Unfortunately, lucrative high-risk enterprises tend to attract the ruthless and greedy, which meant that Torrio’s business partners included such volatile lunatics as the Terrible Gennas, Claude “Screwy” Maddox, and Dion O’Banion, a cherubic little Irishman who might either buy you a drink or shoot you in the back depending on his mood. O’Banion once set Torrio up by selling him the Siebens Brewery on the Near North Side just a few hours before it was scheduled to be raided. Initially, Torrio refused to go after O’Banion, prefering diplomacy to slaughter in the interests of business. But the nature of the business demanded violence. There was no way to prevent it. All arguments, whether about territory, profits, or management philosophy had to be settled by force. In short order, the streets of Chicago were red with blood, as were the streets of Kansas City and Detroit and almost every other major American city. The Cook County State’s Attorney, trying to stem the crimson tide, added a thousand men to the police force, got the county to triple the number of judges, and had absolutely no impact whatsoever. Over 200 gangsters were gunned down, blown up, or knifed to death during the first two terms of his watch—on at least one occasion there was a machinegun duel in broad daylight right in front of the Standard Oil Building on Michigan Avenue—but not a single gangster was sent up for murder.xv In court, witnesses contracted a disease called “Chicago Amnesia,” and one prospective juror told the judge straight out he wouldn’t vote guilty because he didn’t want to get beaten to a pulp. In January of 1925 a serious attempt was made on Torrio’s life. Remnants of the O’Banion gang, rightly convinced that Torrio had signed off on the murder of their erratic leader, waited for Torrio outside his house with shotguns. They blew four holes in him as he was getting out of his car. Somehow he survived, but for a man who liked to hum opera to himself, this was no way to make a living. He turned the operation over to his less sensitive sidekick, Big Al. At this point Capone took total command of an army of some 500 men, and his ruthless approach to marketing soon eliminated or co-opted almost all of his competitors. He travelled through the city of Chicago in a seven-ton armored Cadillac with cars ahead and behind