MISSOURI: Murder on Truman Road

Every day at Charlie Binaggio's First District Democratic Club on Truman Road in Kansas City, boon seekers ran a gauntlet of stony-faced hoodlums, sought their favors of the gimlet-eyed man sitting beneath the bare light bulb behind the bare desk. Charlie was a political big-shot in Jackson County, President Truman's home county. He had 30,000 votes in his pocket. He boasted that he controlled 40 state legislators, that he had elected Governor Forrest Smith. But Charlie Binaggio, who looked deceptively like a mild and prosperous chiropodist, made a mistake which is as...

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