“Across town,” he said, giving her a sly, suggestive smile. “Come on, I want to show you around my office.”
It was a quick drive to Cicero, and when they’d climbed the stairs to Eddie’s private haunt he could tell that she was impressed.
That corner office where he and Capone had first met three years ago was now Eddie’s opulent base of operations. It was stocked full of things he’d always dreamed of one day owning: art, sculptures, handmade furnishings, and all the rarities and luxuries that dirty money could buy. The massive leather divan alone was worth more than Mayor Kelly’s touring car.
Hundreds of impressive cloth-bound volumes crowded his floor-to-ceiling shelves: casebooks and federal statutes, precedent opinions, lofty treatises, and details of many tens of thousands of regulations.
These books made for a classy backdrop, but they had a practical use as well. Unlike most attorneys, who used these books as a guide to the narrow letter of the law, Easy Eddie used them as a vast encyclopedia of loopholes, exploits, and artful legal dodges.
While others in his profession might advise their clients from the top floors of a high-rise building downtown, Eddie’s one-man firm overlooked the homestretch of the dog track at Sportsman’s Park.
Eddie had been told that many doors would open for him when he became a big-city lawyer. It was true; some of these doors led to politics, some to corporate power, some to a judge’s seat, and others down troubled streets and the never-ending fight for the rights of the common man.
But there’s one more door, an old, dark one, way down near the end of the hallway. That’s the one Eddie found, standing open just a crack, when he’d first hung out his shingle. He knew damn well he shouldn’t look at it, much less swing it wide and walk right through—but he’d done it anyway.
“Hey, Eddie?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.”
“I never get out to the track and I love it here. Do you mind if I go down and make a bet?”
“Don’t mind at all.” He walked over and handed her a hundred, then gave her a pat on the bottom. “I’ve got a box right on the finish line. Just tell the boys you’re with me and they’ll get you whatever you want. Go on, I’ll join you in a few.”
When she was gone he sat at his desk. There were things to be done, as always, but he had no desire to do them at the moment. He poured himself a drink from the flask in his top drawer and before long he was lost in his thoughts again.
With Eddie’s growing wealth had come the free time he’d always wanted. But, by the time 1927 rolled around, it was far too late to save his status as a family man. All his business travels, along with his wandering eye, had finally run his marriage into the rocks. But, despite the rifts his choices had created, Eddie continued to provide for his kids, and held out hope that he could be a positive presence in their lives, however small that might be.
He’d bought his soon-to-be ex-wife and the kids a fine new home and tried to make up for the neglect of his fatherly duties through financial support. The girls, he was convinced, would be fine; their mother had raised them right. It was his son who’d proven to be a cause for concern.
Eddie saw a lot of himself in the boy. And that wasn’t a good thing.
? ? ?
Eddie had tried to teach his son the right things; things that a normal, at-home dad would be there to pass along. He taught him to play fair, to stand up to bullies, and to protect those unable to protect themselves. He taught him how to box and wrestle, and he took him to the shooting range until the boy had become an outstanding marksman. He took him flying, often talking their way into the cockpit so his son could try his hand at the controls. He’d tried his best—at least that’s what he told himself—but on one recent visit, he realized that his best hadn’t been good enough.
His son was also called Eddie, in honor of his wayward dad, but around the neighborhood he’d been picking up nicknames better suited to the billiard hall or the jailhouse than the Harvard Club. The kid was becoming lazy and spoiled as well, acting as if a cushy address on Easy Street were the only place he ever dreamed of living.
These early warning signs were enough to convince the elder Eddie that it was past time for a major change. Last month he’d put his foot down: the boy would leave St. Louis immediately and enroll in the Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois—far from the ne’er-do-wells he’d begun to associate with, and near enough to his father’s Chicago home that the remainder of his youth could still be well supervised.
Eddie finished his drink, stood, and gave himself an approving onceover in the mirror by the coatrack. As he walked downstairs to join his girlfriend in the stands, he quietly hoped that, for the first time in a long time, he’d made the right decision.
It may have been too late for Eddie to pick the right door in life, but his son still had a chance.
Sportsman’s Park
Cicero, Illinois
Early June 1930
Whether or not Eddie’s concerns for his son had been justified, a few years later it seemed that his efforts had paid off. One of those early nicknames had unfortunately stuck, but other than that, young Eddie Jr. had grown into a confident, disciplined, square-shouldered cadet, ready to graduate with honors and set out on his own path. Where his ambitions had once involved a couch and a comic book, the boy now wanted to make it to the United States Naval Academy.
At last, things seemed to be looking up.
But, as so often happens to those who boldly stray to the wrong side of the law, just when things look their brightest, the devil is coming for his due.
Eddie arrived at his office on this warm June morning to find the feds waiting. That seductive door he’d opened long ago had slammed shut behind him. The good cop sat him down and brought him a coffee, and then the bad cop laid out their ironclad case. He was to be arrested on an old bootlegging rap, and the G-men were confident that a number of serious tax irregularities would surface in the run-up to the trial. When it was over Eddie had little hope of ever seeing daylight again.
Unless.
Naturally, it wasn’t just a crooked Chicago lawyer they were after; the going price for those was a dime a dozen. No, J. Edgar Hoover wanted Al Capone and he wanted him bad. He’d sent his men to talk to the one insider who could finally help them put him away.
In return for information, Eddie would dodge the current charges and be assured of leniency toward any minor crimes that might come to the government’s attention in the future. Then they told him about the icing on the cake: despite his father’s sullied reputation, it would be arranged that his son would receive the necessary congressional nod to be approved and admitted to Annapolis. Without their influence, they assured him, the son of a gangster would never have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting into the U.S. Naval Academy.
In truth, even without the threat of prosecution, Eddie had been considering making such a move on his own for quite some time. From a business standpoint, Capone had become a major liability and a constant thorn in his side, leaving no room for any legitimate enterprises. The offer to get his son into Annapolis was appealing, but he wasn’t even sure if these guys could actually pull it off. On the other hand, they could definitely sling enough mud to keep his son out of the academy if they didn’t get what they wanted.
It didn’t take long for him to consider his options. After only a moment or two, Easy Eddie nodded and smiled, and did what he did best.
He made a deal.
Sportsman’s Park
Cicero, Illinois
November 8, 1939
By the clock on the wall, Eddie had been lost in his memories for quite a while. He blinked a time or two, and the past faded away.
The waning daylight through his tall windows had grown dim and warm, and the hallway outside his office was still. In fact, it was so damned still it seemed that every last employee must have gotten a whispered word to go home early and avoid the line of fire.
Eddie knew there was no doubt that he’d done what he set out to do. In the end, however, he had to admit there wasn’t a lot to be proud of. Over the years he’d lied and swindled nearly every working day. He’d kept ruthless criminals on the streets and let innocent men be sent to rot behind bars. He’d been an accessory to felonies and even murder—though he’d never actually pulled the trigger himself—many times over. He’d lost his wife, neglected his children, and nearly watched his boy drift into a lowlife existence of sloth and ill-repute.
Eddie was too much of a realist to accept the idea of redemption, especially for the kind of man he’d become. The best he could hope for was that he’d soon be forgotten, and that, for the sake of his son, the name they shared wouldn’t forever be synonymous with infamy and shame.
The newspaper lay open on his desk, and the headlines spoke of dark days to come. It was an uncertain world he’d be leaving behind. Hitler was consolidating Poland and turning his eyes toward new conquests. President Franklin Roosevelt had just declared the United States to be resolutely neutral in the war that was surely on the way, but that position couldn’t last much longer. Eddie knew as well as anyone the workings of the criminal mind: some madmen will never stop unless someone stops them; sooner or later the United States would be drawn in. As a sailor, his son would no doubt be a part of whatever terrible battles were in store.
But whatever was coming, Eddie knew he wouldn’t be around to see it. His partner had a special knack for dealing with his enemies. Ten years before, Capone had invited the North Siders to a Tommy-gun party down on North Clark Street. It had been a St. Valentine’s Day that Bugs Moran and the rest of Chicago would never forget.
That was it, then. All his memories had been revisited and nothing was left to do but stand up and face the music.
He walked to the sideboard, poured and downed a last short scotch and water, and felt once more for the pistol under his overcoat. As he walked out through his office door he paused and smiled. The irony was not lost on him: This door, the one that he’d walked through and changed his life, was also the one he’d walk through to end it.
? ? ?
Eddie was pleasantly surprised when he opened the back exit and wasn’t immediately cut down by machine-gun fire. As he started his car there was a moment of relief when the bench seat didn’t instantly explode beneath him. But then, about halfway home, he saw the dark sedan approaching from behind.
It was hopeless, he knew, but as that car slipped closer he stepped on the gas and decided to give them a good run for their money.
Traffic ahead was stop-and-go, but Eddie flashed his lights and laid on the horn and people seemed to get the message. He pumped the clutch and downshifted and heard his tires squeal as he rocketed through a space so tight he clipped off his outside mirror. Unfortunately the car behind matched every dodge he made, and more than once they got close enough to bump him good and hard from behind.
After a high-speed mile or two up Ogden Avenue the sedan managed to pull up alongside him. He was hemmed in with nowhere left to turn and no way to go any faster.
He looked to the side, straight into the barrel of a shotgun, and saw behind it a face that he recognized from his many years on the wrong side of the law. He wasn’t surprised. That’s the way they do it; they take care of their own. And then there was a double-barreled flash, a spray of glass and metal, and far less pain than he imagined. He was already dead when, seconds later, his car slammed into a trolley pole by the side of the road.
Aboard the USS Lexington with Task Force 11,
far into enemy waters
Two and a half years later: February 20, 1942
Butch lay in his bunk, still in his flight suit, flipping playing cards into the hat of his dress uniform across the small sleeping room. He had a championship run going, forty-four cards without a single miss. The unofficial all-time wardroom record was in sight.
He paused his target practice as the ship listed slightly to starboard, and he felt the rumble of the carrier’s engines as they labored to turn the Lexington into the wind for another launch.
He sighed, flipped another card into the hat, and recalled a phrase he’d heard a thousand damned times from his instructors.
A lot of war is waiting.
All through the Academy, and then later on in flight school in Pensacola, Florida, that was the wet blanket some old-timer would toss out whenever a rookie was overheard fantasizing about the exciting life of a navy flyer.
No, the wise guy would say, that’s not the way it is. There would be hours and days and even months of tense anticipation followed quickly by a few terrifying minutes of heart-stopping, blood-curdling, adrenaline-pumping chaos. If you were brave and prepared and skilled and exceptionally lucky, that flash of chaos could be kept just barely under your control. You might even live to tell your grandkids about it all.
Butch’s father had once said that if you ever want to hear God laugh, all you’ve got to do is make a plan. At the time, his dad’s comment concerned his own struggles to build a business and support his family through the depths of the Great Depression, but his admonition was as true in battle as anywhere else. The military brass often spent weeks on their brilliant strategies and tactics, only to see the tables turned in a last-minute frenzy when the enemy failed to behave as expected.
The day’s plan, for example, was set to be supervised from the flag bridge by Vice Admiral Wilson Brown. Before it all blew up it had probably looked just swell on paper.
The USS Lexington and the rest of Task Force 11 had been ordered to attack the enemy base at Rabaul, a major strategic prize off the coast of New Guinea that had recently been overtaken by the Japanese. The loss of this base was a major blow to the Allies. As the enemy ramped up air and sea forces there it would become a huge threat to vital shipping lanes.
While this small task force didn’t pack nearly enough muscle to actually retake the base, their job was to throw a monkey wrench into the machine and cause as much damage as they could. Butch’s air division had been chosen to lead the assault—bombing runways, sinking ships in the harbor, destroying as many hangar-bound Japanese Zeroes as possible. Down the road, a larger Allied operation would follow up, conquer the base, and send the Japs packing.
The battle plan hardly had a chance to get going, before a long-range enemy scouted the American ships. Butch had just returned from his morning patrol by then and could only watch as other fighter pilots from the Lexington took off and went after the airborne spy.
Butch’s shipmates had taken the scout, but before he was shot down the sneaky bastard had almost certainly radioed his position and sent a warning to his distant commanders.
And that changed everything. A surprise attack by a minor strike force was one thing, but without that element of surprise, Task Force 11 was just a slow-moving target, a sitting duck in the middle of some very hostile waters. Another enemy reconnaissance flight soon followed, another Japanese spotter plane was splashed, and that was all the convincing required to turn the whole mission into a bust.
But at this point, even running away wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.
TF 11 had already made it to a waypoint a little over 450 miles from Rabaul, and now the enemy was alerted. By this time Admiral Aritomo Goto had likely cooked up a surprise of his own for the discovered Americans—one involving a swift and overwhelming retaliation with a squadron or two of his long-range bombers and torpedo planes.
Though the American attack was off, an official retreat hadn’t yet been ordered. Admiral Brown was famously reluctant to give up on a strategic goal, so for the moment all the task force could do was stay the dangerous course toward Rabaul, keep a sharp eye on the skies, and wait.
Butch wondered how he might stack up in an all-out, life-or-death dogfight like the one that might be coming soon. That was one test he hadn’t faced so far.
According to his reviews, he was an exceptional pilot, and since he was a boy he’d been an excellent marksman. Putting those two skills together, though, had proven to be the biggest challenge of his twenty-eight years. He’d flown plenty of missions, but he still hadn’t had the opportunity to fire a single shot in battle.
Butch flipped one card and then another for two more direct hits.
In the calm before the storm, he thought about his father.
The last letter he’d written to him a few years ago had been dashed off and routine, nothing like the note he would have written if he’d known there’d never be another. He’d let an awful lot go unsaid over the years, but thank you was the one sentiment that Butch had probably neglected the most. And when his father was murdered—gangland-style, no less—a number of unpleasant things that had gone unspoken were confirmed.
A busload of reporters and photographers had nearly ruined the funeral. But, after a few ugly days of lurid headlines—CAR CRASH KILLS CAPONE CANARY, SHOTGUN JUSTICE FOR UNDERWORLD SNITCH—the stories shrank and slipped to the back pages and were gradually forgotten.
Mother said that’s what his father would have wanted in the end: to be forgotten by all except his family. Whatever his failings, Dad had been proud of his boy and girls. Flaws and all, he’d done the best he could for them, and he had hoped that the tarnish on their family name would fade with time.
But his bad choices had left quite a dubious legacy. Easy Eddie was survived by a criminal record, a broken marriage, a young trophy girlfriend, two fine daughters who’d grown up mostly without him, and a fairly shy, slightly overweight, navy pilot son who was pushing thirty years old and still waiting to prove himself among his peers.
Butch drew in a deep breath, took aim past the brim of the hat, and flipped the last card that would tie his personal best.
The door to the cabin banged open, swatting the flying queen of diamonds cleanly into the trash can. His friend and wingman, Marion “Duff” Dufilho, stood there, trying to catch his breath.
“C’mon, Butch, we’re up!”
Out in the hall a loud Klaxon had begun to wail. As the two men clattered up the stairs toward the flight deck they felt the big ship beginning to maneuver and accelerate, and heard the repeating action order booming over the horns from high on the bridge:
Battle stations!
Battle stations!
Battle stations!
No need for a stop by the ready room; they got their mission briefing on the run.
? ? ?
Radar had picked up what looked like a jagged V about seventy-five miles west. As it disappeared and reappeared among the shifting storms the operator soon realized what he was seeing: a large contact that wasn’t one of us, inbound at eight thousand feet and making 150 knots. A patrol was scrambled and launched to investigate.
Meanwhile, an earlier air patrol was returning, low on fuel and ready to land, but the remaining idle planes on the deck had been cleared and stacked astern to allow the just-departed squadron to take off. Now all those planes had to be moved to the bow again so the returning out-of-fuel patrol could be recovered before they started dropping dead-stick into the drink.
The flight deck was helter-skelter and crowded wingtip to wingtip. All available hands were occupied with respotting the planes, fore and then aft again. Aircraft were being fueled and rearmed, and the air boss was bullhorning and directing it all like a mad orchestra conductor.
“Pilots, man your planes! Thach, take thirteen, Sellstrom in number two, O’Hare in fifteen, and Dufilho in four!”
The microphones from the radar room and the tower had been routed directly to the topside loudspeakers, and an operator’s voice blared out:
“Contact! I’ve got a contact! Bogies inbound, forty-seven miles west!”
Butch and Duff had been ordered to man the last two F4F Wildcats on the deck and given call-signs of Raven 5 and 6. After a last confirmation of orders both men were soon squeezing into their narrow cockpits.
“That contact,” Butch shouted back over the rising noise, “is that the same one our boys have already gone after? Or another one?”
“Do I look like I know?” Duff yelled forward. “Just strap in, cross your fingers, and get her ready to roll!”