Part 20

Fleishman luckily was able to hail a cab, and he and Gallagher jumped in. As the cab wheeled from the pier a black sedan roared from the shadows to give chase. The frightened taxi driver finally shook off their pursuers and Fleishman and Gallagher returned to their rooming house.

The information they had gathered was turned over to the Department of Justice and prosecutions were begun. The crackdown didn’t halt the smuggling by any means, but it was a jolt to the underworld.

Then, on August 30, 1928, Lawrence Fleishman sat at his desk fingering a letter which the mailman had left at his office a few minutes earlier. The letter was postmarked Washington, D. C., and across the front was written the word “Confidential.”

Slowly he tore open the letter and began reading:

Sir:

You will report at the earliest date possible to Detroit, Michigan. As soon as you arrive in Detroit, you will register at the Barlum Hotel.... You are to work strictly undercover and you are to report to me daily by mail as to your findings.

You will report any dishonesty or irregularity on the part of any Customs employee, securing wherever possible such evidence as is obtainable....

(Signed) Elmer J. Lewis

Fleishman tossed the letter onto his desk and felt the excitement building up inside. The order really came as no great surprise, although he knew that it would be something of a shock for his wife to learn they were leaving immediately for Detroit. Their plans for the future hadn’t included any sudden, mysterious journeys to a city neither of them had ever visited before.

Fleishman knew the assignment would be dangerous. Yet he saw no reason why he shouldn’t take his bride along. He could rent an apartment and the stay in Detroit could be pleasant for both of them as long as business was separated from their home life.

This wasn’t an era for Fleishman or anyone else to be surprised over reports of graft and corruption in law enforcement. The papers were full of stories of prohibition agents and other officers being involved with gangsters in liquor smuggling. If Congress wasn’t ordering an investigation of a breakdown in law enforcement, others were. Bootlegging and racketeering had grown to be a multi-million-dollar industry. It was hardly surprising that an underpaid police officer was tempted when he could make $100 merely by looking the other way while a cargo of liquor was being unloaded.

There were times when Fleishman and his fellow agents were not proud of their agency. But the Customs Service was by no means the only enforcement agency tainted by crooks and weaklings. There was corruption rampant throughout the United States. The Federal government itself was only beginning to recover from the shocking scandals in the administration of President Harding. It was all a part of the revolution in manners and morals which had swept the country after the close of World War I. It seemed after the war that the vast majority of the citizens of the United States were eager for prohibition. Congress had voted overwhelmingly for the Nineteenth Amendment to establish prohibition throughout the United States. The dry forces had easily won ratification of the amendment when it was placed before the various states.

Then came the revolt. As soon as Congress passed the Volstead Act, to enforce the prohibition amendment, the country developed a prodigious thirst. Bootlegging became one of the country’s major industries. Revenue from the sale of illegal whiskey provided mobsters with unbelievably rich treasuries. It made millionaires out of bums. The gangsters were better armed, better disciplined, and better organized than the average law enforcement agency throughout the country. The cynicism of the period was summed up by Franklin P. Adams, who wrote in the New York World:

Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop. We like it. It’s left a trail of graft and slime, It’s filled our land with vice and crime. It don’t prohibit worth a dime, Nevertheless we’re for it.

In Chicago, the pudgy gangster named Al Capone fashioned a crime empire from the profits made on smuggled booze, prostitution and other rackets. At one time he and his mob controlled--literally--the city of Cicero outside of Chicago. They elected its officials, controlled the appointment of police officers, and dictated the affairs of the entire community, with the threat of the Thompson submachine gun to enforce their rulings. City governments--and even the Federal government at times--seemed powerless to cope with the marauders.

In Detroit the Purple Gang came to power, and among the major hoodlums was a man named Pete Licovoli, whose name usually cropped up whenever there was a gangland murder, violence, or a report of widespread corruption. He was a man whom Lawrence Fleishman would get to know well.

This was the state of affairs in September, 1928, when Fleishman and his wife loaded their belongings into their shiny new Model A Ford sedan and set out for Detroit.

On arriving in Detroit, they registered at the Barlum Hotel as Supervising Agent Elmer Lewis had instructed. The following morning Fleishman went to Lewis’ room in the hotel to be briefed on his mission. He was eager to meet Lewis, who was one of the Bureau’s veteran agents with a reputation for being tough, honest and efficient.

Lewis answered Fleishman’s knock on his door. He took Fleishman’s hand and Fleishman felt like a schoolboy as he looked at the big, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man who towered above him. Lewis was 6 feet 4 inches of bone and muscle.

Lewis introduced Fleishman to Sumner C. Sleeper, the chief of the Detroit Customs Patrol. He was a man of medium height who had spent many years in the Service. The glasses he wore gave him the look of a schoolteacher.

Quickly Lewis got down to business and sketched the assignment Fleishman was to undertake: There were rumors, true beyond doubt, that some members of the Customs Patrol were deeply involved with the gangsters in smuggling whiskey into Detroit. The situation had reached the point where something had to be done to check the bribery and corruption, but there could be no effective prosecution until the Bureau had solid evidence that bribes were being offered and accepted.

Lewis explained that arrangements had been made for Fleishman to join the Patrol as a rookie. If offered bribes, he was to accept them and make a record of the serial numbers of the bills. He was to report daily in writing to Lewis, detailing everything that happened, along with the names of those involved in any wrongdoing. Only four men knew of his assignment--and he was to discuss his activities only with them. The four were Lewis, Sleeper and two assistant collectors.

“We hope,” Lewis said, “that within three months you can get enough evidence to break this thing wide open.”

It was agreed that as a “cover” Fleishman would tell anyone who was curious that after leaving the Navy he had found a job as bookkeeper for a large New York State gambling syndicate but the syndicate had been broken up by police, forcing him to find another job. The story sounded reasonable enough, because the newspapers had carried stories that summer of a big gambling combine which had been smashed by New York State police.

At the close of the conference, Lewis gave Fleishman a final bit of advice: “If you ever think they are suspicious of you, get to a safe place fast--and call me.”

Within a few days, Fleishman and his wife were settled in a modest apartment on Van Dyke Street not far from Detroit’s main downtown section. And on September 22, 1928, Fleishman reported for duty at the Customs Patrol headquarters at the foot of DuBois Street on the Detroit River. The Patrol offices were in an old wooden building enclosed by a high wire fence. There was an adjoining garage and a slip for the patrol boats alongside a boat repair shop. In addition to the office, there was a squad room for the patrolmen, where each of them had a locker.

During his first week on the job, Fleishman knew he was being watched with suspicion. He was never given an assignment with any of the night patrols. Each morning he was assigned to headquarters duty--which meant sweeping out the offices, tending the coal fires, carrying out ashes, filling cars with gas and oil, and sprinkling water on the sand pile in the front yard to prevent the sand from blowing into the offices.

At odd moments, Fleishman sat around watching the older men shoot craps in the locker room and joining in their talk. Slowly the wall of suspicion began to crumble, and during the second week he was assigned to a 12 midnight to 8 A.M. patrol with a senior officer named Raleigh Hampshire, a big, flabby man who looked as though he slept in his uniform.