Daley Life in Chicago

In a little office on North Clark Street in Chicago, two men met to talk business. The deal: how to muscle into the thriving Chicago Restaurant Association and take control of it. Said James Weinberg to Paul ("Needle Nose") Labriola: "We'll have to kill Teitelbaum, but we don't want a big uproar in the papers. We'll push him out of his office window. He's in income-tax trouble, and everybody will think it was suicide."

Without knowing it, Needle Nose and Weinberg were, on that day in 1953, spilling their plans into a "bug," i.e., a hidden microphone. On the floor above, a husky cop named Joe Morris tore off his earphones, made for the office of Lawyer Abraham Teitelbaum, counsel and general organizer of the Restaurant Association. The cops glued a 24-hour bodyguard around Teitelbaum; later Labriola and Weinberg were found drugged and strangled in the trunk of an abandoned car--presumably because the mob considered that they were both hot and talky.

Wrong Bug. As chief investigator of a super-secret intelligence unit of the Chicago police dubbed Scotland Yard, Joe Morris had, since 1952, been painstakingly gathering data on Chicago gangsters and their political friends. His tactic: pick up a hoodlum, e.g., Sam ("Golf Bag") Hunt,* grill him, set him free, tail him. With the help of surveillances, wire taps and bugs, Morris filled five filing cabinets with intelligence on 600 "syndicate" mobsters, 8,000 lesser hoodlums, and a disturbing number of his fellow cops and assorted politicians.

Last year, the Cook County Democratic machine decided to drop Morris' patron and chief protector, Reform Mayor Martin Kennelly, in favor of County Clerk Richard J. Daley (a key Illinois tactician for Presidential Candidate Adlai Stevenson). During the campaign, Morris was tripped up as he tried to bug the hotel room of a suspect who had powerful connections with the county committee. Word got to Candidate Daley that Scotland Yard was working against him. Observed the Daily News: "Predictions were made . . . that the election of Mayor Daley would mean the disbanding of Scotland Yard."

Ten-Year Setback. The prediction came true. Last month Police Commissioner Timothy O'Connor ordered the Scotland Yard office to cease work immediately, had it padlocked and guarded round the clock, reassigned the unit's officers. Complained Chicago's Crime Commission Director Virgil Peterson: "Now the police department is back where it was ten years ago as far as hoodlums are concerned."

On Independence Day Chicago hoodlums and their pals celebrated around a champagne fountain at the plush River Forest home of Mobster Tony Accardo (heir to a strip of Al Capone's toga). The Accardo soiree, an annual affair, had a different spirit this year. Where once his guests had slipped their black limousines into a hidden parking lot on the Accardo property, they now made an open show of their attendance, and the Big Boss's gardens rang with fresh and ominous joy.

Inevitably, the bookie joints unfurled in the Chicago Loop last week like so many Fourth of July flags. Processing the bets were highly organized wire rooms where the big bookies sat at banks of telephones, raked in a take every dollar as good as the rackets produced in Capone's heyday. All this confirmed the Crime Commission's long-held fear that the town would be opened up shortly after last year's election.

As for Mayor Daley and Commissioner O'Connor, they said they were merely "decentralizing" the police department.

*A Capone bodyguard, Sam was the first to discard the accustomed violin case, carried his Tommy gun in a golf bag.

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