by Sam Giancana
Unlike the politicians and entertainers he disdained, Mooney always kept a promise. If he said he’d give a guy a chance, he would—even if it was years later. Sitting in the Van Buren book joint one evening in late May, Chuck was reminded of that when Fat Leonard mentioned they needed two guys to run a liquor store. Mooney remembered a promise he’d made.
“Well, I said I’d give Carl Torsiello another chance if one ever came up . . . and I fuckin’ meant it. If we need a couple of guys to run a liquor store, I’ll put Sharkey Eulo and Carl Torsiello in. Carl’s still bustin’ his balls over in the rail yard. Ange tells me his family’s barely gettin’ by . . . and Christ, the guy’s as loyal as the day is long. He’s perfect to run a joint.” He told Chuck to find out whether Carl wanted the job.
It had been seven years since Carl had heard from Mooney. But Chuck was sure Carl had heard all about Mooney’s climb up the ladder in the Syndicate, because Carl’s wife, Tillie, was a Nicastro and her brother, Pete, had been a member of the old 42 gang. Carl’s sister-in-law, Rose, was friends with Ange; her husband, Sharkey, had worked for Mooney as a soldier since the old 42 days.
After the barber’s union deal, Chuck imagined Carl thought he’d never get a chance again. But here it was, a chance for the guy to have an honest job running a liquor store for Mooney. When Chuck gave them the news, Carl and Tillie were elated.
Years later, Carl would tell Chuck that he and Tillie spent hours talking and dreaming about what their lives would be like with him running the liquor store. He’d anxiously awaited the go-ahead from his brother-in-law, Sharkey, and was devastated when Sharkey came by the house and delivered a less than polite reply to Mooney’s offer: “Fuck that nickel-and-dime shit. You can tell Mooney to go scratch his behind. I’m not about to sit in some goddamned store all day. I don’t want any part of it.”
Carl and Tillie were sure Sharkey had rejected Mooney’s offer more because he didn’t want Carl to get a leg up than anything else. Chuck thought they were probably right; Sharkey was a small man who liked to talk big and he’d always enjoyed the fact that he was “on the inside” and Carl wasn’t. “He’s just jealous, Carl,” Tillie had said, trying to console him.
Sharkey’s decision put Carl in an awkward spot; he faced a real dilemma. He couldn’t tell Mooney what Sharkey had said; the guy might be killed for his arrogance, and Carl, always wanting to do what he felt was honorable, thought telling Mooney would be wrong and vindictive.
Carl agonized for days over his decision until finally coming to what he thought was the only logical conclusion. “I couldn’t tell Mooney what Sharkey had said, so I had to turn down the offer.”
He admitted there’d been tears in his eyes when he wrote his reply in his best longhand. “Dear Mooney,” the note read. “I regret I am unable to accept your most generous offer at this time. Please accept my humblest apologies. Sincerely, Carl Torsiello.”
He gave the envelope containing the note to his thirteen-year-old daughter, Anne Marie. “Take a trolley over to Mr. Giancana’s house,” he instructed her. “And give him this envelope.”
Chuck and Mooney had just finished dinner when Carl’s daughter arrived with the message. Chuck thought the little girl pretty but timid, with the big soulful eyes of a moppet. She stood in the living room, head bowed respectfully, and awaited Mooney’s response.
“Chuck, why don’t you give her a ride home” was all Mooney said after he thoughtfully read the note and crumpled it in his hand. Then he surveyed Carl’s daughter and added, smiling, “You’re Anne Marie?”
She nodded, barely looking up.
“Chuck, on your way to the Torsiello’s get a hundred-pound bag of sugar for Anne Marie’s mother.”
After rejecting Mooney’s offer, the Torsiellos never expected to hear from him again; it was all Carl could do each morning to trudge out to his job at the rail yards. For weeks, the family mourned the loss of opportunity. Then, just as suddenly as they had heard from Mooney before, another request came. Ange had heard from Tillie’s sister that their daughter Anne Marie was an excellent student. Could she be employed as a tutor for the Giancana girls, particularly Annette? It was a request that so honored the Torsiellos, it was unthinkable to refuse.
It was late spring when Anne Marie began her employment at the Giancana residence on Monitor Street. Watching her, Chuck could tell that the girl was enthralled by the opulence of Ange and Mooney’s lifestyle. As each new luxury was revealed, her eyes grew wider. The washer and dryer, a new refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, and the beautiful porcelain and china left the thirteen-year-old speechless with delight.
Chuck knew that in Anne Marie’s home, as in most homes in the Patch, improvements came slowly; largely things had remained, with few exceptions, as they’d been decades before. The neighborhood had stood frozen in time, as well; the bustle and clamor of excitement were still in evidence on every corner; men continued to gather for a game of bocci in the evening and women still sat on stoops in their aprons, trying to catch a little sunshine and fresh air, gossiping with one another while their children played with makeshift toys.
What changes there were had been made thanks to an increase in the neighborhood’s political clout and the Syndicate’s pull. The streets’ muddy ruts had been replaced by concrete before the war and the city sanitation department now made regular garbage pickups. Trolleys still clanged and clattered past the redbrick tenements but no longer were horse-drawn carts the norm. The vendors continued to hawk their wares, but from sagging storefronts and rusted-out trucks.
The poverty of the Patch was the same, more or less, as it had always been. But in the heart of one of the Patch’s younger residents—a very serious and studious little girl named Anne Marie Torsiello—suddenly there was hope.
After school each day, she fairly rushed to her new job as tutor. It was the strong-willed little girl Annette who most needed help with her studies. Annette was smart enough, she was pretty enough, and, Anne Marie told Chuck one night as he drove her home, she thought Annette had enough to be the happiest girl on earth. But instead, she said, “Annette sulks through their English and history drills and refuses to do her homework. . . . She’d rather daydream about movie stars.”
Worse, however, was Annette’s open resentment toward her. “She hates me,” she fumed. “She knows I can’t make her do anything . . . and she loves to throw that up to me every chance she gets.”
Listening to Anne Marie pour out her frustrations, Chuck couldn’t help but feel sympathetic. Annette was an enigma, and not only to Anne Marie. No one, not Mooney, not Ange, not one person who knew her, could understand the bitterness she carried. She was never happy—no matter what her parents did to coddle her—nor did she show the slightest appreciation for the many luxuries she enjoyed. Chuck felt certain Anne Marie was angry because, like most girls from the Patch, she would have traded places with Annette, or her sister, Bonnie, in a heartbeat.
Just as she’d done with Chuck, Ange took Anne Marie under her wing and taught her how to set the table with the finest silverware, told her what was proper etiquette—and what was not. Unlike her own daughters, she found in Anne Marie a ready pupil for the social graces.
“That little girl never complains; she just thanks me over and over again,” Ange remarked to Chuck and Mooney. “It can be the tiniest thing . . . a cast-off sweater, a faded ribbon, a quarter for a special treat.” This was a girl who eagerly did her schoolwork and did it well; a girl who took pride in whatever she was required to do, be it washing dishes or making beds. Thus, in a few short weeks, Ange found herself lamenting to Mooney and Chuck her disappointment with Annette and Bonnie. “Why can’t they be more like Anne Marie?” she asked night after night. Her comparisons fueled Annette’s resentment and she soon became virtually uncontrollable at the mention of Anne Marie. Ange’s slightest request was grounds for domestic warfare and fits of childish rage.
Ange and Mooney tried everything from cajoling and screaming to threats
and bribery. But to no avail; nothing seemed to soothe the troubled, angry Annette. And, although Anne Marie kept her thoughts to herself, she did confide in Chuck on his evening drives to her home. “It’s quite obvious to me,” she said, “the Giancana girls are spoiled brats.”
Chuck laughed at that. He’d known Mooney’s girls all their lives and he loved them as if they were his own. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d walked into their house and said, “Give me a bite,” while leaning down to receive their affections. Giggling, Bonnie and Annette always complied, planting little wet kisses on his cheek.
They might be his little princesses, but he had to admit that Anne Marie was right; they were spoiled. The shy little girl, barely four feet tall, in the seat next to him was slowly gaining his respect. There was no doubt about it, Anne Marie Torsiello was a sharp little cookie.
As summer drew near, Ange decided to have Anne Marie move in, telling Mooney she thought the girl would be a help as well as a good influence. All Mooney could do was shake his head. “Well, it’s worth a try,” he said in uncharacteristic resignation. And then he turned to Chuck, saying, “But boarding school is where Annette and Bonnie belong.”
Anne Marie quickly learned that living at the Giancana house was not the same as being their daughter. She was, for all intents and purposes, a servant. While Annette and Bonnie went out to play, she helped the cook prepare the meals and set the table. After dinner, she cleared the dishes and washed them, as well. Like Ange and Mooney, Chuck was impressed by her unswerving loyalty. Her stamina and determination were unusual for what he considered a child. She rarely smiled, going about her chores with unyielding discipline, but she positively beamed when escorting Bonnie and Annette on outings. She excitedly described her day to Chuck: the stage shows at the Oriental theater, the turquoise blue swimming pool in Forest Park, the ball games at Parichy Stadium, the beautiful clothes she saw when they went to Marshall Field’s.
Chuck imagined it made Anne Marie’s heart ache with desire when she went to Marshall Field’s and felt the softness of a cashmere sweater or admired the sensuous luster of a satin blouse. Her station in life was sadly different from that of the Giancana girls, and on more than one occasion when he’d accompanied them to Marshall Field’s, he’d heard Annette and Bonnie impudently remind her of that. “Too bad you’re just hired help and can’t have nice clothes,” they taunted as Anne Marie watched them toss one pastel sweater set after another into the open arms of a smiling salesclerk.
Although nine years her senior, Chuck thought he and the little girl had a few things in common. It was an ultimate irony that they both were surrounded by so much and yet had so very little. As much as Ange might praise Anne Marie’s seriousness and uncommon maturity—or Mooney grant him greater status—such rewards paled next to the material world of the Giancanas.
“Someday,” Anne Marie told Chuck with a fierce determination that belied her years, “someday . . . I’ll have nice things, too.”
Chuck often wondered whether she fell asleep with the word someday on her lips, just as he had so long ago. Hearing her say that made him more convinced than ever that he’d been right all along about one thing. “Hang on to your dreams,” he advised her. “Because you have to have a dream to get by in the Patch.”
Occasionally, Chuck thought that the lifestyle the Giancana girls led wasn’t a dream come true at all but, rather, a nightmare. He believed children were like the dogs he’d seen in the Patch: They sensed a person’s true feelings. Mooney rarely, if ever, expressed any warmth toward the girls. He brought them armloads of presents, things girls from the Patch like Anne Marie might give their eyeteeth for, but Chuck never heard him once say, “I love you.” All the clothes and toys and fancy baubles in the world couldn’t make up for that. Ange tried to compensate for Mooney’s aloofness, and, in her attempt, gave in to their whims and demands, however unreasonable they might be.
Chuck saw the storm building through that summer of 1944. Annette’s black mood cast a darkness over the Giancana household for weeks. In reaction, Anne Marie grew quiet and solemn, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Mooney had been going out of town on business to New York several times a week—something he hadn’t done much of before—and Ange was left to deal with the strain of the headstrong girls alone. It almost seemed that Annette was pushing her mother purposely, seizing every available opportunity to encourage a confrontation. Ange had been almost too calm, too compliant. And then, the storm finally broke.
On a Friday night in August, Chuck was greeted at his brother’s door by a tearful Anne Marie.
“Hurry, Chuck,” she whispered, clearly frightened. “Please, please hurry . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Her fear was contagious and he hesitated on the steps, afraid of what he’d find inside. A thousand horrible things ran through his mind, but he tried to look calm and nonchalant. “Now slow down,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s, it’s Ange . . . and Annette. It’s terrible, Chuck. Just awful.” She began to cry.
He grabbed her slender shoulders and shook her gently. “What? What’s going on with Ange and Annette? Are they all right?”
Then suddenly, he knew; he heard the screams, the pleading—and with their sound, the memory of his own childhood beatings rushed on him like a tidal wave.
“Ange got real mad at Annette. Real mad,” Anne Marie explained through her tears. “I’m afraid for her, Chuck . . . of what Ange might do. She got a golf club and hit Annette with it all the way to her bedroom. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t watch . . . it was awful.” Chuck’s breath caught in his chest; it felt just as it had when he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him as a kid, jumping off stoops. “A golf club?” He repeated her words. “A golf club?” He was incredulous; Ange had never done anything like this before; it went beyond the boundaries of discipline.
Anne Marie nodded her head. “Uh-huh . . . she got mad at Annette and said she was going to teach her a lesson. Then she went and got one of Mooney’s golf clubs. I’m afraid, Chuck. I’ve never seen Ange like this. She went . . . well, she went”—she lowered her voice—“crazy.”
Chuck walked past the girl and toward the hallway, calling back softly, “Go to bed . . . everything will be fine. Just go to bed.”
She turned and left, relieved perhaps that someone older and wiser was there. But Chuck felt neither; the closer he got to the doorway of the bedroom, the smaller and more vulnerable he felt. He talked to himself, tried to convince himself that he was an adult now, that he was in control. But Annette’s cries took him back to a time and place he thought he’d left years ago.
Looking into the room, he saw Ange standing over Annette, holding the club head as the shaft blurred through the air with a silver whoosh; a golf club could be lethal—Ange could kill Annette.
Obviously, his sister-in-law was out of control and needed to be stopped. But, for some reason, he stood in the hallway, frozen in place, immobilized as much by the rage that reigned beyond Annette’s bedroom door as by the thought of his brother’s reaction if he were to intervene.
He could almost hear Mooney shouting, “Keep your eyes and ears open and your fuckin’ mouth shut.” Chuck took a step back; he didn’t know whom he was kidding; he wouldn’t go in and stop Ange; he wouldn’t do anything—except turn around and leave. He wasn’t sure exactly why, either. Was it fear of his brother or a desire to please him, hoping to be rewarded with his favor? Or both? He stood there in shock at the truth and then, before Ange and Annette knew he’d been witness to their madness, he silently moved down the hallway and out the door into the night.
In his car, he thought he might be sick and he rolled down the window. He didn’t know whether he felt more sorry for them or himself. And why did he feel sorry for himself? If anything, he should feel ashamed at having turned his back on Annette. But he wasn’t sure he did.
In the days and weeks that followed, not a word was said about A
nnette’s—or Ange’s—behavior. Miraculously, Annette showed no signs of abuse; but then, she never did. The headstrong girl simply nursed the bruises hidden beneath her expensive frocks and went on living in her own obstinate way. Chuck salved his conscience with that knowledge; his niece was a problem, no question about it. There wasn’t a person in the family who wouldn’t agree, including Mooney. No, there was no sympathy for Annette. And Chuck sure as hell wouldn’t be the one to blow the whistle on his sister-in-law’s treatment of the girl.
Besides, the truth was, there was nothing more important than pleasing Mooney. Nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to risk his brother’s disfavor. He couldn’t sacrifice his own dream of being in the Syndicate for some meaningless principle or ethic or moral. Or person.
He thought that was understandable. After all, he didn’t know anyone who, faced with the same choice, wouldn’t do the same thing. But what he didn’t understand was why he felt so angry for weeks after the incident—and so sad.
CHAPTER 10
“Man oh man . . . you got so much class, you could cut it with a knife,” Chuck exclaimed.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Mooney said, laughing. “But shit, for five hundred bucks, I better look good.” He turned in the full-length mirror, carefully examining every detail of the double-breasted suit: the gentle drape of the soft navy wool across his chest; the wide lapels; the broad, padded shoulders. Peeking out from beneath the trousers’ full cuffs, were a pair of six-hundred-dollar handmade black leather wing tips.
Jimmy Celano, the shop’s plump owner, stood nearby. He pursed his rubbery lips together and softly whistled. “Mooney, you can really wear a suit,” he complimented. “You’re a walkin’ billboard for my place here, I tell ya . . . you got a lot of style.”