Chicago Confidential

I threw up my hands. “You are letting it happen! Where’s your goddamn judgment gone? Sapperstein warned me about hiring you.”

“Nate...”

“You’ve always had a hard-on for these Outfit guys, but breaking into their homes and bugging them? Setting up a listening post in their fucking basement? It’s insanity.”

Jaw muscles pulsing, he stood; he pointed a finger — Uncle Bill Wanted Me. “Sitting back and watching these bastards get away with murder, that’s insanity! Looking the other way while the city we love falls under gangster control — that is insanity!”

I found a crate to sit on and sat and sighed, leaning an elbow on my knee; I held a hand to my face. I said nothing. Finally Bill, perhaps a little embarrassed, sat back down, himself.

His voice was almost a whisper when he added: “Somebody has to stand up against these barbarians.”

“Bill,” I said, softly, looking up at him. “When exactly wasn’t this city under gangster control? Name a time.”

He swallowed, shook his head. “That doesn’t make it right.”

Unlike almost every other cop in Chicago history, Bill Drury hadn’t pulled political strings to land his badge; no graft had been involved, and there was no Outfit connected ward committeeman or alderman or judge in the woodpile. Instead, he had studied hard and scored record high marks on the P.D. entrance exams, and passed the physical requirements with grace and ease, former Golden Gloves champ that he was. The closest thing he’d had to an “in” was that his brother John was a well-known reporter on the Daily News; the department didn’t mind getting a little good publicity now and then, and having a reporter’s kid brother on the job couldn’t hurt.

That had been the late twenties, when gangster rule in Chicago was at its most blatant and violent — from the train-tunnel slaying of newsman Jake Lingle to the blood spattered warehouse of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. A bright young idealistic go-getter — a natural athlete, a scholar — could get ideas about playing Wyatt Earp, and cleaning up this dirty town, like a modern Tombstone or Dodge City. My friend Eliot Ness certainly grew such notions; and so did Bill Drury.

Moving from patrolman to detective in under a year — another Chicago P.D. record — Drury had decided a police officer ought to do something about Al Capone and his boys, and had targeted the Outfit for special attention. Whenever he would spot a known Capone associate, Drury slammed the guy against the nearest wall and made him stand for a frisk.

And Drury didn’t care where this took place — a restaurant, the racetrack, a men’s room, a street corner — and he would gladly embarrass these hoods when they were out with their wives and kiddies.

“Let these families know,” he’d say, “what kind of coward is the head of their household.”

Soon the papers had dubbed Bill the “Watchdog of the Loop” — his sports background, his brother being a reporter, and his own gregarious nature led to friendships with countless newspapermen, who constantly gave him glowing mentions in the press — and the Syndicate boys were scratching their heads wondering why they were paying good dough to Drury’s superiors, when they were getting ballbreaking treatment like this. Before long, Bill was taken off the street and assigned station house duty; then he was transferred to the pickpocket detail, where I first met him. In neither case did these assignments prevent the Watchdog of the Loop from pursuing his mission in life.

Drury spent his off-duty hours sauntering along Rush Street and Division and other Loop thoroughfares, prowling for hoodlums. When he spotted a millionaire thug like Tony Accardo or Murray Humphries, he demanded their identification and leaned them against the nearest building, legs spread, arms and hands and fingers outstretched, patting them down for concealed weapons.

Such vicious killers as Spike O’Donnell, “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, and Frank McErlane were among those he fearlessly badgered. He arrested Louie “Little New York” Campagna on State Street, catching the Capone crony packing a .45. In a North LaSalle office, he nabbed ten mobsters, catching Charley Fischetti carrying heat; and he arrested Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, the notorious Outfit accountant, outside Marshall Field’s, to the delight of jeering onlookers.

“You son of a bitch,” the pudgy, iguana-like Guzik had sputtered. “I’m no vagrant! I got more money in my pocket right now than you earn in a fucking year!”

“Two more words, Jake,” Drury said, “and I’ll snap the cuffs on you. Two more sentences, I’ll get you fitted for a straitjacket.”