GANG WAR
THE next week proved to be the most tumultuous period that had ever rocked Chicago’s underworld. Mobsters were at work.
Larrigan’s hoodlums were shooting down all the stray Savoli gangsters that they could find. At first, the tide was turned against the big shot. His forces seemed to waver before the open attacks of Larrigan’s mob.
Then Nails Pietro gained courage, and his killers did their work.
The police theory seemed to be turning into fact. Let the gangsters kill each other. It might prove true, at last. Yet the killing seemed one-sided. Savoli’s men were falling like the leaves of autumn.
The police were forced to action. This open warfare was too desperate. Squads of policemen entered the struggle, and unwittingly served Nick Savoli a good turn. For they killed a few of Larrigan’s mobsters.
Then came the turn of the tide. The big shot had been waiting. His gorillas fought back, but more efficiently than Larrigan’s men, and the mobs of independent leaders who thought that Savoli’s end was near.
The master of the old regime planned his executions, and they had a terrifying effect upon the enemy.
The prime job was the killing of Mike Larrigan. The wild gang leader had adopted every precaution within his power; yet he was following the old plan that the best defense was a powerful offense. He was wary, was Mike Larrigan. Yet his end came when he least expected it.
As he was riding along a busy street, his car was riddled with machine-gun bullets. The barrage came from the ground floor of a partly completed building. The roar of the gun was drowned by a multitude of riveters, who worked on, unconscious that they were a party to the killing.