by Sam Giancana
With Mooney getting the go-ahead that winter to move more heavily into gambling, particularly the policy rackets, he rapidly began setting his plan in motion. He divided his territory by race and city wards; the colored section was reserved for policy—or numbers, as it came to be called by whites looking to give the game more class—while the white neighborhoods would be graced with the more traditional forms of gambling such as poker, craps, and horse racing. To oversee his little empire, Mooney bestowed the job of underboss on Fat Leonard Caifano,
Under Mooney’s direction, Fat Leonard made substantial progress. In the white wards, utilizing legitimate taverns and restaurants as fronts, he set up book joints, many with back rooms for poker and the like. Any competitors were given an ultimatum: Join up with Mooney or join the other saps in the graveyard. After making good on that promise with a few guys who stood in their way, other joints fell right in line and it wasn’t long before Mooney controlled no fewer than two hundred operations throughout the city of Chicago and another two dozen in the county, each averaging a healthy two thousand a month. Not one to leave any money on the table, Leonard solicited the assistance of individual bookies to work the hundreds of thriving factories and taverns.
Penetrating the colored policy rackets was another matter. Until Eddie Jones was released from prison and gave his support, progress would be slow; colored gamblers wouldn’t play a white man’s wheel and few colored policy men were willing to serve as front men for the cutthroat Italians, despite the monetary reward. In the white neighborhoods, Mooney’s ventures fared much better; when word got out that the Syndicate was making a push into gambling and there was money to be made, the more ambitious legitimate businessmen flocked to Fat Leonard in hopes of setting up their own book joint. But, more often than not, Leonard put a trusted Italian soldier in charge as manager, with instructions to employ guys from the old neighborhood. “Take care of our people first” was Mooney’s motto.
Depending on the size of the place, the manager hired one or two cashiers, several scratch-sheet writers, and a lookout for ten dollars each a day. Once business got under way, the scratch-sheet writers scurried about, receiving telephone updates continually through a wire service at local and national tracks, and revised the odds on each race. The joints hummed. All over the city, cashiers raked in the dough and lookouts stared endlessly out the door for any sign of a raid—which was highly unlikely given that Leonard had paid off the necessary coppers.
“As sure as the goddamned sun will rise tomorrow,” Mooney said to Chuck one night that winter, “the captain will get his two hundred dollars for every book joint in his district.” And Mooney was more than happy to pay it; he thought the Syndicate got off cheap. “If the coppers found out this operation will bring in five million this year,” he said, laughing, “we’d have to make them full partners.”
At the end of each month, the managers totaled the profits in order to “make books” with Leonard’s bagman and then the cash was taken to Mooney. There it was counted again.
Nobody could say Mooney wasn’t generous; he made sure cash bonuses were delivered each month to his managers and their men. But Mooney’s bonuses could never be predicted; one month a guy might get a thousand bucks, the next, one hundred—for doing exactly the same thing. It never made any sense to his soldiers, which was exactly the way Mooney liked it. “You gotta keep ’em guessin’, Chuck,” he said. “Never let your men think you’re completely satisfied with their job. They’ll work harder when they’re worried about what you’re thinking . . . and what might happen if you ever got real fed up. Don’t make work just a measly paycheck . . . make it life and death.”
In March, while Chuck was just starting a job as a lookout at a book joint Mooney had invested in on Sixty-fifth and Cicero, news came of the indictment against Paul Ricca, Frank Nitti, Phil D’Andrea, Louis Campagna, Frank Maritote, Johnny Roselli, and Charlie Gioe. Mooney told Chuck that Ricca had instructed Nitti to take the rap for the rest of the guys, confessing he’d acted alone, “or else.” Perceived as Chicago’s “boss” by authorities, the ineffectual Nitti would most certainly be believed and, Ricca reasoned, considered quite a prize, practically guaranteeing the real conspirators their freedom.
Chuck secretly wondered what a confession from Nitti—and the acquittal of the other Syndicate men—would do to Mooney’s plans. But Nitti, faced with Ricca’s ultimatum, committed suicide, leaving Ricca and his boys to face the charges without a fall guy.
Found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison, Ricca appointed Tony Accardo as boss of Chicago’s underworld, with Humphreys and Guzik as advisers. Mooney saw the transition as his big opportunity to move up within the ranks and wasted no time solidifying his own power base.
By the time the sensationalized Browne-Bioff case was under way, Chuck was making seventy-five dollars a week in his position as a lookout. It was good money at the time, but he was still disappointed. He continued to live at home with Antonio and his brother and three sisters; his other sister, Mary, had gotten married through an Old Country arrangement and now they saw her only occasionally.
He found being at home depressing. Chuck had given up on his father ever amounting to anything more than a vegetable peddler. Antonio had opened and closed more stores than anyone could remember; living under the same roof with the man was almost more than Chuck could bear. His father’s low station in life contrasted sharply with Mooney’s success, offering a constant reminder of what Chuck might be if he failed to hit it with his brother.
What Chuck wanted most was some real action, a pretty wife, and some big bucks. In the past few years, he’d had his fill of whores, fast Polack broads, and penny-ante crap games. Looking at the older men—most of them old 42 members—who surrounded his brother, it seemed everybody had gotten a piece of the big-time but him. He obediently carted the small-time gamblers from Madison and Des Plaines to the book joint in Cicero that early spring in 1943 and dutifully kept his eye on the door for any sign of the coppers, but the truth was, he was bored. Worse, the other Syndicate guys who worked the place, among them Fat Leonard, were nervous around him. They thought he was a spy for his brother and it made them skittish and untalkative, always afraid they might say or do the wrong thing. The only real excitement came when there was a raid; he was always tipped off in advance, and at the sight of Chicago’s finest rushing toward the door, he yelled out to the cashiers, “Clean up.” In an instant, the large scratch sheets showered down from the walls like dandruff, leaving the joint’s back wall as slick and shiny bare as a bald man’s pate.
Nevertheless, the coppers always had a look around and then, disappointed, shrugged their blue-suited shoulders and went off on another wild-goose chase. That was Chuck’s big excitement and he thought he was further than ever from big-time hoods and his brother’s domain.
With the war against Japan already in full swing by the spring of 1943, Americans were asked to further tighten their belts. Consumption of sugar was limited to two pounds per month per family, and 10 million people were scraping by, in the name of patriotism, on as little as six gallons of gas a week. Ever enterprising, Mooney saw a lucrative opportunity for another racket—hustling stolen ration coupons—and busily set out to turn a profit on the nation’s hardship.
As Mooney expected, there was a ready market for the thousands of coupons his soldiers stole from Chicago’s government warehouses. And like his New York counterparts—“Shit, Gambino and Luciano are makin’ millions on stamps,” he explained to Chuck—he found plenty of people looking to make a fast buck themselves, people willing to pay his men, who scrambled from one end of the city to the other, top dollar. From mom-and-pop neighborhood groceries and gas stations to the highfalutin’ businessmen and politicians downtown, Mooney’s list of contacts, and men who owed him a return favor someday, grew. Thanks to a war raging in the Pacific, business boomed for Mooney.
And while other women in the United States were learning what rivets were or st
ruggling with hoes in tiny victory gardens, and as other women pined for the silken touch of a pair of nylons or the extravagance of chiffon and woolen yard goods, Ange began to enjoy a more lavish lifestyle. World War II brought no hardship to the Giancana household. Mooney wore trousers graced with sumptuous cuffs, and Ange’s drawers and closets—as well as those of her daughters, Bonnie and Annette—were filled to overflowing with stylish leather shoes and other such black-market luxuries.
Most homemakers carted heaps of fat they’d saved for the war effort down to the corner butcher, or dreamed of the latest washer and dryer while rationing their meager supply of sugar for a few dozen holiday cookies. But Ange was a lady of privilege; she had the latest appliances and threw extravagant card and tea parties that featured linen-covered tables heaped high with cakes and confections too dear for most. Tarts, mints, and sugar-laced ladyfingers sweetened her friends’ palates.
Mooney’s fare, however, was beginning to leave a sour taste in some of the more important bosses’ mouths—notably Guzik’s and Humphreys’s. Told of Mooney’s success in amassing new gambling ventures, the old guard was starting to get nervous. Word on the street was that Mooney was moving too fast, that he was an insane, cold-blooded killer—and worse, a goddamned upstart.
In April, Mooney decided to get the big boys in line and settle the score once and for all. He’d establish his supremacy by doing something so absolutely crazy that only a 42 would have thought of it. He’d kidnap Jake Guzik, his friend and mentor—the man considered the Syndicate’s elder statesman, the same man who’d given Mooney his old suits for Antonio.
Mooney gave Guzik what he considered a reasonable choice: the kindly old man could either accept Mooney’s “gift” of two hundred thousand dollars and support him, getting Humphreys and the rest of the Syndicate powers to do the same, or get a bullet in the brain. It was up to him. After two days in a condemned building in Cicero with a gun to his head, Guzik came to a wise decision: Mooney and his ventures had his wholehearted support. Mooney drove Jake to West Roosevelt Road and let him out. And that was that.
Already shaken by the Browne-Bioff case, the rest of the Syndicate fell right in line, just as Jake had promised.
The caper with Guzik left Mooney busier than ever before; there were new men to get on board: Jake Guzik’s protégé. the Greek, Gussie Alex, who was a premier political fixer; the old-time Capone slot machine king, Eddie Vogel; and the north side’s Ross Prio. He had to meet as well with longtime Capone advisers and financiers Abe Pritzker and Art Greene, and the local politico Jake Arvey.
Mooney’s days and nights were filled with back-room meetings and whispered orders to his men. He was making his move.
When he could get away from his job at the book joint, Chuck went along with Mooney on his daily rounds. Seeing Mooney hold court at Louie’s gas station again, conducting business just as in the old days, made everything seem right with the world. Fat Leonard sat there as he always had, slurping down a cup of lukewarm coffee, while nearby, Needles lit cigarette after cigarette and the men—coppers, politicians, businessmen, and beggars—filed in, one by one, just to have a word with Mooney.
Occasionally, a familiar look would cross Mooney’s face and Chuck knew Needles would soon be taking some poor slob for a ride out in the country; the guy would be lucky to escape with a brutal beating.
Mooney never gave a second thought to “pushing”—killing—a guy if he got in his way or if he just needed to set an example. People were like pawns to be shoved around in the context of a bigger game. It was a calculated view of life Chuck didn’t like to think about—and when he did, it bothered him. But he knew damned well that if he let Mooney’s tactics get under his skin, he had no place to turn. The vision of his father hawking watermelons always came to mind, quieting any misgivings.
After wrapping up at Louie’s, they’d jump in Mooney’s souped-up Buick and head into the heart of the city, where Mooney usually ended the day—after stopping countless times for hushed strategy sessions—at Chicago’s biggest book joint.
It always amused Mooney that the Syndicate’s largest operation sat directly across the street, on Canal and Van Buren, from the city’s main U.S. Post Office. But he told Chuck they had the okay from the city fathers to run the joint, that the place was protected from raids thanks to a few large payoffs in the right pockets—pockets that went all the way up to the governor.
There were four large gambling joints like this one downtown, which Mooney operated with partners Gus Alex, Ross Prio, and Eddie Vogel. Proceeds averaged well over fifty grand a month at each location, with annual revenues of two to three million dollars.
At first glance, the white stone building on Canal and Van Buren didn’t look like much to Chuck, but once Mooney led him up to the second floor and through the immense double doors, he discovered a gambler’s paradise. There were scratch sheets on the back wall for the horses; crap tables and poker games ran twenty-four hours a day. The clientele ranged from postal workers to coppers and everything in between. There were always plenty of good-looking women roaming from table to table. And the drinks were good.
Mooney rarely had a drink, or if he ordered one, he scarcely drank it. More than once, he reminded Chuck that drinking “makes you stupid. Let the other guy get drunk and spill his guts . . . not you.”
At night, the book joint was like a rowdy class reunion. Fat Leonard and his brother, Marshall, Fifi Buccieri, Needles, Teets Battaglia, Willie Potatoes—all the old 42s would gather at a table for a few hands of poker. Sometimes Gus Alex, Murray Humphreys, Jake Guzik, Eddie Vogel, and Ross Prio would join them for a game with their own entourage of underlings.
To Mooney’s 42 followers and the other bosses, the gatherings at the book joint were social events; the guys laughed and gossiped like old hens. But to Mooney, the meetings were strictly business. Everything Mooney did was strictly business.
Mooney studied the way a guy laughed; the way one guy acquiesced to another—even if they were just horsing around. He paid attention to little things such as who sat where. He absorbed every last detail; nothing escaped his scrutiny. He was constantly evaluating the people around him, finding their vulnerability, assessing their worth, deciding whether they were right for the next job or if they weren’t.
Chuck thought the most impressive thing about Mooney was the way he could be doing all that without anybody knowing it. The guys couldn’t read Mooney, ever. It also amazed Chuck how Mooney was never wrong when he sized a guy up. The slightest move in the wrong direction and it would be all over for a guy’s future; he wouldn’t even be aware that Mooney had decided his fate. The guy might not lose his life, but Mooney would slowly cut him out of his. And once Mooney was done with a guy, for whatever reason, it was over; the guy would never get a break—not as long as Mooney pulled all the strings.
“Never trust anybody you didn’t grow up with, Chuck,” Mooney told him. “Those people you understand, you can predict. A new guy . . . you gotta fuckin’ watch him. You don’t know what makes him tick, if he’ll be there when he’s supposed to. Is a guy a coward? You don’t know unless you’ve seen him stare down the barrel of a gun. Guys from the neighborhood . . . I know them better than their mothers . . . forget about their wives and girlfriends . . . I know them better than they know themselves. I keep a file”—he tapped his temple with one finger—“right here . . . and I remember every move a guy’s ever made . . . so I always know exactly what his next move is gonna be.”
Behind his back, Mooney was called a lot of things: a ruthless bastard, a cold killer. But one thing he could never be accused of was going back on his word. Mooney believed a man’s word was his bond and keeping a promise was the honorable thing to do. He told Chuck, as they drove from meeting to meeting, that that was at the heart of why he’d never liked politicians and celebrities. He said they wanted power so badly, they’d sell their souls just to get a movie contract or be elected to some lousy post—that their word wasn’t
worth two cents. But for the same two cents, there wasn’t one he couldn’t buy. Maybe it was from watching Diamond Joe or Ricca and Humphreys operate for so many years, but Mooney recognized that a guy’s ego was his biggest weakness.
“They’re all alike,” he said. “Look at President Roosevelt . . . shit, he got to the White House thanks to Syndicate money. . . . We used Hollywood and Joe Schenck to funnel money to his campaign and Joe Kennedy up in Boston, too . . . he gave him millions. Roosevelt’s got a lot of favors to pay back. Or look at guys like Jimmy Durante and fighters like Graziano. They want to be big-time stars and, with us, they can. Or how about our Congressman Jimmy Adducci or Andy Akins, our friend the police captain? Why do you think they’re where they are? Why do you think I can drive as fast as I want and never get a ticket? Park where the hell I please? Believe me, Chuck, they’re all on the take . . . or wanna be.”
In Illinois, Mooney began fraternizing in earnest with legislators, senators, and federal judges as well as with local precinct captains, ward committeemen, and county sheriffs. He wined and dined them all at swank restaurants like Fritzel’s or chic clubs like the Chez Paree. And he started traveling to Hollywood, solidifying Chicago’s future while the rest of the Syndicate’s top brass languished behind bars.
Mooney even took Ange along to California early in 1944. “We got the royal treatment,” she gushed to friends. “A tour of the studios by all the bigwig producers . . . and we met lots of stars who acted like Mooney was their best friend. Betty Hutton was so charming, but Ann Sothern was arrogant and rude. All in all, it was wonderful, though . . . we were treated better than the stars by the heads of all the studios.”
Chuck had to smile at that. Such treatment simply meant Mooney had picked up the pieces Roselli, now in jail, had been forced to abandon. It was a thrill for Ange, but it was all business to Mooney—part of some master plan in the back of Mooney’s head.