"There is evidence to suggest that this vault once belonged to Al Capone—the richest, most powerful gangster of his time."
Word Count: 1,137
I need your help and I heard you take payment in stories.
So let me tell you about the first time Dean O'Banion died.
It all came down to Merlo. He'd held Chicago together with shaky hands for 5 fucking years. I guarantee if somehow he'd made it then the history of that city would've been different. No way would we have got a war between the Outfit and Northside. And the Spirit wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the fighting to get their foothold in either.
I remember what kicked it off because I was there. We had the green light from Torrio after that thing with Angelo Genna. Come November the winds blowing off Lake Michigan would usually freeze your balls off, but that night was warm. It's burned into my memory because I was sweating like a fucking pig.
Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi had me wait in the car while they went into the flower shop. 5 shots. Two in the chest, two in the neck, and while he laid there bleeding another one in the back of his head.
Then we went back to the cat-house. Frankie'd never had a Chicago girl before, so the Genna crew paid for one. And we all had a good time, I spent most of it drinking. When we woke up in the morning I said my goodbyes and headed to see Joe Torrio.
Torrio was fucking furious with me. O'Banion had called during the night to swear revenge. Joe asked me what the fuck these other guys had done. I told him I was just the driver, so I didn't see it happen. But I'd heard the shots. And you don't have to spend long around killers to know when that adrenaline is pumping. I told him that they'd definitely killed someone last night.
He wasn't happy. Obviously. Capone just sat in the corner like a statue staring at the back of my head. The newspapers ran the story though, Dean O'Banion dead. So it must've been true, right? Whoever called must've been trying to fuck with our heads.
Funeral was bigger than Merlo's. The Archdiocese wouldn't put him in consecrated ground. We thought that was a final "fuck you" at the time. Today I've been thinking elsewise.
A week later a soldier in the Genna crew on a collections run ended up dead and in the Chicago River. Almost didn't find him when the blizzard moved in, but some nosy dockworker or another noticed the body stuck up against a pier.
Can't say it wasn't a big deal, but it wasn't like we expected the Northside to just lay the fuck down and take it when we killed their boss. Guy had gone out with a partner though, and we couldn't find him at all. Then he turns up a day later scared shitless and missing half his fucking face. He's laying there bleeding to fucking death and all Capone does is try and find out who did it. Guy says it was O'Banion.
The guy they just buried.
Never said anything else. Just the name. O'Banion. Over and over.
That night a man came up to the cat-house and asked to see Joe Torrio. We know about it because the girl at the entrance started screaming. I looked out the window and there he fucking was, nice new suit, two holes in his neck and a face with a crater just above his left eye. He started shooting. Torrio wasn't there, but Capone was, and we lit that fucking corpse up. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. We all just thought we were seeing things. Capone wasn't taking any chances though. He covered the corpse in gasoline and lit that fuck on fire. I could of sworn I heard him screaming.
I couldn't take it so I went to bed but Capone watched him burn for hours.
The next day the body was gone. And that spooked fucking everybody.
Torrio was more than willing to fuck with the Spirit if we needed something. He'd let them operate in his territory for a while, and whenever some unexplained bullshit happened, they were the first people he called. This was way before the big blowup that made him retire. So for now we were still on good terms. He calls them up and they tell him that O'Banion had a contract with them. Something about life insurance. They won't explain what it means, just tell us to look out because it isn't over yet.
Like we had time for this kind of bullshit. Northside was already in the streets looking for blood. And if we spent time on this disappearing corpse we'd probably end up joining him so we said fuck it, and we went to war.
You know that story already. We won. They lost. It's history by this point.
8 years later I was face down on the bar in the Lexington. Was trying to sleep off the drinks when I heard the bartender gasp. I looked up and there was this half-burned fucking corpse with white eyes looking at me. I tried to turn and do something but he was on top of me faster than I could think. Knocked me off the stool and came down hard on my neck. No lips. No face. Just that crater above the left eye and a big fucking grin. I remember being confused, then terrified. But even then I could see his skin was starting to grow back. Slowly, around the edges of where his face should be. It's funny the things you notice when someone's strangling the life out of you.
Capone came out of nowhere and tackled him, and then a few guys jumped in. O'Banion just kept reaching his dead hands out towards me while they took him apart. First they just beat him, then Al went and grabbed a bone saw from the back. After it was over he and a couple guys took the pieces and took 'em out to the hotel vault. Threw 'em inside, locked the door and never opened it again.
That was almost 60 fucking years ago. But you know what I saw last night on TV? I saw a fucking idiot open Capone's vault and find it empty. Not almost empty. Completely fucking empty. And it had me thinking. Everybody else is dead. Torrio, Yale, Calise, Anselmi, even Capone. If it took O'Banion 8 years to heal up enough to come after me the first time… where is he now?
~ An unsent letter found in the home of Ty Tomaselli, former Mob Enforcer for the Chicago Outfit. It was addressed to a "Mr. Night". Outside of some dried blood, no evidence of foul play has been discovered.