GANGSTER IN OUR MIDST, by Betty Blandt Passick. Published by the author and available from Dept. TGM, Amazon. Price: $16.95, plus shipping.
This 240-page softbound volume based on a true story, is listed as an historical novel about the life of a man—Louie La Cava—who reportedly served as a bookkeeper, lieutenant, and occasional hitman for Al ‘Scarface’ Capone and Johnny ‘The Fox’ Torrio. The unusual part is his marriage to an Iowa girl—Josephine–who wanted to live in her hometown some two-hundred-sixty plus miles west and slightly north of Chicago, Illinois, and Cook County.
The town, people and most of the events are real or have some basis for being, the conversations, naturally, less so. Some names may have been changed or altered, but many—Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, etc.– remain the same.
Containing 29 chapters from Three Fingers through Face In The Crowd, it also features a ‘cast of characters’, prologue, author’s notes and comments, etc. (The ‘Cast’ lists in alphabetical order more than ten dozen entries, from Tuffy
Adams and his wife Evelyn, owners of the town (Oxbow) Creamery, to Rev. C. C. Winter, the Methodist Church minister, for the period through the mid-1960s. Two each are listed for 1968 and 1981. Even the Ford Model T cars have names.)
As with most novels, there are few illustrations—two to be exact. There is a map of Oxbow (the town) as it would have been in 1928, and a faded headshot view of ‘Scarface’ Al and ‘Three Fingers’ Louie.
A lot of research—file searching, etc.—went into the writing of this book, but a bit more might have benefited Chapter Nineteen (The Duck Blind) devoted to Louie and Sweeney Delaney, Oxbow’s town Marshall, hunting ducks from a blind. Louie was hunting with a sawed-off side/side more suited to holding up banks, etc. due to its shortness and conceal ability under a long coat. Cutting the barrels removed the chokes so the ducks would have to be close. Sweeney was using a Browning autoloader, probably a Belgian-manufactured model in the 1920’s time frame. During one overhead pass, Louie had the “stock resting on his shoulder, barrel pointed toward the gaggle.” (Side/side means two barrels, side by side, and gaggle usually refers to geese, and flock to ducks.) Louie, unless he reloaded, could fire two shots and Sweeney at least five shots in his unplugged Browning of that era when even baiting with shelled corn was legal. Still, “the two emptied their guns of ammo” and got four ducks. Later, Sweeney “opened the magazine of his Browning and proceeded to load up.” The Browning autoloader has a tubular magazine concealed by the forearm and is loaded through the opening on the underside of the receiver. If you are right-handed, you usually turn the shotgun so the receiver is facing the the upper right, place a live shell on the lifter and push it down and forward into the magazine; repeat until the
magazine will not accept another shell. If the side/side is auto-ejecting the process is faster, push the top lever to the right, hinge the barrels down the two empties will automatically eject. Drop two live shells, one in each barrel chamber, and snap the barrels closed.
This is an interesting book covering a period of our history in which time seemed to move slowly, and except where gangsters were involved people were more trusting. Prohibition was probably a mistake as it seemed to spawn crime–mainly bank robberies and deadly bootlegging competition, especially in the Chicago and New York areas. The author has done her character research well and the way the chapters are arranged allow the book to be read, laid down, and picked up later to continue without having to remember where, or what actually happened in the previous chapter. As a historical novel it is excellent with only a few minor technical errors.
