The Untouchables Episode Rating Graph

April 28, 1932. Chicago. 3,500 fans are at the arena, watching the end of a 7-day bicycle race. But Ed ""Duke"" Monte is there to make a drop-off. Ness and Lee Hobson catch him, with a quarter of a million dollars in counterfeit bills in his leather bag. On May 25, Monte is sentenced to 10-15 years in the State Pen. That same day, at Monte's old headquarters (the Odeon Theatre which specializes in Burlesque), his former lieutenant, Lou Sultan, is having the guy he accuses of being the stoolie, Parrot Krebs, worked over by his thugs.

Chicago, 1929. Mike Brannon's been a cop for 15 years, but now he's being suspended for hospitalizing ""one of Tony Lamberto's dope-pushing punks."" Mike thinks Captain Bellows is corrupt for not going to bat for him. There is a tense moment when the Captain asks for Mike's gun-- Mike points it at him. But then, Mike turns the gun over and leaves.

Chicago, March 2, 1932. The hottest nightspot in town is the Club Tunisian, owned by gangster Pete Kalik, who built it up from a small speak. Ness and Lee Hobson show up, but not to see gorgeous singer Mavis Carroll-- they had gotten an anonymous phone tip earlier. Lee Hobson is tired, he is due to take his vacation leave starting Friday. Ness and Hobson get contacted by the club comedian Eddie Paris, he is the one who phoned them. After his show, he meets with Ness and Hobson at the Denton Street wharf; Eddie wants Pete Kalik put away behind bars, he says Kalik is working out a big alcohol deal with the Partner, the mysterious man who had backed Torrio and Capone.

1933. Violence and corruption were at an all-time high in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City-- virtually every city in the U.S. The lone exception is an Eastern seaboard metropolis, referred to as City Without a Name, in which the voters had used the ballot box to vote corruption out of public office. And Federal agent Arnold Wainwright had kept organized crime out-- but on October 22, he is blasted by machine-guns while in a coffee shop.

Chicago, July 1934. Anonymous phone calls have been tipping off Ness and his men to narcotics activities; they do a bunch of raids. On August 4, even though sales have fallen off, Frank Nitti is ordering 15 kilos of heroin*, the biggest single shipment ever. That night, one of Nitti's boys makes the trade: dough for the H. He gets into a car driven by another of Nitti's boys, Manny Kravitz.

New York, 1933. Racketeers are poking their greasy fists into every corner of the nation's business. The Fulton fish market in New York supplies fish on the East Coast to as far west as the Mississippi; they supply 700-million pounds of fish a year, worth $200-million. When Captain Joe McGonigle, owner of the fishing boat the Margie Mac, won't pay protection money, 2 of Frank Mercouris' hoods, Lenny Shore and Swede Kelso, drown his deck hand, and it makes the newspapers; it's only the beginning of trouble with the Syndicate moving in-- and so Eliot Ness and his men fly to New York.

October 11, 1932.  Chicago.  Less than one month before the elections, David Mantley, running for State's Attorney on the Reform ticket, is making speeches: he says the power behind his opponent, Jeremiah Down, is mobster Bryan O'Malley.  At the same time, across town, O'Malley is being feted at a testimonial dinner-- even though a week from now he'll have to stand trial for murder and income tax evasion.

September 8, 1934. A cruise ship from Cuba to New Jersey has caught fire. There are over 300 passengers on board; some of the passengers and crew are jumping overboard to avoid the flames. Ness and his men, on assignment in New Jersey, speed to get there when the ship docks; Ness has an arrest warrant for Valentine Ferrar, racketeer and founder of the Big Syndicate. Valentine Ferrar had been in Cuba, picking up a million bucks collection money for the Syndicate.

Summer 1931, Chicago.  Eliot Ness and his Untouchables had smashed most of the big breweries owned by the mobsters.  But racketeers, taking advantage of the poverty and desperation of many immigrants, forced them to make a gallon of whiskey a day in small stills in their homes-- makeshift stills which could be put together for less than $3. The absolute boss of Little Italy is Augie ""The Banker"" Ciamino, and with whiskey pouring out of 1,000 tenement stills, he was cancelling the gains that Ness had made.

1929.* Notorious gangster boss Charlie Radick is dying of leukemia; there'll be no mourning for him, the other overlords will be vying for his throne. All Radick wants to do is see his long-lost daughter before he dies. Ness visits Radick; Ness is afraid a gang war might break out, as rival gangs scramble to take over. Ness says, ""Turn over your books to me; names of the people in your organization, distribution points, contacts in City Hall."" Radick says while he was in prison, he left his daughter with a couple; 3 years ago she ran away.

Chicago, August 29, 1934. That night, in the Haymarket district, special agent Daniel Gosden, a policeman on loan to the Untouchables, goes through a skylight and finds an opium laboratory in the top floor of a rundown tenement hotel. Just then, drug lord Victor Rait and 4 hoods (Gus, Sully, Max, and Trapp) show up, carrying crates of supplies into the place. Rait spots Gosden and gives chase; just as Gosden phones Ness for back-up, Rait blows him away with a shotgun. Then Rait blasts 6 bullets from his gun to disperse the crowd of tenants investigating the noise. Somebody phones the cops, because within minutes Eliot Ness and his men and some policemen are on the scene.

Early November 1931. On West Madison Street, there is a wonderfully diverse neighborhood made up of gypsies of Romanian, Hungarian and Czech descent. The area is flooded with Capone's rotgut, being distributed by Janos Colescu. There are many colorful characters, including the chestnut vendor with his singsong voice: ""Get your red-hot che-e-estnuts, the wind is cold."" When the rotgut leads to a drunken knife-fight that leaves a gypsy dead, the 8-member gypsy Senate, headed by Victor Bartok, with his brother Fedor Bartok, convenes. Eliot Ness shows up to offer his help to end the bootleg booze; they decline his help, saying they will handle matters themselves.

New York City. July 23, 1934. The Underworld, which had long made big money by covering bets on horse races, wants to get their hands on a new invention-- the racewire, which can speed the results of horse races to bookmakers everywhere.  That rainy night, Michael Barrigan and Frederic Withers (who, along with their partner Douglas Barrows, own and run the Trans-Pacific News Service) receive an urgent call from Barrows-- but Barrigan finds Barrows dead in a bookie joint (the back room of Hayes florists) when he gets there.

New York, middle of 1932. The Syndicate-- headed by Joe Kulak, Louis ""Lepke"" Buchalter and Dutch Schultz-- has the city's huge garment industry organized and under control. Now they are setting their sights on bakeries; there are 500 independent wholesale bakers in the city. They give Bull Hanlon the word: get the biggest independent baker, Adam Stone, to sign up and all the rest will fall in line.

The night of May 3rd, 1934. A traveling carnival is at the Midway, 35 miles outside of Cleveland. There are half a dozen bellydancers on stage, as the barker goes, ""Hurry, hurry, hurry,"" and a sign reads: ""One dime shows you the best hootchy koochy show in the world!"" Hans Eberhardt, twice convicted for armed robbery and dope peddling, spots Ness and his Untouchables and the local police about to pull a raid; he runs to the office trailer of carny Otto Frick.

November 7, 1933.  Slot machines are big business; 2,000 of the one-armed bandits rake in $100,000 per week; ($50 per machine).  One night, ""Moose"" Tobin and 3 other Bomer hoods drop in on Porker Davis' upstairs gambling joint.  Tobin tells Davis that Bomer wants to teach him a lesson; the hoods chase everybody out of the joint.  Then they start throwing the slot machines out the 2nd story window; when one of Davis' employees tries to stop them, the hoods throw him out the window. 

Detroit, August 1932. The notorious Purple Gang-- long synonymous with terror in beer, booze, labor and prostitution-- gets into a new racket: kidnapping. They specialize in snatching other members of the underworld, since they can't go to the police for help. So far, they've kidnapped 9 hoods (the latest mug is Rocky Garver), for a total of 100 grand.

March 4, 1933. The Windy City is getting ready for the Chicago World's Fair, also known as the ""Century of Progress"" Exposition. The 3 wealthy Endicott brothers, who jointly owned franchises at the upcoming Fair, are all rubbed out in short order. Restaurant owner Gus Dmytryk goes to the Licensing Committee, and it seems he will get the former Endicott franchises: 3 nightclubs at the Midway, and 5 other concessions. It will mean big bucks, since the Chicago World's Fair is expected to draw 50-million visitors.

In the years following WWI, there was a flood of European immigrants into the USA. In the early 1920s, the 6 Genna brothers, place of origin Sicily, were headed to Chicago. The Genna brothers are nothing but a gang of bullies, and in a few short years they are the ruling lords of Little Italy, an Italian neighborhood in Chicago. One night, as the 6 Gennas are beating up a street vendor, Agent Enrico Rossi whales into them. The leader, Mike Genna, asks if he knows who they are; Rossi says, ""Yeah, the Genna brothers-- one rat with 6 heads!"" Mike Genna says that Enrico Rossi is Italian, just like them; Rossi says he's ashamed.

1932. Chicago is a thirsty town, consuming 86,000 gallons of booze a day; that's 32-million gallons a year. Almost all this booze is beer and rotgut, but 1% is the finest Canadian scotch. Nitti's boys, armed with tommy guns, shoot up a rival speak, the Blue Lion, that's serving the Canadian scotch. Ness and his men investigate; 2 people dead, 3 critically injured.

In the summer of 1934, a new gambling device was sweeping the nation: the punchboards. Even though they were nickel-and-dime games, it added up-- they made more money for the mob than the numbers racket. After Ness and his men smash some of the punchboard manufacturing sites, the 5 members of the syndicate running the punchboards hold a meet at a building by the freight yards: the top mobsters from Chicago (Jake ""Joe"" Petrie), Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit and New York (Max Riegel). Petrie says he can sum up all their problems in 2 words: Eliot Ness.

New Jersey, the night of April 16, 1931. Waxey Gordon, the undisputed beer baron of New York, is muscling in on New Jersey, which is run by Frankie Dunn, ""Bugs"" Donovan and Roger Weiden. Waxey is waging a gang war to eliminate rival gangsters for control of the Jersey beer market. Waxey and his boys smash into a brewery owned and run by Frankie Dunn; they blast with their choppers until the large beer vats, Frankie and his workers are filled with holes.

Chicago, October 1932. Within minutes of the time the Globe's top reporter Carlton Edmunds was shot, Eliot Ness and his men are on the scene. Ostensibly it appears a stray bullet in a gunfight hit Edmunds; he was just a passerby in the wrong place at the wrong time.

December 24, 1930. That evening, small-time mug Hap Levinson is playing Santa Claus at the Sackman Orphan Home. Santa brings toys and ice cream to all the waifs. He walks outside, waves good-bye, and is promptly machine-gunned to death by hoods in a speeding car. Quite a shock for all the kiddies. Killing Santa is not a federal crime, but Eliot Ness investigates. Hap was a friend of Ness' for 10 years; they had sort of a truce. If Ness was on official business, they were on opposite sides of the law; unofficially, they were pals.

Chicago. Pete ""The Persuader"" Kalmisky, former bodyguard of Al Capone, accompanied by Syndicate business manager Alan Sitkin, have a meeting with Joey December, president of the debt-ridden Great Lakes Pacific Railroad. They form a crooked alliance; Joey agrees to transport their illegal liquor on his trains, in exchange for ""20% off the top."" After Kalmisky leaves, Sitkin talks privately with Joey. Sitkin gives Joey $100,000 for 10,000 shares of Canada Central stock, now worth $10 a share;

October 1932, Chicago.  With Capone in the slammer, other bosses are biting off chunks of Capone's empire.  One boss is Frankie Gruder, head of a group that is the forerunner of Murder, Inc.; Gruder wants control of all the Canadian imports and exports.  Gruder and his boys go to a warehouse, Gruder shoots a longshoreman.  Ness and his men show up and start blasting.  There's a shoot-out.  Gruder manages to escape.

November 1932. Big-time gangster Joe Palakopolous is playing a dangerous game-- he just had his hitman rub out Danny Kugan, the biggest supplier of Canadian whiskey that Frank Nitti had. And Nitti's plenty sore. Kugan was the only guy who could import Canadian Gold for Nitti. The phony stuff is no good; Nitti quips that bottled rotgut is so bad, ""it peels off the labels from the inside."" Eliot Ness and his men investigate Kugan's killing, and try to find out who will take over the operation.

In mid-June 1932, Eliot Ness, having compiled a list of Frank Nitti's breweries & distilleries, began a series of raids designed to break the back of the Capone empire. This puts the pressure on Frank Nitti, Capone's lieutenant. Nitti calls a meet with Seth Otis and Phil Grier, who jointly own the biggest speakeasy in Chicago, the Hotsy Totsy Club.

April 11, 1932. Millionaire building contractor Thomas B. Randall is the target of a kidnapping; he is throwing a party right now. Intruding on his estate that night are: ex-bootlegger and now gang leader George ""Blackie"" Dallas, Pete Appleby (former torpedo for the Purple Gang), Marty Stoke (bank heist expert) and Jiggs (ex-heavyweight boxer and now strongarm man). The gang kills a security guard, and kidnaps Randall-- and they warn his family and guests not to call the police, or he gets it.

Chicago, late Summer 1932.  Eliot Ness and his men had stemmed the supply of narcotics coming into the Windy City from Asia and southern Europe.  Now the Underworld was using new ways to supply the city's 5,000 dope addicts.  The Syndicate was robbing drugstores, doctors' offices, wholesale drug houses-- any place which kept a supply of painkilling drugs.

Chicago.  (year?)* The jury had been out for 12 hours, on the case Ness had worked so hard on, trying to get a conviction for top mobster Johnny Fortunato. Now the newspaper reads: Fortunato got off, the chief witness was a ""suicide."" At 9 p.m., Ness decides to get some spaghetti at Socrates Eatery. Ness' old high school buddy, Frank Barber, drops in. They laugh and smile as they recount their glory days at Garfield High, when Barber was the star football quarterback, and Ness was his favorite receiver.

Chicago, October 1932. The only ""beer"" allowed to be served during Prohibition is ""near-beer"" or ""Near-O""-- which is 0.5% alcohol, as opposed to real beer which is 4.0% alcohol. And so, a lot of legitimate beer producers wind up ""spiking"" the barrels of near-beer with pure alcohol, to get it up to strength. A northside brewer named Woody O'Mara wants to smash all his competition; he tells his girlfriend Amy Gratzner, a rather plain-looking 23-year-old secretary for rival brewer Franz Koenig, to blow the whistle on her boss.

Chicago, January 1933. Danceland has a big sign, ""30 girls, open until 2 a.m."" Inside, customers mingle with the dime-a-dance girls. Hoofer Ellie Haskell says goodnight to the owner, Marty Pulaski; outside, she is immediately shot by a sniper on the roof of a building across the street-- the sniper is Herbie Pulaski, Marty's mentally disturbed brother. Lt. Roy Gunther is on the case, he questions Marty, who has 20% of the dancing racket. However, Marty is sure his main competitor, Vince Bogan who owns 80% of the dance racket, is responsible for the killing.

Chicago, the Summer of 1932. There are 12-million unemployed in the U.S.; with less money to spend, the price of booze goes down. The whiskey Syndicate is meeting; the chairman is the powerful gangster Vincent Tunis who runs the town. His 3 lieutenants suggest they hit the speaks. To make a point, Tunis demands a toothpick from his underling Charlie Grach; Tunis roughs him up, bloodies his nose, and points a gun at Charlie*-- demanding a toothpick.

Ring of Terror-- Boxing ring, that is. July 1931, the Chicago Sports Arena was like a hundred other boxing rings across America-- a place where young toughs from reform schools and rotting tenements, willing to sacrifice their blood, could try to rise above the oppression of poverty. But the young men with the boxing gloves only got a small amount of the money; the big payoffs went to the gangsters.

May 14, 1931. Eliot Ness and his men notice that the top bosses are leaving Chicago: Frank Nitti has gone to Atlantic City; Bugs Moran and Jack Diamond have left, too. As Ness puts it, ""The rats are leaving the ship."" Obviously, they want to be out of town when someone important is hit. What Eliot doesn't know is that he is the target.

Movie: ""The Gun of Zangara"" (continued) Nitti's plenty sore! Mayor Cermak's stepped-up law enforcement has cut deeply into Nitti's operations. In the Montmartre club, Nitti takes a newspaper with a big photo of Cermak on the front page, and tacks it to the wall-- then Nitti takes out his 6-shooter and blasts 7 bullets into the photo.

Chicago, March 1931. Eliot Ness and his men were doing raid after raid on Capone's speakeasies and breweries; his empire was tottering. Who would take over? A big-time gangster from New York, Charlie ""Pops"" Felcher, had just arrived in Chicago, along with his crooked lawyer Archie Grayson.

Chicago, December 1931. With Al Capone in prison, the bootlegging part of his empire was split in 2. One of Capone's lieutenants, Mayer Wartel, acquired the speakeasies; another lieutenant, Karl Positan, acquired the breweries and distilleries. In an attempt to take over the entire operation, Positan withholds his whiskey and beer; the number of speaks flourishing drops to an all-time Prohibition low. Eliot Ness and his men keep an eye on the situation. Nitti's plenty sore.

Mid-October 1932. The nation's attention is on the election campaign between incumbent president Herbert Hoover and his opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is crippled by polio.  With Prohibition still the law of the land, the government is looking for ways to denature alcohol, which legitimate manufactures need for industrial purposes (making perfumes, etc).  Should the alcohol fall into the wrong hands, if it was denatured, it would be useless to bootleggers.

Autumn 1934. An armored truck, loaded with the special paper used in printing U.S. currency, is headed for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. The truck is hijacked, and the 3 armed guards are tommy-gunned. Since counterfeiting will be on a national level, it's a federal offense, and so Eliot Ness and 5 other federal agents from around the country convene in Washington, D.C., and are briefed on the situation.

Chicago, last week of April 1933. Frank Nitti is offered a huge quantity of Chinese opium. Ever since the government had established the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, the flow of opium from China to the USA had slowed to a trickle, and by 1932 the flow had almost ceased; now, with the end of Prohibition seeming imminent, the Syndicate is ready to deal in opium again. Late on the night of May 4, Nitti sends one of his top lieutenants, Ed Getty, to pick up some opium from Art Rele and his thug Cliff Anders. But Ness and Lee Hobson show up, too; in the shootout, only Art Rele escapes.

Chicago, April 25, 1932. With Capone in prison doing his rap for income tax evasion, his 8 lieutenants are running things; their HQ is the Montmartre Club, in Cicero, 4 miles west of Chicago. Capone's booze trucks are being hijacked, his speaks are tommy-gunned; Capone's breweries are being smashed, and not just by Eliot Ness, but by rival gangs.

Joe Lassiter is the greatest inside man in the bootlegging racket. He and his sidekick, Nick Karabinos, have just arrived in Chicago by train; Lassiter traveled 1,000 miles because of a 250 grand deal: build a Ness-proof brewery. At the closed Bell Club (which Ness took apart last week), Lassiter meets with bootleg czar Louis Tully and his associates.

July 4, 1930.  40,000 horse racing fans fill Arlington Park.  Ness and his men have Arnold ""Spats"" Vincent under surveillance; they will close in on him as soon as he gets a piece of paper: a list with the names of officials in high places who are ready to do business with the crime cartel.  2 hoods (one tall, one short), apparently associates of Spats, approach him.  The tall hood sits next to him and whispers something to him; then he stabs Spats. 

October 16, 1930. Jackson Parker is a small-time bootlegger, he has his henchman Benny deliver bottles of booze to places on a college campus: student unions, fraternity houses. Parker is arrogant, he tells Benny he could ""throw him out with the rest of the garbage."" Parker has big plans: he thinks he's meeting with Frank Nitti. At the Montmartre club, Nitti is telling his assembled lieutenants, ""And after we get that pipeline set up, the feds will have to dig up every street in Chicago to find it."" A round of laughter.

Jazz was born in the Roaring Twenties. It's now 1930, and on Chicago's Gold Coast there's a nightspot called ""Goose Gander's Golden Egg"" jazz club. Blues player Eddie Moon is blowing his hot cornet with the jazz band. But then mobster Lucky talks to Ray ""Goose"" Gander; Lucky wants him to carry Lou Cagan's hooch in his joint. Ray refuses, the strongest drink he serves in his place is coffee. Then Lucky's hitman plays some music of his own-- with his tommy gun; he shoots up the joint.

1933. Prohibition ends. But that doesn't mean the war on crime is over for Eliot Ness and his Untouchables. The syndicate has already moved on to a more profitable-- and more deadly-- source of income: narcotics. By September, Ness and his men had found and destroyed every major source of narcotics. By early October, the price of a bindle of heroin jumps from $20 to $50. Nitti and his boys want to take advantage of this seller's market.

Chicago, 1931. On the Southside, on a dead end street, there is a junkyard-- but it's really a front for a narcotics empire, run by gangster Victor Salazar. Ness and his men are on the case; they keep intercepting his trucks, carrying shipments of narcotics. Barney Howe tells his boss Salazar that his problem is the operation's too spread out; but one big shipment will give him the Northside, too-- Barney says he will ""put Chicago in his pocket."" Late at night, they get a call from a hood named Kierson who has info in his briefcase: the time and route of a $2-million commercial shipment of morphine crystals to a medical research center; he's to meet them at the corner of Mohawk and 23rd in 10 minutes.

January 1932. Smalltime bootlegger Al Remp is serving 3-5 years in prison; he's done 3 years and is up for parole next week, but it seems he won't get it. The guards put him in solitary, and Remp has a visitor: Eliot Ness. Remp tells him, ""I got nothing to say to you."" But Ness tells him that if he agrees to help him nail bigtime bootlegger ""Fat"" Augie Strom, his former boss, he'll get that parole; or else 2 more years is a long time.

New Jersey waterfront, 1933. Johnny Mizo had been marked for death by the American crime cartel; he had fled to Brazil. Now, he has returned to America to get the $200,000 he had hastily stashed in a hideout before fleeing. The Captain tells Mizo he has exactly 11 days, and then the ship sails back to Rio de Janeiro, with or without him.

Chicago, March 31, 1933. Giuseppe ""Joe"" Bucco is at home when he gets a visit from his wife's cousin, Barbara Vittorini-- she says her husband Arturo has been missing for 3 days, and accuses Bucco of killing him. Bucco has his flunkie Abe Garfinkel take her home. Bucco knows about rub-out attempts, Guzik's boys once shot him 4 times, but he lived; Bucco swears to his wife Anna that he doesn't know where Arturo is.

Chicago, February 1932. Crime has been spreading all over, from the dark alleys of Cicero to the social atmosphere of the Gold Coast. Crooked attorney Paul Curtiz is attending a party being hosted by gangster overlord Augie Viale, king of the southside of Chicago. At the affair, Viale is openly paying off this guests with cash-- police commissioners, judges, lawyers, and businessmen; all of them ready to hand Chicago to Viale on a silver platter.

1932. Just 3 weeks after Al Capone was convicted on the ironic charge of income tax evasion, the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. was calling its leading law enforcement agents from all over the country to fly to the nation's capital to testify and get a new Anti-Racketeering Bill passed. Back in Chicago, 4 of Capone's bigshots who ran his bootlegging empire had skipped town, like rats deserting a sinking ship.

Chicago, January 1933. Ness and his men raid a speakeasy owned by gangster Mikhail ""Red Mike"" Probich, and run by Connie LaVerne. At the trial, Probich is represented by his crooked lawyer Morton Halas, who grew up in poverty. The trial drags on for 5 days. Finally, Ness is ready to call the last prosecution witness, Connie LaVerne, who ""is 80% of their case."" Morton Halas objects, on the grounds that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband.

March 3, 1932. It's the great train robbery, on the southbound express headed for Chicago. The Stryker brothers steal mail sacks containing 750 grand in payroll money. During the robbery, a baggage man and Lippy Carson (an associate of the Stryker brothers, who had worked as a mail clerk) are killed, and thrown from the speeding train. Since mail robbery is a federal offense, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are called in.

March 31, 1934; Prohibition is over. Al Capone is still running things from Alcatraz, his new money-maker is ""white slavery"" which refers to prostitution; his main operation is run by a mean gangster named Mig Torrance. Right now, Eliot Ness is conducting his 7th raid since being assigned to closing down the houses. While all the other hookers are escaping through a trap door, one of them, young Mary Sage, lays on a bed-- dead from a drug overdose.

The night of August 3, 1933, outside the Louisburg Federal Prison in Pennsylvania. After serving 2 years of a life sentence for his part in the holdup of a Federal Reserve bank shipment, Frank Halloway is busting out, climbing over the wall. When a fellow inmate breaks his leg from the jump from the high prison wall, ruthless Frank Halloway hops into the getaway car that was left there for him-- and runs over the hapless inmate.

Little Egypt (not the Belly Dancer) was the city of Morraine, the heart of the gangster-infected area in downstate Illinois known as ""Little Egypt."" Election night, 1931. New mayor Marcus Stone is giving a speech on the radio-- he meant what he said about reform, and promises to rid the town of Charlie Byron (a Major in WWI) and his gang, whom he calls ""bloodsuckers"" and ""scum."" Listening to the radio is Major Byron, who gives his gang orders to knock off both Mayor Stone and Sheriff Mooney; they both get tommy-gunned that night.

March 1935. One of the toughest mobsters in New York City is Dutch Schultz. He and his mob were responsible for over 100 murders. Dutch is into every racket: liquor, narcotics, labor shakedowns, the numbers, selling protection. But "Lucky" Luciano is muscling in on his territory; to try to keep his clients from paying to Luciano, Dutch Schultz has his boys work his clients over with fists. When Joe Floris won't pay 30% protection money to Schultz, saying he is already paying 15% to Luciano, Joe Floris gets some acid in the face, blinding him. But Dutch has a gentler side, too-- his wife just had a baby

Chicago, October 1932. The depths of the Great Depression, marked by unemployment and poverty. The only chance some people felt they had to rise out of poverty, if only for a short time, was to win the lottery or at the punch-boards. The mob saw this as an opportunity, by coming up with a numbers game. People picked a number from 0-999; their odds of winning were 1-in-a-1,000-- the payoff was 600-to-1. The thousands of losers, pouring money into the mob, were never mentioned.

30 miles from Chicago, the (fictitious) Calum City; population: 10,000.  Judge Leon Zabo is running for mayor, to clean up the town.  Working hard in his campaign headquarters is his lovely daughter, Rosetta Zabo.  Judge Zabo tried to put an end to vice, graft and corruption; in the last 6 months, he had closed down 110 bars, clubs and gambling casinos in the notorious Barbary Coast district.