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control. He became wrapped around the little finger of a singer named Dale Winter. The call of the siren distracted him from more important matters, such as business. When Prohibition started Torrio suggested that Big Jim start making big money from booze. Jim was more into his women, so Torrio had him taken out of the picture.
    Now that Johnny was top dog, Al rose to be his second in command. Capone started out managing the many brothels in Chicago, but he was not very comfortable in the role of pimp. When Prohibition roared into the 1920s, he got into the speakeasy end of the business.
    Equal-Opportunity Mafioso
    Capone, being American-born and exposed to many other ethnic groups growing up, was not as clannish as other Mafiosi. He married an Irish girl and met his new best friend in Chicago, an Orthodox Jewish family man named Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik. Capone put on the façade of a mild-mannered used-furniture dealer for his neighbors while he let it loose when engaged in his other life. Like many Mafiosi, he strived for respectability while making a living in illegal enterprises and using terror and murder as tools of his trade.
    For many years Capone had a free ride in Chicago. The politicians and police were shamelessly corrupt. The people wanted their vices, and Capone was more than happy to provide them. Cries of outrage and calls for reform from the political machine were nothing more than lip service. It was a wide-open town where the mob ruled. Mayor “Big Bill” Thompson was considered to be one of the most corrupt men in a long line of corrupt politicians.
    However, real reform was slowly making inroads into the Windy City. A man named William E. Dever succeeded Thompson as mayor, and he promised to crack down on the vice and corruption on his town. The Mafia took it in stride. A reformer at the top was a minor inconvenience when the rest of the team was more than eager to play ball.

    Capone and Torrio were not the only Italian bosses operating in the Windy City. The Genna brothers, Angelo, Tony, Mike, Sam, Peter, and Vincenzo, controlled the South Side of Chicago. They were bitter rivals with the North Side gang, led by Dion O’Bannion. But after three of the brothers were killed in shootouts, the survivors left the racket business for good.
    Al’s Private Fiefdom
    When the heat in Chicago proper got too hot, Al left for the nearby suburb of Cicero. Located just outside the city, Cicero was a perfect place to open a new headquarters. They simply bought the town with the smoking barrels of their machine guns, using bribery as needed. In short order Capone controlled all the prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging in the town. He even took over the racetrack. Capone’s brother Frank acted as liaison with the corrupt local government.
    Freedom of the Press
    A maverick journalist named Robert St. John openly opposed the Capone invasion in his newspaper. It looked like Capone’s handpicked politicos might lose the election of 1924. Capone used muscle to try to sway the voting public. His goons loomed around polling places making it clear which candidate would be the “healthiest” choice. The cops were called in response, and Frank Capone was gunned down. He allegedly pulled his revolver when he found himself surrounded. (A dumb move, if indeed it’s true.) It was deemed that the police acted in self-defense when they killed him. At the end of the day, Al Capone owned Cicero, but at a terrible price, a brother’s blood.
    Capone vented his frustration by shooting a small-time hood who dared to call the little big man an ethnic slur. He was brought to trial for the first time in his life, but he beat the murder rap. Witnesses were hard to come by, as was always the case with Mafia trials. The highly public trial made him something most mobsters did not want to be—famous.
    King of Chicagoland
    Few twenty-five-year-olds achieve the power and wealth that Al Capone had at that young age. And few people