CRIME: One Big Shot

At the beginning of last week there were three live leaders of Chicago gangland —Big Shots, in gangster parlance. They were Alphonse (“Scarface Al”) Capone, whose dominion reaches out from the South Side of the city, and his two long standing enemies, Joseph (“Joe”) Aiello and George (“Bugs”) Moran, both of the North Side. For weeks all three had kept public and police (who sought them on vagrancy charges) guessing as to their whereabouts. Suddenly two of them appeared, very much in the public eye.

Joe Aiello left his West Side apartment-house hideout by the front door. Pup-Pup! stuttered a waiting machinegun. He, wild-eyed, slithered into an adjacent courtyard. Puppety-Up-Pup! another gun stammered. Blood oozed; Joe Aiello crumpled down with 57 holes and more than a pound of lead in him. Death had spat from two rented rooms, cunningly chosen for a crossfire. Hundreds of cigaret-butts in each room testified that the gunners had waited long for their prey. Because the trap resembled one which slew Earl (“Hymie”) Weiss, another North Side Big Shot, and because that trap was credited to Capone, police announced Aiello’s slayers were Caponemen.

Bugs Moran had been in gaol the day his partner was mowed down. Big, greying and hardboiled, he had suffered much from the puppuppetty-pup of the machineguns. His power really was broken when his seven chief followers were riddled in his garage, St. Valentine’s Day of 1929 (TIME, Feb. 25, 1929). He then seemed to have abandoned ‘legging for an anti-Capone cleaning & laundry racket. Even so, one of his chief North Side henchmen, Jack Zuta, was spattered to death by slugs last summer in a Wisconsin dancehall (TIME, Aug. 11). Rumor said that Bugs last week came out of hiding to: 1) negotiate with Capone for a beer-peddling and gambling job in the North Side he once had ruled; 2) plot, with Aiello, Capone’s death. He was arrested, questioned. He joked police and newsgatherers: “Who killed Lingle [TIME, June 23, et seq.] and Zuta? That’s easy —Santa Claus! . . . I’m a lover of outdoor sports . . . vice president of the Central Cleaners & Dyers … a reputable businessman. I make $25,000 a year.” But he was loud and earnest in wanting the Press to know he never had blamed Capone for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. When he was freed under a total of $15,000 bail a few hours before the Aiello slaying, he skulked off, disappeared. He was no Big Shot last week, just a gangless gangster.

Capone did not need to appear. He was in the public eye anyway. Elimination of the others left him Biggest Shot of All. Adding to his glory was a book, fast gaining popularity, advertised widely with photographs of the hero’s fat, coarse face, entitled Al Capone, The Biography Of A Self-Made Man* It was written by Fred D. Pasley, onetime rewrite man for the Chicago Tribune, often collaborator with Alfred (“Jake”) Lingle. Author Pasley seems to know his gangs. He portrays the rise to a tycoondom of vice of once obscure Hoodlum Capone, gives it a macabre grandeur. Author Pasley does not hesitate to link the Big Shot himself to many a gruesome murder. Final sentence of his biography is:

“The moving trigger-finger writes. . .”

*Ives Washburn, publisher; $2.50.