told, "Unless you let our pals go, we'll come down there and kill everybody we see. We've got plenty of men and some machine guns." Butler reported the threat routinely to the Chicago police, who, rather hysterical about it, warned him to take the call seriously. Butler armed himself, and had the state militia called out to guard the school. Within a few days, a 42er scouting party of three showed up headed by Crazy Patsy Steffanelli. They were grabbed outside the reformatory walls and freely admitted they were scouting ways to have machine gunners bust into the joint. The episode brought considerable press coverage to the 42 Gang, and calls for tougher treatment for hardened juvenile criminals. The
Chicago Tribune
declared the real decision lay between sending 42ers to Joliet penitentiary or to the electric chair.
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The press coverage pleased the 42ers no end. Their ultimate ambition was to turn the heads of the big bootlegging gangsespecially the Capones. They staged robberies just to have a lot of cash to spend freely in Capone mob hangouts. Occasionally the big mobsters were impressed enough to use some of them as beer runners or drivers, but for a number of years they considered "these crazy boys" too dangerous to have around.
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Finally the Capone men accepted one 42er. Ironically, it was Sam "Mooney" Giancana, and his nickname fit; he was one of the "mooniest" of the gang. Still, he was an excellent wheelman who never got flustered under pressure. Tony Accardo took him on as his driver. Later, as Giancana learned to curb his wild behavior, he moved up the syndicate ladder under the patronage of Accardo and Paul Ricca, the latter especially seeing executive material in this cunning savage. As Giancana moved upward, he brought a number of 42ers after him. Among those who went on to make a considerable mark in the Chicago syndicate were: Sam Battaglia, Milwaukee Phil Alderisio, Sam DeStefano, Leonard and Marshall Caifano, Charles Nicoletti, Fifi Buccieri, Albert Frabotta, William Aloisio, Frank Caruso, Willie Daddano, Joe Caesar DiVarco, Rocco Potenza, Leonard Gianola and Vincent Inserro.
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Another 42er didn't last long among the Capones. He was Paul Battaglia, Sam's older brother, and one of the first leaders of the 42 Gang. Paul got careless about whom he robbed; he was a fingerman for gunners who specialized in sticking up horse betting rooms and handbooks. Since such operations by the mid-1930s had come under the Capone Syndicate, information could be swapped around about the holdup men. Pretty soon Paul was the known common denominator in the holdups. That earned him a mob assassinationa couple of bullets in the head.
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This left Sam Battaglia with two options, frequently faced in the Mafia and organized crime. He could seek revenge or he could accept a loved one's murder as "just business." Sam opted for the second way and later achieved the level of underboss under Giancana when the latter reached don status.
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Four Deuces: Capone mob headquarters and vice den
The address, 2222 South Wabash Avenue, gave the place its namethe Four Deuces. Standing out front late in 1919 was a chubby, round-faced character, shilling. The journalist Courtney Ryley Cooper later recalled: "I saw him there a dozen times, coat collar turned up on winter nights, hands deep in his pockets as he fell in step with a passer-by and mumbled: 'Got some nice-looking girls inside.'"
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He was young Al Capone, newly summoned to Chicago by Johnny Torrio, at first for the most humble of chores, including that of capper for a brothel.
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Capone would mature, and so would the Four Deuces. For a time the mob's headquarters, it was also one of the most notorious pleasure joints operated by Torrio and Capone. A four-story structure, it gave over the first floor to a saloon, with a steel-barred gate setting off a large office area. No one but members of the mob passed this barrier. Solid steel doors led to gambling rooms on the second and third floors while the fourth housed what became by Capone standards, a very lavish bordello.
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The cellar at Four Deuces was also the scene of a number of murders. A famed, incorruptible Chicago judge, John H. Lyle, wrote:
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 | | I got some first-band information on the resort from Mike de Pike Heitler who bitterly resented the mob's invasion of his field [prostitution]. Shuffling into my chambers one afternoon, be told me: "They snatch guys they want information from and take them to the cellar. They're tortured until they talk. Then they're rubbed out. The bodies are hauled through a tunnel into a trap door opening in the back of the building. Capone and bis boys put the bodies in cars and then they're dumped out on a country road, or maybe in a clay bole or rock quarry."
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Years later Lyle and a retired police lieutenant took a tour of the then-abandoned building and discovered the tunnel and trap door. Police were reasonably certain that at least a dozen gangsters had been slaughtered in the Four Deuces.
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Other mobs gave the Four Deuces considerable competition, especially the nearby Frolics Club. Frolics offered women and booze of Four Deuces quality at lesser prices. Rather than file unfair business practice
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