Reading them has left me horrified by the cozy relationship between the underworld and the upperworld. Crooks and sadists like Al Capone, Frank Nitti, Tony Accardo, Paul Ricca, Murray Humphreys, Sam Giancana and a slew of succeeding crime bosses were essentially business partners with assorted mayors, police commanders, judges, state senators and members of some of the city's most prestigious boards of directors. It was all an open secret that most Chicagoans chose to ignore.
I see no reason to believe the dynamic has changed now that organized crime is run by younger, more ethnically and racially diverse goons. Any accomplished office-holder has to be aware of the long reach of drug dealing, pimping and burgling gangs into City Hall, the circuit courts and the state house.
It seems crazy, but many of us celebrate these slobs. Take the whole Godfather-Sopranos-Rat Pack mania that's been going on for years. Countless lunkheads titter at "Goodfellas" lines and listen to Louie Prima disks because that's what Wise Guys listened to. Oh, what a guy the Don was, making people offers they couldn't refuse! And Giancana and Sinatra were as thick as, well, thieves - isn't that a riot?
I once did a story about Mike North, at the time, the king of Chicago sports talk radio. He brought me into his northwest suburban home and proudly showed off his basement den on which he'd spent a mint recreating precisely the office of Vito Corleone, right down to the cherry wood blinds.
After reading Russo and Demaris, I'd equate North's interior decorating choices with those of someone who elects to reproduce John Gacy's bedroom or Osama bin Laden's cave in his home.
Organized crime depends in large part on the labors of little men who jimmy car trunks, break into homes or knock over jewelers. Some of these penny-ante crooks even become local heroes of a sort. The Panczko boys - Pops, Butch and Peanuts - for instance, were compulsive burglars who were lovingly profiled in numerous Sunday newspaper magazine sections.
We laugh at and secretly cherish these chestnuts of Chicago's colorful history: Hey, our petty criminals and smart and entertaining! And our Mob is ten times better than New York's Five Families, the Cleveland and Detroit guys or those flamboyant LA kingpins. Hell, they almost bumped off Castro! They got Kennedy elected and then they killed him for two-timing them! Our monsters are better than your monsters!
I've had a couple of run ins with home burglars. In 1980, I was awakened by strange noises in the middle of a hot July night. I got up to investigate and discovered a treasure trove of my belongings piled on the back porch, waiting to be lugged down the stairs. I dashed to my roommate's bedroom to alert her. As I knocked on her door, I glanced toward the back door and saw the burglar coming back in for more swag.
I shouted and ran at him. When he saw me, his eyes became wide as saucers. He turned and flew down the stairs. I chased him only as far as the back porch because, well, I was naked. No wonder his eyes had grown so wide!
A dozen years later, in another apartment, I came home one afternoon to find my TV, VCR and stereo piled neatly near the front door. I found a note from my next door neighbor who said she'd happened to glance into my living room window and seen a stranger prowling around so she called the cops. The burglar was nabbed while hiding in the basement stairway under my back porch.
I also found several clean socks, taken from my sock drawer, scattered around the areas where the valuables had been. Later, I found a couple of socks in the basement stairway. I figured the burglar had used them to wipe stray fingerprints off the surrounding surfaces. Pretty smart.
Anyway, I showed up at the punk's trial a couple of months later. Before the proceeding, I sat in an ante-room with a couple of harried, distracted Assistant State's Attorneys. They told me they were certain this punk had been responsible for a rash of similar burglaries in my neighborhood. They thanked me, profusely and hurriedly, for showing up.
I went back out into the courtroom and sat next to the punk, whose picture I'd seen when the prosecutors had opened their file in front of me. As we rose for the judge to enter the court, I took advantage of the rustling and whispered to him, "I better never see you around my house again." The punk, maybe 19 or 20 years old, looked at me with panic on his face.
The case was called and the two of us marched up to the bench as if we'd come to court together. This elicited a surprised look from the judge. Then he fell back into his previous bored visage, thumbed through the case file and addressed me.
"Mr. Glab, did you find anything missing from your house?"
Now I panicked. None of my valuables were missing, of course. But if I answered no, he might decide there was no case here. I thought quickly. Aha! There was something missing!
"Yes, your honor. I found two socks - one white and one gray - in the basement stairway under my back porch."
I was ready to launch into an explanation of my fingerprint-wiping theory. But the judge cut me off, loudly.
"What?" he hollered. He threw the file toward his clerk. "Get this out of here! Case dismissed."
"Oh, but I...," I began, but he talked over me, directing his ire at the Assistant State's Attorneys. "Don't waste my time with stuff like this. What's the matter with you?"
The prosecutors looked sheepish. Then they looked at me. I shrugged. They shook their heads.
"Next," the judge announced.
The un-convicted burglar walked free. I like to think he kept my warning in mind. Maybe I even scared him straight. Maybe. Then again, he may have aspired to become so good at his occupation that one day some lunkhead might decorate his house the way he had. Or a Sunday newspaper magazine writer would pen a loving profile of him.
