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December 24, 1930. That evening, Hap Levinson is playing Santa Claus at the Sackman Orphan Home. Santa brings toys and ice cream to all the waifs. He walks outside, waves good-bye, and is promptly machine-gunned to death by hoods in a speeding car. Quite a shock for all the kiddies. Killing Santa is not a federal crime, but Eliot Ness investigates. Hap was a friend of Ness' for 10 years; they had sort of a truce. If Ness was on official business, they were on opposite sides of the law; unofficially, they were pals. Hap was a frontman for Mike Volney who owns the Criss Cross Club; Volney trusted him, and Hap also kept his books and records for him. It doesn't figure that anyone would rub out a small potatoes guy like Hap, especially since almost everyone liked him. The only motive could be because a month ago, Volney had shot another hood named Augie over some silly bet; there were 4 witnesses counting Hap. 2 of the witnesses had been killed. Now, with Hap rubbed out, that left only one living witness: Jimmy Canada, who was on the lam. Ness' only lead is a small, wrapped present made out to "Renee." Ness calls his men to assemble at the Federal Building. Lee Hobson enters and quips, "$2,500 a year, and you expect to get a night off?" They all go to arrest Brikka to get information. Ness talks to Hap's widow at her home, but she doesn't tell Ness anything. Back at the Federal Building, Brikka tells Ness that he should ask Volney about Hap's death; he also says that Hap had a girlfriend: Renee. At the Criss Cross Club, Mike Volney isn't there, only his lieutenant Art Tenney. Backstage, Ness questions the chorus girls at the club; they offer no information. But outside, Sophie the wardrobe woman approaches Ness and tells him that Hap's girlfriend was Renee Grayson. Now that Ness knows her last name, he looks her up, and delivers the wrapped present. She tells Ness nothing. After Ness leaves, she opens the present: it is a cameo necklace. She screams in frustration, she was expecting drugs. Desperately needing a fix, she phones Art Tenney at the Criss Cross Club. Finally, a break in the case-- Jimmy Canada turns himself in, he wants to be placed in protective custody. Jimmy was a bartender at the Criss Cross; he and Hap were there when Volney shot Augie over a silly baseball bet. Augie had said that Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in one year would not be broken; Volney said that even though Hack Wilson had only hit 56 homers that year, he would beat Babe's record next season.* Ness gets a phone tip from Sophie that Volney has sent Art Tenney over to kill Renee. Ness and Lee Hobson go to her apartment to warn her. Just then, there's a knock on the door, and Tenney fires 4 shots through the door. (The first 2 shots are clean misses; the 3rd shot hits Renee in the shoulder, she falls down; and the 4th shot misses her.) When Ness opens the door and runs into the hall, the hitman is gone. Renee is bleeding from the right shoulder. Renee explains to Ness, that with Hap's supply of drugs ended, she wanted Volney to supply her; she'd called Tenney and told him that Hap had spilled things to her, and Volney better give her some stuff. But instead of drugs, Volney had sent a hitman over. Jimmy Canada figures Volney will rub him out, in jail or not, so he hangs himself in his cell. With all 4 witnesses to Augie's shooting dead, Volney comes out of hiding. Ness confronts Volney at the club; he is arresting him for the murder of Hap. Volney asks, why would he kill his own man? Ness tells him that Hap was a junkie; if he pulled him in for questioning, all he'd have to do is ice him for a few hours and he'd break, like any junkie. Volney comes back by telling Ness that Hap was using his supposed friendship with Ness to his own advantage. And so, on Christmas morning, Ness arrests Volney for the murders of Augie and Hap. But in March 1931, Volney stood trial for Augie's murder and was found innocent; in May 1931, Volney stood trial for Hap's murder and was found innocent. Eliot Ness learned his lesson the hard way, there's no neutral ground in the battle against organized crime. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[trivia: Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927; he only hit 49 in 1930.]

Joe Lassiter is the greatest inside man in the bootlegging racket. He and his sidekick, Nick Karabinos, have just arrived in Chicago by train; Lassiter traveled 1,000 miles because of a 250 grand deal: build a Ness-proof brewery. At the closed Bell Club (which Ness took apart last week), Lassiter meets with bootleg czar Louis Tully and his associates. 7 breweries have been wrecked by Ness and the Untouchables. Ness can always smell a brewery a mile away, because of the fumes they give off. So Joe Lassiter decides to build a brewery on the 6th story of a building-- the Cooker in the Sky; Lassiter leases the 6th story of an abandoned warehouse building. But Harry Gordon, who had been Tully's inside man, is worried for his job-- and his life. He tips Eliot Ness off to Lassiter's brewery. That night, Ness and Lee Hobson secretly check out the place; the brewery would be the largest ever constructed, when completed it'll be able to make 10,000 gallons of booze a day. Ness makes a risky decision: let them finish the brewery before he smashes it, that way the mob will be out about 300 grand. Lee Hobson tells him if the newspapers find out that they know about a brewery and aren't shutting it down, they'll accuse them of being on the take, and their reputations will be shot forever; everything they've ever worked for will be destroyed. One of Ness' men, agent Jack Rossman, even gets a job as one of the construction workers building the brewery. All June, Ness keeps tabs of how much money it is costing the mob. But when an investigator from Washington, D.C., Will Hefner, comes to Chicago and confronts Ness, the heat is on. Hefner will file a formal complaint with Washington that Ness is not closing down a known brewery. Finally, the brewery is finished; Lassiter brags that it will pay for itself in 2 months. That night, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables, along with 4 Chicago policemen, raid the brewery. They not only shut it down, but also arrest Tully and Lassiter and all the top mobsters. Since Louis Tully had only poured one glass of beer from the tap-- and he'd spent almost 300 grand on the brewery and 250 grand for Lassiter's fee-- it was the most expensive glass of beer ever served. Lassiter and Karrabinos take their money and serve a year and a day in jail. Gordon, at his home, hears news of the arrests and jumps for joy. He's still the king. The Organization will have to turn to him now because he's the only one on the outside. Unfortunately for poor Harry, Prohibition was shortly thereafter to be repealed. Harry Gordon was the King of Nothing. (synopsis by: kdh)

By mid-June 1932, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables had uncovered and shut down every champagne-producing operation in the city. 4 months later, however, champagne appears again in the fashionable Westside nightclubs. Ness is about to raid the swankiest speak, the Silver Canary. At the club, Marty Baltin is paying Charley Mailer for the last champagne shipment: $86,000 for 350 cases (that comes out to about $245 per case of 12, about $20 a bottle). Ness and his men raid the place; as Charley Mailer exits quickly, he accidentally leaves his small ledger book on Marty Baltin's desk. Ness and Hobson find a dozen bottles in the bar area, wherein the champagne is frozen solid, the bottles must have accidentally arrived in a refrigerated shipment. Enrico Rossi checks with the railroads, and finds out 4 refrigerated freight cars had arrived from the Marblehead Seafood & Ice Company in Boston; the Untouchables fly to Boston. Next day, Mailer is meeting with Baltin again. Baltin found out Mailer has been charging him double the price for the champagne, compared to what he charged another customer. Baltin figures instead of owing him $86,000 he only owes him half that: $43,000. And since Mailer charged him $150,000 for another shipment that was only worth $75,000-- Baltin figures Mailer now owes him 32 grand! Mailer offers to get him a double shipment to make up for it; he gets on the phone with Ira Bauer. Mailer says into the phone, "We gotta take care of our best customers," and then, when Baltin isn't looking, he takes out his heater and blasts Baltin. Meanwhile in Boston, Ira Bauer, who is blind, is giving Ness and Hobson a tour of his Seafood Company. With the feds snooping around, Ira decides not to send out any champagne for a month. Charley Mailer, who has a ton of gambling debts, decides to ship another bootlegger, Louis Collings, empty bottles which he can fill with his cheaper fake champagne, and thus keep the speaks in Chicago supplied. When Ira finds out, he rubs out Mailer; he doesn't keep it a secret, he tells Ness, and says it was self-defense. Ness examines the body, and finds an address for Mailer's bookie, Howie Reif, at a cheap hotel; Ness and Hobson pay him a visit. Reif isn't a bootlegger, just a bookie. Reif is sitting on the bed, the checkered patterned of the sheet fades into a chessboard. Ness and Ira are playing chess; some feat considering Ira is blind, and must keep the position of all the chess pieces in his head. They play to a stalemate; Ira likes playing games, and admits to Ness he is shipping champagne, and dares Ness to catch him at it. The next day, while Ness is snooping around the Seafood Company, Ira Bauer gets even bolder, he tells Ness, "I want to prove to you that I can ship champagne right under your nose." It's an election year, Prohibition will probably be out; but Ira tells Ness that then he will start distributing narcotics. Ira says, "The game is on." Ness retorts, "This isn't a game, Bauer." During the next 5 days and nights, Eliot and his men keep the Seafood Company under 24-hour surveillance. One night, they follow a visitor, Louis Collings, who leads them to his bottling company. The next day, a shipment of empty bottles is loaded onto a train to Chicago; Ira Bauer is shipping the champagne separately, but how can he ship it if it's not in the bottles? After midnight, November 18. At the Seafood Company, Eliot finally finds out how the champagne is being shipped-- those giant 4-foot-tall ice blocks aren't made of frozen water, they're frozen champagne. Instead of surrendering, Ira turns off the lights, and foolishly decides to shoot it out with Ness; he fires at Ness' voice, as he hears him walking. But Ira slips on the wet floor of the balcony, and crashes through the railing, falling to his death. Chess game over: check and mate. (synopsis by: kdh)

Chicago, the Summer of 1932. There are 12-million unemployed in the U.S.; with less money to spend, the price of booze goes down. The whiskey Syndicate is meeting; the chairman is the powerful gangster Vincent Tunis who runs the town. His 3 lieutenants suggest they hit the speaks. To make a point, Tunis demands a toothpick from his underling Charlie Grach; Tunis roughs him up, bloodies his nose, and points a gun at Charlie*-- demanding a toothpick. Charlie pleads, "I can't give ya what I haven't got." Tunis quips, "Neither can the speak operators." Vincent Tunis is The Economist: he explains the law of supply-and-demand to the Syndicate. The speak owners get 15 cents a shot for booze, that's $3 a bottle, that's $36 a case-- and the Syndicate wants $75 a case; the speak owners can't give the Syndicate what they don't have. So, Tunis will dry up the market, sending the price of booze way up-- he says, to "20 cents, 30 cents, 50 cents: where it belongs"** Vincent Tunis reads to them from the newspaper: the U.S. government has stored $500-million in surplus wheat and cotton, to support the prices. So Tunis and his 3 lieutenants will store all the surplus whiskey in Chicago-- the 4 of them will put up half a million bucks each: $2-million in whiskey will be stored in a spot that Tunis picked. For a mere 1,000 bucks a year, Tunis had rented a Navy underground ammo vault, which had been abandoned for over 12 years, since the end of WWI. All the surplus booze in Chicago is gathered up; Charlie Grach is in charge of the operation. As Tunis had ordered him, Charlie uses a dozen men, and half a dozen trucks, to load all the booze into the vault. However, acting on his own, Charlie has 2 men-- George Dahlstrom and his brother-in-law Myles Henning-- take the booze out, to a secret place only George knows about: he had rented an abandoned construction site just 4 blocks away, and they put all the booze in a huge basement. Since that is 25,000 cases, it takes a week. But after the job is done, Charlie decides to pay off George and Myles-- with hot lead. He shoots George, but Myles escapes. Just as Charlie double-crossed his workers, he is now ready to double-cross his boss Tunis. July 4. Myles, with his wife and baby, flee to Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, Ness*** and his men head to intercept a convoy of whiskey from Canada, only to find the shipment has already been hijacked, and the booze set on fire, compliments of Tunis. To make sure that production of booze ceases, Tunis' boys go to Mr. Sarro's Pasticceria (pastry shop); he's a wholesaler who had been supplying yeast and sugar to tenement families making bootleg booze in small stills in their kitchens. They stick his hand in a kneading machine, turn it on, and mangle his arm. When Tunis and his lieutenants go to the Navy ammo vault, they find only about 15 stacks of whiskey cases piled 10 high-- 150 cases out of 25,000; the rest of the vault is empty. Charlie says 12 delivery workers knew of the vault, but only 2 knew where the booze is really kept, and they are both dead; (he's lying, Myles Henning is alive). Then Charlie puts the squeeze on Tunis: if he wants to know where the booze is, it'll cost him $500,000. Tunis beats him up, and throws him into some stacks of cases; (goof: from the way 7 stacks piled 10-high fall on him, it's obvious they are empty). Charlie tells Tunis he will give him the information, tomorrow at 4 p.m., when he has "one foot aboard" a plane leaving for New York, and the money in his hand. But Charlie must have gotten a concussion from the cases falling on his head; driving home he has blurry vision, and gets into a car wreck, and is rushed to a hospital. Dying, Charlie babbles to a nurse about a $2-million hoard of booze; she phones Ness, but only after phoning some reporters; (they have a standing offer, $10 for any hot tip leading to a scoop). Ness talks to Charlie just before he dies, but Charlie is delirious and tells him nothing. The newspapers have a field day, suggesting (on the front pages) that Ness has finally taken a bribe. (The public is so fickle.) Tunis goes to Ness' office and tries to bribe him; Ness throws him out the door and into a wall. But D.A. Beecher Asbury tells Ness it looks bad. July 14, the police fish George Dahlstrom's body out of the river. Now, the search is on for his brother-in-law Myles Henning. Ness and his men go to Washington, D.C. But Henning makes a dumb move; in the wee hours of the morning, he calls Tunis (collect) and asks for $5,000 in exchange for info where the booze is. Tunis tells him to meet him in front of St. Brandon's church in the (fictitious) city of Roselyn (presumably a suburb of Washington D.C.). Myles is to meet him the following morning at 6 a.m. Ness finally finds Mrs. Henning; he learns that Myles is going to see Tunis. Ness says he'll spell it out for her, "If I don't get to him before Tunis, your husband's a dead man." Mrs. Henning tells Ness of the meet: in front of St. Brandon's church in Roselyn. Tunis shows up; he has his 2 boys in the car drive away, he also throws away his gun to make Myles feel at ease. Tunis has an envelope with $5,000 and Miles tells him where the whiskey is, 4 blocks west of the Navy ammo vault. Then Tunis starts beating up Henning with his bare hands, though Henning is taller and stronger. Ness and Enrico Rossi come tearing down the street in their car. Tunis' boys drive back; there's a shootout, Ness and Enrico kill the thugs. Tunis surrenders, and Ness arrests him. With Myles' testimony, the cops find and raid the vault, and smash the hoard of whiskey. The Economist suffered an economic crash, but the smashing of 25,000 cases of whiskey bottles was all sweet music to Ness' ears-- his name had been cleared, again. (synopsis by: kdh) ***[where's Ness? Eliot doesn't show up until 13 minutes into this episode; Robert Stack had less on-screen time in these episodes in season 4.]

Chicago, December 18, 1930. On the southside of town, Herbie Catcher is playing 8-ball for 50 cents a game, in a dilapidated pool joint. Herbie, not being much of a pool player, gets cleaned out by Cooker. Herbie's best friend is Josh, a nice black man who happens to be blind, who is the employee working in the pool hall. Josh tells him, "You'd be surprised at the things I can see, I'm an owl in the dark." ("Owl" is his nickname.) Since Herbie can't make money shooting pool, and only has a job working as a busboy, he is in the habit of getting a few bucks by giving Eliot Ness tips. However, today his tips are all stale. Herbie tells Ness that Wally Marcos is back in town; Ness says he already left again. Herbie has info on Angel Podaris; Ness says he sold out to Martin Rawlings. Herbie relates that there's a new place on Maple Street making bottles for imported Scotch; Ness says, "We knocked it over last week." Even though all the "hot tips" are useless, Ness slips him a fin-- he wants to encourage Herbie's future cooperation. Herbie is no better at being a busboy than he is shooting pool; at Zehner's club, he accidentally knocks a tray of food over on a patron. In the hatcheck room, Max Zehner slaps him around for it; but Mae Denby, the hatcheck girl, tells him to stop it. Mae has been Zehner's girl for 12 years, but he treats her rotten. Herbie sees Mae with a notebook, and Mae tells Herbie she could blow the whistle on Max and all of them with her book. Ness and Rossi and Lee Hobson show up at the club, they heard that gangster Martin Rawlings just knocked off Kusher; Rawlings is at the club, upstairs, with his main squeeze Bunny. Mae goes upstairs to tell Rawlings that Ness is here; when Rawlings insults her, and Zehner does nothing to defend her, Mae tells Zehner she's gonna pour him out like a glass of stale beer-- her book has names, dates, amounts of money in it: their whole operation. And then Mae tells Rawlings, "And when I say names, that includes you: you're number one." Rawlings pushes her down the stairs, killing her. Herbie corroborates Rawlings' version to the police-- that Mae was drunk, as usual, and her fall was an accident; a grateful Rawlings slips Herbie a double sawbuck. Rawlings is upset over the book; Zehner tells him there is no book, Mae was all talk. But Zehner believes she wrote down everything. Later, Zehner talks to Herbie; if Herbie finds Mae's tell-all notebook, he'll give him a c-note. But Herbie thinks big; he says if he finds the book, he wants to be promoted from busboy to waiter, cause they make that much a week. Zehner says okay. Herbie finds Mae's book in the hatcheck room; but Herbie's no fool-- he knows if he gives the book to Zehner, he won't have to keep his promise. So he tells Zehner he has the book, but he's holding onto it. Herbie gets promoted from busboy to captain, and is enjoying the money; but of course, he's playing a dangerous game by stringing along a gangster. When Rawlings finds out there is a book, he has Zehner rubbed out. Then Rawlings takes over Zehner's club. He tells Herbie he wants the book. When Herbie denies having it, Rawlings has 2 of his hoods rough him up. Herbie says he needs to make a phone call; he calls Josh. He says into the phone, "Is this the old Owl? You know that brown envelope I gave ya, the one made out to Eliot Ness?" Rawlings is watching him like a hawk; then Herbie says, "If I don't check in by the morning-- mail it!" and he quickly hangs up. Now Herbie is thinking big; he doesn't just want to be captain in the restaurant, he is now Rawlings' new partner. He even gets Rawlings' girl, Bunny (he thinks-- really she's just hanging around with him because Rawlings told her to). Herbie and Bunny are cozy on the couch one day, when Ness shows up; Herbie introduces her to Ness, but Ness already knows who she is: Bernice alias "Bunny" Colton, born Bertha Ciasulli, 3 felony arrests by age 19, served one year in state prison for women, arrived in Chicago in October 1928, took up with the Genna brothers."* Ness wants the book. Ness tells Herbie he can't count on him for protection; Herbie is no longer a stoolie, the Pea, he is now one of the hoods. And Herbie's going to get it from both sides; Ness tells him: "You're in the middle. Rawlings on one side, me on the other -- we'll slice you down like a stale salami." Herbie decides to show Bunny a swell time; he shoots pool in the dilapidated joint, while she's bored. But when Cooker gets rough with Josh, Herbie takes his cue stick and clobbers Cooker. Later, Bunny tells Rawlings, who is interested to find out Herbie and Josh are friends; she adds, "Herbie would've killed the punk. You couldn't much blame him; his friend's blind." Rawlings figures it out: that day Herbie called a guy named "Owl," and Herbie's best friend is a blind man. Now they know where to find the book. A couple of Rawlings' hoods go to the pool hall; they kill Josh and take the book. When Herbie confronts Josh's killer, Herbie shoots him. Just then Ness and his men show up. Ness takes the book. Riddle me this: When is a book like a useless gun? When they're both filled with blanks. The 100 page notebook didn't have a single word in it. Based on Herbie's testimony in court, Rawlings was executed for the murder of Max Zehner; as for Herbie, it was ruled he killed in self-defense. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[fact: There were 6 Genna brothers. By the middle of 1925, 3 were killed and the other 3 run out of town. So Bunny could not have joined them in 1928.]

December 12, 1929. That night, gangster Arnie Kurtz is in a car, watching a hit he ordered. Another car, speeding along and with a chopper blasting, guns down a pedestrian; but the victim pulls a gun and fires back, his bullet goes through the windshield. The car crashes; the driver is dead, but the hitman escapes. Arnie Kurtz goes to establish his alibi; at 10:35, his wife Stella drops in on her brother Benno Fisk, who owns a pawn shop. Stella has a job for him: deliver a payment of 100 Gs to a gangster in Washington, DC, for her hubby Arnie. Benno will be gone for 3-4 days, so Stella takes his 2 pet birds with her; Stella and Arnie are permanent guests at the swanky Lakeview Hotel. A newspaper headline reads: "Parrot Fever Kills 2 More." Ness and his men investigate the shooting of the pedestrian; Rico finds the driver's license of the dead driver of the getaway car: he was a New York hood named McHuey. It seems the New York Syndicate figures into Arnie Kurtz's trying to take over the Southside of Chicago. December 13, Benno Fisk arrives in Washington, but he's feverish and collapses on the street; he just manages to hide his case with the 100 Gs. At 12:20 p.m*, 2 doctors are on the case: Dr. Victor Garr, about 50, with a lot of experience and a deep care for patients, and Dr. Daniel Gifford, about 30, inexperienced and has a habit of always doing things by the book. When Benno, almost delirious, manages to say a few words-- "Stella Kurtz... Chicago"-- Dr. Gifford takes a 3:45 plane to Chicago. Meanwhile, a girl and a boy find the case with Benno's 100 grand. In Chicago, Rossman and Youngfellow have Arnie Kurtz's phone line tapped; they listen in on a call, a gangster waiting in Washington did not get his 100 grand. Arnie says he'll go to Washington to replace it. Arnie and Stella argue, he accuses Stella's brother of running off with the dough; they fight, he slaps her, she leaves taking the birds with her. At 9:16 p.m. in the hotel lobby, Dr. Gifford arrives, and is intercepted by Rico who is keeping tabs on Arnie. Over Rico protestations, Dr. Gifford goes up to Arnie's room, intending to quarantine him, even though Rico said any interference would ruin their stake-out. Sure enough, Arnie bolts down the fire escape. Rico phones Ness, and a few minutes later Ness and Dr. Gifford have a discussion about which is more important: quarantining infected people or tracking criminals. Next day Dr. Gifford, since he's in Chicago now, visits other "parrot fever" patients in the Cooke County hospital. Ness and his men take a train to Washington, but stubborn Dr. Garr won't let Ness see his patient Benno Fisk. Back in Chicago, Dr. Gifford talks to an infected clarinet player and an infected gentleman-- they have something in common, they had both been to Benno's pawn shop recently. Dr. Gifford takes a fast taxi over to the pawn shop; he finds Stella Kurtz dead, and the infected birds. Back in Washington, the girl and boy turned the case with 100 Gs over to Officer Cavanaugh-- when he talks to Dr. Garr, the doc finally agrees to let Ness see his patient. Benno says he was supposed to leave the dough in a bus station locker, and pick up a bag. By posting warnings about "parrot fever," Ness gets a tip on Arnie Kurtz, staying at the Maybrook Hotel under an alias. Arnie Kurtz goes to the Lincoln Memorial to pay a gangster 100 grand, in exchange for a bag containing names, addresses, info on breweries and distilleries, and contacts-- everything Arnie will need to take over the Southside of Chicago. But Ness and his men show up, and arrest both Arnie Kurtz and the gangster, thus foiling another plot to expand the rackets in Chicago. (Arnie was not infected.) (synopsis by: kdh)

Chicago. Right after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. (February 14, 1929.) Ness and his men are scouring Chicago, looking for Bugs Moran.  Ness says there used to be 2 gangs in town, now there's just one.  Ness figures if they get to Moran first, maybe he'll talk-- he might just be mad enough to give them the information they need. Someone else looking for Moran is Eddie O'Gara, a small-time hood who has been on the run for the past 3 years; he's decided to come home. Eddie's brother Vince, a trolley driver, isn't happy to see him; but Eddie's mom welcomes him back with open arms. Eddie finds Moran at his old hideout: a big storage room in the lakefront Midway.  But Moran is ready to blast him; O'Gara was a punk until Moran made him a highly-paid gangster, and 3 years ago Eddie double-crossed him.  Eddie fast-talks his way out of it.  Moran has lots of money, but no gang; Eddie can get him a new gang, but he'll need lots of money.  So they decide to work together-- but Moran warns Eddie, "For once in your lousy, double-crossin' life, you better be on the level." Moran gives him 3-grand. A short time later, O'Gara is in a bookie joint, and Capt. Jim Johnson hauls him in.  Ness grills O'Gara, but he says he hasn't even seen Moran.  O'Gara then goes to talk with Jack McGurn; McGurn says he will round up some boys.  February 21.  Ness' roundup of hoods continues, he grills Phil "The Bartender" Benyas, top triggerman for the Syndicate; all Ness finds out is that Benyas is surprised O'Gara is back.  Later Ness tells Lee Hobson that O'Gara was a Swamper (construction slang for a helper) 5 years ago, until Moran showed him how to make big money as a hood; and now Moran has a price on his head. That night, O'Gara has a meet with 7 hoods: Jack McGurn, Jinx Mahoney, Joe Aiello and his brother Dom, Jake Weinhof, Sammy Watuski, and Pete Herndon-- 7 of the worst cutthroats you could imagine. They will be Moran's new gang, replacing the 7 that were killed in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. At night, O'Gara and McGurn burst into a Southside hideout, shoot 2 hoods, and steal the arsenal of choppers.  Later, at the scene of the crime, Ness tells Capt. Johnson that it's the start of gang war that'll make the Clark Street Massacre seem like a tea party. The following nights: McGurn walks into a Southside speak and guns a hood; speeding cars with tommy-guns blasting shoot up a Southside pool hall and a hood on the sidewalk; a lobbed pineapple blows up a store. Ambitious O'Gara tells Moran they should set up a meet with the Syndicate, offering to talk peace.  And then, when they are all in one room, wipe them all out.  Moran keeps a cool head, and says he will have Joe Aiello handle things.  That night, when Joe Aiello and his brother Dom are in a speak, O'Gara drives a car by the speak, while McGurn blasts the Aiellos with his chopper.*  When O'Gara meets with Moran later, Moran is angry about the hit.  Moran doesn't really care that the Aiellos are dead, but Moran is the boss and only he gives the orders; O'Gara was out of line.  Moran says no hits, he wants to set up a peace talk for real.  So O'Gara double-crosses Moran again, and tells his pal McGurn about it.  O'Gara meets with the Southside Syndicate boss Rudy Mann, and says he can rub out Moran at the peace talk; Mann's lieutenant Phil Benyas is there listening.  Later, Ness gets a break-- they pick up Jinx Mahoney and he sings like a canary; he tells Ness that the Northside and Southside boys are having a peace meet in neutral territory, at the Westside Men's Club. And so, on February 28, just 2 weeks after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Moran is going to a meet with the Syndicate that tried to rub him out.  Ness and his men are planning on being uninvited guests.  At the Westside Club, Moran and O'Gara check their hats and guns at the door; around a big table, 9 Southside hoods are seated-- but not Rudy Mann.  O'Gara asks Moran if Rudy Mann is always this late; a hood tells O'Gara he's got a phone call in the other room, and O'Gara tells Moran that might be Rudy Mann calling.  O'Gara goes to the other room and keeps on walking-- outside, and into his car, and he drives away.  McGurn and another hood get their machine-guns ready.  From the outside, they walk up to a window that opens into the meet room.  McGurn says to his partner, "Like Eddie said: just Moran."  But Ness gets into a shoot-out with the assassins, and kills them.  Ness and Lee Hobson go inside, and tell all the hoods to get against the wall.  Later, Rudy Mann has O'Gara rubbed out.  As for Bugs Moran-- who had escaped both the Clark Street Massacre and the Westside Club Ambush-- it would be a year before he'd make another bid for power in Chicago.  (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[Giuseppe "Joe" Aiello was born in Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, in 1891.  Joe Aiello died on October 23, 1930.  A hood in the Northside of Chicago, Aiello eventually got into a conflict with Al Capone. After several years and many deaths, Joe Aiello was elected president of the Unione Siciliane, but he was machine-gunned to death outside a friend's apartment on N. Kolmar Avenue in 1930.]

1929.* Notorious gangster boss Charlie Radick is dying of leukemia; there'll be no mourning for him, the other overlords will be vying for his throne. All Radick wants to do is see his long-lost daughter before he dies. Ness visits Radick; Ness is afraid a gang war might break out, as rival gangs scramble to take over. Ness says, "Turn over your books to me; names of the people in your organization, distribution points, contacts in City Hall." Radick says while he was in prison, he left his daughter with a couple; 3 years ago she ran away. Radick tells Ness, "Find Margaret, and I'll give you everything you ask for." Ness never makes deals with hoods; but this time the gangster isn't asking for a break, or to plea bargain: he only wants Ness to find his daughter. Ness doesn't promise him anything, but he starts the search. Eliot Ness is getting help from Lt. Agatha Stewart and Frank-- they do some legwork, and find out Margaret Radick is now going by the name Margaret Wilson. The trail leads to the slums of Chicago; Lt. Stewart checks out an apartment complex where Margaret lived, there is a "building condemned" sign hanging on it. Lt. Stewart talks to a little girl named Amy; when the building manager comes out, Amy says to Lt. Stewart, "He's my father... he drinks beer." The manager says Margaret had a kid out of wedlock. Then Amy sneaks over to the Green Cat nightclub, where Margaret is. Margaret is a gorgeous lady, about 30, and she's having drinks with a customer. That night, at the pier, Charlie Radick is being set up for a rubout by his own man Millerick; one of Nitti's lieutenants, Vadney, is about to shoot him, when Ness fires first. Radick asks Ness what he's doing; Ness tells him he's providing protection. Ness wants to keep him alive, so he can get the mob records. Back at the Green Cat club, Lt. Stewart is talking to Amy. She finds out that Margaret's baby was taken away from her, probably by the child welfare people. Furthermore, Margaret just left for the bus depot; she wants to go to Denver. Lt. Stewart finds her there and they talk. Margaret says that when her father went to prison, he told her "you're all I've got," and promised that "someday I'll come back for you." That was her dream, her hope. But her father deserted her. Ted Clemens is the father of her child, but he refused to marry her. Ironic, that while Clemens failed in his duty as a father, it is Margaret who was declared an unfit parent, and had her child taken away from her. "I took care of my baby," says Margaret, "and when they took her away, I just didn't care anymore." Margaret resented her father for deserting her-- now, Margaret had deserted her child; she had become like her father. Ness is at the hospital where Radick is dying; Margaret shows up. Radick says, "I owe ya, Ness," and gives him the key to a safety deposit box which has his book, detailing everything about the mob and its operations. For many years, Margaret just wanted to be with her father; now, she is meeting him out of spite, to show him what she's become. Radick says he wants to take a look at her; Margaret snaps spitefully, "Take a good look." But then she realizes that, just as her father had once said she is all he's got, her father is all she has, too. She forgives him, and they embrace. Eliot Ness, his job finished here, goes off to get the records and shut down the mob. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[for some reason, the year is never mentioned. But I figured out that the other Lt. Agatha Stewart episode, # 101 "Search for a Dead Man," takes place in 1929.]

July 4, 1930.  40,000 horse racing fans fill Arlington Park.  Ness and his men have Arnold "Spats" Vincent under surveillance; they will close in on him as soon as he gets a piece of paper: a list with the names of officials in high places who are ready to do business with the crime cartel.  2 hoods (one tall, one short), apparently associates of Spats, approach him.  The tall hood sits next to him and whispers something to him; then he stabs Spats.  The hoods take off running; Ness and his men and some cops chase them. They arrest the tall hood, but the short one gets shot by a cop. Ness figures that top gangster Nate Stryker had put a contract on Spats; Ness and his men grill the tall hood, but he's not talking, he won't even give his name.  Ness has Stryker hauled in, but the tall hood won't squeal on him.  Later, Stryker meets with Dexter Lloyd Bayless-- he runs a school where he trains assassins; Bayless had provided the 2 hoods for this hit.  Stryker is worried the hood might sing, but Bayless just says he trains his killers too well for that. July 12.  The short hood, still unidentified, is buried as a "John Doe" in Potter's field.  One night, a girl puts an Anthurium Lily (from Hawaii, yet) on the grave.  There are 294 florists in Chicago, so Ness and his men start checking them all.  On the 3rd day, they find the florist who sold it; he describes the girl as 5'3",  17 years old, with long, auburn hair and gray eyes.  But then, the girl winds up as a "Jane Doe" in the morgue; she is finally identified as Linda Parish, who had a sometimes-boyfriend named Jimmy  Chavis.  Ness and his men visit Jimmy's parents, Julius & Catherine Chavis, to confront them that Jimmy was the short hood. Ness-- by checking with Jimmy Chavis' former employer, tracking down a retired bus driver who remembers where Jimmy got off, and finding a large painting of Bayless' mansion hanging on the wall in the Chavis home-- finds Bayless' mansion, the school for assassins.  Louis Mallet and Rick Tarro are 2 students who go there every day. As a cover for their stake-out, Ness gets Rico's sister (along with her husband, kid and baby) to move into the house next door to Bayless. Friday, August 22.  Once again, in the secret basement training room, Bayless tells his students, "Come and Kill Me."  They fight in the dark, using knives covered with protective cork tips dipped in chalk; but when the training session is over, the chalk marks show that Bayless "killed" them, while he is untouched. He shows them a chart of the human body, and plunges a pointy-tipped cane into the heart. Ness' visual surveillance and wiretap provide enough evidence for him to get an arrest warrant for Bayless.  Ness leaves Capt. Jim Johnson and the police next door, and his Untouchables outside-- and goes inside the Bayless mansion alone.  (!)  In a reckless move, Ness (alone) follows Bayless down to the basement training room.  Bayless hits the light switch, the room plunges into total darkness.  Bayless taunts Ness, "Come and Kill Me."  Bayless throws a knife at Ness, missing his head by inches.  Bayless sneaks up behind Ness, and starts choking him with a chain; Ness breaks free.  Finally, they get into a knife fight, but Bayless falls on his own knife.  Ness had smashed the school for assassins.  (synopsis by: kdh)

Chicago, 1929. Mike Brannon's been a cop for 15 years, but now he's being suspended for hospitalizing "one of Tony Lamberto's dope-pushing punks." Mike thinks Captain Bellows is corrupt for not going to bat for him. There is a tense moment when the Captain asks for Mike's gun-- Mike points it at him. But then, Mike turns the gun over and leaves. The dollar value of the city's wholesale industrial trade is $6-billion; the revenue of organized crime is $200-million. "Tough Tony" Lamberto's Market Street Produce Co. is just a legit façade; it takes in a percentage off the top-- from every racket dollar in the Southside of Chicago. Tony Lamberto is often the target of rival gangsters, so he rides around in a steel-plated limo with bulletproof glass; it cost $30,000. (this is a time when most people make $600 to $1,000 a year, and cars cost $500.) Right now Tony has another problem: a visit from Eliot Ness and his men. One of Tony's boys, Max Templar, is eating a honeydew melon; but Ness and his men inspect some melons in crates marked with an "X" and find a packet of heroin. Max gets a trip to the pokey, but Tony Lamberto's shyster attorneys get him sprung in no time. Mike Brannon assembles his 4 brothers: Keir, a pool hall hustler who could make 40 bucks a week; Clarence, a small-time wrestler making 20 bucks a week; Denny, a welder, is the youngest, making $16 a week; and Sean, auto mechanic -- together, they are A Fist of Five. Mike Brannon tells them his plan, to both get revenge on crooked millionaire Tony Lamberto, and to make them rich-- they'll kidnap Tony and demand a $150,000 ransom. District Attorney Beecher Asbury tells Ness they've got Lamberto on income tax evasion; the hearing is set and they expect to get a conviction. Meanwhile, Lamberto is telling his top shyster Viertel to fix it; the mouthpiece says you can't grease it when it's Federal. Lamberto asks him what he's paying him a $50,000 a year retainer for. But tough Tony's got a gentler side, too-- he loves his wife. Angie is a beautiful 35-year-old woman who is confined to a wheelchair now; when they married 3 years ago, she was a showgirl. A rival gangster had planted a bomb in a speakeasy to kill Tony, but his wife got injured instead. Tony tells her he wants out of the rackets, and he'll take her to the Old Country; she likes that. Tony calls Angie "carissima mia." (my dearest) Lamberto talks to Ness, he wants to make a deal. Lamberto will give Ness the info he needs to bust his Market Street Produce Co. (which Ness has been unable to do so far); in exchange, he wants Ness to talk to the Feds in Washington, DC, and guarantee he'll do no jail time-- just pay the taxes he owes, and be deported to Italy. The hearing is set for Friday, Lamberto wants to meet with Ness again Thursday; Ness says he'll "see what he can do." Meanwhile, the Brannon brothers cleverly disguise a car to look like a police car: they paint "Chicago Police Dept." on the door with white paint using stencils, and attach an old, discarded police siren. That night, they use the phony car, siren wailing, to pull over Lamberto's car; Mike Brannon, wearing his cop uniform, shoots the driver, Albert "Monk" Colcheck. They put the snatch on Lamberto. Lamberto was to meet with top mobster Augie Relyea, bookkeeper Manny and a couple of others; instead, Augie Relyea gets a phone call from Mike Brannon, demanding $150,000 ransom tomorrow at noon. But next day at noon, Augie Relyea doesn't answer the phone-- he figures Lamberto's gonna go up the river for 10 years anyway. So that night Mike kidnaps Syndicate lieutenant Max Templar. Next phone call, a defiant Augie Relyea yells, "We ain't payin' nothin'!" But when Max's body shows up in their dumb waiter, Augie has a change of plan; he decides to pay the money, (and then blast the kidnappers). The police find the phony cop car; Ness notices the serial number on the siren, and traces this back to the 14th Precinct, and Captain Bellows, who tells him it must be Mike Brannon kidnapping his old nemesis Lamberto. That night, Augie Relyea and his boys drop off the ransom dough; Augie tells Carmine he'll get a bonus if Lamberto "accidentally" gets a slug. Mike Brannon picks up the loot and takes it to Brannon's Auto Repair; the whole time, Augie and his boys are keeping a lookout. Lamberto's hoods find the Brannon brothers-- at Brannon's Auto Repair. (of all places.) They blast Denny with a chopper but he lives; they gun down Sean and Clarence permanently. Mike and Keir escape in a speeding car, but without the money. Ness and his men show up. They shoot one of Augie's boys, and arrest everyone else. In the hospital, Ness tells Denny he wants to take his 2 remaining brothers alive; Denny tells him about the sewer they used to play in as kids. But in the sewer, the brothers don't surrender, instead they start firing. Youngfellow shoots Keir. Mike shoots Tony Lamberto in the back, but he doesn't die right away. Ness' men capture Mike. A dying Tony asks Ness what the Feds in Washington said; Ness tells him they said "no deal." Nonetheless, Tony tells Ness to ask his wife Angie for the "special" set of books they kept; with his dying breath, Tony says, "Tell her... I love her." The books brought convictions of all the officers in the rackets organization. As for Mike Brannon, he was convicted of murder and kidnapping-- and was buried next to his brothers. (synopsis by: kdh)

Chicago, October 1932. Within minutes of the time the Globe's top reporter Carlton Edmunds was shot, Eliot Ness and his men are on the scene. Ostensibly it appears a stray bullet in a gunfight hit Edmunds; he was just a passerby in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Lee Hobson picks up 4-5 pieces of cotton batting-- the gunmen were firing blanks: except for the one bullet that hit Edmunds, who was 30 feet away. The "gunfight" was staged to fool the sole witness to the shooting: newsman Barney Rich. Barney tells Ness that earlier, Edmunds had said he was working on a story about scrap metal-- a story that would tear this town wide open. Just then, a cross-country flight, from East coast to West, has a stopover in Chicago; reporter Floyd Gibbons gets out at the terminal to make some phone calls. Globe-trotting reporter Floyd Gibbons is a fast-talking, straight-shooting whirlwind of activity; not even losing his left eye in World War I slowed him down-- for more than the past dozen years, he's bulldozed his way to the front-line of every major news-story in the world, often making himself and his exploits news. When he sees the headline that his buddy Carlton Edmunds was shot, Floyd blows off his trip to cover the war in Manchuria, and starts his own investigation in the Windy City. Meanwhile, mobster Vince "The Enforcer" Dastille goes to a meet of the Crime Syndicate, being held in the Decatur Export-Import Co.; the top boss is John Brecker, and he is surrounded by 4 of his lieutenants. Brecker doesn't like it that Dastille rubbed out Carlton Edmunds; Brecker also feels Dastille the bootlegger is living in the past: FDR will be elected next month, and the first thing he'll do when he takes office in March, is repeal Prohibition. Brecker is taking over all the junkyards he can; the Syndicate is making gigantic profits by selling scrap metal to Manchuria which is at war, and to European and Asian countries preparing for war. Floyd Gibbons drops in on Ness in his office; they both want to solve the Edmunds killing. But Ness is looking at a dead man, and tracing cars and checking ballistics; Floyd Gibbons wants to approach the case from the point of view of Edmunds while he was still alive. Floyd meets with Barney Rich and pumps him for all the info he can remember about Edmunds. Later, Ness is there when Capt. Jim Johnson fishes one of the cars used in the hit out of the river; it fits Barney's description, but the fingerprints have been wiped clean. Floyd drops in on the non-grieving widow Kitty Edmunds; he notices she has 2 glasses poured. Floyd says he will come back later tonight to take her to dinner. When Floyd leaves, a man comes out of Kitty's bedroom-- ironically, it's Vince Dastille (who rubbed out her husband); Kitty used to work for him, she was a singer in one of his nightclubs, but Kitty is slow to discard old lovers. Floyd goes to the park to while away some time; Dastille doesn't want to get into more trouble by killing another reporter, so he has a couple of his goons just rough Floyd up. Later, Floyd and Kitty are at a restaurant; but in typical Floyd fashion, he has to rush off somewhere before they eat. Meanwhile, Vince Dastille rubs out Willie Drummer because the cops fished out the car he'd ditched, none too well. Barney drops in on Floyd in his fancy hotel room; Barney asks him how he got the presidential suite. Floyd quips, "The desk clerk thinks I'm Wiley Post."* Barney tells Floyd that all the independent scrap dealers are selling out, and Dastille is buying. It's 1:30 a.m., but Floyd drops in on Dastille; Floyd says he knows about the scrap deals. When Floyd leaves, Dastille tells Solly to rub him out. But Solly squeals to Brecker; on Brecker's orders, Solly pumps Dastille full of lead. Meanwhile, Ness and his men find the cab driver who picked up Willie Drummer, and he identifies him through the mug sheets; Ness doesn't know Willie is already dead. Floyd goes to Kitty's apartment (it must be 3 a.m. by now). Floyd calls her a 14-carat phony; Kitty says she thought Vince would just pay off Carlton, not kill him. Then Kitty says, "I think I could fall in love with you, Floyd." (just how many guys is she gonna fall in love with?) Later, Solly takes Floyd to Brecker at the Decatur Export-Import Co. Ness and his men drop in on Kitty; Ness tells her Brecker killed Vince Dastille. Meanwhile, at Floyd's meeting with Brecker, Floyd calls him a war profiteer; Brecker gives Floyd $50,000 as a payoff, but as soon as Floyd leaves the office he tells Solly and Monk to kill him before he gets out of the building. Ness and his men show up. There's a shootout; Ness and men shoot Solly and Monk. Ness shoots Brecker who takes a header, over the stairway railing from 4 stories up. Floyd gives Ness the 50-grand, for the "policeman's welfare fund." The next day, the newspapers print Floyd's story about the crime Organization's link to foreign munitions; then Floyd hops on his plane to Manchuria. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[Wiley Post was the first pilot to fly solo around the world.]

June 1930. Speak owner Louie Akers-- about to go dry and out of business because Guzik couldn't supply him with hooch for that last 3 weeks-- buys his booze from another supplier. Akers pays Johnny $1,142 for barrels of beer and crates of whiskey, that some deliverymen just dropped off. Just then, a couple of Guzik's boys (Sully and Mac) drive up; they start blasting at the delivery truck (which still has plenty more booze in back), just as it's pulling away. Once the delivery truck is at a safe distance, Johnny gets out and hands the dough over to the booze supplier-- Eliot Ness! (Johnny is an undercover cop.) A short time later, Akers gets a visit from Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik and a few of his boys; Guzik is the overlord of the Syndicate that supplies 90% of the booze to Chicago. Guzik has Mac take his tommy-gun and riddle the booze full of holes; Akers is lucky Guzik doesn't have Mac fill him with holes, too-- Guzik only has Sully rough him up. When Akers says there are 118 other speak owners that need booze, Guzik says they all should come to his meet tomorrow night. Next morning, an upset District Attorney Beecher Asbury has a meeting with Ness.  It seems Ness must have supplied 100 speak owners with $1,100 worth of booze, because he turns in $111,000 he collected.  Beecher tell Ness firmly that he can't sell booze to hoods!  In the last 3 years, Ness and his Untouchables had smashed about $5-million worth of Guzik's distilleries; so now Guzik has given up brewing his own stuff, and is getting it from thousands of small, independent suppliers.  This is Ness' scheme to put the pressure on Guzik: by providing "competition," Guzik will have to take the risk of importing a huge supply of liquor.  Guzik will be gambling a fortune; Ness is taking a gamble, too-- Beecher tells him, in no uncertain terms, "I will not condone you subverting the law to uphold it." A half dozen of the top speak owners meet with Guzik, who promises to deliver all the booze they need in 2 weeks-- and they better wait, or else! Since Ness is watching Guzik like a hawk, Guzik decides to get George "Bugs" Moran to import the booze for him. Later, Ness drags Akers to his office for questioning; Ness filmed him buying the booze. (though how he filmed it is unclear, they didn't have small mini-cams back then.) Ness learns from Akers that his plan is working: Guzik intends to import liquor. And so Guzik meets with Moran, even though Moran holds him personally responsible for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Guzik will have his boy Sully truck 500,000 gallons of Canadian whiskey across the border into the U.S.; Moran will take it from there. Moran demands $500,000. Next day, Moran's boy Striber goes an office at the Litto theatre* to pick up the first payment. Guzik tries to buy Striber with money, to keep tabs on Moran. But Striber doesn't want money; all he wants is the name of the guy who killed his kid brother in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. So Guzik gives him a name: Sully. Moran will move the whiskey by train; 500,000 gallons in 68 boxcars.  (that's 7,353 gallons per boxcar; at about 9 pounds per gallon, that's 66,000 pounds per boxcar.) Moran forces Albert Lane, owner of a railroad siding, to cooperate by threatening his family.  On June 18, at the Lake Huron Packing Co. in Track City, Michigan, 2 trains-- each with 68 boxcars, and identical serial numbers-- are loaded.  One train has apples, and will be shunted at a siding halfway to Chicago; the other train has $6-million worth of whiskey.  When Moran doesn't need Lane anymore, he shoots him. Striber, all this time, had put off shooting Sully-- but now, surprisingly, Moran gives him the order to kill Sully.  Striber obliges-- he pumps 6 slugs into Sully. The bodies of Lake and Sully lead Ness and his men to Track City.  Some booze that was stolen by the janitor leads Ness to a train route; but when Ness and his men inspect a train in Hillsgrove, all they find is apples.  Ness drives to Chicago; the apple train is shunted, and the whiskey train is rolling again.  When Ness gets to the Chicago Freight Yards, he gets a surprise: finding one particular train is like finding a needle in a haystack.  1,200 trains enter and leave Chicago daily; there are 80,000 loaded freight cars there right now. Rico and Lee Hobson sneak into Guzik's office and tap a microphone into the phone; they overhear the name Striber, so they know Moran is implicated.  Striber had phoned Guzik to tell him Moran wants another $500,000.  Later, Hobson tails Striber to the freight yards; Hobson phones Ness.  Guzik and Moran and all their boys are there; Ness and his men show up.  While Lee Hobson, Rico, Youngfellow and Rossman arrest Guzik, Moran and half a dozen hoods, Ness chases Striber.  Ness and Striber shoot it out; Striber dies in front of a boxcar-- ironically, one of the stray bullets penetrated the boxcar, making it leak whiskey.  Winchell: "The deal between Jake Guzik and Bugs Moran, perhaps the 2 strangest bedfellows in the history of crime, ended disastrously.  Jake Guzik could never recover from the loss of $6-million of bootleg liquor." (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[to add some authenticity to the episode, the Litto Theatre is showing a newsreel about the Graf Zeppelin.]

June 1929.* A body is dumped into Lake Michigan; when it's fished out 3-4 weeks later, on July 10, the Bureau of Missing Persons has a John Doe on its hands. And so, Lt. Agatha Stewart and her sidekick Frank Benson are on the case. At the City Morgue, all the coroner can tell about the decomposed body is the approximate age, 50, and that the deceased might have had a bad heart. Outside, Lt. Stewart runs into Eliot Ness, who came down to do an I.D. on a Joe Fuselli. (not the Joe Fuselli from "The Scarface Mob.") The morgue will keep the body for 10 days. July 20, in Potter's Field, the John Doe is buried in the rain; there are no mourners, only Lt. Stewart and reporter Walter Rimer attend. But then a clue-- a huge wreath is delivered by O'Banion florists; the delivery man doesn't know who ordered it, so Lt. Stewart goes to the flower shop. It had been owned by the notorious gangster Dion O'Banion (1892-1924), until he was rubbed out 5 years ago by Johnny Torrio. Now, the shop is owned by Gerald Feeney, an O'Banion henchman who made peace with the Syndicate, and retains the flower shop as a front. All Lt. Stewart finds out is that a woman paid $175 cash for the wreath; she confiscates the money, and tries to find out from which bank a $175 withdrawal was made on July 19. Meanwhile, Ness and Lee Hobson get a break in the case they're working on: a booze shipment worth over $1-million being smuggled in from Canada. They get a tip from Mike Fuselli, brother of bullet-riddled Joe Fuselli; this leads Ness and his men to the Pink Lion, a speakeasy on the Southside. The only mobster big enough to handle this million dollar deal is Jake Portuguese. Ness gets a setback when a speeding car dumps the body of Mike Fuselli onto the sidewalk. August. Lt. Stewart tracks down Claire Simmons, who made the $175 withdrawal. But all Lt. Stewart finds out is the name of Claire's boxer boyfriend, Sonny Dale. Later, Claire phones Rudy Portuguese, Jake's younger brother, and tells him a cop was snooping around. Lt. Stewart and Officer Harrison arrest Sonny. While he's in jail, Lt. Stewart gives him the bad news that Claire's been killed by a hit-and-run car; Sonny says Jake Portuguese did it. October 31, the big booze convoy rolls into Chicago; it's delivered by Arnie Retzik from Canada. Eliot Ness and his men, along with Lt. Stewart, pay a visit to Jake Portuguese's mansion, and find it empty. They find a couple of clues: prescription nitroglycerine pills (taken by people with heart problems), and Jake's car in the garage has a broken right headlight. Ness says if the glass matches, they've got Jake on a hit-and-run for Claire's death. Arnie Retzik meets with Rudy, the collection man for his brother Jake. But Rudy tells him Jake is dead; Rudy wants to get half of the million dollar payment. When Retzig wants to pay him off with only a couple of Gs, Rudy fills him full of lead. Meanwhile, Lt. Stewart finally has proof, through dental records, that her John Doe is Jake Portuguese. Ness and his men put a 24-hour-a-day tail on Rudy; one night Lee Hobson follows Rudy to a big warehouse at 6th & Beacon, and phones Ness. Inside the warehouse Rudy-- who has learned his lesson and goes back to the old story that brother Jake is alive and he's just his collection man-- picks up the $1-million payment. The 4 top gangster bosses inspect the huge booze shipment. Just then, Ness and his men crash through the warehouse doors with their car. There's a big shootout. When Rudy makes a run for it, Ness guns him down. The 4 bigshots are captured alive, but Rudy's a goner-- before he dies, he tells Ness that he didn't kill Jake, he had a heart attack; but he did run down Claire with Jake's car. And so, later, the body of John Doe is given a proper funeral; since Jake Portuguese was a top gangster, all the others send him flowers-- from O'Banion florists. There was only one problem: nobody was left to mourn.(synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[note: for some reason, they never mention the year. But they do say the flower shop "had been owned by the notorious gangster Dion O'Banion until he was rubbed out 5 years ago by Johnny Torrio." Since O'Banion was rubbed out in 1924, and that was 5 years ago, that makes this 1929.]

1929. Eliot Ness gets another anonymous phone tip: a big meet at a warehouse on Grover Street, Nitti and all the boys will be there. At the warehouse, about 20 hoods are putting their record books into a huge trunk. Since Al Capone got nailed because of bookkeeping, from now on nobody is to keep any written records; there will only be one central file, and the bookkeeper will be Leo Stazak. Leo tells the boys that records, with notes on accounts receivable, would tip the Feds as to how the speak owners do business. Leo will run the central file, everybody else is just to use the phone and deal in cash. Then Nitti gives a little talk: they all know what happened to Artie Graff, he ran a good speak-- but he got busted because Ness got a hold of his records. Nitti adds laconically, "The Organization has voted to give his widow a few bucks in memory of her departed husband." (and the guy's not even dead yet-- enough said.) Ness and his men use their cars to crash through the warehouse doors. Nitti tells his boys, "No guns. We're clean." Leo Stazak douses the records with a gallon of gasoline, and turns them into a blazing inferno. Ness takes all the hoods downtown. In the interrogation room, a defiant Nitti ironically tells Ness the fire was no big deal-- what's he trying to do, make a federal case out of it? Ness says it IS a federal case. But with the evidence a pile of ashes, Ness has no choice but to let Nitti go. Nitti tells Ness he doesn't like being interrogated like this-- and as a parting shot Nitti says, "Ness, you operate like a cheap hood." Outside the Federal Building, Nitti is looking for his car, which is nowhere in sight. Nitti grouses to Leo Stazak, "My boys are probably still lookin' for that 2-bit lawyer of mine! I can't depend on nobody." Leo offers Nitti a ride in his car. Nitti likes the way Leo torched the records; Nitti says ask for something and it's his. Leo's modest request is that Nitti give his cousin Angie (who is driving the car) a job. Nitti agrees, and adds, "Peanuts, peanuts, nickels and dimes." Then Nitti says, "Tell me what you really want," and they both have a good laugh. Nitti needs to raise $1.25-million, so he can buy a 60-truck convoy of Canadian whiskey. Leo says all he needs is 300-grand to start things rolling, and he'll double Nitti's money in the stock market. Leo manages to accomplish this by getting Anton Ryba, a master forger who owns a print shop, to run off duplicate stock certificates. A week later, after liquidating, Leo gives Nitti over half a million bucks in cash. Nitti says, "Let it ride." But then, there's the stock market crash: October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. Leo can no longer use his phony explanation (that he's picking winning stocks all the time) to cover the fact that he was really using phony certificates. But Leo plays the stock market crash to his advantage: he tells Nitti the half million in cash is gone, when he really has the cash in his suitcase. He'll get away with it, if only he can fast-talk Nitti out of filling him full of lead. Leo says he guessed wrong, but the whole world guessed wrong on the market. Nitti won't kill the guy for trying. Then Leo outlines a new scheme. Maybe they can get the $1.25-million whiskey convoy without money. (The whole time Leo is explaining his scheme, Nitti is resting his right arm on the suitcase filled with half a million bucks, the money Leo said was lost in the stock market crash!) Leo says they can get the whiskey in return for services. Nitti sarcastically snaps, "Fine, fine-- and whatta we pay for this? What are we, a bunch of Indians? Whatta we give 'em for this, beads?" Leo explains that they can get their share of the profits by offering the whiskey owners storage and distribution for their booze. Meanwhile, Ness pays a visit to Anton Ryba about the phony stock certificates he printed. After Ness leaves, Leo pays Ryba a visit. Leo doesn't want him talking to Ness-- or worse, to Nitti-- so Leo pays Ryba off with a slug in the pump. That night, Nitti is at the Bazaar Baths club (specializing in Turkish baths), getting a rubdown; Ness walks in. Nitti quips, "I got the whole place tonight, Ness. Why don't you go down to the Y?" Ness brings up how much Nitti must have lost on Black Tuesday. Nitti says, "Yeah, the whole world went down the drain," and then he adds sarcastically, "except you guys work for the government. But you ain't interested in money, are ya, Ness?" Nitti says he'll never get him on a tax rap, and then Nitti heads to the showers. Ness follows him into the shower room and keeps talking. Nitti can't believe it, "You still here?" The masseur hoses Nitti down with two hoses. Ness talks about the stocks. Nitti retorts, "I told ya I lost, whatta ya gonna do now, laugh?" Then Nitti snaps at the masseur, "Whatta ya tryin' ta do, drill holes in me?!" Ness shows Nitti the phony stock certificates. After Ness leaves, Leo visits Nitti, who is now in the steam room. A steaming Nitti snaps at Leo, "What if I fit you out for a pair of cement boots?!" Leo fast-talks his way out of it, saying he didn't double-cross Nitti, his cousin Angie did-- Angie pocketed the cash and faked the certificates, so he killed him; Leo swears he is loyal. With a phone call, Nitti verifies that Angie is dead. Using some curious logic, Nitti says, "Any guy who'd kill his own cousin is loyal clear through." But later Ness tails Leo, and finds him with the cash, and arrests him; Leo was tried and executed for murder. As for Nitti, he was sent up for 18 months, on the tax evasion charge he'd tried so hard to avoid. But he let bygones be bygones when he sent flowers to Leo Stazak's funeral.

October 16, 1930. Jackson Parker is a small-time bootlegger, he has his henchman Benny deliver bottles of booze to places on a college campus: student unions, fraternity houses. Parker is arrogant, he tells Benny he could "throw him out with the rest of the garbage." Parker has big plans: he thinks he's meeting with Frank Nitti. At the Montmartre club, Nitti is telling his assembled lieutenants, "And after we get that pipeline set up, the feds will have to dig up every street in Chicago to find it." A round of laughter. Harry, who is guarding the door, tells Nitti that the punk is here; Nitti says to throw him out, but then decides to let him in for amusement. When they laugh at Parker's small-time bootlegging operation on a college campus, arrogant Parker says, "I thought I'd be talking to a more intelligent group of men." Nitti warns him, "One more like that, and the ice is gonna crack right out from under you." Now that they've had their laugh, Nitti has Parker thrown out. Although Parker had bragged to Nitti that his operation could move 100 cases/day, Benny only sells 4 bottles of bad hooch that day-- all of them land the students in the hospital, one of the students is Jimmy Farris. Ness meets with Jimmy and his older brother, Associate Professor Harold Farris. Jimmy is temporarily (possibly permanently) blind from wood alcohol (methanol) contamination; Jimmy gives Eliot a description of Benny. Ness and his men are on the case, they cover the college campus. The newspaper headlines read: "4 students blinded by bootleg whiskey." The papers call whoever did it scum-- the editors would have been even more vitriolic had they known that Parker did it on purpose (it seems Parker wanted to warn students of the dangers of cheep hooch, so they would be willing to pay more for the good stuff). Parker meets with Nitti again; this time Nitti slugs him one. Parker swears he's innocent. Later, Parker kills Benny, trying to make him the scapegoat; he calls Nitti and tells him the problem is taken care of. Then Parker meets with Nitti again. Parker gives Nitti some big talk-- he promises him distribution at all the major campuses: University of Chicago, Northwestern, DePaul, Loyola, the medical schools. Nitti sneers, "You think I can send my boys in there to hustle booze? They'd stick out like Primo Carnera at a midgets' convention."* Parker tells Nitti he won't use gangsters to push the booze, he will hire ordinary men who are desperate for employment in the Depression. Parker says, "They will blend into the surroundings like chameleons," then arrogant Parker talks down to Nitti, adding, "those are lizards that change their colors." Nitti snaps, "I know what they are. And I know what you are. I don't like you." However, Nitti agrees to supply him with booze for 30 days, and he'd better move 100 cases of whiskey/day. Nitti says, if anything goes wrong, it's Parker's neck. Then Parker proceeds to hire salesmen-- he'll only hire men with wives and kids, and Parker threatens to harm their children should they squeal to the cops if they get arrested; (Parker is scum). October 24, the distribution on college campuses starts; this is the big Snowball. Ness arrests salesman Paul Meadows and grills him; but Meadows won't talk because he loves his 3 kids. Ness takes Meadows to the hospital, to meet with 19-year-old Jimmy who is still blind, and may be permanently. Meadows says that the man responsible threatened to hurt his family. At the hospital, Ness finds out that a girl, 18-year-old Barbara Harrison, has just died from wood alcohol. At the Montmartre club, an angry Ness confronts Nitti; Ness dramatically smashes a couple of bottles of whiskey on his table. Ness tells him that 4 students are blind, and Barbara is dead. As for Benny, Ness gives Nitti the revelation that his fingerprints were all over the still; so now Nitti knows that Benny was working for Parker the whole time. Ness tells Nitti to give him the name of the man responsible, and he'll put him away for half a dozen lifetimes. But we can see from the look on Nitti's face that he wants to take care of this himself. Late on the night of October 29, a speeding car dumps the body of Jackson Parker on the sidewalk, in front of Ness, Rico and Lee Hobson. As a way of showing this was to get the scum who distributed the bad hooch, the body had been soaked in wood alcohol. The scum was too dirty to live, even in prison-- this time, Nitti did Ness a favor by bumping off Parker. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[boxing trivia: Primo Carnera was a boxer who stood 6'10". He became the heavyweight champion of the world in 1933.]

Late Summer 1930. It started in Wichita, Kansas: a staggering gait called the Jake Dance. (we see a man staggering along using a cane in each hand.) There are many different kinds of alcohol, but the only kind that is safe to drink is ethyl alcohol; many people had been drinking Ginger Jake, which is contaminated with methyl alcohol, also called "wood alcky." And people who drank a lot of it often suffered permanent loss of muscle coordination, and developed a staggering gait called the Jake Dance. Many died. In Wichita, 1% of the adult population was stricken. So the U.S. Health Department calls for its top guns: Associate Surgeon General Dr. Victor Garr (about age 50, with a lot of experience and a deep care for patients), and his assistant, Dr. Daniel Gifford (about age 30, inexperienced and has a habit of always doing things by the book). Right now, they are swamped with hundreds of patients in the hospital. Dr. Garr sees his sidekick going over some notes. Dr. Garr snaps sarcastically, "Can I get you some coffee, doctor? What do you think you're doing-- writing a thesis? The roof's falling in on these people." Dr. Gifford respectfully answers, "We're going back tonight, we'll need this information." Dr. Garr retorts, "We need a hand with these patients-- play games with your statistics on the train." Dr. Gifford respectfully but firmly says, "I didn't deserve that, doctor." (this is drama. But the name of the show is "The Untouchables," not "Ben Casey.") In Chicago, Ness and his men are on the case when the Contine Co., specializing in cosmetic bases and essential oils, is robbed of 21 of their 55-gallon drums containing hair tonic formula: 34% alcohol. It could be cut and sold as Ginger Jake. (but the owner, Nicholas Contine, arranged to have one of his own boys, Iggy, pull off the "robbery.") Dr. Garr reports to the Chicago offices of the U.S. Public Health Services. There were 1,200 cases of Ginger Jake poisoning in Wichita, 1% of the population; the theft of 1,155 gallons of the hair tonic could lead to 1% of the Chicago population being poisoned-- a city of 3,375,000. September 7, 1930, 3 weeks after the robbery, the first case of Ginger Jake poisoning shows up in Chicago. At 5:45 one morning, at a time most decent folks are getting up to go to work, Ada Spencer is just coming home, after being out all night with a man (who isn't her husband) and drinking. But it is her daughter, 17-year-old Mary Kay Spencer, who falls down; she thinks she is temporarily paralyzed. Mary Kay is rushed to the hospital. Dr. Gifford tries to find out from her where she'd been getting the Ginger Jake, so others won't be poisoned; she doesn't want to tell. Then, Dr. Gifford accidentally lets it slip that 1,200 people in Wichita who drank it are "paralyzed for life." Mary Kay tells him where she got the stuff. Dr. Garr sternly tells Dr. Gifford you don't "destroy a human life" to get information. Ness and his men track down the truck that had its front fender damaged in the robbery; Iggy and another hood try to make a getaway in the truck, Ness and Lee Hobson shoot, and the truck crashes into some fuel pumps, setting off an explosion. They arrest Iggy; the other hood is dead. Then Dr. Gifford and Lee Hobson track down the drugstore where Mary Kay got her Ginger Jake-- ironically, the proprietor is her own uncle, Marlon Spencer. In the following weeks,* more cases of Ginger Jake poisoning show up all over Chicago. One night, Iggy Minter is being transferred to the Cooke County jail. But a truck runs into the police car, and in the confusion Iggy escapes. It was all planned by Ness, the truck driver is Enrico Rossi. Iggy speeds off in a conveniently-located cab.** He is tailed by Ness and his men and the doctors. Iggy leads them straight to a warehouse, where Nicholas Contine has set up a Ginger Jake lab; by staging that "robbery" earlier, no one would suspect him of being the supplier. There is a big shootout. Ness winds up shooting Iggy, who takes a header off a stairway from 30 feet up. Contine is arrested. Dr. Garr and Dr. Gifford confiscate some of the stuff for quantitative analysis. Crooked druggist Marlon Spencer died in prison in 1934; his niece Mary Kay Spencer inherited the drugstore, and ran it honestly for over 20 years-- and she never sold any Ginger Jake. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- *[Walter Winchell says "April 22," but this doesn't fit the timeframe at all. It should probably be September 22. Whoever wrote Winchell's lines wasn't checking the script.]

Jazz was born in the Roaring Twenties. It's now 1930, and on Chicago's Gold Coast there's a nightspot called "Goose Gander's Golden Egg" jazz club. Blues player Eddie Moon is blowing his hot cornet with the jazz band. But then mobster Lucky talks to Ray "Goose" Gander; Lucky wants him to carry Lou Cagan's hooch in his joint. Ray refuses, the strongest drink he serves in his place is coffee. Then Lucky's hitman plays some music of his own-- with his tommy gun; he shoots up the joint. But tonight Lucky isn't so lucky; an hour later, Eliot Ness and Lee Hobson and Enrico Rossi grab him. This is the 3rd little, independent club he's shot up; the previous 2 were the Whoopee Club and the Lion's Den. Ness runs him in. Meanwhile Lou Cagan (Mr. Big of the Chicago northside), who owns the lavish gambling resort the Parthenon Hotel, is getting some bad news from Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Lepke, representing the New York syndicate, tells Cagan they sent him 700 cases of booze, but he hasn't sold any; Cagan says things are slow, and the booze will start moving again. Lepke tells him to open 10 new outlets now, or else! Later, Ray Gander gets another visitor who tells him to sign up with Cagan: Ness. Eliot tells him to buy Cagan's rotgut, find out where he gets his booze and stores it, and then give him the information, so he can put Cagan away once and for all. Eddie Moon, who has been listening in on this conversation, blows taps: if Ray "Goose" crosses Cagan, it'll be Blues for a Gone Goose. Eddie really loves the old slob, so he talks him out of signing with Cagan and double-crossing him. Ironically, this backfires. That night, Cagan and his wife Bunny visit Ray's nightclub; Lucky rubs out Ray. Enrico Rossi finds the body; Rossi yells at Lucky to "hold it!" Lucky draws his gun, but Rossi shoots him, seriously wounding him. Ness, wanting to keep Lucky alive in the hospital, leaks the story that he's dead. Next day, Cagan sends his wife Bunny to Eddie, to give him money for Ray's funeral. Bunny denies that Cagan had Ray rubbed out. Eddie says, "You must be blind or stupid or as crummy as he is." She slaps him; they do some heavy smooching. Then Eddie says sarcastically, "The loyal, noble wife. I make one pass..." and she slaps him again. The dame's dizzy for him. Eddie Moon's out for revenge against Cagan and Bunny. Eddie tells Cagan he wants to reopen the Golden Goose, and be partners; really, he wants to get information to Ness. His tips lead to Ness smashing 1,400 cases of booze. When Eddie tells Bunny that he wants to kill Cagan, she falls head-over-heels in love with him; they start shacking up. When Cagan finds out Lucky is still alive, he has one of his hoods lob a pineapple into the hospital room; they don't care that the room holds 4 patients. They get blown up, along with a cop. An hour later, an angry Ness confronts Eddie and tells him that 2 patients, an intern and a cop were killed along with Lucky. Now, Ness' raids are fast and frequent. Eddie thinks Bunny squealed that Lucky was in the hospital; Bunny thinks Eddie is tipping off Ness. The whole time, they're still smooching and shacking up. Bunny loves Eddie, and leaves her husband for him. But Eddie was just motivated by revenge; he lies to Cagan, and tells him Bunny has been squealing to Ness. Cagan shoots Bunny; in the shootout, Ness and Lee Hobson shoot Cagan. And so Cagan's bootlegging operation is crushed. As for Eddie, who betrayed the woman who loved him, he hung up his cornet and never played the blues again. (synopsis by: kdh)

1933. Prohibition ends. But that doesn't mean the war on crime is over for Eliot Ness and his Untouchables. The syndicate has already moved on to a more profitable-- and more deadly-- source of income: narcotics. By September, Ness and his men had found and destroyed every major source of narcotics. By early October, the price of a bindle of heroin jumps from $20 to $50. Nitti and his boys want to take advantage of this seller's market. Nitti has a dope smuggler named Yang brought in from Shanghai. At the Montmartre Club, 5 lieutenants put their money on the table: elderly Tony, 350 Gs; Mike, 275; ailing Sam Weidman, 600; Kurt Koenig, 350; and Larry Bass, 425. Nitti quips, "Two million bucks-- there ain't been that much dough on this table since we bought the Southside." When Sam Weidman asks how can they be sure Yang will deliver, Nitti snaps, "Whatta ya think we're dealin' with, some 2-bit punk?" He walks over to a huge globe, a yard in diameter. "He's got poppy fields in places that ain't even on this thing." The junk is already here, and since Nitti likes to do things right under Ness' nose, this time he has the drugs stashed inside the big globe in his office, literally a Globe of Death. Nitti says, "100 pounds of pure heroin-- and by the time we get through cuttin' it up, it oughtta be worth about 10 million bucks." Kurt Koenig is anxious to have them cut up the stuff. Nitti says they'll sit on it, he tells them, "You bums don't know when you're well off. Last month this stuff was worth $4-million. Now, thanks to Ness, it's worth $10-million. And by next week." All the lieutenants but Koenig like the idea. Koenig says, that's okay for those that have the silk stocking district-- but in his area, the waterfront, when junkies don't get their fix, they come after him with a razor. Nitti gives him a piece of free advice: "Duck." And Nitti laughs. Nitti decides to keep the globe in a bank, specifically the Great Lakes Bank & Trust Company; only Nitti and his 5 lieutenants know about it. Ness and Lee Hobson fly to San Francisco, and check with the U.S. Customs Office about ships that came in from Shanghai. Nitti has one of his boys, Augie, take a big crate (with the globe in it) to Max Weidman (Sam Weidman's uncle) who owns a moving truck; Max takes the crate to the bank. Meanwhile, Larry Bass is assembling a trio of experts to help him rob the bank: Mr. Harman, Duke Barker, and (as soon as he gets out of prison where he just served 7 years for manslaughter) his old childhood chum, Whitey Grosse. Whitey is the former bodyguard of Jack "Legs" Diamond. Whitey comments that nobody but Larry showed up; Larry Bass tells him, in your whole life, you can count on only 3 people: your father, your mother, and the guy you grew up with. Bass and his boys work in underground tunnels, drilling through the wall of the bank's basement; they will use nitroglycerin to blow the vault. Ness is following leads. He's already figured out about the globe being used to smuggle the heroin; he finds out it was sent to 5691 22nd Avenue in Cicero-- right next door to Nitti's Montmartre Club. Ness and Lee Hobson, with a search warrant, visit Nitti in the kitchen of the Montmartre, (but the globe has already been shipped to the bank), so Ness finds nothing. Nitti tells Ness, "So you take your warrant and your nosey friend and get outta here." Ness leaves; Nitti is worried that Ness found out about the globe so fast. Nitti tells Augie to rub out Max Weidman; Augie says, but he's Sam Weidman's uncle. Nitti quips, "So we send flowers." Bass and his 3 hoods break into the vault; Bass puts 100 pounds of heroin into a big suitcase, the others go for the money. Then Bass double-crosses Harman and shoots him; Whitey Grosse double-crosses Duke Barker and shoots him, but Duke shoots back and seriously wounds him. Larry Bass helps his wounded friend Whitey, and they escape. Meanwhile Ness, who has traced the globe shipment to the bank, gets the bank president to open the place; in the basement, they find the blown vault. Nitti shows up. Ness tells him his money is insured; but as for the empty globe, Ness rubs it in: not only is the heroin gone, Nitti has to pretend it never belonged to him in the first place. Nitti's plenty sore. He calls an emergency meet at the Club Montmartre. Only Nitti and his 5 lieutenants knew about the globe in the bank; whoever did the heist is "gonna get measured for a cement overcoat." So Nitti uses a process of elimination. Whoever did it must be planning on taking over; that eliminates Sam Weidman who is sick and only has 1 or 2 years to live, he's got no long-range plans. Elderly Tony could have had the chair years ago if he'd wanted it; he's too smart to pull something like this. Mike is too cautious to pull something risky like this; Nitti says, "Mike is no gambler, he's conservative like Guzik-- he turns my stomach, but he didn't steal my junk." Kurt Koenig was the only one who objected to storing the stuff, and Nitti says he knew Koenig was desperate; so Nitti had him watched, and he'd done nothing, talked to no one. So that leaves Larry Bass. Nitti roughs up Bass. Nitti and his boys take him to the hotel room Bass had rented for Whitey Grosse. But Whitey had already been taken to the hospital. As for the suitcase with heroin, it shows up-- with Ness carrying it. Niti, Bass, and the rest are taken into custody but Nitti brags that he'll beat the rap. Larry Bass testified in court that Nitti knew nothing about the heroin and proclaimed his own innocence. This did no good for Bass because he got the electric chair but Nitti got off. As for Whitey Grosse, he died of the gunshot wounds before he could be brought to trial. (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- [this was Bruce Gordon's 3rd and last appearance for season 4. In all, he had portrayed Frank Nitti 27 times in 118 regular-season shows and most of those episodes are fan favorites]]

Chicago, Spring 1931.  That night, Ness and his men are in their car; it's an 80 mph chase to catch a guy running whiskey for Solly Girsch.  The 19-year-old driver has a high-speed accident; his car overturns and explodes in flames.  Solly Girsch is the king of bootleg whiskey; he has 500 "mom & pop" stores pushing his hooch-- all together, they form the biggest single outlet of whiskey in Chicago.  Next night, top boss Harry Mastrogeorge-- along with Solly's crooked lawyer Billy Baron and about half a dozen of Mastrogeorge's lieutenants-- are throwing a party for Solly, celebrating his getting his 500th outlet.  They bring in a 2-foot-high cake.  Solly quips he wishes a blonde would jump out of the cake. (she'd be pretty short.) But Solly has an announcement; he's buying 1,000 gallons of whiskey a day from them, and he wants to cut the price he pays from $8 a gallon to $4.  They all balk, and Pete Topchinski  is vocal about it.  Big bucks are involved-- it's a $2-million a year business. Meanwhile, at the City Morgue, a grieving Charles Tarasovich identifies his son Jimmy, the driver of the car; Ness talks to Tarasovich.  Later, Tarasovich goes to Ness' office.  Ness has been trying for 2 years to document a case against Solly Girsch that will hold up in court; Ness and Tarasovich set up a sting operation.  Tarasovich owns a small grocery store, just the type of shop Solly uses; he meets with Solly.  Solly will set him up as a distributor; Tarasovich will get 2 gallons a day, and pay $12 a gallon; he'll sell it in bottles at $2 per pint-- that's $16 per gallon, netting him $4 profit per gallon. At $8 a day, 6 days a week, that's an extra $48 a week; in those Depression days, that can make the difference between going bankrupt or not.  To seal the deal, Solly gives Tarasovich this big sob story about how he reminds him of his own dear, departed father; and Solly says he loved Jimmy "like he was my own son."  The moment Tarasovich is out the door, Solly laughs at him. Harry Mastrogeorge calls a meet; again, Pete is vocal about not giving in to Solly.  But when Solly shows up, he's brought some "life insurance" with him-- is new partner is Eddie "Deuces" Kobler of the Detroit Purple Gang.  They vote to give Solly his price cut.  Deuces makes a point of it to say, "Pete, you're lookin' good"; that night, Deuces takes out his shotgun and gives Pete both barrels, blasting him into oblivion. A month later, April 14, Ness has the police start the raids; they bust 6 shopkeepers, including Tarasovich; Solly has crooked lawyer Baron spring them all immediately. Now Tarasovich works with Ness on the next part of the sting: Tarasovich tells Solly he won't sell the whiskey anymore-- this prompts a visit in person by Solly, who gets him to say he'll sell again. Solly sells him 2 gallons, and Tarasovich pays for it with marked money. Outside, Ness, Rico, Lee Hobson and Youngfellow are waiting; they spring on Solly. Now they've got him, he'll get a year in prison for this. But in the meantime, Solly is out on bail-- and Ness and his men will have to protect Tarasovich around the clock. Ness has Tarasovich's wife Anna, and his sister, relocated out of town.  Solly doesn't want to bump off Tarasovich, all 500 of his distributors would rebel and quit if he did.  So Solly has Deuce shoot Tarasovich's uncle George; over the phone, Solly tells Tarasovich that he'll kill his wife and all his cousins, too, if he testifies.  Deuce also torches George's house.  June 23, 1931, the trial starts.  But Tarasovich won't testify when D.A. Beecher Asbury questions him.  Ness and Beecher call for a recess, telling the judge the witness has been under coersion.  Ness helps Tarasovich regain his nerve, and he testifies.  Solly was convicted.  But whereas Eliot Ness had toppled Solly from his throne, bootleg shops would remain a fixture of Chicago until the Repeal of Prohibition.  (synopsis by: kdh) --------------------------------- [note: the title of this episode comes from the Bible passage about "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The other Untouchables show to take a title from the Bible was episode # 33 "The Mark of Cain".] [note: last appearance of Frank Wilcox as District Attorney Beecher Asbury.]

Chicago, 1931. On the Southside, on a dead end street, there is a junkyard-- but it's really a front for a criminal empire run by Victor Salazar. Ness and his men are on the case; they keep intercepting his trucks, carrying shipments of booze. Barney Howe tells his boss Salazar that his problem is the operation's too spread out; but one big shipment of narcotics will give him the Northside, too-- Barney says he will "put Chicago in his pocket." Late at night, they get a call from a hood named Kierson who has info in his briefcase: the time and route of a $2-million commercial shipment of morphine crystals to a medical research center; he's to meet them at the corner of Mohawk and 23rd in 10 minutes. But rival hood Steve Ballard takes out his silencer, and pumps Kierson full of lead, and makes off with the briefcase. Around midnight, Salazar orders all his boys to find Kierson; ironically, one of Salazar's "Enforcers" is Steve Ballard, the guy who bumped Kierson off! But it seems Ballard hates his boss; Ballard has a scar on his cheek from where Salazar cut him once, "for not doing as he's told." (Fred Santos doesn't like Salazar, either.) A couple of nights later, Ballard and Santos-- armed with tear-gas canisters, gas masks and choppers-- steal the morphine shipment at the train station; Santos gets shot by a cop, so Ballard carries the 6 small crates of morphine off by himself. Ballard also comes up with the dough to have chemist Martin Pegler turn the 150 kilograms of crystal morphine into a more useable form. Ness and his men show up at Salazar's fancy office, on the 2nd floor of a building on the junk yard site; Ness has a search warrant. Ness suspects Salazar hijacked the morphine, since Fred Santos, who was shot at the scene of the crime, was one of his boys. Barney Howe takes a swing at Ness, to deliberately get himself arrested. At the police station, he tells Ness his real name is Barney Retzik-- he's been working undercover with the Narcotics Bureau. He asks Ness to take the pressure off Salazar for a while; Ness balks at first, he and his men have been working for 6 months on the case. But Barney Retzik promises Ness, when Salazar gets his hands on the morphine, he'll contact Ness and he can arrest Salazar. Ness goes along with it. Meanwhile Max, who has a legit restaurant (where Rosie sings and plays the piano), is one of the big narcotics distributors; he has a meet with 3 other big distributors: Monett, Leopold and Meyerhof-- they'll raise cash to buy the hijacked morphine. Pegler, working in a lab (in a condemned building at 1060 Buffalo Street), has converted the stuff and put it into candy: which now has 10% heroin. (morphine can be turned into heroin by using acetic anhydride and heating to 176 degrees.) Steve Ballard offers to take Pegler to the train station to get out of town, but takes him for a "one-way ride" instead. Ballard plans on leaving town with his main squeeze Rosie, right after his payoff. Salazar had set Max up with his district a long time ago; Max was under strict orders never to buy dope from anyone but Salazar. In his office, Salazar sweats the truth out of Max-- he admits that he and Monett, Leopold and Meyerhof are scheduled to meet at 1060 Buffalo Street that night, to buy the hijacked stuff. Salazar has Max rubbed out; then Salazar tells Barney he will be there tonight, to get "all the guys that double-crossed me." (he doesn't know that Barney is setting him up for a double-cross.) That night at 1060 Buffalo Street, Ballard and Barney show up; also Monett, Leopold, Meyerhof and their boys-- while Salazar with a couple of his hitmen wait outside on the sidewalk, and Ness and his men are hidden from view, ready to strike. Monett and the other 2 distributors give Ballard a big pile of cash, and start to walk outside with armloads of the heroin-laced candy. As they're going down the steps, Salazar yells, "You crumbs don't buy from me-- you don't buy!" And Salazar and his boys gun them down. Ness and his men attack, there's a big shootout. Inside, Ballard shoots at Barney-- but Barney returns the fire and kills Ballard. 5 gang members are captured, about as many are shot dead; Ness himself shot Salazar. Ness says to Barney, "It doesn't make any difference now whether Salazar's with possession or not." And so Barney Retzik, undercover narcotics man, had helped Ness and his Untouchables to smash a major narcotics ring. (synopsis by: kdh)

January 1932. Smalltime bootlegger Al Remp is serving 3-5 years in prison; he's done 3 years and is up for parole next week, but it seems he won't get it. The guards put him in solitary, and Remp has a visitor: Eliot Ness. Remp tells him, "I got nothing to say to you." But Ness tells him that if he agrees to help him nail bigtime bootlegger "Fat" Augie Strom, his former boss, he'll get that parole; or else 2 more years is a long time. Remp is married to a good woman; the whole time he's been in prison, she did "stand by her man." Remp agrees to help Ness. "Fat" Augie Strom is a very heavyset man who perspires even in winter, his operation is at a meat packing plant by the Chicago stockyards; he likes the large refrigeration section where the meat is prepared, it's nice and cool in there-- he's the Man in the Cooler. A big man with a big temper, he has "Bitsy" Whyller rub out Pete Laffey for bungling a job. Remp is reunited with his faithful wife Marcie; but he also has to meet with Ness, who gives him 50 bucks to buy a nice suit, and a gun for protection, so he can rejoin the Strom organization. Next day, Remp meets with Strom; perfect timing, there just happens to be an opening (since Pete got bumped off). Augie Strom is decentralizing, he's moving 7,000 cases of booze, worth 850 grand, to various warehouses across Chicago. Remp steals a duplicate of the manifest. When Bitsy tails Remp, and catches him phoning Ness, he's going to take him to Strom. But Remp shoots Bitsy; Remp tells Strom that Bitsy was the one talking to Ness. Strom gives Remp 5 grand; with the taste of more big money to come, Remp decides to double-cross Ness, and keep working for Strom for real. Remp is now Strom's top man. But when Strom finds out that Remp took the manifest from the warehouse, he sends hitman Harry Tazik to knock Remp off. At Remp's apartment, Harry is about to take Remp to Strom, at gunpoint. Ness and Lee Hobson show up. In the shootout, Harry kills Remp; Ness and Lee Hobson shoot Harry. Ness finds the manifest in Harry's suit. With that information, Ness and his Untouchables locate and destroy the 850 grand supply of booze. But Marcie Remp is now a widow; she wishes her husband would have stayed safely in prison, rather than rejoin the mob. Ness had asked Remp to go back to a life of crime, as an undercover man, but the temptation was too much for him. Remp had turned again only Ness never found out. As for Marcie Remp, she lost herself in her own despair and loneliness and didn't even bother to attend her husband's funeral. (synopsis by: kdh)

Racketeer Gus Ducek is fingered to be knocked off. But when the car with the hitmen drives towards him, Ducek's boys fire back with machine guns, turning the tables; one hitman dies, Boley Davis escapes. Watching the botched rubout attempt are Lt. Philip Hedden and Sgt. Davey McCain. Eliot Ness and his men are out to pin the murder attempt on Hedden, since the hitmen were driving one of his cars. November 11, 1931; a group of about 2 dozen Army buddies, who were all in B-Company, 431st Infantry, in WWI, are celebrating the 13th anniversary of Armistice Day. It is their annual reunion, and their host as usual is Lt. Philip Hedden; and beside him, as always, is his sidekick Sgt. Davey McCain. Lt. Philip Hedden regales the men, again, with the story of how he won his medal, the