Willie’s Vegas mentor Greenbaum was killed in 1958; he and his wife were trussed up in their home and their throats slashed.
Such deaths were typical of the post-Nitti Outfit’s style; the headlines were often bloody, the heat was frequently stirred up. Not until the 1960s did the style revert, somewhat, to Nitti’s lower-key approach.
The Chicago local of the IATSE, by the way, continues to be linked to the Outfit; in 1980 the Chicago Tribune reported that the feds had identified twenty-four men with mob ties as members of Local 110. And the second-highest-paid labor leader in the entertainment industry, Variety said in 1985, was the business manager of that local, who took home nearly a million in salary and expenses over the latest ten-year period.
As for me, from time to time I had dealings with Nitti’s successors, but never again did I come to know one of the mob bosses in the way I knew Nitti. My agency, A-1, is still around; but I retired years ago.
Barney? On January 12, 1947, he was released from the U.S. Public Health Service addiction hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where he had admitted himself voluntarily three months earlier. He’d gone that route because (he told me later) he heard “those private sanitariums ain’t tough enough.” Also, by going to a government hospital, he’d make a clean breast of it, publicly; he might encourage others with the same problem to come forward, too. It was also a gesture to his wife, who had recently left him, of his sincerity about quitting the stuff. Cathy was there for him, when he got out of Lexington.
“The withdrawal gave me the miseries,” he told me, “because the reduced dose of morphine wasn’t enough to kill the cramps and the sweats. I learned quick enough where the expression ‘kick the habit’ come from. When they gradually cut down my dope, I got spasms in the muscles of my arms and my legs actually kicked. And then I was back there again, Nate. On the Island. I kept fighting the Japs in that muddy shell hole, over and over again. But now I don’t have to go back there no more.”
I hope nobody does.
Despite its extensive basis in history, this is a work of fiction, and a few liberties have been taken with the facts, though as few as possible-and any blame for historical inaccuracies is my own, reflecting, I hope, the limitations of my conflicting source material, and the need to telescope certain events to make for a more smoothly flowing narrative. The E. J. O’Hare and Estelle Carey cases are complex and, in order to deal with them both within this one volume, the use of compressed time and composite characters was occasionally necessary. While in most cases real names have been used, I have at times substituted similar or variantly spelled names for those of real people, when these real people-particularly, more minor, non-“household name” historical figures-have been used in a markedly fictionalized manner. Such characters include Nate and Barney’s fellow Marines and soldiers in the Guadalcanal section; Sergeant Donahoe; the Borgias; and Wyman. All of these characters did, however, have real-life counterparts.
While numerous books and newspaper accounts were consulted in the writing of the Guadalcanal section of The Million-Dollar Wound, several books proved particularly helpful. Semper Fi, Mac (1982), by Henry Berry, a Studs Terkel-style oral history of the Marines in the Pacific, was far and away the most valuable resource for that section, and is highly recommended to any readers interested in exploring this subject further. Very helpful as well (and recommended reading) were (are) two Marine memoirs: With the Old Breed (1981), E. B. Sledge; and Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (1980), William Manchester. And, of course, the autobiography of Barney Ross (written with Martin Abramson), No Man Stands Alone (1957), provided the basis for Barney and Nate’s story; it should be noted that the death of a Marine by “friendly fire” in this novel is fictional, although it grows out of an admission in the Ross autobiography that such an event nearly occurred. Otherwise, the account of Barney Ross’s experiences in that bloody, muddy shell hole is a true one.
The portrait of Westbrook Pegler is drawn primarily from two biographies-Pegler: Angry Man of the Press (1963), Oliver Platt; and Fair Enough: The Life of Westbrook Pegler (1975), Finis Farr. Also consulted were Pegler’s own writings, including the collections ’T Ain’t Right (1936) and George Spelvin, American, and Fireside Chats (1942), as well as his newspaper columns pertaining to Bioff and Browne. The anti-Semitic behavior of Pegler depicted here is reflected in these biographies to an extent, as well as in Louis Nizer’s My Life in Court (1961); but is based also upon an interview with an acquaintance of Pegler’s who was on the receiving end of the columnist’s prejudice.
As was the case in True Crime (1984), the portrait of Sally Rand herein is a fictionalized one, though based upon numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and especially drawing upon Stud Terkel’s oral history Hard Times (1970); but I feel I must label it as fictionalized, as I know of no historic parallel in Sally Rand’s life to her relationship with Nate Heller. Her portrait in these pages is also drawn from a 1939 Collier’s article by Quentin Reynolds. The portrait of Robert Montgomery is largely drawn from another Collier’s article by Reynolds of approximately the same vintage (it is typically Heller-ironic that two articles by Quentin Reynolds, whose libel suit against Westbrook Pegler spelled the beginning of the end for the feisty columnist, served as major reference sources for this novel). The Montgomery portrait was further drawn from Current Biography (1948) and Contemporary Authors, his own book Open Letter From a Television Viewer (1968), and various other magazine articles and books.
Other books that deserve singling out include The Legacy of Al Capone (1975) by George Murray-the only comprehensive study of the post-Capone mob era, and a very valuable reference to the writing of the Nitti Trilogy; The Tax Dodgers (1948), a memoir by Treasury Agent Elmer L. Irey (with William J. Slocum); and The Extortionists (1972), a memoir of Herbert Aller, business representative of the IATSE for thirty-six years.
The portrait of Antoinette Cavaretta, the second Mrs. Nitti, must be viewed as a fictionalized one. Although the basic facts of her business involvement with Nitti, working as E. J. O’Hare’s secretary, marrying Nitti, etc., are accurate, few interviews with her exist (and these brief interviews were at the stressful time of her husband’s death); my imagined portrait of her is largely drawn from the newspaper accounts of the day, and from material in Murray’s The Legacy of Al Capone and Ed Reid’s The Grim Reapers (1969). Also consulted (in regard to Antoinette Cavaretta and other mob-related figures in this book) were the transcripts of the Kefauver Senate Crime Investigating Committee hearings. Nate Heller’s speculations about Cavaretta’s personal relationship with Nitti prior to their marriage-including her possible role in O’Hare’s murder-should be viewed as just that: speculation; and speculation by a fictional character in a historical novel, at that. It should be noted, however, that the Kefauver investigators explored the same area in the questioning of various Chicago crime figures.