First you break the law.
Then you get pinched.
Then you hire Charlie Ford.
Who is he? Charles E. Ford is the “Fifth Street Cicero.”
Ford, a behemoth of 220 pounds, is 52. He has been practicing law in Washington for 28 years. His father, a New Jersey Democrat, was the public printer of the United States in 1913. Since then a lot has been printed about his son in the public records.
As noted, Ford was the late Jimmy La Fontaine’s lawyer and is a trustee of his estate. He appeared in Chicago to convince the Kefauver committee it couldn’t force Anna Fischetti to testify against her husband, Charles, the notorious Capone gangster. And he convinced it.
But not all Ford’s work is so aristocratic. He and his associates take them as they come. Hardly a day passes without defendants in criminal court being aided and comforted by Ford or someone from his office.
He is the darling of the gambling and prostitution fraternity. His clients seldom go to jail. The police don’t feel so bad when they lose to Ford as they do when other lawyers oppose them. For Ford is a great friend of the cops. Whenever a policeman gets in trouble, Ford takes his case, usually without fee.
Charlie is one of those big, brash, bluff guys everyone loves, especially the newspapermen. He feeds them plenty of copy—and liquor—and never hesitates to give them a lift when they need background material on gangsters and criminals, without violating his fiduciary ethics. He is a social guy who likes to entertain and who loves to eat. One of his clients was the late Tom O’Donnell, and under the terms of his will Charlie operates the two celebrated O’Donnell restaurants and patronizes them freely.
Whenever his waist gets out of bounds, he goes to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for the reducing baths and a few days of friendship and cheer with Owney “The Killer” Madden, retired gang chieftain, now Hot Springs’ most eminent elder statesman.