eyes on him at all times. Everyone seemed to understand that this was now war. He and Albert kept sawed-off shotguns in their coat pockets.At restaurants, Eliot recalled, “We always took a corner table as the danger of our undertaking was becoming more imminent.” The jumpiness, the constant worry, became a habit. More than two decades later, long after leaving law enforcement, Eliot would still always sit at corner tables in restaurants, his back to the wall.He quietly, bashfully, smiled when friends ribbed him about it.
Which is not to say Eliot’s worrying was pure paranoia. Chicago’s Prohibition Bureau office, noticing the collection of bodies piling up in little Chicago Heights, decided there was a conspiracy case there after all. The bureau ratcheted up its investigation once again, focusing anew on tying the liquor ring’s operations to city officials. Yellowley and Jamie pushed for more evidence, which meant more harassment at clubs and “soda parlors,” more interviews with suspects, more eavesdropping on conversations—and more violence from increasingly harried and desperate bootleggers.Three days after Christmas, while on one of their cruising tours of the town, Eliot and Albert noticed “a flashy new car” with a lone occupant right behind them for block after block. Albert punched down on the accelerator of their Cadillac—and so did the car behind. Next he slowed to a crawl, and so did their pursuer. Finally, following Eliot’s direction, he swung into a residential neighborhood, found a narrow street, and slid the car “diagonally across the street . . . forming a block for the car behind us.” Eliot leapt from the Caddy and grabbed the driver, pinning his arms to the wheel. Albert ran around the back of the car and pushed the barrel of his shotgun through the open passenger-side window. The man, who appeared to speak only Italian, was unfamiliar to them; they couldn’t recall ever seeing himat the Cozy Corners or any of the other gang hangouts in the area. But they found a gun on him, the numbers filed off. It was loaded with dumdum bullets, the kind that expands on impact, spreading the damage. Eliot, still thinking about his friend Frank, still blaming himself, believed he was the target.
“This gun,” he said, “was obviously meant for me.”
CHAPTER 4
Flaunting Their Badness
A t 5 a.m. on January 6, 1929, a dozen Chicago police cruisers arrived at an undeveloped lot on East Ninety-fifth Street. The cars carried officers three abreast in the front and back seats. None of them knew why they had been sent to this desolate spot early on a Sunday morning. Then a small army of federal agents climbed out of parked sedans, their collars pulled up high, hats squashed down low. The agents fanned out in the subfreezing morning air, providing instructions to the cops, handing out arrest warrants. When a policeman clapped his hands to ward off the cold, he was told to cut it out. Agents gave each car a specific assignment and a time frame within which to accomplish it. Police officers were traded out with Prohibition agents so that each automobile was mixed. The cars idled in the lot for no more than fifteen minutes, the mission hammered home emphatically. Then doors slammed, engines revved, and the cars pulled onto the street and ripped southward, heading for the Chicago Heights city limits.
This was the new world order. Republican Herbert Hoover, an unabashed dry, had just been elected president of the United States in a landslide over the Democrats’ wet candidate, Al Smith. The president-elect publicly declared that the country faced a law-and-order crisis, and so the Chicago Prohibition office wanted to make clear to Washington that it was vigorously pursuing its mission. On Friday Jamie had told the press that Chicago Heights was “a Mafia nest and [bootlegging] ring operating in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and New York.” The Chicago office made sure the newspapers knew about
Which is not to say Eliot’s worrying was pure paranoia. Chicago’s Prohibition Bureau office, noticing the collection of bodies piling up in little Chicago Heights, decided there was a conspiracy case there after all. The bureau ratcheted up its investigation once again, focusing anew on tying the liquor ring’s operations to city officials. Yellowley and Jamie pushed for more evidence, which meant more harassment at clubs and “soda parlors,” more interviews with suspects, more eavesdropping on conversations—and more violence from increasingly harried and desperate bootleggers.Three days after Christmas, while on one of their cruising tours of the town, Eliot and Albert noticed “a flashy new car” with a lone occupant right behind them for block after block. Albert punched down on the accelerator of their Cadillac—and so did the car behind. Next he slowed to a crawl, and so did their pursuer. Finally, following Eliot’s direction, he swung into a residential neighborhood, found a narrow street, and slid the car “diagonally across the street . . . forming a block for the car behind us.” Eliot leapt from the Caddy and grabbed the driver, pinning his arms to the wheel. Albert ran around the back of the car and pushed the barrel of his shotgun through the open passenger-side window. The man, who appeared to speak only Italian, was unfamiliar to them; they couldn’t recall ever seeing himat the Cozy Corners or any of the other gang hangouts in the area. But they found a gun on him, the numbers filed off. It was loaded with dumdum bullets, the kind that expands on impact, spreading the damage. Eliot, still thinking about his friend Frank, still blaming himself, believed he was the target.
“This gun,” he said, “was obviously meant for me.”
CHAPTER 4
Flaunting Their Badness
A t 5 a.m. on January 6, 1929, a dozen Chicago police cruisers arrived at an undeveloped lot on East Ninety-fifth Street. The cars carried officers three abreast in the front and back seats. None of them knew why they had been sent to this desolate spot early on a Sunday morning. Then a small army of federal agents climbed out of parked sedans, their collars pulled up high, hats squashed down low. The agents fanned out in the subfreezing morning air, providing instructions to the cops, handing out arrest warrants. When a policeman clapped his hands to ward off the cold, he was told to cut it out. Agents gave each car a specific assignment and a time frame within which to accomplish it. Police officers were traded out with Prohibition agents so that each automobile was mixed. The cars idled in the lot for no more than fifteen minutes, the mission hammered home emphatically. Then doors slammed, engines revved, and the cars pulled onto the street and ripped southward, heading for the Chicago Heights city limits.
This was the new world order. Republican Herbert Hoover, an unabashed dry, had just been elected president of the United States in a landslide over the Democrats’ wet candidate, Al Smith. The president-elect publicly declared that the country faced a law-and-order crisis, and so the Chicago Prohibition office wanted to make clear to Washington that it was vigorously pursuing its mission. On Friday Jamie had told the press that Chicago Heights was “a Mafia nest and [bootlegging] ring operating in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and New York.” The Chicago office made sure the newspapers knew about
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