The Outfit (47 page)

At least one connected Chicagoan was wise to the scam. Mayor Daley’s intelligence chief, Jack Clarke, laughed recently when the incident was brought up. Clarke had assisted the committee’s staff on occasion, as when they tried to locate Outfit leaders. “The committee had hired some local detectives to do their skip-tracing,” Clarke remembers. “Humphreys slipped them some C-notes and told them to report back that he had died. Apparently, Bobby bought it.”

Making the committee oversight even more unbelievable is that that very year, 1959, Humphreys appeared before an Illinois grand jury investigating organized crime and put on one of his seminal performances. It happened on April 1, 1959, and Curly’s performance was likely his idea of an April Fools’ Day joke. According to the April 4 edition of the
Chicago American,
Humphreys appeared but a pale shadow of his former self. “Humphreys has lost the dapper, erect appearance of his better days,” the paper reported. Wearing a crumpled raincoat, and feebly hobbling with a cane, Curly told onlookers, “My left leg is crippled - arthritis. I’ve gone to fifty doctors, but they haven’t been able to correct it.” For good measure, Humphreys sported a patch over his left eye. “It’s some sort of nervous disorder,” he explained. A local journalist quipped, “Humphreys is over the hump.” John Morgan, who wrote a Humphreys biography published in Wales, described what happened next, a scene that presaged the climax to the 1995 film
The Usual Suspects:
“Humphreys was asked a few questions: he croaked the Fifth Amendment a few times. After five minutes, the embarrassed court allowed him to leave. He shuffled into the April air, turned into Rush Street, threw away his walking stick, his raincoat and his homburg and skipped as blithely as ever from bar to bar to meet old friends. But the picture of the broken man was in every newspaper.”

Despite this widely reported incident, Kennedy and the committee proceeded as if they still believed the gangster to be dead, and made no effort to contact him.

“The Waiter” Is Unmasked

Whereas Curly Humphreys succeeded in disappearing from the G’s radar, Paul Ricca had no such luck. For over ten years, and with no fanfare, federal agents had quietly been building a case against a man they had initially believed to be chiefly a tax cheat. They soon concluded that Ricca was also an illegal alien and a murderer. While Ricca was imprisoned on the Hollywood extortion case conviction in 1945, an anonymous tipster apparently contacted the Chicago branch of the Immigration Service and informed them that Ricca had entered the United States on a false passport, using the name of Paul Maglio, a real citizen of a small Italian village of six thousand named Apricena. The investigation took a decade, but Ricca’s pursuers eventually stumbled into an astonishing coincidence: The real Paul Maglio had also emigrated to America, and to of all places, Chicago. In a strange twist, Maglio had been leading a parallel life as a laborer in the shadow of his alter ego, one of the most powerful crime bosses in the country. Adding to the bizarre tale was that Maglio had no idea he had been impersonated by Ricca. Even more, Maglio had been the town clerk of Apricena and knew that only one local family was named Maglio, and that there was only one Paul Maglio - him.

At Ricca’s Immigration trial, the surprise witness was none other than the real Paul Maglio, who delivered testimony so airtight that Ricca offered no defense. Although he was ordered deported, Ricca was supremely confidant that the order would never be enforced. Ricca boasted, “I’ll blow the lid off politics, from the White House down.” Through Curly Humphreys, Ricca demanded that all the pols who had been feasting at the gang’s trough be marshalled in his defense. In short time, Ricca’s petition to remain at liberty was remanded to the federal district court of Judge Michael L. Igoe, who was one of the many friendly officials who had marched behind the coffin of the Outfit’s patriarch Big Jim Colosimo in 1920. Ricca was said to have laughed in Igoe’s face after the judge granted him his request.

According to Humphreys’ second wife, Jeanne, Curly worked tirelessly to have the deportation order quashed, putting in long hours in legal research and strategizing. The work on the immigration issue proved successful, but the feds merely fell back on their charge of last resort, tax evasion. On this charge, even Curly could not obtain a complete dismissal, and on July 1, 1959, Ricca was sent to Terre Haute to start a ten-year sentence, later reduced to three years, with twenty-seven months ultimately served.
²
The real Paul Maglio, who said he had testified to prove that not all Italians are lawbreakers, became a neighborhood hero, still walking fourteen blocks back and forth to work every day.

Ricca’s imprisonment caused him to miss by three days the wedding reception Mooney threw for his daughter Bonnie and her husband, Tony Tisci (Congressman Libonati’s secretary) at Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau Hotel. The muted affair, by gang standards, was held on the very day most mob watchers were in River Forest gawking over Joe Accardo’s Fourth of July barbecue. Giancana purposely kept the marriage low-key, after the fallout from the much more lavish reception he had thrown for another daughter, Antoinette, three months earlier. That affair, which had featured more than seven hundred guests at Chicago’s LaSalle Hotel, had drawn local headlines and become fodder for questions put to Mooney two months later when the boss appeared before the McClellan Committee. Mooney, therefore, decided to keep Bonnie’s wedding off the press’ radar. Poor Bonnie was thus prevented from receiving the same kind of envelope largesse as her sister, who collected over $200,000 at her gala. “I never saw most of the money,” Antoinette recently said. “I gave it to my father for safekeeping and never saw it again, except for a few thousand dollars he gave me for a down payment on my house.”

Cat and Mouse with the G

Although green to the world of the Outfit, Chicago’s newly assigned G-men were under such pressure from Hoover that they worked overtime until learning who the leaders were, and where to find them. With Ricca already in “college” and Accardo lying low, the agents became most interested in Curly Humphreys and Mooney Giancana. FBI men like Ralph Hill, John Roberts, Bill Roemer, Marshall Rutland, John Bassett, and Vince Inserra hit the streets, attempting to tail their targets. In many instances, their efforts played out like a Keystone Kops comedy, in which the hoods used their well-honed skills to toy with the agents. Local G-men remember one humorous incident in which they employed a full-court press on Mooney Giancana, dispatching nine cars to his home one morning, intent on following his every move. Little did they know they were about to match driving skills with the most talented wheelman from the Patch. When Giancana drove off, he took his pursuers on a labyrinthine route, causing them to bark excitedly to one another on their radios, at times nearly colliding with one another. After successfully losing all nine cars, Mooney snuck up on one of them from behind, then stopped alongside the agent’s car and chided, “Here I am.”

On another occasion, Curly Humphreys saw that on one particularly hectic day the G was following him everywhere he went, from a newsstand, to an attorney’s office, to a restaurant, to a hardware store,
etc.
Eventually tiring of the game, Curly had his driver stop the car, then alighted and walked back to the startled agents parked behind him. “Look, this is silly,” Curly said. “Instead of wasting all this gasoline, why don’t I just send my driver home and go with you guys. That way you’ll know exactly where I am at all times.” Humphreys then opened the back door of the federal car, got in, and was chauffeured for the rest of the day by the federal government. Needless to say, the agents took a grudging liking to the disarming Welshman, as did almost everyone else who had personal contact with him. The charm he had first cast as a teen on his court-appointed adjudicator was as potent as ever. On one occasion, agents followed Joe Accardo and Curly Humphreys into a movie theater as they took in a matinee of the 1959 film
Al Capone.
Sitting inconspicuously behind the bosses, the agents eavesdropped as the old chums critiqued the adaptation of their patriarch’s career. “No. No, it wasn’t like that at all,” they said repeatedly, nudging each other.

Unbeknownst to the G-men, their routines were also being scrutinized - by the Outfit. The gang knew one agent, Bill Roemer, coached his son’s Little League team and had determined the boy’s practice schedule, so they coordinated their most important gatherings around little Roemer’s baseball. One gang member recalled walking to a meeting with Accardo and worrying about Roemer’s surveillance. “He’ll be gone by three,” Joe replied confidently.

In his memoir, Bill Roemer makes much of the “Family Pact” he reached with Curly, whom he called Hump. At the time, according to Roemer, his wife, Jeannie, had been receiving threatening phone calls. “Your husband is a dead man,” they would whisper before hanging up. In addition, Roemer’s two sons were seen followed to school by two mysterious men in a car. Wisely, Roemer sought out Curly to intervene. One morning, Roemer approached Humphreys outside his current residence at 4200 Marine Drive and introduced himself.

“Yes, Mr. Roemer, I know who you are. What can I do for you?” Humphreys asked.

Roemer explained what had been going on, and Curly replied, “Mr. Roemer, I understand your situation. I’ll look into it.” Roemer suggested ground rules that essentially stated, “You stay away from our families and we’ll stay away from yours.” Curly agreed to take the matter up with his associates and get back to Roemer. A week later, Humphreys reported, “Bill, this was the work of a misguided individual. I have spoken to him, and you can rest assured your family will have no more problems.” With that, the two amicable adversaries shook hands on the Family Pact. However, when Humphreys later learned that the G had given the press the name of Frankie Ferraro’s mistress, Humphreys and Roemer’s mutual friend and restaurant owner Morrie Norman was asked to set up another meeting.

“I thought we had a deal,” Curly said. Roemer professed that he had no idea “families” included mistresses. “Bill,” Humphreys said, smiling, “there might come a day when you regret this. You might not always be so righteous.” The arrangement was soon amended to include paramours. At least that was Roemer’s version.

According to Humphreys’ widow, the “threatening” calls and visits were greatly misrepresented by the late Mr. Roemer. “Roemer couldn’t keep his zipper zipped,” says Jeanne Humphreys. Jeanne maintains that it was common knowledge in the Outfit that Bill Roemer and his compatriots had roaming eyes for some strippers working in a downtown joint called the 606 Club. A passage from Jeanne’s contemporaneous journal reads, “Gussie [Alexl, Henry Susk, and Dave Gardner were trying out the same strippers as the agents and decided to use the strippers to get the goods on the agents.” Jeanne recently summed up the gambit, saying, “It was Gussie’s idea to rat Roemer out to his wife to get the G off everybody’s back. The Family Pact was nothing more than ’you forget about our mistresses and we’ll forget about yours.’ No one ever threatened Roemer’s wife and kids.” Curly told his wife of the pact, explaining, “This way, the G will get to keep their lily-white image, and they’ll stay away from our families.” When Jeanne asked one of the gang if the agents’ families had ever been threatened, her source quipped, “Sure, their home life.”

Years later, Roemer wrote of his sincere affection for Humphreys: “I actually did like the guy. The truth is, I did have a grudging respect for Accardo. And I had even more respect for Hump . . . There was a style about the way he conducted himself. His word was his bond.” Roemer added that he took no glee in harassing his “friend” Humphreys. He much preferred to chase the swarthier, violent types like Mooney Giancana. “In Chicago there were always plenty more mobsters to choose as targets. But none like Hump.”

Roemer was well aware of the professional problems that might ensue from his genuine affection for the Hump. As he wrote in his
Roemer: Man Against the Mob:
“I had clearly developed an affinity for Hump - more so by far than I did for anyone else in the mob. Obviously, I had to lean over backward to ensure that my respect for the man did not outweigh my responsibility to do all in my power to neutralize his connections and minimize his role in the mob.”

After many months of tails and informant debriefs, the Bureau’s effort began to bear fruit as, one by one, the gang’s meeting places were identified. At the time, the Outfit maintained a series of venues for use at specific times. At nine in the morning, like clockwork, the old guard of Accardo and Humphreys met with Mooney and his aides at Celano’s Custom Tailor Shop, a large second-story facility located at 620 North Michigan Avenue, in the heart of the city’s Magnificent Mile. Although the Bureau never learned of it, the gang assembled for lunch twice a week in the Wedgewood Room of Marshall Field’s Department Store, where the city’s elite ladies gathered for tea. “It was perfect,” remembered one hood. “Nobody ever suspected that these tough guys would meet in a room full of women. When we took over the back of a restaurant in those days, we referred to our section as Amen Corner.” On Thursday nights, the “boys” came to Joe’s River Forest palace to conduct business over a home-cooked meal, while Mooney Giancana met his charges late night at the Armory Lounge at 7427 West Roosevelt Road in the western suburb of Forest Park.

The Bureau first noticed that Curly and the others were showing up every morning just before 9 A.M. at the North Side intersection of Rush and Ontario Streets. The hoods would enter an office building and disappear into a maze of hallways and lobbies. After some weeks of head-scratching, the agents discovered that the building shared a common hall with another edifice that fronted on Michigan Avenue, which took the gangsters ultimately to the backroom of Celano’s; the Ontario entrance was meant as a diversion. Once inside, the gang nodded to Jimmy Celano, who abandoned the backroom while the Outfit conducted its business. Accardo et al. met in the sparsely furnished room, which had a couple easy chairs, a large sofa, a desk, a television, a well-stocked wet bar, and a safe.