Miracles and Massacres (19 page)

Calvin Spotted Elk did not expect a reply, but he added one additional line in the hope of proving to whoever would read the letter that he had good standing in this matter.

For many years, my grandfather, Chief Spotted Elk, has erroneously been known as Chief “Big Foot.”

Elk, along with many others who have petitioned the government over the years to reconsider these medals and revise the official report on the Battle of Wounded Knee, is still waiting for a response.

Executive Management Level

Sportsman's Park

Cicero, Illinois

November 8, 1939

Easy Eddie O'Hare sat down at his fine mahogany desk and placed his glass of eighteen-year-old scotch on the blotter. Then he opened the bottom-left drawer and took out his pistol.

Oiling and cleaning this little .32 had become a thoughtful evening ritual over the last several years, though he'd never felt the need to carry it. But tonight would be different. Tonight, for the drive home from Cicero, he would load his gun and have it holstered beneath his overcoat. At least he'd be armed when they came for him, for all the good that would do.

Even the Chicago mob has laws. Not many, of course, but the few there are have only one penalty. And the mob has got more style in enforcement than the police and the courtrooms. They'll still hold trial and pass sentence, all right, but once a person's condemned they aren't killed right away, not unless it's absolutely necessary. They let the poor sucker walk around free and think about how his days are numbered.

They'd let Easy Eddie think about it for six long years.

He still had a few friends in the outfit; that's how he knew for sure that his number was up.
You shouldn't buy any green bananas, old pal
. The straight-faced warning in that bit of gallows humor was the only help he could expect. No one was going to be caught dead coming to his aid, not with Capone due back in town any time from his extended holiday on Alcatraz Island.

As he finished tending to his pistol, Eddie sat back and looked around the luxurious office that he'd furnished with ill-gotten gains. Not everything here was of great value, though, at least not in the monetary sense. Some items were only mementos, worth little to anyone but him.

There were the old photos of his kids that were just beginning to yellow in their frames. He hadn't seen the girls in years, and his boy had long since become a navy man—a pilot, to be exact.

One of the paperweights on his desk was a dented gas cap from Charles Lindbergh's mail plane, a souvenir pocketed at Lambert Field after a ride-along with that soon-to-be-great man. A pair of blood-flecked boxing gloves that hung on the coatrack recalled a very short match he'd once fought in his misspent youth, an open-call tryout for a pro sparring partner. One quick right cross from his opponent had put Eddie facedown on the canvas and convinced him he was no Jack Johnson.
There must be an easier way to make a million
, he'd thought.

And so there was.

He checked his pocket watch, studied the door for a while, and decided that he wasn't quite ready to walk through it for the last time. Maybe just one more drink, and for old times' sake, just another short stroll down memory lane.

His tired eyes soon found another keepsake, this one displayed on its own side table. It was an artificial rabbit on a rusty metal stand, the odd invention of his first big legal client—and arguably the object that put Easy Eddie on the road to riches and, eventually, to ruin.

But that wasn't really where the story started. For that, he'd have to go back a bit further.

Soulard district, St. Louis, Missouri

Twenty years earlier: December 31, 1919

The baby was crying and, before long, Eddie's young son had joined in the wailing.

He couldn't really blame hungry kids for making a racket, but that night it was just a little too much to swallow. With him and his wife not on speaking terms, Christmas had once again been a dismal, joyless affair. And now New Year's Eve was threatening to turn out the same way.

At one minute to midnight, with no steady job, no prospects, and not a plug nickel to his name, Eddie had made himself a promise, an oath that couldn't have been more solemn if he'd signed it in blood. He would make himself a wealthy man.

The bleak decade he'd just suffered through had finally and mercifully ended. There would be no more hopeless days, no more dead-end laboring just to scrape together another humble meal for the family table. No more drifting, no more despair, no more drafty walk-up apartments that reeked of cold cuts and day-old produce from the grocery store below. Right then and there, with the 1920s set to come roaring in, Eddie swore to change his life and his fortunes.

The next few years were a blur. Between working any job he could scrounge, day and night classes to complete his education at St. Louis University, and later studying law until the wee hours, there'd been far too little time left for his wife and children. But all of this was for them; at least that's the way it had begun.

During his lowest times, Eddie's father-in-law would encourage him with the same words over and over:
Stay with it, son. The day you pass that bar exam, a lot of doors will open
. He was right about that, of course, but if he'd really wanted to help, his wife's old man would have added one more nugget of valuable counsel:

Be awfully careful what you wish for
.

Sportsman's Park

Cicero, Illinois

October 3, 1924

The fresh paint had barely finished drying in his first law office when Eddie met Owen Smith, the inventor of a more reliable, new-and-improved lure to entice racing dogs to speed around the greyhound tracks. The two of them were a good match: Mr. Smith needed help to patent his furry little robot, and Eddie needed the fee.

Now, a year into the relationship, Eddie had become Owen Smith's chief business advocate—and business was getting better every day. The two men traveled extensively, selling operator's rights to use the rabbit at dog tracks from St. Louis all the way to Hialeah in southern Florida.

This was their first trip to the Chicago area and, so far, it seemed to be a fruitful visit.

Eddie and Owen Smith had been seated in the track manager's garish corner office, waiting as the man looked over the contract and considered their deal, when the door opened behind them.

Three imposing men entered the room and took stations near the entrance. A gorilla in a pin-striped suit is still a gorilla, but this trio of simians obviously belonged to somebody with a lot of swing. Soon another man appeared—balding, shorter, and stockier than the others.

When his eyes caught this last man, the track manager dropped what he was doing and stood like he'd been called before a hanging judge.

No one spoke up immediately, so Eddie broke the silence.

“We're in the middle of a meeting here, fellas. Can I help you with something?”

The shorter man smiled humorlessly.

“Yeah,” he said, “I've heard that you can.”

“You've heard I can what?”

“Aw, let's not play coy, counselor. I've heard that you can help me with something.”

Eddie blinked, and got to his feet. “I'm sorry, do I know you?”

“You don't, but you should.”

The man gave only the slightest gesture and the track manager hurried from the room, followed closely by Owen Smith, who was well-known for his ability to take a hint.

The three big guys also left and closed the door, leaving Eddie and the sharply dressed stranger alone. Only then did Eddie notice the scars that trailed down the other man's face. It looked as though at some point in his youth he'd lost a fight with a broken bottle.

Eddie put out his hand. “I'm—”

“I told you, I know who you are.”

They shook, and it felt to Eddie like he'd gripped a cold shank of Easter ham. “So, what can I do for you?” he asked.

“I'm looking to buy myself a little piece of this track,” the man replied, “and some people downstate are making things very difficult for me.”

“And?”

“And I hear you're a guy who can make things easy.”

“I'm embarrassed to say that you've still got me a bit confused,” Eddie said. “Who are you?”

The man laughed and pulled the track manager's rolling chair around the desk. He motioned for Eddie to sit, and then he did, too. “You talk real classy. That's good. I like that.” His smile began to fade as he continued. “Yeah, I can tell you're a college man, but here's something I guess they didn't teach you in school. See, when you do business in Chicago, the first thing you've gotta do is choose a gang. Fortunately you got real lucky this time, because the gang chose you.”

Eddie found that his mouth had grown uncomfortably dry. “And what gang is that?”

The man's next words were spoken low, as if he thought there might be a lawman listening from behind the drawn curtains across the room.

“Pleasure to meet you, Easy Eddie,” he said. “I'm Al Capone.”

Uptown Chicago

August 9, 1927

Eddie worked his way through the noisy crowd at Capone's favorite club, the Green Mill Lounge, glad-handing the VIPs and passing out
tips like peppermint candy. He gave a wave to part owner Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn and got a respectful nod in return. Eddie had his new girlfriend on his arm, an illegal cocktail in his hand, and the band was playing “The Best Things in Life Are Free.” He thought that it had been a hell of a day so far.

When they reached Eddie's table, the one always reserved near the stage, they sat and waved for the waiter.

“A gal down at work called this place ‘the blind pig,' ” his girlfriend said, shouting over the music. “Why do you think she called it that?”

“It's an old-time name for a speakeasy,” Eddie replied, “from the last century. Back in your grandfather's day, they'd get around the law by putting a carny attraction of some kind in a room in the back—you know, a two-headed chicken or a three-legged cat—”

“Or a blind pig?”

“Right. And so they'd make you buy a ticket to see the pig, and then they'd give you the whiskey for free. No sale, no crime, see?”

She nodded, and smiled, clearly impressed.

“Thinking up stuff like that; it's kind of what I do for a living,” Eddie said.

“That's very clever.”

“And you're very pretty.”

“Aren't you sweet,” she said. She gave him a kiss and a wink and then turned in her chair toward the stage to listen to the band.

Eddie watched her for a moment or two. His divorce had been finalized not long before, and though the parting had been fairly friendly, it certainly hadn't been a picnic. He thought of his boy, now a teenager, and his girls. The thought of them made him think hard about how his life had changed. A lot of dirty water had flowed over the dam in the last three years.

But a good man doesn't go bad all at once.

His alliance with Capone had started small. Eddie had smoothed the way for deals to establish front-businesses for Big Al, his lieutenants, and, from behind the scenes, the big boss, Johnny Torrio. He'd told himself for a while that he wasn't doing anything that any other capable attorney wouldn't do for his clients. But, eventually, he faced the
facts: a man couldn't so much as walk across the street with Capone and stay clean. He was the King Midas of crimes and scams; everything he touched turned to possible jail time.

Even at the track—a seedy enough hangout to begin with—Capone wasn't satisfied with simply gambling; he had to cheat. His favorite sure thing was to feed seven of the dogs a Porterhouse steak before a race and then bet heavy on the last, hungry dog. That was always good for a laugh and a hundred-dollar ticket at twenty-to-one odds.

All the while, little by little, Eddie had traded in his principles for riches, and each step downhill had certainly seemed like a worthy bargain at the time.

But then his affair with the mob took a giant step forward.

Early in 1925, Bugs Moran and the North Siders tried to assassinate mob boss Johnny Torrio. They'd shot him to hell right outside his home; but he'd lived. When he'd recovered, after a brief stint in prison for operating a bootleg brewery, the man they called “the Fox” had finally seen enough trouble. He left for Italy with his family and turned the reins over to his longtime protégé, Alphonse Capone.

On that same day Eddie had also received a promotion he'd never signed up for. One minute he was just a lawyer with a few loose connections to organized crime. The next he was the reluctant chief counsel to the new underworld king of Chicago.

From across the packed dance floor, Eddie noticed a stern-faced man sidling up to the bar. Maybe it was just his discount-store haircut, but he didn't seem to fit in with the festivities. Then another oddball joined him, and this one definitely had
Johnny Law
written all over his ugly face. It was beginning to seem like a real good time to be somewhere else.

Eddie leaned to his girl and whispered, “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Where to?”

“Across town,” he said, giving her a sly, suggestive smile. “Come on, I want to show you around my office.”

It was a quick drive to Cicero, and when they'd climbed the stairs to Eddie's private haunt he could tell that she was impressed.

That corner office where he and Capone had first met three years
ago was now Eddie's opulent base of operations. It was stocked full of things he'd always dreamed of one day owning: art, sculptures, handmade furnishings, and all the rarities and luxuries that dirty money could buy. The massive leather divan alone was worth more than Mayor Kelly's touring car.

Hundreds of impressive cloth-bound volumes crowded his floor-to-ceiling shelves: casebooks and federal statutes, precedent opinions, lofty treatises, and details of many tens of thousands of regulations.