remember when they let me transfer from Leavenworth to Terre Haute?”
“Yeah, you told them you needed to be close to your family, right?” Chuck chuckled at his brother’s obvious ruse.
“Right. Well, anyway, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me . . . besides gettin’ out of ‘school’ a year early . . . because when I got to Terre Haute, I met Eddie Jones, a colored policy guy.”
Mooney’s words took on a dreamlike quality. “Jones says the whole thing started back in the old days. In New Orleans, back in slave times. It moved up the river and north with the shines ’til it reached Chicago. Pretty soon, everybody in the colored neighborhood played . . . washwomen, street sweepers, ministers . . . you name it.” He paused and shivered. “Hey, what do ya say we go have a drink?”
They headed for one of Chuck’s favorite dives, the Little Wheel on California and Lexington.
“It’s all so clear, Chuck,” Mooney continued once they were in the warmth of the car and on their way. “Nobody in the Syndicate knows. Nobody. They never dreamed the colored bosses were rakin’ so much in. Nobody knows . . . but me.” He looked over at Chuck and smiled a broad, smug smile.
“Well, what good does knowin’ do us?” Chuck asked. “Coloreds don’t let whites in on their action . . . ever. What the hell good does it do knowin’ that a handful of smart shines are makin’ a killing . . . while us Italians are over here making peanuts?” He paused for a moment and then answered his own question. “None, huh? It wouldn’t do us one damn bit of good. . . . You know I’m right about that, Mooney . . . unless one of them would let an Italian guy in.”
“Yeah.” Mooney nodded his head in agreement. “Well, one will. . . .”
“Who, that Eddie Jones guy?”
“Yeah, Eddie Jones.”
“Man oh man, you’re fuckin’ kiddin’, Mooney, aren’t you? He’ll let you in?”
They’d reached the bar and Mooney stopped the car and turned to Chuck. “Oh, he’ll let me in all right. We’ve got a deal. When Eddie gets out of prison, we’re partners. Meanwhile, I’m gonna work with his brother, George. Hell, it’s smart business . . . good for him and good for the Italians . . . and very good for Mooney Giancana.” He grinned and opened the door.
It was jumping in the Little Wheel. Crowded and noisy, a jukebox blared out a scratchy Jimmy Dorsey tune. The place smelled of stale beer and cheap perfume. Smoke hung in the air, casting a cold blue film over the room. As Mooney led Chuck to a booth in the back, the bartender called out a greeting. A few guys gathered around and told Mooney how glad they were he was back in town, how it hadn’t been the same without him, and then respectfully went back to slouch over their red-lipped girlfriends and drinks.
They ordered scotch—“Doubles,” Mooney said to a pock-faced waiter they called “Goldie” because of his gold tooth—and leaned back in their chairs.
Chuck couldn’t get over the way things had changed since Mooney had gotten out of prison. Those three years at school—as Mooney and Ange referred to his prison stay—had made a hell of a difference. Chuck was twenty now and Mooney treated him like a man, an “almost-equal” When Mooney came home right before Christmas in 1942, as a result of early parole, things changed between them for the better.
All the days and nights he’d watched after Ange in Mooney’s absence, carted over the envelopes stuffed with money from Guzik, Fat Leonard, and the guys for her and the kids, all the errands he’d run, all the chauffeuring to places like Marshall Field, where she continued to buy designer dress after dress—it had all paid off. He hadn’t done it for any other reason than that he thought it was the right thing to do, but now he realized it had been more than that—his loyalty had earned him something he didn’t think he’d ever achieve: Mooney’s respect and gratitude. Mooney never said anything, but he didn’t have to.
Their drinks came and Chuck’s dark brown eyes searched his brother for more information about this latest venture. As if reading his mind, Mooney went on to relate the story of the Jones policy empire.
He told Chuck that by the thirties Eddie and his brothers had the most lucrative policy wheels in black Chicago. “They’ve got over a thousand soldiers workin’ for them . . . and the money, you won’t believe it . . . there’s so much that they have to carry it to their headquarters over on South Michigan . . . in fuckin’ bushel baskets. Over fifty thousand dollars a day. So much money, they have to divide it between twenty-five different banks.”
Chuck whistled. “Wow,” he said.
Not one easily satisfied with a simple gambling enterprise, Jones had invested his earnings in legitimate businesses—purchasing a Ben Franklin store, four hotels, a food market, and several apartment buildings. But of all of Jones’s holdings, Mooney was most impressed with his international villas. “The guy’s got a place, a fuckin’ mansion, in Mexico and another one in France.”
To hear Mooney talk, Eddie Jones lived like royalty. His wife was a beautiful Cotton Club queen from New York who dressed in exquisite diamonds and furs. Their home in Chicago was furnished lavishly with antique tapestries, oil paintings, and real gold fixtures in the baths. Mooney didn’t have to say it; what Jones had was everything Mooney had always wanted and more. Chuck watched his brother’s face in the ice blue light of the bar. It hardened with determination as his story wound down.
“So, what’s next, then . . . I mean what happens with Jones and all?” Chuck asked as he leaned forward on his elbows and swished the amber liquid pensively around in his glass.
“What’s next is policy. Chuck. I’ve got meetings with George Jones tomorrow morning at their Ben Franklin and a meeting with Paul Ricca and Jake Guzik tomorrow night. Once those guys see there’s money in this . . . big money . . . well, shit, I’ll have the nod. And then, I’m on my way.” He smiled broadly. “Yeah, I’m on my way.”
Mooney was well aware that his Chicago superiors had other, more pressing concerns to address that year—things more important, at least on the surface, than any gambling venture Mooney might propose. He told Chuck later that approaching the bosses while they were trying to finagle their way out of a federal indictment, the Browne-Bioff case, made all the sense in the world. “Maybe I should’ve asked for the moon . . . the guys were so distracted by this federal rap, I probably would’ve gotten it,” he said, eyes twinkling.
Like most of America, Chuck had heard all about the gangland-Hollywood scandal. Three years earlier, federal agencies had begun digging into the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Operators, headed by Chicago’s one-time pimp and union man, Willie Bioff. What the feds unearthed was an incredible trail of corruption that led right up to—but stopped short of, for lack of evidence—Chicago’s top men. Bioff and George Browne were ultimately convicted of labor racketeering. Meanwhile, their most easily nabbed partner in crime, T
wentieth Century-Fox producer Joe Schenck, a man Mooney said had funneled more than “half a million to Roosevelt’s campaign for the Syndicate through Postmaster General Farley,” was also imprisoned for not paying taxes on the four hundred thousand dollars in payoffs he received from Chicago.
According to Mooney, Roosevelt later repaid this underworld donation to his political campaign by making labor gangster and president of Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Sidney Hillman, a frequent White House guest and his most prominent labor adviser. Additionally, Roosevelt agreed to make a person whom Mooney called “their boy”—Harry Truman—chairman of the Democratic National Committee and his vice-presidential running mate.
Mooney told Chuck that the possibility of Bioff implicating his superiors had been a legitimate concern to Ricca and the other bosses and, consequently, Bioffs life “wasn’t worth two cents”—which was probably what had led Bioff to start talking to the feds that year.
Chicago had continued to conduct their Hollywood business as usual, with Johnny Roselli at the helm after Bioffs conviction, but now Bioffs testimony would put the entire upper echelon of Chicago’s Syndicate in jeopardy. Mooney seemed strangely happy about the whole affair.
“Won’t it hurt the Syndicate if Ricca and the guys go off to prison?” Chuck asked. “Won’t things fall apart?”
Mooney smiled secretively. “No, not if there’s someone Ricca can trust to work with Guzik and Humphreys, somebody smart with the muscle to keep things in line. The guy who can step in and handle things . . . well”—he smiled again—“that guy will have it made. Shit, Ricca and those guys could be facin’ ten years. That’s ten years, Chuck, for another guy to get to . . . well, let’s put it this way. . . to get to wherever he wants . . . to the top.”
Mooney told Chuck that the studios were too lucrative to abandon. “We’re not about to turn our back on so much money and power.” He said relationships with men like Columbia Harry Cohn, Warner Bros.’s Harry Warner, and Louis B. Mayer of MGM were far too important to Chicago’s future. “Besides,” he added, “those guys are more than business contacts . . . they’re our friends now. Roselli’s got them in his pocket.”