Double Cross

by Sam Giancana

  There were some things an outsider—and in Mooney’s way of thinking, most people were outsiders—never, ever did. One was call Mooney’s home. Another was discuss business with Mooney’s wife. Both were considered insults and demonstrated a gross lack of respect for Mooney’s position. If a guy wanted to talk to Mooney, he asked another guy, such as Fat Leonard or Rocky Potenza, for a meeting. They would go to Mooney for permission and then, and only then, would the guy get to see Mooney.

  As Ange relayed the phone message to Mooney, Chuck concluded the guy didn’t know the first thing about the Syndicate. He even started to laugh—until he looked over at Mooney, purple with rage.

  “Do you know this guy”—Mooney glanced at Ange and decided to temper his words—“. . . this Mendolia SOB? Well do you. Chuck?”

  Chuck nodded, his mirth transformed to somber acquiescence in the face of his brother’s outrage.

  “Yeah, sure I know the family,” he said. “His brother, well he’s a thief. Fences his stuff through a guy on the north side. But Johnny? Jesus, Mooney, the guy doesn’t know his you-know-what from a hole in the ground. He’s one square John. Tell you the truth, I can’t believe it was Johnny who called. He’s a real greenhorn.”

  Mooney motioned with his cigar for Chuck to follow and turned to walk into the living room. Once alone, he whirled around and hissed through clenched teeth, “I don’t fuckin’ care if the little bastard is green as grass. And I sure as hell don’t care who he’s related to . . . nobody fuckin’ calls my home . . . nobody. Ever. This little prick needs to be taught a goddamned lesson. After you’re done with him, I expect he’ll know a thing or two about respect. Capisce?”

  Chuck stared into Mooney’s eyes. They were as cold and dead as fish eyes. He wasn’t sure exactly what Mooney was asking him to do. But he was certain, when he found out, he wouldn’t want to do it. A flush of panic came over him; he hoped Mooney didn’t see it. His thoughts raced. Was this his moment of truth? The moment he’d been dreading for years, hoping against hope the day would never come when Mooney demanded proof of his loyalty? Could this be it? And would it come down to something so meaningless as a guy—who just plain didn’t know better—making a stupid phone call he shouldn’t have? Chuck drew out a cigar and lit it. Slowly, purposefully, he walked across the room. Trying to act nonchalant, he looked back into Mooney’s eyes.

  “So what exactly do you want me to do to the guy?” He searched Mooney’s face impassively.

  “Beat his fuckin’ brains in, that’s what.” Mooney clenched his fist. “Goddamn it, give the guy somethin’ to remember.”

  Chuck stood there motionless, speechless.

  “You got a problem with that?”

  He avoided Mooney’s stare and looked down at the ash on his cigar. Picking up the ashtray, he flicked it and took a long, deep breath. Before he could reply, his brother spoke.

  “Forget about it,” Mooney snapped. “We’ll both go see the son of a bitch. I’d like to see what the guy is up to, anyhow. Go call him at the Walgreen and tell him we’ll be right over.”

  A mixture of relief and guilt swept over Chuck as he dialed the number. He felt as if he’d let Mooney down, but he was thankful he hadn’t been forced to tell Mooney yes or no. Maybe to Mooney it was the same thing; his hesitation probably said volumes. And Chuck knew there were plenty of other guys who’d have jumped at the chance to do his brother a favor—no matter what it was.

  He’d heard them before. The guy who shined Mooney’s shoes once offered to take out anybody Mooney wanted. And Mooney had thought it was a swell thing that the guy would offer something like that. People would do just about anything to be on the inside. And here he was, a Giancana, Mooney’s own brother, and he’d hesitated.

  They didn’t talk much on the way to the Walgreen. Mooney coughed a couple of times and asked whether Chuck knew what the punk looked like. That was the extent of their conversation. Chuck still didn’t know what Mooney was going to do to the guy. Or ask Chuck to do to him. His winter coat felt heavy and too warm. He rolled the window down.

  “Hot?” Mooney asked sarcastically.

  “No, just thought I’d let some of my cigar smoke out,” Chuck replied, and rolled the window back up.

  Finally, they were there. The Walgreen was crowded and Chuck spotted the man in a booth near the soda fountain. With his wide brimmed fedora pulled over one eye and a trench coat with an upturned collar, he looked like a guy who’d seen one too many gangster movies. Chuck felt sure the guy had no idea how silly he looked.

  They went through stilted greetings and sat down. Mooney crossed his arms and leaned back.

  “So, I understand, Johnny, you wanna talk to me about openin’ a joint in your neighborhood?” he said, smiling.

  “That’s right, Mooney.”

  Chuck saw his brother bristle. No one in Mendolia’s position called him Mooney. No, it was Mr. Giancana.

  “Mr. Giancana,” Chuck corrected.

  “Oh, sorry, I thought us bein’ practically related and all . . . well, I thought we was like family.”

  Chuck wished he could talk for the guy himself, because the more Johnny said, the worse it got. He was waiting for Mooney to explode. Or worse, throw Chuck that look he’d seen him give Needles countless times before.

  “Well, Johnny, we’re not family. That was your first mistake,” Mooney said evenly. “And we’re not related in any way I know about, now are we?”

  “Well, no, not really . . .”

  “So you see you’re off base here. In fact”—Mooney leaned forward—“you’re way over your head. You could get yourself hurt real bad messin’ around, shootin’ off your mouth. Some guys might go pretty hard on a punk tryin’ to muscle a place in the gang. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

  Johnny nodded and nervously gulped his coffee.

  “So let’s just get a few things straight before you go home today. All right?”

  Again, Johnny nodded.

  When he spoke, Mooney’s voice was soft and low, not at all the way Chuck had expected. “Don’t ever call my home again. And don’t ever talk to my wife. You aren’t gonna have a fuckin’ joint on Grand Avenue or anywhere else. You’re gonna go back to your nice little family and get a nice fuckin’ job cuttin’ meat at a market or loadin’ fruit on a truck somewhere. And . . . you’re gonna forget about things that aren’t any of your business. But you know what the best thing is?” Mooney reached across the table and patted Johnny’s hand before he could reply. “The best thing is . . . you’re gonna fuckin’ stay alive.” He rose from the table. “Nice seein’ you, Johnny,” he said, and, with Chuck right behind him, left the punk to his coffee and dreams.

  Figuring Mooney out, Chuck thought, was going to take a lifetime. Sometimes he’d coil up and strike on a dime. Or lie back real nice and let a guy off the hook. It was hard to tell what Mooney might do. After their conversation about Johnny in the living room, Chuck had expected the worst. And the opposite had happened; Mooney hadn’t even raised his voice to the guy. He had been in perfect control.

  There was something about the way Mooney just automatically took the reins—he didn’t wait to see what the other guy would do; he just took control. And oddly, nobody ever questioned his domination. Chuck couldn’t imagine it being any other way, and he thought it probably had never even entered Mooney’s mind, either, that he might play second fiddle to another guy’s tune.

  In the latter part of 1947, Mooney gave Chuck a job working the pinball-machine rackets in the Marquette district. It was an area where Mooney said police captain Andy Akins would “turn his head to Syndicate goings-on,” allowing Chuck to have a “field day.” And indeed, by the following year, Chuck had managed to place over two hundred of the illegal gambling devices without the merest hint of difficulty from the police. From this one operation, he grossed $120,000 a year—money he dutifully delivered to Mooney.

  Sitting in Mooney’s Oak Park basement in January of 1948, Chuck watched as Mooney counte
d out a thousand for him and then bundled another six thousand for himself, depositing it neatly alongside bundle after bundle of cash in his heavy desk drawer. He handed Chuck a cigar and sat back in his chair. “So how’d you like to go to Cuba? See some shows, win a few bucks, screw a couple of Latin broads?”

  “Hey, I’d probably love it, Mooney. . . . I mean, what guy wouldn’t? Right?” Chuck smiled, savoring the smooth Havana cigar. He didn’t really take Mooney seriously; he thought they were just shooting the breeze and killing time.

  “Well, I think you will. No point freezin’ your ass off here when it’s warm and sunny in Cuba. Right?”

  Chuck cleared his throat; Mooney was getting at something. “Right,” he replied. He leaned forward in the leather Viking chair. “So what you want me to do?”

  Mooney opened the lower-right-hand drawer in the massive carved oak desk. He lifted out a small manila envelope and pushed it toward Chuck. “Take this to the Hotel Nacionale in Havana and deliver it to ‘Mr. Meyer.’ ”

  “No problem,” Chuck said, smiling. He picked up the envelope. From its shape and feel, he could tell it contained money.

  “Wanna know what’s in there?” Mooney asked, grinning.

  “Not if you don’t wanna tell me.”

  “A half a million bucks, Chuck.”

  He nodded.

  “In these.” Mooney held up a bill.

  At first, Chuck couldn’t make out the numerals or the face. He’d never seen a greenback like it. He squinted across the desk.

  Mooney started to laugh. “It’s a fifty, Chuck.”

  “A fifty?” He’d never seen a fifty like it before

  “Yeah, a fifty-thousand-dollar bill.”

  “Oh, yeah. I see that now,” Chuck said, trying to sound unimpressed. He hoped his face hadn’t registered shock or amazement.

  “Mr. Glass here”—Mooney tapped the face on the bill with the back of his hand—“is a world traveler. He’s come in real handy in Cuba.” He laughed again.

  Chuck joined in the laughter and then, pausing, asked in earnest, “When do I leave?”

  “Right away. Drive down to Florida and then take a plane from Miami over to Havana. Hey, take a friend if you want . . . what the hell, have a good time.”

  “All right. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, Chuck. There’s more. Lots more action in the future. You just come along for the ride, okay?” He leaned over the desk. “Listen, we’re movin’ fast now. I got two points, two percent of the skim, in the Flamingo in Vegas already . . . shit, at thirty-five Gs apiece, those points were a helluva buy. And after we’re done lockin’ up Cuba, we’re gonna look at the Arabs, the Dominican Republic. When we’re done with the dictator down there in the Dominican Republic, he’ll give us the whole fuckin’ island . . . and if he doesn’t, we’ll find somebody who will.” He stood up and walked around the desk.

  On cue, Chuck also rose from his chair. Mooney smiled a strange, secret smile and put his arm around Chuck’s shoulder. “And ya know what?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You’d be fuckin’ perfect to run our end down there when it opens up.”

  Chuck was speechless; this was the moment he’d been waiting for, his dream come true. He wanted to say something, but everything he thought of, he quickly rejected as inappropriate or trite.

  Mooney walked him to the basement’s heavy steel door. “You have some fun in Cuba; take care of this for me and we’ll see what happens.”

  Chuck’s face became deadly serious as he turned to go. “You know it’s gonna be handled right with me, Mooney. You can always count on me,” he promised.

  “I know,” Mooney said softly, and with that, he closed the door.

  CHAPTER 11

  Chuck and his friend Sam Marcello, everybody called him “Googy Eyes,” landed in Havana, Cuba, on January 18, 1948. The door of the small prop opened, revealing a cloudless azure sky—“so blue, it could make you cry,” Chuck would tell his friends back home. The steamy blasts of humid tropical air swept his hair around like dry seaweed as he walked down the steps to the tarmac. He sniffed the air. “Salt,” he said to his friend, and he smiled at the warmth of the Caribbean sun caressing his face. He thought he might like this place.

  But his opinion soon changed. Actually, he hadn’t had one, hadn’t really known what to expect—a Sodom and Gomorrah? A Rush Street with palm trees? A Miami with gambling? Probably the latter, he thought to himself as their cab with its oily, torn cloth seats, stained and smelling like stale urine and cheap wine, honked and shoved its way through the crowded dusty streets, narrowed by throngs of hollow-eyed people and menacing police officers.

  The poverty shocked him. It was worse than the Patch, and he’d always thought that was as bad as it could get. But no, Cuba had that beat all to hell. Here, raw sewage ran in rivulets down the twisting alleyways and blind and one-armed beggars lined each corner, hands outstretched. Hungry children, mostly boys, rushed to the cab to hawk their wares in broken English. “Want to screw, mister? My sister is very pretty,” one runny-nosed kid yelled in perfect English. “Mine is prettier, mister,” cried another. They pushed and elbowed their way to the cab window, pitching both shoe shines and their sisters with equal salesmanship.

  As one scene melded into the next, Marcello could only shake his head and say, “Jesus, can you believe this?” Chuck patted the pocket of his linen sport coat and was relieved to find the envelope’s reassuring bulge. All he cared about was making this delivery; he’d do that and then they’d get the hell out of here.

  It began to feel as if they’d been driving around for hours and Chuck started to consider the fact that he had no idea where they were going; the cabbie, gabbling in Spanish, could take them anywhere he wanted and Chuck wouldn’t know the difference. As the heat of the city closed in around them, he suddenly realized how dangerous this job actually was; the people here were so poor and life so cheap that two gringo touristas could disappear in an instant—especially two gringos with five hundred thousand American dollars. The presence of the police, their guns bristling, did nothing to reassure him.

  A clammy sweat began to creep over his hands and soon spread to his clothes; beads of perspiration gleamed on his forehead. He patted the tiny bulge in his pocket more than once and silently chastised himself for being so nervous; the last thing he wanted to do was look that way, he told himself as he struggled to maintain his composure. He lit a Cuban cigar and tried to relax and take in the “scenery.”

  At last, rising out of the stench of the streets, was the Hotel Nacionale. Like an island within an island, its white walls stood in green-shuttered elegance. When their driver parked the cab, Chuck threw open the door and walked hurriedly through the hotel lobby and up to the desk. More collected now, he calmly requested the manager.

  Dressed in a dapper white panama suit, the small, mustached man quickly appeared. As instructed, Chuck asked for “Mr. Meyer.”

  Shortly thereafter, a slender Jewish man in a white short-sleeved shirt appeared. “For Mr. Meyer?” he asked. He smiled as his eyes caught sight of the envelope.

  “Yes, sir,” Chuck said, handing the envelope to the enigmatic man before him.

  “Thank you.” He tucked the envelope under one arm and then added, “Tell Mooney hello.”

  Chuck nodded and “Mr. Meyer” faded into the crowd. That was all there was to it and, his job for Mooney safely accomplished, Chuck loosened his tie and sighed with relief.

  That night, he and Googy Eyes ventured down the shadowy streets to drink and laugh and cuddle their share of voluptuous Cuban girls. “Boy this is livin’,” Googy Eyes said more times than Chuck could count. But as the night grew long, it all reminded him of a too-rich meal; the glitter was reduced to decadence and gluttony in the face of the island’s poverty. And like a man who’d had more than enough, he pushed it all away and excused himself for the night.

  With some relief and more guilt, he c
rawled into bed. It seemed almost criminal to sleep in such affluence; somewhere outside his window, there were row upon row of tiny propped-up tin-roofed shanties with dirty floors and dirty children. If the millions Mooney and the Syndicate were pouring into Cuba was making a difference in the lives of Cubans, he hadn’t seen it—unless it was to magnify their poverty. He had to believe that these people wouldn’t beg in the shadow of the Syndicate’s opulence forever, not without someday wanting their share. And frankly, he’d tell Mooney later, he couldn’t blame them.

  The next morning, Chuck awakened with one thought, and that was to get out of Cuba.

  “But you must see the El Mora Castle before you leave,” insisted the disappointed desk clerk as they paid their bill.

  Googy Eyes wholeheartedly agreed. “We have to see somethin’ besides shacks and broads,” he complained.

  Not in the mood to argue, Chuck acquiesced and they visited the historic site, mingling with the floral-shirted tourists in the hot midday sun.

  Later, as he boarded the plane, Chuck looked up at the Cuban sky one last time and thanked God he was leaving. “A beautiful hell,” he called Cuba after that. “Just one more beautiful hell.”

  Mooney was pleased with Chuck’s performance in Cuba and dangled the Dominican Republic carrot repeatedly by commenting, twinkle in his eye, “A guy can live like a king down there.”

  The possibility of such a plum being bestowed on him, coupled with his renewed appreciation for the United States as a “land of opportunity,” spurred him on. Chuck threw himself into his pinball-machine operation with new zeal. He held on to what Mooney had said about running Chicago’s end in the Dominican Republic—although he secretly hoped it wasn’t anything like Cuba. Whatever it would be like, it would signal his move up and he wanted to be ready. He was willing to work for it, to prove himself to earn Mooney’s favor.

  For now, he was making good money. He always had ten or twenty C notes in his pocket; sometimes he had as much as three thousand dollars. And he drove a shiny new 1948 baby blue Super Buick with a trunk chock-full of pinball-machine parts and punch boards for the book joints.