Double Cross by Sam Giancana

Author:Sam Giancana [Sam Giancana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

What happened on June 19, 1951, was almost, to the letter, a repeat performance: a darkened street; a sleek sedan stealthily stalking its intended victim; its passengers, three fedora-hatted men in silk suits, toting guns. The moment Teddy Roe looked into his rearview mirror and spotted the bright headlights flashing behind him, he probably knew. It had Mooney Giancana written all over it.

Roe had prepared himself for just such an inevitability. After a series of run-ins with Mooney, he’d hired off-duty coppers as body guards. In the five years since Eddie Jones’s abduction, the black policy king and his family had lived with the constant threat of death. Mooney had once said that fear wore a man down—made him tired and careless—and that living in fear was worse than death itself. But Mooney hadn’t yet locked horns with the likes of Teddy Roe. Roe had become a hero in the colored neighborhood because he hadn’t knuckled under to the dago mobsters. He’d stood up to the man the colored papers called “the meanest of them all,” Mooney Giancana, and lived to tell about it. That alone won him their adulation and the nickname the “Robin Hood of Policy.”

With Roe alive and flourishing, Mooney had yet to gain control of all south side policy wheels. Teddy Roe was the last holdout, and for that he was a hero.

After the heat died down following the Jones incident, Roe’s business thrived instead of folding. It grated Mooney to know that his policy takeover was incomplete, that Roe’s loyal gamblers flooded his wheels in record numbers, making him richer than ever.

Mooney had tried a number of tactics to pry Roe out of operation. His soldiers bombed Roe’s home and threatened his family. Meanwhile, Mooney offered the cocky mulatto $250,000 to leave town, to which Roe had sneered, “I’ll die first.” It was a surprise to those who worked for Mooney that he hadn’t taken Roe up on it. Why he’d waited so long to move against Roe was a mystery—because he plainly hated the guy.

Chuck, however, theorized that Roe struck a chord somewhere in his brother. There had never before been a man or woman Mooney couldn’t have. Nor had there been, to Chuck’s knowledge, anyone who stood up to Mooney in his forty-three years as Roe had. In some twisted way. Chuck knew Mooney admired that. It was the same with a broad. As long as she played hard to get, Mooney was up for the challenge. He’d try everything—money, gifts, introductions to his celebrity friends—because, as he put it, “There’s always somethin’ a broad wants more than her fuckin’ virtue.”

Perhaps what Mooney wanted most was to find the one person who didn’t have a price. Someone to restore his faith in humanity—a faith that had been lost as a child while chained to the tree on Van Buren. Significantly, he’d often told Chuck that, “unlike those whores they call politicians,” once he’d made up his mind about something, “nobody can buy me or fuckin’ scare me into anything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.