Business took me
from Joliet to Chicago somewhere beyond 2100 North Clark Street.
The day was cold and blustery. As I crossed a street, I heard a
subdued rat-a-tat-tat ahead of me that sounded like a riveting
hammer. As I walked on, I stopped to let several men followed by
two policemen pass to an automobile drawn up at the curb. I
supposed it to be an arrest and continued on my way without further
thought of the matter. But on my return to Joliet late that
afternoon, I learned that it was not an arrest. The "policemen"
were gangsters disguised as police officers. They had learned
that Moran's rival gang was having a meeting in the garage where Moran
serviced his bootlegging trucks. The two psuedo-policemen entered
quietly with drawn revolvers and ordered the seven inmates to line up
face to the wall. They carried a package which proved to be a
machine gun. Before Moran's men fully realized what was happening
to them, the machine gun was in action, riddling them with
bullets. The two, so-called policemen then entered their car and
drove away. They must have done their job in a business-like
gangster manner, for when I saw them emerge from the garage, I had no
idea that this was anything but an ordinary arrest of drunks, theives,
or other mild lawbreakers. What I had heard in the distance and
supposed to be the rattling noise of a riveter was the noise of a
machine gun within the garage behind closed doors.
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