The Outfit Read online

  With Nitti in place to draw the flak, the board of directors - the Outfit was free to forge the consummate gangster “think tank,” devising schemes that allowed their enterprise to flourish for decades. More important, their stewardship effectively granted their descendants a seamless merge with the upperworld, old-money tribe. Beyond doubt, the most significant member of this board was the twenty-five-year-old referred to by his associates as Joe.

  Joe

  Accardo has more brains for breakfast than Al Capone ever had all day.

  -George Murray, Chicago American columnist

  Antonino Leonardo Accardo was born in Chicago on April 28,1906, the son of a Sicilian immigrant shoemaker. The youngest of five siblings with three brothers and a sister - he grew into a five-foot-nine-inch, two-hundred- pound barrel of muscle. As a teenager raised in Little Sicily on Chicago’s Northwest Side, he got his parents’ assent to join the workforce instead of enrolling in high school. Little is known about Accardo’s youth. The young Antonino held various jobs, among them grocery clerk/ delivery boy and truck driver. Those were his day jobs. By night, the teenaged Accardo made a rapid ascent up the ladder of crime, starting as a pickpocket, graduating to house burglar and then car thief. Although he was hit with numerous arrests, the youngster never spent a night in jail and as an adult he never would. Years later, FBI agents would describe his language as laced with profanity, while grudgingly admitting that he was never a braggart or a liar. After the excesses of his youth, Accardo would become renowned for his fairness.

  When Volstead passed, Accardo’s parents, like many of their Sicilian neighbors, joined the cottage industry of alcohol home cooking. Their son, along with his punk chums, gravitated to Claude Maddox’s Circus Cafe, located on North Avenue. Maddox was on the periphery of the Torrio bootlegging Syndicate, tithing the requisite percentage to the gang from Cicero. Young Antonino’s pals at the Circus included Vincenzo Gibaldi, aka the infamous “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, Capone’s chief hit man. With such liaisons, Accardo was brought under the Torrio umbrella, where he functioned as an enforcer, compelling the Syndicate’s “franchised” bar owners and loan-shark debtors to pay up. He wielded his baseball bat so forcefully - at human heads, not baseballs - that he soon acquired the moniker Joe Batters. His closest friends addressed him as Joe so regularly that his given diminutive, Tony, was all but forgotten even years later by his own wife.

  At the height of the Chicago beer wars, with Capone forced to swell the ranks of his personal army, young Accardo first came to Capone’s attention. According to some accounts, Joe was brought to Capone by one of the Big Guy’s bosses, “Tough” Tony Capezio. Still others believe McGurn suggested the young muscle. In any event, the seminal first meeting between Capone and Joe, as deduced by the FBI, occurred in early 1926, when the twenty-year-old youngster was ushered into one of Capone’s headquarters - the Four Deuces, the Lexington, or the Metro-pole Hotel. His enlistment procedure was quite simple by Italian mob standards: There was no elaborate East Coast Mafia ritualism, melodrama, and symbolism. Most likely, there was a quick oath of loyalty to Capone and the Syndicate, with the young capo-to-be swearing to uphold the most intrinsic Sicilian beliefs: respect for wives and families, and contempt for “stoolies.”

  Joe Accardo thus became a fixture in the lobbies of Capone’s headquarters, where the young tough often sat guarding the entrance, “Chicago typewriter” in his lap. Completely loyal to the Syndicate, Joe made his bones with Capone-Torrio by eliminating traitors to the regime. When the North Siders’ convoy of assassins fired on Capone on April 26, 1926, it was Joe who pulled his boss down and shielded him with his twenty-year-old body. Capone was rightfully impressed and elevated Accardo to the role of his personal driver and chief bodyguard. (It will be seen that the role of driver for the boss often presaged a future leadership post.)

  Accardo’s star rose quickly, and it is widely assumed that he was a key player in the notorious St. Valentine’s Day massacre in 1929. Former Chicago FBI agent and Accardo biographer Bill Roemer held that Accardo was actually one of the gunmen, along with John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, and Jack McGurn. Accardo also matched the description of the man using the name James Morton who rented the getaway car, which had been disguised as a police car. Four months later, when two of the assassins (Anselmi and Scalise) were murdered in Indiana by Capone after plotting a mutiny, they were beaten to a pulp with a baseball bat. Agent Roemer is among those who believe Accardo wielded the stick. Subsequently, Capone was heard to say about Joe, “This guy is a real Joe Batters.”

  After the madness of that spring, Joe accompanied Capone as his personal bodyguard when the boss and a dozen other Syndicate members attended the 1929 Atlantic City mob convention. During a break, Accardo went to a tattoo parlor and had a bird emblazoned on the back of his right hand. The creature appeared to flap its wings when Joe opened and closed his fist. Unimpressed, Capone chastised his young soldier, “Kid, that will cost you as much money and trouble as it would to wear a badge with the word thief on it.” Despite the thoughtless act, Joe remained close with the Big Guy. Later that year, Joe was arrested for vagrancy in Florida while golfing with Capone and Jack McGurn. When Capone’s archenemy, temporary president of the Unione Siciliana Joey Aiello, was murdered in October 1930, Joe was considered the prime suspect.

  In 1934, three years after the Outfit assumed control, twenty-eight-year-old Joe Accardo wed Clarice Porter, twenty-two, a beautiful blond chorus girl and the daughter of Polish immigrants. As best as can be ascertained, Joe was a faithful husband, as well as a doting father to their two sons and two daughters. In a short time, Accardo became a capo, a young boss with his own crew of ten. Among his chief responsibilities was overseeing the Outfit’s gambling operations. Attempting to put a veneer on his image, Joe insisted that his associates refer to him as JB, a moniker more befitting the country club set. But try as he might, the name Joe stuck.

  Years earlier, as a teenaged runner for the Torrio-Capone organization, Joe had often worked side by side with with a young man nine years his senior named Felice De Lucia, better known as Paul Ricca. They became each other’s lifelong best friends. Their fellowship would span decades; their shared stewardship of the Capone regime’s residue would become the stuff of local legend.

  Paul

  Felice De Lucia was born in 1897 in Naples, Italy, making him thirty-four years old when Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion. In Italy, Felice committed his first murder at age eighteen, when his sister Amelia was disgraced by the family of a boy she was dating. In a fit of rage, Felice murdered the suitor, Emilio Perillo. After serving two years, Felice tracked down and murdered the witness who had fingered him. On the run, De Lucia stole the identity of fellow Neapolitan Paul Maglio and made his way to New York and the New York to Chicago gangster pipeline. In the Windy City, De Lucia assumed the name Paul Ricca and took work as a waiter, a job that would earn him the appellation Paul ’the Waiter’ Ricca.

  Ricca worked to establish a far different persona from the violent one he had earned in Italy. In Chicago, his reputation was that of a soft-spoken, well-mannered businessman. In his late twenties, Ricca took work as a manager of Little Italy’s World Playhouse, a side enterprise of the Torrio-Capone combine. His superior intellect was not unnoticed by the Big Fellow, and Ricca’s star rose quickly. When Ricca married in 1927, his new best friend, Al Capone, stood up for him as best man. Soon, Capone appointed young Paul as his personal emissary in dealings with syndicates from other cities. When Johnny Torrio established the Commission with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in New York, Ricca was honored with the critical role of liaison to the gang from the Big Apple. The coming decades would see yearly powwows convened in mob-favored restaurants, with the gangs intent on maintaining and coordinating the alliance. At such times, Paul Ricca played either the host in Chicago or the traveling emissary to New York.

  At the infamous 1929 Atlantic City mob confab, New York mob boss Meyer Lansky advised a
young Paul Ricca on how to get rich in the rackets: “Play the waiting game,” said Lansky. “Keep your name out of the newspapers and build your own organization.” Ricca and his Outfit colleagues took the admonition to heart. With Nitti as the interim front man, it was only a matter of time before the real brain trust took over. As Paul patiently waited his turn at the helm, his nickname, the Waiter, became a double entendre.

  Simultaneous with the enlistment of Joe and Paul in the midtwenties, Capone installed another key member of his team. Capone met the young man when the new recruit was twenty-seven years old. The newest Syndicate soldier combined great style and charm with one of the fiercest intellects in the annals of organized crime. His closest friends knew him as Curly.

  Curly

  He was a man of many aliases. John Brunswick, G. Logan, Mr. Lincoln, Dave Ostrand, Cy Pope, and John Hall are among more than two dozen listed by the FBI. The press referred to him as The Camel, or The Hump, but it was the nicknames bestowed on him by people who actually knew him that spoke volumes: Mr. Einstein, The Brainy Hood, and Mr. Moneybags. If he had chosen the straight life, Llewelyn Morris Humphreys could have been an adviser to presidents or the CEO of a Fortune 500 firm. A master of syllogism, Humphreys’ gift for didactic reasoning left everyone in awe. Tall and nattily attired, he moved as easily among Hollywood studio heads and nationally known politicians as he did among the gang that frequented the Four Deuces.

  Although he had no compunction about meting out the ultimate punishment to an enemy, he did it rarely, and only as a last resort. To the rest of his acquaintances Humphreys was a charming, soft-spoken, and rakish dandy. He was often described as the nicest member of the Outfit. The only known Welsh gangster, Humphreys was so courteous and trustworthy that when told of his passing, his FBI case officer reportedly had to stifle a tear. Arguably the most fascinating hoodlum who ever lived, he was so obsessive about his low profile that he remains for many “The Unknown Gangster.”

  Humphreys was born in Chicago on or about April 20,1899, to Welsh immigrants. Since no birth certificate has ever surfaced, the exact date remains in question. As best can be determined, Humphreys had one brother and three sisters, he being the third born. As a youngster, his mane of dark, curly hair earned him the nickname by which his close friends would know him from then on: Curly. Precious little is known of his early years, as he always demurred at discussing them. Even in congressional testimony decades later, Curly Humphreys refused to open up about his formative period. What little has emerged suggests that, as a boy, Curly sold newspapers, but soon gravitated to petty theft and street gang fights. As a thirteen-year-old, he came under the influence, perhaps by court order, of a Chicago judge named Jack Murray, who saw in Curly a rare brilliance.

  According to various accounts, Murray attempted to school the bright young rebel in the ways of the political world, an attempt that would backfire, as young Curly heard only what he wanted: there was a double standard for the great turn-of-the-century robber barons and the rest of the world. Curly appears to have taken this as a clarion call to join the life of the amoral criminal in a world without reason. In honor of the well-intentioned judge, and to thank him for the political education, Curly changed his name to Murray Humphreys. He also became a talented jewel thief.

  Little is known of Curly’s life over the next few years. FBI records indicate that as a sixteen-year-old, he was nabbed for petty larceny, for which he served sixty days at the House of Correction. Humphreys, who even by this tender age had mastered his use of “persuasion and payoff,” had had the charge reduced from felony burglary, which would have mandated a much longer prison term. George Murray, a journalist and acquaintance of Humphreys’, recalled that Humphreys first obtained a private meeting with the prosecutor. The precocious young man was in rare form as he argued: “You try to get me indicted for burglary and I will weep in front of the grand jury. They probably won’t indict me because I am only sixteen. But even if you get me to court the do-gooders will say that because of my extreme youth 1 ought not to be sent to prison. However, if you reduce the charge to one of petty larceny, I will plead guilty. I will get a light sentence. You will get a conviction that looks good on your record. Everybody will be happy. What’s more, you will receive a suitable gift before the case goes to court.”

  The prosecutor was persuaded, and the next day an expensive, diamond-studded wristwatch was placed anonymously on his desk and Curly’s modus operandi was now carved in stone. As the Big Guy would later say, “Anybody can use a gun. The Hump uses his head. He can shoot if he has to, but he likes to negotiate with cash when he can. I like that in a man.”

  Curly’s style became so famous in Chicago that to this day hoods and nonhoods alike happily quote aphorisms they attribute to the disarming Welshman. Among the most quoted:

  • “Love thy crooked neighbor as you love thy crooked self” - inscribed on a plaque hung above his fireplace.

  • “Go out of your way to make a friend instead of an enemy.”

  • “No good citizen will ever testify to anything if he is absolutely convinced that to do so will result in his quick and certain death.”

  • “The difference between guilt and innocence in any court is who gets to the judge first with the most.”

  • “If you ever have to cock a gun in a man’s face, kill him. If you walk away without killing him after doing that, he’ll kill you the next day.”

  • “Vote early and vote often.”

  Years later, Curly would hang another wall plaque with an inscription many believe represents his finest intellectual achievement. In 1951, acting on Curly Humphreys’ advice, Outfit bosses befuddled a Senate panel with a plea legislators had never heard before: citing their Fifth Amendment privilege, they refused to answer the investigators’ questions. Although the refusal had been voiced in criminal court, Congress had not previously experienced this tactic, and believing the exemption could not be enforced in their venue, they cited the bosses for contempt. Much to their consternation, the committee was informed by the courts that Curly’s precedent-setting ploy was in fact legal. Soon, a plaque was seen hanging in Curly’s Oklahoma house: “I refuse to answer on the grounds it might incriminate me.”

  In 1921, while on the lam for a jewel heist, Curly fled to his brother’s home in Little Axe, Oklahoma. The slick-talking Humphreys took work as a door-to-door Victrola salesman. On one of his rounds he met, and charmed, a beautiful half-Cherokee college student named Mary Clementine Brendle. Clemi, as she was known, would become an indispensable component in the financial workings of the Outfit. Said to have possessed total recall, Clemi would eventually commit to memory the names of one hundred union presidents - unions Curly would be controlling.

  After a brief courtship, the couple married and returned to Chicago, where the heat had cooled on the new bridegroom. Now in his early twenties, Curly found work as a short-order cook at Messinger’s Restaurant on Halsted Street. There he met another brilliant (and perhaps the only college-educated) gangster, Fred Evans. Evans had studied accounting, engineering, and architecture, earning his degree at age nineteen. At the time he met Humphreys, Evans was earning his walk-around money buying and selling jewelry and distressed merchandise that he acquired at government auctions, taking advantage of a pre-Black Tuesday financial depression that prompted insurance companies to hold auctions in an attempt to recoup their losses.

  Inevitably, the two prodigies were drawn to each other like magnets. Curly opined that if the two joined forces, they could “fence” pilfered merchandise, which included repainted stolen cars (acquired by Curly’s gang), alongside Evans’ goods at the warehouse Evans rented. As with everyone else who met Curly, Evans was charmed, and a partnership was born. Not surprisingly, their enterprise quickly escalated into the big-money operation of bootlegging. However, with no breweries of their own, the young men took the direct approach - they hijacked the other bootleggers’ trucks. Humphreys proved to be not only a talented booze thief
, but an effective kidnapper as well. Often, bootleggers were kidnapped until their partners paid up in either booze or money. Among the gangs, kidnappings were a nuisance that came with the territory. All was going along swimmingly until Curly made the first, and possibly last, stupid mistake in his life: He hijacked a shipment owned by Capone.

  After fleeing in terror from the gun-toting Humphreys, Capone’s driver scurried back to the Four Deuces and reported what had happened. In short order, Capone had the young upstart hauled before his tribunal of one. Instead of relegating the curly-headed thief to the heap of corpses of previous transgressors, however, Capone was inveigled by the defendant. Just as he had before the juvenile division prosecutor, Curly somehow (details are unknown) talked himself out of being sanctioned, and before he was through, he was not only acquitted, he was offered a job. Curly never forgot Capone’s act of forgiveness and became one of his most loyal charges. Later, Curly would name his pet dog Snorky in homage to Capone.

  After a brief stint as a beer-truck driver for the Syndicate, Humphreys was given a role more suitable to his intellect: the protection racket. Curly quickly became adept at the ways of extortion and graft. Curly’s preference for the payoff resulted in his masterminding of the 1931 Capone jury pool bribery. Through his contacts in the judicial system, he obtained the list of jurors, who, had they not been switched at the last minute, were totally corrupted and poised to acquit Capone. When Capone eventually went to jail, Curly, Joe, and Paul paid regular visits to the man who had brought them all together.