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JUST A HUNCH

The Roaring Twenties was one of those memorable, yet strange decades, a mixture of flappers and jazz music, mobsters and prohibition, and stocks and speculators. Herbert Hoover was president. World War I, the war to end all wars, had come to a peace-loving end in late 1918. The boys were back home, whooping it up. People were carefree and wild. The daring engaged in flagpole sitting, barnstorming, and marathon dances. The even-more-daring spent money they really didn’t have. Never mind tomorrow. By 1929, the last year of this mayhem, something ominous loomed on the horizon. Some — the smart ones — saw it coming. But most didn’t.

CHICAGO — OCTOBER, 1929

HONEYMOONERS JAKE AND JENNIFER COURTNEY were oblivious to what they were in for as they stepped off the New York-to-Chicago train in mid-afternoon on a chilly, rainy Tuesday to flag down a cab on the street outside the station.

“Where to?”

“The Royal Palace Hotel,” Jake answered the driver.

“Yes, sir.”

They squeezed in the cab’s back seat. The driver whipped the couple’s luggage into the trunk and spun off. Along the way, Jake and Jennifer caught the sights of the busy town they had heard so much about, on this day off between train connections for the western leg of their honeymoon trip to sunny California. The streets in the Loop were packed with people and cars, despite the heavy rain. Exciting place, this Chicago, according to the talkative cab driver. People — mostly outsiders — called it the Windy City. It had over a million people. One writer called it “the pulse of America.” It was an ethnic city of many nationalities. Poles, Germans, Jews, Italians, and Irish. All trying to get along, despite their differences. It was a city of factories and slaughter houses. On the dark side, it was also a city of speakeasies and the notorious Al Capone. The Courtneys nodded at the driver. Who hadn’t heard of Al Capone?