The empire that Gangster Al Capone had built with the help of the Tommy gun and the dum-dum bullet in the back had a strange air of flaccid respectability in 1950. Marty the Ox died in bed without a single bullet hole in his hide. And in the rare places where the shakedown still prevailed, it was costing a merchant as little as $1 a week to insure his plate-glass windows against a well-heaved brick. The ugly libel was afloat that Chicago had turned sissy and petty larcenous.
But to anyone who knew what went on behind the grey post-Capone fagade, it...
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