Lenny’s Circus Turn

This chapter describes the trial of the 1990s in which Lenny Patrick played a crucial role. These were two of the most substantial trials ever aimed at the Chicago Outfit. The goal of these trials was ambitious: to take down what was left of the Outfit. Patrick was only an instrument to that end, but, as such, he could give perspective to the long and violent history of the Syndicate. In a way that perhaps no organized crime witness had done in any trial anywhere in the country, Patrick would tell his life story—a story that amounted to a history of the Jewish gangster stretching back to the late 1920s. Many of its details seemed impossible, evoking not just a vanished Lawndale but the forgotten conflicts over criminal operations that changing times had erased.

Roots of the Lawndale Machine

This chapter considers the complex of politics and crime that created and depended upon a generation of Jewish gangsters in Chicago. It tells the stories of two gangsters who became politicians—Emanuel “Manny” Abrahams and Morris Eller. Manny Abrahams became the alderman for Benjamin Zuckerman’s adolescent Maxwell Street ward and was a boss of the world when Patrick was still a toddler. Abrahams got there using tactics that paved the way for Morris Eller and Jacob Arvey. Through a combination of political tactics and gangster violence, Abrahams put himself forward for election, becoming the first full-blown gangster/politician hybrid. The chapter then turns to Morris Eller, the man who picked up the pieces Abrahams left behind and went even further than Abrahams did. He played a long game, working his way from one political position to another over a quarter century, but he played it smart. He became not simply a city power broker but the leader of a gang willing to commit murder to keep him there.

The Sunset of 1974: Lenny Patrick’s Changing World

This chapter documents Lenny Patrick’s growing paranoia by 1974. This was a pivotal year—the twenty-fifth since the death of Benjamin Zuckerman and Patrick’s own rise to power. Everyone knew that and, for practical purposes, such knowledge mattered. It meant people made way for him; that they understood he had influence to help in shady business; and that they acceded to his suggestions, requests, or threats. In a legal sense, though, the difference between knowledge and proof was everything. Until law enforcement had hard evidence against him, he was a free man. And by 1974 the FBI and Chicago Police Department had been trying to collect such evidence for at least fifteen years through sustained campaigns of surveillance, wiretapping, and harassment. Wherever Patrick went, someone was trying to track him. He had had a long run as boss of Chicago Jewish organized crime, but the net was tightening around him.