Authors: Gus Russo
The Outfit (62 page)
When the dust settled in December, Giancana (with the G listening) counted his profit, which exceeded $3 million. Hoping to learn more, the Bureau made discreet contact with some of the Villa’s performers. With great candor, Sammy Davis, Jr. told them, “I can’t talk about it. Baby, I got one eye, and that eye sees a lot of things that my brain says I shouldn’t talk about. Because my brain says that if I do, my one eye might not be seeing anything after a while.”
A few weeks after the monthlong party, Mooney abandoned the Villa, which curiously burned to the ground soon thereafter. Mooney Giancana would need every penny of his take from the Villa operation, as the new year would bring increasing pressures, both from the unyielding Bobby Kennedy and his own disgusted Chicago masters.
1
. Among those ID’d were Gambino, Columbo, Profaci, Marcello, Alo, Buffalino, Bompensiero, Genovese, Patriarca, Lansky, Costello, Trafficante, Marcello, and Dalitz. As a final reminder that this was an effort to outdo the recent Bonanno-Profaci wedding in New York, the only mobster not invited was Bonanno, who was an outcast even in New York.
2
. The agents were Harold Sell, Bill Roemer, Vince Inserra, Johnny Bassett, and Ralph Hill.
3
. Regarding the Fontainebleau, Frank Sinatra’s 1,275-page FBI file notes that Giancana associate Joe Fischetti “was deeply involved in this hotel” and arranged for Sinatra to perform there “without charge.”
4
. Even Nevada’s lieutenant governor, Cliff Jones, found he was being watched when, in 1965, he found a microphone and phone-line-powered transmitter hidden in his office.
5
. For more on Bobby and the use of the underworld in the Castro operations, see Russo,
Live by the Sword,
and Hersh,
The Dark Side of Camelot.
6
. Jeanne says that the confused byplay actually went on longer, although she cannot recall all the details four decades later. Once back at the Biscayne home, Jeanne could not restrain herself and brought up the hilarious non sequitur that had just occurred at the Fontainebleau. But just as with the election, Curly found nothing funny about the charade. “Forget about Mongoose,” he told his wife. ’It’s another crazy scheme of Johnny’s.’
7
. Old-time Chicagoans are quick to point out that not many availed themselves of the gondola rides since the Des Plaines River, on which the boats traveled, was linked to an open sewer line, the effect of which removed much of the romance from the boating experience.
U
pheaval was the rule in 1963, with pressures both personal and professional mounting with each successive day. The intensified scrutiny even forced Joe Accardo into doing the unthinkable, selling his palatial mansion in favor of a more modest eighteen-room rancher he had built at 1407 North Ashland, also in River Forest. Although Accardo’s ever-lowering public profile gave him an oasis of sorts, the others Humphreys, Giancana, and Rosselli especially - began to whither under the strain. Most of the bosses sought refuge in constant travel, hoping to elude their government pursuers.
“It’s a bad situation with the G on us,” Humphreys said into the hidden mike at Celano’s. “I stay around a week, and then go away for a week or so, that way they lose track of me. Then they get puzzled. I haven’t been home for weeks.” However, when the hoods moved about the Chicago environs, their lives were miserable. The local FBI’s report on the game of cat and mouse is informative: “The hoodlums take the most elaborate precautions to prevent themselves from being placed under surveillance. These involve frequent changing of automobiles, the use of various types of public conveyances, including taxicabs, the devious and circuitous routes followed to reach a particular point and the confrontation of individuals whom they believe to be following them.”
Humphreys’ FBI file shows that J. Edgar Hoover himself ordered his agents to escalate their surveillance of Humphreys, who went to extraordinary lengths to elude them. In addition to keeping his loaded .38 in his jacket pocket, Humphreys gave his associates intricate codes for calling him, using a prearranged number of rings and hang-ups before answering, and a Morse code of sorts for knocking on his apartment door. At his Key Biscayne home, Humphreys had the height raised on the retaining wall that encircled his property (the G responded with helicopter flyovers).
On the streets of Chicago, Curly walked in zigzags, hoping to throw off the G. Given that one of Curly’s many business triumphs was the local dry-cleaning concession, it was ironic that the G-men referred to Curly’s evasive tactics as “dry cleaning.” In one of their summary reports, the local feds wrote: “Humphreys located in vicinity of [King Arthur’s] Pub. He dry cleaned and walked approximately fifteen blocks, entering and exiting buildings, drug stores, etc. [for twenty five minutes when] he entered restaurant.” In another report, an agent described how Humphreys “left his Marine Drive residence and walked two blocks south . . . where he hailed a cab. It was again noted that during this two-block walk, Humphreys was constantly turning around and walking backwards and otherwise taking great pains to determine if he is being surveilled.”
FBI agent John Bassett recently spoke of his personal travails in tailing Humphreys. Bassett remembered Curly’s penchant for ducking into a large department store such as Marshall Field’s, where he would immediately head for the first-floor cosmetics section, utilizing its myriad mirrors to observe his observers. The FBI also listened in as Humphreys proudly read aloud from a purloined Chicago Police Intelligence Unit report, which stated that the local cops, at least, “had no success whatsoever in surveilling him.” Welsh historian Royston Webb aptly concluded, “No one knew the ’dry cleaning’ business better than Hump.”
1
Even with the choke hold applied by his adversary, Humphreys was not without the occasional victory. In April 1963, Curly’s never identified FBI spy came through with a document that Humphreys shared with his fellows at Celano’s. As the eavesdroppers listened in shock, Curly read from a highly confidential Bureau memo that held the names on Bobby Kennedy’s target list, which included not only the Celano’s crowd, but their allies in Las Vegas. Humphreys discovered that the G had even ID’d the new courier the Outfit had brought in to replace the exiled Virginia Hill, Ida Devine.
2
Humphreys quickly forwarded a copy of the memo to Las Vegas, where the casino bosses were similarly shocked. The warning inspired the Las Vegas contingent to press their own sources, who also served up a plum. Later in the month of April, Las Vegas FBI agents listened in astonishment as Fremont Casino manager Ed Levinson read aloud from a just-written FBI summary of the skimming operation. “My God,” Levinson lamented, “they even know about Ida [Devine].” The purloined memo sent the various casino executives scurrying throughout their physical plants in efforts to ferret out the illegal bugs. FBI mikes were soon ripped out of Levinson’s office, the Dunes, and also the Horseshoe. Not all the mikes were found, however, but open talk of money was soon forbidden in the gambling venues.
Not content with the pace of his antimob crusade, Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the G to revert to its tried-and-true weapon, the IRS. Armed with the FBI’s discovery of the Humphreys’ luxurious Biscayne Bay home, the taxmen first sought to prove that it was impossible that the former $75-per-week dice girl Jeanne Humphreys, whose name appeared on the $55,000 mortgage, could have afforded either the home or the extensive improvements; likewise, the purchase was out of all proportion to Curly’s income, as reported to the IRS.
When the IRS spoke with Curly, he informed them that Jeanne had indeed contributed $50,000 to the home. In seeking to determine if Jeanne was capable of such a purchase, the taxmen spoke with her former husband, Outfit bookie Irving Vine. Vine, who lived at a hotel owned by Humphreys aide Ralph Pierce, told the taxmen that his former wife maintained no such nest egg, and that he would agree to testify to that effect. Although Vine told the truth as he knew it, he was mistaken. During their marriage in the 1940s, Jeanne did indeed have a low income. But after they separated, Jeanne developed a high-class clientele in the better clubs. “I had one tip of fifteen hundred dollars,” she says. “Another time I had a first-class vacation to Vegas paid for by one tip alone.” By the midfifties, Jeanne had banked so much savings that she purchased her own home in Florida, thus to be near her brother who also lived in the Sunshine State. In Florida, Jeanne supplemented her savings by working at a dog track. Indeed, part of the money for the down payment on the Key Biscayne home came from the sale of her other Florida home. Thus, there was some truth in what Curly had told the IRS.
Some have postulated that Vine sought a possible payback on the man who he may have believed stole his wife, but Jeanne Humphreys emphatically denies it. “Our marriage broke up long before I began seeing Murray,” she says. “In fact, our marriage broke up long before we separated. The last three years we only lived together out of convenience.” Whatever his motivation, Vine unwisely agreed to testify against Humphreys.
According to the local press’ ubiquitous unnamed “informed sources,” the Outfit dispatched a number of soldiers who urged Vine to rethink his ill-considered persecution of underworld icon Curly. It is widely believed that when Vine ignored the warnings, the Outfit lashed out in a manner seen less and less frequently in recent years. After being called to Pierce’s Del Prado Hotel on May 6 by a hysterical chambermaid, homicide detectives surveyed a scene that was explicitly described by writer Ovid Demaris: “Homicide detectives found Irving Vine lying on the floor, dressed only in blood-smeared shorts, his mouth and nose sealed with surgical tape, his legs also bound with tape, a shirt twisted loosely around his neck and a pillow covering his head. Three of his ribs were broken, his face was scratched and his knees bruised, but the real damage was to the lower part of his body where savage tortures had been inflicted with an ice pick during a period of several hours. Death was due to suffocation.”
As first culled from Humphreys’ massive FBI file by Welsh historian Royston Webb, the Bureau was told by informants that “Vine was murdered on behalf and under instructions of Humphreys, due to the fact that he was a prospective witness for the IRS . . . but also to serve the purpose of enabling Mrs. Humphreys to say that she received money . . . from Vine . . . She will now be in a position where she can throw the blame, not on Humphreys, but on Vine, now deceased.” The G, however, was unable to track down the elusive Humphreys, who fled Chicago for Oklahoma and then Miami during the dustup.
“He flew to Florida the next day, worried that I had read the news of my ex-husband’s murder,” Jeanne recalls. “He told me, ’We didn’t have anything to do with it. We don’t do things like that.’” But Jeanne knew that when Outfit bosses believed they were betrayed, they
did
do things like that. She has always believed that her second husband authorized the murder of her first husband.
Returning to Chicago after the heat had died down, Humphreys maintained a furious workload, despite his own deteriorating heart condition, which periodically saw him hospitalized. In addition to his constant legal research on behalf of Accardo and Ricca, he also assisted Ralph Pierce on a lawsuit he had filed against the police department; Buster Wortman, who was being prosecuted for intimidating a racetrack official; and Marshall Caifano, for whom Humphreys rigged a jury. On the business front, Humphreys’ workload was equally daunting: He investigated gambling ventures for the Outfit in the Bahamas, Santo Domingo, and the Leeward Islands; brokered the sale of Pete Fish’s restaurant; met with Kansas City boss Nick Civella; negotiated the heavyweight boxing match between Ernie Terrell and Eddie Machen; worked with Libonati in Washington and others in the state capital to defeat antimob bills; bought and sold properties and continued to seek avenues for expanding his dry cleaning empire; and spoke regularly with Hoffa, Korshak, and Rosselli to oversee the Outfit’s national ventures.
Humphreys experienced some minor victories in his legislative partnership with Libonati, getting Mr. Malaprop to introduce legislation that would outlaw Bobby Kennedy’s surveillance techniques. In one conversation (overheard by the G) with Pat Marcy at the First Ward headquarters, Libonati spoke of his warfare with the attorney general, bragging, “I killed six of his bills - that wiretapping, the intimidating informers bill . . . “ The eavesdropping G-men summarized the balance of the conversation thus: “Libonati thinks that JFK is a sweetheart but RFK is cruel. Libonati describes how he opposed a RFK bill and got a call from Mayor Daley. Libonati told John Kennedy to stop Robert calling Mayor Daley on such matters. Bobby said on TV that his brother wants him to stay out of politics because he is the Attorney General. Libonati takes credit for this, saying, ’That was me.’”
With Humphreys working himself into an early grave, one can only imagine how he took the news that the so-called boss, Mooney Giancana, using the name J. J. Bracket, had spent two weeks in May with Frank Sinatra and Phyllis McGuire on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu (at the Surf Rider Hotel) and Maui (at the Royal Lahaina Lodge).
The constant surveillance became so bothersome that Humphreys decided to move from his Marine Drive apartment to new and hopefully more secure digs. Regretfully for Humphreys, the effort he put into the move had the opposite effect, although he never learned just how. Through their Celano’s bug, Little Al, the G heard Curly speak of the move, but perhaps as a tease, he refused to disclose the new location. At the tailor shop, he told his associates that his new address would be so secret that “not even you guys are going to know.”
After putting his furniture in storage with a friend, who adamantly refused to cooperate when the G came asking questions about where Curly was going to settle, the gangster decided on a shiny new twin-towered apartment complex, overlooking the Chicago River. Designed by famed architect Bertrand Goldberg, the two “corncob” towers consisted of pie-slice-shaped rooms radiating from a concrete core, with the first eighteen floors reserved for parking. The recently completed Marina Twin Towers sixty-story aerie was the tallest apartment building in the world, and much in demand with the city’s high-rolling apartment dwellers. Part-time residents like Curly’s upperworld alter ego Joe Kennedy were also quick to take apartments in the coveted habitat. FBI agent Bill Roemer claimed that, of all the apartments available in the Second City, he guessed that Curly was going to move into the Twin Towers and quickly moved to develop an informant, a secretary, inside the complex.
Although Roemer was allowed to see the building’s register log, he failed to pick up on the name Eddie Ryan, Curly’s longtime gofer, who had rented apartment 5131 in the East Tower. However, when Roemer’s informant called to say that Ryan had just shown up with Humphreys, who was going to move in the next day, the G-man had to hustle. Illegally presenting their government IDs, a crew of agents gained admission to Humphreys’ new dwelling later that same day, where they hid another microphone, which they nicknamed Plumb.
3
After weeks of overseeing a meticulous painting and carpeting of the apartment, Humphreys moved in on Memorial Day, believing the FBI agents would be on holiday. Unaware of the G’s bug, Curly followed form and G-proofed (he thought) the apartment. Ironically, while Humphreys secured the abode, the very adversary he was securing it against was listening in. Humphreys’ very unofficial biographers in the FBI noted in Curly’s file how he sought to protect himself: “[He spent] considerable time in his new apartment supervising the installation of additional locks. He mentioned that although the G has expert lock-pickers, they will be unable to gain access to his apartment due to the expensive locks and bars he has installed on his doors and windows . . . Humphreys kicked a paper hanger out of his apartment because he was not convinced that the paper hanger was what he claimed to be.”
The Bureau further stated that Curly and his aide Ralph Pierce were attempting to “locate someone who can manufacture equipment which will scramble or garble their conversations so that their conversations cannot be monitored by someone outside the room.” And despite living on the fifty-first floor, Humphreys had bars and railings installed on his balcony, the perfect metaphor for the caged existence his was now forced to live when in Chicago. The FBI soon learned more about Curly’s security precautions, as noted in his file: “The apartment now has a burglar alarm, three inside and outside locks, a tear gas device, bars and double-thickness glass on balcony window, pistol and shotgun.” Curly also gave his maid a tear-gas gun that dispensed a dye that stained the offender for days. He also looked into the possibility of obtaining a “Tear Gas Watchdog,” which would automatically fire on any intruder.