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ontherockswithsalt · 6 years

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A Made Man

Jamie and Noble have quite a road ahead of them. The story continues here with Part 3, picking up exactly one week after Jamie’s return to New York.

Summary: To accept is to believe in the realness of something. Jamie and Noble find themselves immersed in a reality they’re ready to stop denying. But it’s tangled and difficult and sometimes it’s easier to keep it a secret.

Part 3 in a series (following The Penthouse and A Guy With A Secret), A Made Man follows Jamie Reagan and Noble Sanfino as they figure out how to accept something that’s anything but simple, but definitely real.

Rating: M (natch)

Chapter 1.

“Who would hate me the most?”

Amused at Noble’s question, the clear, deep note of his voice floating through the speakers of my laptop, I cross my room to put a stack of folded t-shirts away. “No one,” I tell him. “You’re kind of unhateable, man. Why do you assume anyone in my family would hate you?”

“Ahh, lets see--” He starts, as if he’s choosing from a list of reasons.

“Alright, fair enough.” I chuckle. There’s so many layers to this arrangement, to Noble Sanfino and me and our low-key relationship, that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain it all to my family. Living thirty years never engaging in anything romantic with a man, never having a boyfriend, never suggesting to my Irish-Catholic family that I might be interested in one would be enough of a shock.

Add to that the fact that this man is someone I met while working undercover -- who’s the son of a pretty prominent capo in one of New York’s deeply rooted Italian crime families -- and it’s not exactly a love story I feel like reminiscing about at Sunday dinner: Yeah, so he has another identity in WITSEC because he and his sister agreed to testify against their whole family -- the one who put a hit out on me, and tried to kill him. And he shouldn’t even try to show his face in New York again, but he does anyway, and we meet up and go to dinner and spend the night together. Aren’t you happy for me, oh family comprised of a seriously intense amount of law enforcement?

So that hasn’t happened yet.

With his computer in his kitchen, I see him making trips back and forth to the refrigerator before he stations himself at the counter to continue his chopping task. The distinct sound of his knife rhythmically slicing down onto his cutting board pauses for a moment with his next question. “Would your sister like me?” He wonders.

A half smile slants on my face as I consider it. “Yes. She’d be pretty sympathetic about what you had to go through. And I’m sure she’d be very... encouraging.”

“How so?”

Over a thoughtful deep breath, I ponder it and work to sort through the pile of laundry on my bed. “Of us. Not wanting me to miss out on something because I was, you know, scared to act on it. Plus she’d think you’re hot.”

“Nice,” he says appreciatively.

“And Danny wouldn’t hate you at all.”

“No?”

“He lives to bust my chops, so just side with him and you’ll be golden.”

We talk as if he’s going to meet my family sooner than later. But it’s more like we’re imagining, building a little world in the abstract someday where boy meets boy, boy falls for boy, boy brings boy home to meet Dad, and we get some kind of happy ending. It won’t happen, so I’d rather have the partial satisfaction of fantasizing about it instead.

“He’s probably the one I’d be most nervous about,” Noble admits.

“Nah,” I dismiss it. “Danny’s a softy when it comes down to it. If you’re gonna be nervous about anyone, it should be my dad.”

He groans. “Oh right. Your dad was in on that whole take-down, wasn’t he?”

“I mean, technically he’s in on everything.”

“How high up in the ranks is your dad, by the way?”

The question makes me pause before I slowly slide the dresser drawer closed. Scratching fingertips along my jaw, I turn back to face the laptop screen and ease onto my bed. “Pretty high up,” I laugh.

“Great,” he complains, sliding some sort of chopped vegetables off his cutting board and into a container before moving onto the next one.

I drag the computer onto my lap and sink down against my pillows. “He’s the Commissioner. Of the NYPD.” It feels weird to tell him because I never know what kind of significance that title holds for people who aren’t immersed in this cop life. “I don’t think I ever told you.”

His brows draw together and he narrows his gaze. “Like… what does that mean exactly?”

“The Commissioner is just… the one who oversees the whole department.”

“So he’s in charge.”

“Yeah.”

“Of the entire police department. Of New York City.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Dude.”

“I know. Don’t get hung up on it, though, it’s okay.”

“So… he’s like the don of the NYPD.”

A loud laugh rumbles in my chest and I tip back against the pillows. “If you want to think of it that way.”

“If the NYPD were the Italian mafia.” He chuckles. “Would that comparison not go over so well with him?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. When you meet him, give it a try,” I joke. “See what happens.”

“I’ll pass.”

“Speaking of, I need to head over there for dinner soon.”

He finishes up at the sink, dries off his hands on a dish towel and then turns to lean against the counter. “I bet they missed you last week.”

“Something tells me I’m going to catch heat for it, too.”

“Tell them you were getting your dick sucked by this hot landscaper in Miami--”

Swinging my arm across my face, I shake my head into the bend of my elbow. “Oh my god,” I groan.

“No. We did more than that. Don’t cheapen it.”

I just let my shoulders shake with weary laughter.

“See, I don’t have that problem,” he muses. “We managed to tell my whole family in one easy confession. Boom, done.”

My arm falls back down and I look at him on the screen, my lips flicking upward with a sad smile.

He’s right. Bianca is all he has anymore, a jarring one-eighty from the life he had, surrounded by dozens of people who considered him family, the ones who came out for him when he opened his restaurant back in New York, proud and even gracious toward me. To have that your whole life, then lose it entirely is something I can’t fathom.

“Yeah I guess your sister is a good one to have around.”

“I’m having dinner with her tonight,” he says. “I’m sure she misses you.”

“What about you, huh?” I murmur.

I see the little quirk at this lips as he scratches fingers at the back of his dark wavy hair. “I miss you.” His voice gets sort of cute. Not sickenly so, but if there was someone else who overheard him, they’d certainly notice the shift in his tone. The low softness of it swells in my chest and makes it ache for a moment. “But you know that.”

“I miss you too,” I tell him.

“I’ll make you uncomfortable during dinner and text you explicit descriptions of the things I miss--”

With a knowing smirk, I nod in acceptance. “I bet you will.”

“So keep your phone on silent.” He directs a raised eyebrow at me with his warning and it amuses me.

“Why don’t you save it for when I get back home and we can talk later tonight?”

“Because I’m trying to achieve Jamie Reagan-level tease status. Some of us have to work at it.”

I laugh, already feeling the simmering pulse he’s able to elicit and it’s only going to heighten until I talk to him again. “Alright, you work at it. I’ll let you know how you do.”

#jamie x noble #newwwww story time!

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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I Care a Lot: Peter Dinklage is the Scariest Gangster We’ve Seen in Years

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This article contains I Care a Lot spoilers.

J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot is one of very few films where everyone in it is a villain. In the lead role, Rosamund Pike ushers in a new amoral high mark as conservator con artist Marla Grayson. Peter Dinklage meanwhile mines the standard Hollywood heavy role for an unexpected haul of gangster gravitas. And with his turn as Roman Lunyov, the former black sheep of the Lannister family in Game of Thrones joins the likes of Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Wesley Snipes, and Humphrey Bogart as memorable cinema crime bosses.

However, this isn’t Dinklage’s first turn in a mob movie. He got his button in Find Me Guilty (2006). The film was based on the true story of Lucchese crime family soldier Jackie DiNorscio, played by Vin Diesel, and the longest mafia trial in American history. The movie was co-written and directed by Sidney Lumet, who not only helmed such crime classics as Dog Day Afternoon and Q&A, but was one of the original Dead End kids when the proto-gangster social drama was still on Broadway. Dinklage didn’t play a mobster in Find Me Guilty. He played a lawyer.

Dinklage’s Lunyov Family isn’t strictly going up against law enforcement in I Care a Lot. Rather Pike’s Marla Grayson and her partner in crime (and life), Fran (Eiza González), are court-appointed guardians from hell, and they represent a rival outfit. They are also operating a lucrative racket.

This guardianship gang war could be seen as similar to the scenarios which happened when Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs moved in on the Harlem and Chicago numbers games in the 1920s and ’30s. Or how Michael Corleone’s first order of business as head of family in The Godfather was to take over the casinos in Las Vegas. Like Don Vito Corleone before her, Marla’s also got judges, such as the sympathetic Judge Lomax (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), in her pocket. Eldercare racketeering dominance is also comparable to the prohibition fights of The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the body count is just as high. The take is just as sweet.

Edward G. Robinson set the standard for cinematic mob rule as “Rico” Bandello in Little Caesar (1931). Dinklage’s Roman Lunyov, by contrast, is more of a Czar. He heads a family in the Russian mafia and purports himself like a descendant of the Romanov dynasty. But he’s got Cossack in him. It’s in his DNA and cascading down his chin like the tail of a cavalry horse.

On Game of Thrones, Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister was part of an insidious dynasty whose roots intertwined with every twig of the ruling class. The modern Russian mob, on screen and off, can boast even more branches.

Netflix’s World’s Most Wanted dedicated an episode to Semion Mogilevich, the reputed head of the Russian mob (aka Bratva). While Moglievich is allegedly tied to arms dealing, international trading scams, and countless murders, the cops in the documentary series compare him to the Keyser Söze character from The Usual Suspects. He’s a respected, low-key businessman who likes to smoke. He lives in a mansion next to the head of the Communist Party in Russia. His activities aren’t merely state-sanctioned, they are apparently encouraged.

Dinklage’s Roman is all these things, even as his identity is actually more elaborately guarded than Söze’s, and his tastes run toward elitist’s treats.

But then Russian mobsters are always ruthless on screen. These are the guys who killed Denzel Washington’s seemingly indestructible narco cop Alonzo Harris in Training Day (2001). You never prepare for that. When the “Three Wise Men” who always have your back tell you to skip town, you know you’re dealing with folks in a rough trade. On Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, Galina “Red” Reznikova (Kate Mulgrew) would rather go to jail for keeping bodies on ice than say she was keeping them fresh for the Russian mafia in Queens.

Dinklage’s big bad leans into this mythic image of Russian mobsters, with Roman appearing cut from the same cloth as the New Jersey-based operators who could make even Tony Soprano take pause in The Sopranos. Albeit if Dinklage’s character ever actually visited the tough guys in the Garden State, he would probably need to rethink his man-bun. After all, Tony Soprano couldn’t even get away with shorts.

When James Cagney had fist fights in his early films, he was always matched with a bruiser twice his size because the studios thought no one in the audience would accept him being remotely challenged otherwise. Dinklage also doesn’t display a traditionally imposing physical presence. But he is no lightweight. His own thugs cower at the very thought of a cross word. In the Lunyov family, it’s best to bring a gun to a food fight.

Roman’s personal attorney almost wets his briefs when he screws up. That’s because Roman is as unpredictable as Cagney’s Cody Jarrett, the gang leader in White Heat, Cagney’s most psychopathic role. Dinklage’s introduction as Roman shows him asking how many mules died on the last drug run. He calculates them coldly, as part of business, with the sociopathology of a Chief Executive Officer. But his biggest similarity can be found in oedipal complexities. Like Cody Jarrett, Roman Lunyov loves his mother.

We don’t know much about Jennifer Peterson, the nice old lady played by Dianne Wiest. She’s got money, a nice house, no living relatives, and a doctor who will exaggerate dementia symptoms in court for a stock payoff. On the surface Peterson seems to be a competent business woman who retired after a successful career. Now under the less than sensitive care at the Berkshire Oaks Senior Living facility, we realize her chosen field was career criminal. After all, any of these sweet old ladies could have had criminally scandalous youths.

When Marla finally asks her ward who she is, all Jennifer has to say is “I’m the worst mistake you’ll ever make.” We learn she has more than one son in the Russian mob. She could be a post-Glasnostic Ma Barker from the Prohibition era. Barker’s fictional approximation in White Heat, Ma Jarrett (Margaret De Wolfe Wycherly) tells her son she can take care of herself. And while Jennifer may have been declared legally unable to do just that in I Care a Lot, she is quite adept at a choke hold, eschewing the standard garrote assassination for her own elbow.

Marla doesn’t romanticize her mother, calling her a psychopath and offering her up as the collateral damage of closing costs. Her single-minded opportunism is more sociopathic than Pike’s Amy Dunne in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gone Girl. She employs a cutthroat logic that’s in the same territories as bad-mannered comedies, but with the ruthlessness of the shark in Jaws.

Roman’s black-on-black dress code ensembles, by contrast, broadcast a desire for stylish power games. Marla is not interested in gangster chic; she prefers classy monochromatic suits so brightly focused they attract moths like flames. Her crew is all business as usual. Dr. Amos (Alicia Witt) is the fixer. She picks the “cherries,” elderly cash cows who can be milked in the retirement home. Sam Rice (Damian Young) is the monster at the center of the center. Everyone’s got a soulless nature except Eiza González’s Fran, who is also the only one to see the wisdom of getting the fuck out of there.

Dinklage is fearsome in one of the scariest screen gangsters in recent years. This guy can dispatch troublesome community angels easier than a creamy éclair pastry–and he loves those treats. He even takes a last loving bite of a chocolate-covered, custard-filled house specialty before he tosses it onto the cold concrete of an underground parking garage.

When he ends negotiations with Marla, his only caveat is to make it look “organic.” Georgia Lyman, who is only credited as “the Assassin,” is I Care a Lot’s Luca Brasi, sharing duties with a few “heavies.” The film’s Fredo is Alexi Ignatyev, played by Nicholas Logan as if he’s always waiting for another shoe to drop. Even Ms. Peterson laughs and calls him an idiot. She laughs a lot, and it’s not just the steady drugs she’s being forcibly and legally dosed with, it’s the glee of power.

Roman’s power lies in his legal team, and the Lunyov family’s Tom Hagen is Dean Ericson (Chris Messina). One thing you have to admit with the Russian mob is they do appreciate innovation and sophistication. Ericson can’t help but be impressed by Marla’s scam. His lowball offer of $150,000 is an insult, but an understandable one. His veiled threats are as subtle as his suits are ostentatious.

Marla doesn’t seem to appreciate the power the Lunyov family wields, but she does appreciate the irony.

“If you can’t convince a woman to do what you want,” she says, appraising the fine print under the mouthpiece’s exploratory offer, “then you call her a bitch and threaten to kill her.” Marla pays it forward by calling the Lunyov matriarch far worse and threatening extreme discomfort, which she promises will last until the day she dies. As restrained as her venom may be, Marla is a proud femme fatale. Though also a stereotypical “ice queen” villainess, and heartless materialist. We’re almost sorry to feel bad for Marla when she is tied to a chair during last minute negotiations.

Director Blakeson, who made the science fiction action movie The 5th Wave and the noir thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed, sets up I Care a Lot like a horror movie.

“There’s no such thing as good people,” Marla Grayson says at the start of the film. The opening is exquisitely unsettling as Jennifer is guided through a process of enforced institutionalization, followed by her house being emptied, painted, placed on the market, and sold. The plot thickens as keys are traced to a safety deposit box containing millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds, which officially don’t exist. Most gangster films aren’t driven by this kind of mystery, but Roman is a new kind of gangster. Though cheap, dead drug-mules are an unnecessary expense, the Lunyov family want to make a difference in the world.

Blakeson wanted to highlight all-too true stories of elder abuse and the perils of court-appointed conservators which could even bring The #FreeBritney movement calling. But he captures the allure of the anti-hero and the all-American dream of a corner on the market. Roman Lunyov has one final thing in common with Michael Corleone, and many of the traditional gangsters: He wants to earn money legitimately. This is not to be confused with wanting to go legit.

Those of us who root for the “bad guys” will find a wealth of insidious characters, and a very original caper, at the heart of I Care a Lot. Peter Dinklage’s Roman Lunyev may go against type, with his eastern bloc nobility stunted by the limits of black comedy. But as a movie mob boss, he is Street Regal.

I Care a Lot can be streamed on Netflix.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Fargo Season 4: The Gang War Between The Chicago Outfit and The Policy Kings

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The following contains spoilers for Fargo season 4.

The FX series Fargo begins every episode of every season with a disclaimer that the stories are true but the names are changed. This gives the show a lot of leeway in picking its stories and how to present them. Fargo season 4 is set in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1950. Two mobs in one small city make a truce, which appears to be traditional in that part of town. It’s been done for at least two generations. Loy Cannon, played by Chris Rock, boss of an African American crime family, trades his youngest son Satchel (Rodney Jones), with the youngest son of Mafia family boss Donatello Fadda (Tommaso Ragno) to keep the peace. Donatello dies shortly after, in the usual unusual circumstances. There is no evidence of this kind of underworld trade in any of the true crime books I personally own, and have found no references to any books which reference it in an internet search. There was a beef in town which resulted in Mafia deaths and racial skirmishes in the Midwest crime world. They are unconnected but fill in some of the gaps.

But the central conflict in Fargo appears to be, at least inspired by, a crime war in the Midwestern city of Chicago where the Bronzeville area’s Policy Kings came up against Sam Giancana’s The Outfit. This is the same outfit Al Capone once ran, but the specific turf war came in the late 1940s and ended in the early 1950s, exactly when Fargo is set.

Sam Giancana is a fairly well-known crime figure whose fingerprints have dusted such high-profile hits as the JFK assassination and the attempted whack on Fidel Castro. He was one of the CIA’s “Family Jewels.” Giancana started out as a getaway driver for the 40 Thieves gang, which started out by busting heads for Chicago’s political bosses. He was the first member of the wild 42 Gang to get pulled into the majors and the very first thing he did when he came to bat for The Outfit was go after the Policy Kings’ numbers racket.

Fargo’s crime history holds that there were two gangs during the early part of the 20th Century, but the African American gang had been running the area’s policy rackets since 1918 and expanded into surrounding neighborhoods during the “Roaring 20s.” Black street gangs formed in the Bronzeville area after the 1919 race riots with Irish gangs. After the riots, the gangs became go-betweens for tourists looking for the best food, a good time, or the hottest jazz clubs, of which the neighborhood was loaded. They also showed out-of-towners where to gamble, get laid, or score drugs. The Policy Kings recruited from street talent, just like the Outfit chose Giancana.

The numbers racket is an illegal street lottery where people pick three numbers which are determined by a random drawing the next day, usually the last three numbers of racetrack totals. You place bets with a bookie and runners transport betting slips and cash to the numbers bank. In the Black section of Chicago it was called the Wheel Game, and the Policy Kings set talented gang members up with wheels of their own. The wheels had two drawings a day, one in the afternoon and another at night, bets were picked up every two hours by wheel men. Bookies got 25 percent of their bets. The bank got the rest. It was a no-lose proposition for the house.

During World War II, the epicenter of the Bronzeville area, Grand Boulevard, housed the Black upper class and celebrities on the east side and the struggling citizens on the west. The Policy Kings was stitched together by a tailor named Edward P. Jones, who went in with his brothers on a Wheel. Edward started as a slip runner and borrowed the $15,000 to start his own wheel, called the Harlem-Bronx, from his mother. Jones’ first runner was Teddy Roe, who was working as a tailor in the shop, which was really a front for a policy wheel. Born in Galliano, Louisiana, and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Roe had been going back and forth between legitimate work and bootlegging, and could pass for white according to the book, Robin Hood of the Hood: The Life and Times of Teddy Roe, Policy King by Ron Chepesiuk and Michael Roe. He would go on to build an illegal gambling empire on Chicago’s South Side.

The street lottery was protected by politicians Edward Joseph Kelly and Patrick Nash. Chicago’s “Big Twelve Policy Syndicate” was organized in 1932. Energized by the Black vote, the city’s Democratic Party gave tacit approval the next year. By 1938 the Policy Kings were making $10,000 a day. Al Capone noticed their success but left the Black neighborhoods in the hands of the Jones Brothers. By 1946, The Policy Kings were pulling in more than $25 million a year.

Racketeers routinely gave back to the community. This bought them goodwill, and more than its investment in terms of alibis. Roe was nicknamed “The Robin Hood of the Southside” because he paid hospital bills for newborns, funeral tabs for the dead, and was known to hand out $50 bills to the homeless. But also, because he expanded into legitimate businesses and hired locally. Like the Chris Rock character’s operation on Fargo, The Policy Kings were the Black community’s banks and employers in Chicago.

The numbers game generated a lot of money to poor neighborhoods and the Policy Kings kept it there, investing in car dealerships, supermarkets and churches. The Jones brothers bought the Ben Franklin department store which employed 150 people, and was also convenient as a front their policy bank. They bought apartment buildings, first on the South Side and then in more affluent neighborhoods. They also lived large. Eddie Jones’ wife Lydia was a former Cotton Club chorus line beauty queen. She wore satin or mink every day.

Jones and Giancana were cellmates at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Giancana was doing time for bootlegging. Jones was serving 28 months for tax evasion, a rap he took to take the heat off his family. The Jones brothers had been working with the other cellmate, Billy Skidmore, who ran 19 casinos inside Chicago’s red-light district. Prodded by Skidmore, a proud Jones told Giancana he ran the biggest of thirty policy games in the city. When Giancana got out of jail in 1946, he brought the idea of taking over the Black policy games to Paul “The Waiter” Ricca, who had been the de facto boss since Capone’s imprisonment, but he and future Outfit boss Tony Accardo, also known as “Joe Batters” and “Big Tuna,” were caught up in a Hollywood labor investigation.

Giancana and “Fat” Leonard Caifano, a bookmaker and loan shark, visited Jones in prison to get him to put up the money for a vending machine operation. Jones gave his brother George orders to bankroll it. Within six months, they had 12,000 jukeboxes, cigarette and pinball machines, and a crew of about 500. The machines were legal, but the soda, candy, records and cigarettes which were in them fell off the backs of trucks.

The mob, seeing earning potential in the African American neighborhood, kidnapped Jones in May of 1946, and demanded $100,000 and a promise he hand over the policy rackets as ransom. Jones was held for five days and released at the corner of Loomis and 62nd Street, with adhesive tape over his eyes, and cotton stuffed in his ears. Roe paid the money, but decided to keep the rackets for himself. Jones moved his whole family to Mexico, though they could have moved to the villa in France where their mother Harriet lived.

Roe did not like or trust the white mob. He was respected as a crook with honor because he refused to give in to the Outfit, stiffing the mobsters their street tax. Ricca and Accardo didn’t take interest in the Black policy rackets until November of 1946, when Tom Manno drove them to the operation’s basement counting room which was filled with piles of money stacked to the ceiling. Accardo gave the order to take control of the policy business by January 1947.

Caifano tried to work out a partnership agreement, but Roe refused to even meet with him. He never backed down from a fight, vowing never knuckle under to any white gangster. A dozen mobsters from The Outfit and an unknown number of Roe’s gang were killed in the gang battle by the end of 1946. Caifano took over gambling parlors and set up bookie joints in the Black wards. Roe’s house was bombed, his wife and children were shot at, his collectors were beaten. Roe became a living legend in the Black community just for surviving, and it was good for business as the betting grew as part of neighborhood unity.

Giancana personally met with Roe. He offered him $250,000 in cash to quit the policy rackets. Roe told him “I’ll die first.” Giancana reasoned he “just might.” On June 19, 1951, Fat Lenny tried to kidnap Roe. He and his brother, Marshall Caifano, along with Vincent Ioli flagged down Roe and his three off-duty Chicago-cop bodyguards. Fat Lenny got shot in the head when they tried to pull Roe into the car. Bill Baxter, one of the off-duty cops, reputedly fired the fatal shot, but Roe took the rap.

The Chicago Police Department booked Roe for murder and put him in Cook County jail. After hearing reports he might be executed, they put him under extra heavy guard and Roe’s meals were prepared outside the jail in case someone tried to poison him. Roe was also charged with conspiracy to violate the state anti-gambling statute. He was denied bail six times before and during his trial. For the murder charge, Roe pleaded self-defense. His defense team linked the prosecution to the mob and Roe beat the case. Roe told reporters “They’ll have to kill me to take me” when he left the courtroom.

But Roe didn’t beat mob rule. Lenny Caifano was a made man, and his brother Marshall Joseph Caifano, was a capo. After Caifano’s killing, Giancana waged a shakedown war on Chicago’s Black bookmakers. Roe was hiding out in his mansion on South Michigan Avenue. He hired a small army for protection, according to Kings: The True Story of Chicago’s Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers by Nathan Thompson. On Aug. 1, 1952, doctors told Roe he had incurable cancer. He dismissed his bodyguard. On August 4, 1952, he left his house dressed in a three-piece suit and hat. Roe was hit in the back, face and jaw by five blasts from a 12-gage shotgun before he reached the other side of the street. He did not have a chance to pull out his revolver. He died slumped against a tree outside 5239 S. Michigan Ave.

“The king is dead,” Chicago newspapers reported. Roe’s was the biggest funeral Chicago’s Black community had since Jack Johnson, the first African American world heavyweight boxing champ, died in 1946. Roe was laid out in a $5,000 casket. He had an 81-car funeral procession. Thousands of people lined the streets.

Police said they had no clues in the killing. They disagreed on whether the Outfit hired hit men or if it was other racketeers. In the early 1970s, Giancana was caught on an FBI wire tape admitting Roe “went out like a man. He had balls. It was a fuckin’ shame to kill him.”

After the last Policy King was gunned down, Giancana took over the Policy racket and began selling Heroin. The largest street gang in the neighborhood by that time was the Deacons, who could do little to protect the neighborhood.

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Fargo airs Sundays at 9 pm on FX.

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