A Gun in My Gucci: Two Outsiders Take Down the Chicago Mob.

A Gun In My Gucci

Copyright © 2014 by Elaine Corbitt Smith

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314-630-704

Published by LSI Publishing at Smashwords

ISBN 9781310095788

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Dedicated to my husband, Tom.

His encouragement, trust and love made my fulfilling career in the FBI possible.

- CONTENTS -

Foreword

Chapter One……………….. Dinner and Death

Chapter Two……………….. A New Career

Chapter Three…………........ Assignment: Organized Crime

Chapter Four………………. The Old Dog Barks

Chapter Five……………….. Hill Street Blues

Chapter Six………………….Frankie Comes Through

Chapter Seven………………The Great Surveillance

Chapter Eight……………… A Fly in My Web

Chapter Nine………………. Eto Wants Me

Chapter Ten………………... Switching Sides

Chapter Eleven………….…. Failure is Forever

Chapter Twelve……………. Who Killed the Killers?

Chapter Thirteen………….. The Last Supper

Epilogue

In Memoriam

Joe’s Accomplishments

End Notes

- FOREWORD -

Personal Reflections

For three reasons, it is a genuine privilege to be asked to write the prologue for this splendid telling of a great story about a unique pair of characters, trailblazing FBI Special Agent Elaine Corbitt Smith and mob gambling operator and mob hit survivor Ken Eto.

First, Elaine and her husband T.D. Smith are longtime colleagues and dear family friends. A real-life version of the old TV series McMillan & Wife, they are a storybook couple. For her part, Elaine is a force of nature. Dedicated, feisty, and an absolute ball of energy, in ever so many ways she turned J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau on its head. This book is reflective of an important job very well done by a beautiful and strong-willed lady who dedicated herself to getting the job done.

Second, Tokyo Joe was a very special person in my 11-year life as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA). A radio call from the FBI on February 10, 1983, summoned me to join FBI Special Agent in Charge Ed Hegarty at Ken Eto’s hospital bedside. A personal bond sealed with drops of Ken’s blood on my hands and on my badge began that night at Chicago’s Northwest Community Hospital and continued until his death in 2004.

Third, it gives me an opportunity to reflect upon the most important and most successful mission in Elaine’s life.

As Elaine recounts, on September 21, 1981, her beloved husband and FBI Principal Firearms Instructor T.D. Smith was critically shot in a training accident at the Bureau’s firearms range at the Great Lakes Naval Base. Initially stabilized, T.D. developed a severe infection, and his prognosis for survival was getting bleaker and bleaker. Unwilling to simply sit at her Tommy’s bedside and hope for the best, Elaine was Elaine at her finest. Using relationships, connections, and her indomitable fighting spirit, she enlisted the personal attention of one of the nation’s most revered surgeons, Dr. George E. Block. Referred to in later years by his University of Chicago Hospital colleagues as the General Schwarzkopf of Surgery, Dr. Block agreed to try to save the gravely ill Special Agent Smith. While the doctors and administrators at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital were none too pleased to be second-guessed, it would have taken the intervention of Seal Team Six to keep Elaine from escorting T.D. to the critical care ambulance bound for Dr. Block’s OR. Simply put, Elaine and Dr. George E. Block saved T.D.’s life. Elaine’s tenacity and drive mark both her personal and her Bureau lives.

Prologue

This book tells a singular story. Two people coming from worlds light years apart — the Chicago Mob and the FBI — see their lives become deeply intertwined. That, one might say, happens with some frequency. Law enforcement officers and former defendants turned witnesses often develop special bonds and close personal relationships. It happened with me and Freddie Mendez, a former FALN member (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña or Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation) who I convinced to defect and who ultimately rendered lifesaving service to the multi-agency Chicago Terrorist Task Force (a.k.a. Wonderful World Police, my beloved organization to which Elaine gives very well-deserved honorable mention).

What is truly unique here, however, is that the protagonists in this story – the FBI’s Elaine Smith and the Mob’s Tokyo Joe, were mold-breakers in their respective organizations. Far beyond being just another gender-barrier buster, Elaine was positively cyclonic. Beautiful, brash, opinionated, and relentless, Elaine was an agent like no other. I have been driven to many protected witness interviews by FBI agents armed with a Smith & Wesson .357 combat magnum, but never before or since by one in a spotless black Lincoln Town Car wearing a tailored suede jogging suit, a full-length mink coat, and hair, makeup, and nails worthy of the cover of Vogue magazine. One could never be lulled into forgetting the steel that lay beneath the style, however. When Elaine would sternly say to me OK, Margolis, cut the stories and crap, let’s get to work, she meant it. I always said, OK, Elaine.

Even more of a fish out of water was Tokyo Joe! A Japanese American who lived for years in a (shameful) World War II internment camp becoming a gambling boss specializing in bolita for Chicago’s Sicilian-dominated Outfit. No one in central casting would ever have imagined the merger of the Mob code of omertà and the Japanese warrior code of Bushido.

And so truth is really stranger than fiction. Elaine builds a gambling case no one else would touch. The charmed life of the guy called Joe the Jap by his Mob cohorts ends with a syndicated gambling conviction. Mob boss Vince Solano foolishly fears that Joe the Jap will cut a deal and talk like Joe Valachi, when in fact Eto’s ironclad will and adherence to his Japanese warrior code would have had him steadfastly serving his time in stony silence. A Mob assassin (and Cook County Deputy Sheriff) fires three rounds at point-blank range, but fires at exactly the angles that allow for superficial entry and exit flesh wounds with no penetration of the skull. An amazing relationship between two amazing people is about to unfold. There is an often-used phrase for which this story is the paradigm:

You can’t make this s**t up.

Elaine, as a former AUSA, I commend you for your extraordinary service with the Bureau. As your and T.D.’s buddy, I thank you for your many years of true friendship. Finally, as one friend of Tokyo Joe’s to another, I’m proud to say to you, Great job!

With much respect, admiration, and affection,

Jeremy Margolis

- CHAPTER ONE -

Dinner and Death

Hey, Joe. The boss wants to see you tonight. A friendly goombah dinner invitation from the boss is usually welcome. But not when your boss is Chicago crime syndicate capo Vince Solano. And definitely not when his back is against the wall and your ass is on the line. Notwithstanding the deadly implications of the request, Ken Eto, a.k.a. Tokyo Joe, agreed to meet his boss at a restaurant on the far west side of Chicago. In reality, Solano’s invitation was a death warrant. To ensure Eto’s attendance at dinner, he was sending a couple of his boys, John Gattuso and Jasper Campise, to escort Tokyo Joe to the restaurant. They were also the authorized executioners. This termination process was almost ritualistic. The actors all knew their parts in this Mafioso passion play. While John and Jasper were preparing their weapons and ammunition, the accused was laying out his best suit. Tokyo Joe Eto, the star of this drama, dressed for the part — he knew he was destined to die that cold day in early February 1983. He knew it was a setup. He knew he had screwed up.

Earlier, the Feds had arrested him. The FBI knew the details of his gambling operations. He was destined for prison. Soon they would attempt to break him — offer him a reduced sentence for information. Would he rat on his brothers in crime? Joe knew he would never talk. He would take the heat and do the time. But his boss couldn’t trust him. Joe wasn’t a made man. He wasn’t even an Italian American. He was a Japanese American and proud of his status as the highest-ranking Asian American in the organization. If he had to die, he would die as a warrior. On his way out of the house, he told his wife where he kept the life insurance policy and then kissed her goodbye. Outside, he sat in his car with the windows open. The cold night air tightened his muscles and helped to focus his mind. The engine remained off. No radio. No sounds other than that of his rapidly beating 64-year-old heart. For 20 minutes, he didn’t move. His last day had arrived. He rejected random thoughts of escape. He was an honorable man. He had never dishonored his associates. He would not do so now. Sure, they had trusted him to run his bolita rackets, (and multiple other gambling operations that had made the mob millions of dollars over 40 years) but that was something they could control. They watched the money very carefully and Tokyo Joe never tried to screw them. He was loyal to his Outfit bosses, but that meant nothing now. He knew too much. Murder, vice, corruption — the Chicago organized crime syndicate spiderweb of mobsters, gunmen, politicians, cops, lawyers, and judges could not be exposed. Joe had to go. There was nothing else. And Joe knew it. Finally, finding a place of peace in his mind, he turned the key in the ignition and drove to face his executioners. He had accepted his fate.

He was told to pick up two middle-aged mobsters, John Gattuso and Jasper Jay Campise, at a social club located on the northwest side of Chicago. These social clubs were unofficial mob hangouts and were usually storefronts disguised as a VFW Halls or an Italian American Clubs. Joe drove them to the restaurant. Campise sat next to Joe in the front passenger seat; Gattuso sat in the backseat behind Eto — a seating arrangement that was fortuitous for Joe. He didn’t participate in the nervous conversation of the killers. They babbled on about the great selection of Italian dishes offered at their upcoming dinner — about Vince Solano having a glass of Chianti waiting for his guests to arrive — about the shitty Chicago winter weather — about the younger generation’s lack of respect for the older members of the tribe. It was all small talk bullshit. It passed the time as Joe slowly drove the death car to its destination. He didn’t hear their words. He didn’t care.

It was early evening when Campise told Joe to turn into a parking lot behind a shuttered movie theater and adjacent to railroad tracks. Darkness had fallen. Campise told Joe to park the car into an isolated parking spot. In front of them, caught in the headlights, icy crosses of barren trees swayed in the whistling wind while sleet tap-danced on the hood like a flurry of frozen maggots. Joe killed the lights and shut off the ignition. Inside, the car was warm and stuffy. It smelled of nervous sweat and stale cigarette smoke. The killers’ rapid breathing filled the silence. Joe remained wordless as he had for the entire ride. He sat in a trance, staring at his doorway of death. He had relinquished his body and mind of the illusion of life. He became the cold, moonless night.

Seconds passed. Gattuso fired his gun. Detached, almost as if a spectator, Joe heard and felt the impact of the first shot. He fell forward against the steering wheel. Then he felt the second shot. But he realized he was still alive. He couldn’t believe it. He thought he better slide his body to the right down on the seat and get out of the way of another bullet. He heard Campise open his door. Gattuso fired again at point-blank range. Joe took another bullet in his skull. And then he faked his death. He purposely leaned down onto the seat, his hands outstretched and limp. For effect, he intentionally quivered like a dying chicken. The killers exited the car and quickly viewed the execution scene. Blood was spattered all over the driver’s seat and windshield. Tokyo Joe’s body lay motionless on the front seat. The hit was done. They slammed the car doors and ran away into the night.

Minutes passed. Joe heard their footsteps as they ran away from the car. But he remained still and waited until he sensed it was safe to raise his head. They were gone and he slowly opened his eyes. He could see. His head ached and blood dripped down his forehead. Time held still for the moment. Joe was mystified. Had he moved on to the next world or was he alive? His battered brain debated the situation. And then he summoned every fiber and cell in his body and commanded them to get moving — to get out of the car — to get help — to live. He was alive. Three bullets fired into his head at point-blank range had not killed him. He was a new man, reborn, owing nothing to anyone. They had failed, and he was free. The passion play was over.

He crawled out of the car and stumbled across the frozen parking lot. He fell, righted himself, and moved slowly forward toward the lights. The pain was intense. His legs barely accepted the task of walking. Damaged neurons fired aimlessly within his crippled brain. Stumbling along, he reached the street. A neon sign hanging in the drug store window ironically beckoned: Terminal Pharmacy. He banged into the door and summoned all his life force to open it. It sprung free. Inside and now unable to hear because of the noise of the gunshots, he searched for help. An older man wearing a white smock stood behind a counter. A few more steps and he was face to face with the pharmacist. Blood and melting snow dripped off his head onto the floor and the counter.

Please…please call 911. Eto’s voice was ragged. He held his hand to his head and blood filled the spaces between his fingers.

Stunned by the intrusion, the pharmacist studied the wounded man quizzically.

Eto remained steady. Call 911. Shot in the head… his voice trailed off. He lowered his head.

Now grasping the situation, the man made the call to 911.

Eto strained to hear the conversation, but he could only see his savior’s lips moving.

The operator’s voice droned: What is the nature of your emergency?

A man has been shot in the head. He’s standing before me. He needs an ambulance. He needs to go to an emergency room. The pharmacist was calm and professional.

This man. Are you certain he has been shot? replied the 911 operator.

Yes. Yes. He’s got blood all over him. His head is very bloody.

Hold on, said the operator. The call went dead.

Twenty seconds later the operator reconnected. Are you certain he has been shot in the head?

Yes. Yes. He’s bleeding profusely.

All right. Is he with you now?

Yes.

Let me talk to him.

The man handed the phone to Eto. Eto gazed at the phone as if it was an unknown object. Slowly he raised it to his head. His world was a madness of ringing sounds and nothing else.

Hello. When were you shot, sir? the operator asked flatly. A pause. Sir. When were you shot?

Eto heard nothing. What? Can’t hear. Shot in head. Eto waited. What?

Can you hear me?

Eto remained quiet.

The man grabbed the phone. His face was red. His voice was loud. Listen. I’m a pharmacist. This man has been shot. Send the damn ambulance.

After a long pause, All right. We’re sending one out now.

The pharmacist slammed the handset into the cradle. Asshole, he said.

Eto looked at him. What?

The man in the white coat simply gave him a thumbs-up.

It took a moment for Eto to recognize the signal. Then he said, Thank you. His voice was quiet, but clear. It carried the authority of a man who would not die — a survivor — a walking miracle. He was at peace again, but this time in the world of the living. A small knowing smile crept onto Ken Tokyo Joe Eto’s bloodied face. He waited patiently for his ambulance. It was his turn now.

* * *

The phone rang, breaking the silence of the night. Deep in sleep and startled, my fingers searched for the handset. I grabbed it and shoved it between my head and the pillow.

Elaine?

I floated in the twilight zone between sleep and reality, but I recognized the voice of my FBI boss, Bill Brown. Slowly the words made it out of my mouth, You know I’m on vacation in Vail…

The excited voice sputtered, Ken Eto’s been fuckin’ shot.

 I took a moment to digest the words. I shook my head to clear it. What happened?

 Shot in the head. Point blank. Three times. Listen, Elaine. He’ll only talk to you — nobody else in the Bureau. 

Now I was awake and thinking. If Eto lives, he’s going to talk. He’s going to talk to me and me alone. This was fantastic.

Are you there?

In my excitement, I almost shouted. I’m flying back tomorrow, Bill. He’s all mine!

No, Elaine, we’ll take care of things for now. Joe is yours when you get back.

I hung up the phone and sunk into the pillow again, thinking about the future and the past. This was the beginning of my new relationship with Ken Eto, the notorious Chicago gangster. No longer adversaries, Mr. Eto and I would be partners now. Destiny and the botched hit had brought us together. We each found our way through life to this nexus — Joe Eto, the unlikely Chicago mobster, and Elaine Smith, the unlikely FBI special agent.

I was not always a crime-fighter. Growing up in Chicago, one would have to have been deaf, dumb, and half-dead not to realize That Toddling Town was run by crooked politicians, that cops could be bribed, and that city workers were lazy and in on the scam. In fact, it hasn’t much changed, other than the corrupt politicians basically run the city now. When I was a kid, the gasbag pols were all puppets of the Mob, the Outfit, La Cosa Nostra, the wise guys — whatever nomenclature one wanted to use, they were all the same.

Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s was a far different place than it is today. The only thing that remains the same today is the horrible, stinking weather. Chicago weather was cold, windy, and always disappointing, no matter what the season. The winters were cloudy, snowy, and never-ending. Just when spring should logically be on its way, a snowstorm would dump 20 inches, even if the date on the calendar was April 1.

The Windy City was a city that conventioneers would come to, but really, no one brought their wives. What would the ladies do? Tourism was minimal in those years. Conventioneers gambled, whored around, and spent drunken nights in the clip joints that the Chicago Mob ran. Nevertheless, there were a few nightlife exceptions that offered great entertainment, such as the London House, Chez Paree, and Mister Kelly’s. Even though I soon learned they were also controlled by the mob, I still wanted to go to them. These nightclubs had expensive minimum drink rules, sometimes a cover charge, and every weekend, Las Vegas-type headliners like Lena Horne, Nancy Wilson, and the Ramsey Lewis Trio entertained. I loved reading about and seeing the local nightclub area known as Rush Street. As soon as I was old enough to wear a bra, I attempted to get into the bars.

After my junior prom, I went to the London House, and my date, remarkably, was my future husband. The waitress arrived to take drink orders. Obviously I had no drinking expertise, but I wanted to appear knowledgeable. I asked Tom to get me a sloe gin fizz as if I knew what that was. Tom bravely told the waitress I wanted a slow gin fizzy. Mortified by his lack of sophistication and that he had called the drink fizzy, I thought: We’re going to be thrown out of here on our 17-year-old asses.

Little should I have worried, because the London House was located in the 18th Chicago Police District, notorious for its ability to flatly ignore all City of Chicago or State of Illinois laws. A slow gin fizzy costing $20.00 would be served to anyone willing to pay for it. A beat cop working in the 18th District was on a gravy train. It was the home of the Mob’s north side crew. They made sure the District Commander got his weekly envelope and instructed him to overlook everything. If the Outfit murdered someone, the Chicago Police in the 18th District would ignore or screw up any evidence pointing to the perpetrator.

When I was a toddler growing up in Chicago, Joe was already working for the Outfit in the same Rush Street area He organized and held card games in which thousands of dollars were floating on the tables. The young punks who provided the muscle for his games grew up to be street bosses, killing their way up the Mob corporate ladder. By the time I was trying to fill out my first bras, Joe was already a debonair, flashy, handsome man. He was something of an exotic — an Asian man who stood out in the company of the Italian thugs. He was much more subtle in the way he spoke, in the way he looked at people, and in the way he carried his muscled, no-fat body. Joe Eto was one smooth gentleman.

Most Chicagoans were unaffected by the corruption of the police department. Fighting vice appeared to be an impossible battle. It was business as usual for The City That Works since before Al Scarface Capone and prohibition. Then, from 1956 to 1958, Chicago awakened to the kidnappings and murders of young teens. No newspaper carried the headline, Murders Rob City of Its Innocence, but it happened. Along the way, my innocence was stolen as well.

February 12, 1958, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, was a Monday holiday for Chicago schoolchildren. I was 12 years old. I had been allowed to go to a holiday matinee to see the movie The Blob. I actually couldn’t have cared less what I saw; just going to a movie with my girlfriend Mary Ann was pretty exciting stuff. As city kids, we walked or took the bus or subway everywhere we went. Our mothers didn’t drive, and it wouldn’t have helped them much if they had because no one owned more than one car, and that one car was how our fathers got to work.

On that day, I walked four blocks to Mary Ann’s house and together she and I walked an additional four blocks to the movie theater. We spent the afternoon eating hot buttered popcorn and alternately laughing hysterically at or being terrified by The Blob, a gooey red substance that relentlessly engulfed one American city after another. Afterward, Mary Ann and I walked home laughing and goofing around. We reached her house, and she ran inside while I continued to walk on to mine.

By then it was about 5 p.m., dark and cold, and I knew I’d better hurry home. I walked past my elementary school. It stood empty and dark on this holiday evening. No one else was walking down the street. I was a 12-year-old girl, alone in the night. I noticed a car that kept driving by very slowly. In my inexperienced, naive way, I knew something didn’t feel right. The car circled the block one more time and then pulled next to the curb exactly where I was walking. The driver leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window. Come here, he said. I was convinced this was danger that I had never seen or experienced before. Panic and fear gripped my mind. I didn’t think to scream.

When the man parked, got out, and started jogging around the front of his car toward me, I reacted. I have no recollection of my brain beginning to function with a plan, but I dashed off the sidewalk into the street behind his car, ran across the street, and miraculously found myself steps away from a mom-and-pop grocery store.

I ran into the store. Although all the lights were on, no one was visible. A cotton curtain separated the owner’s apartment from the store. I ran to this curtain and called into it, Please help me. Some man is trying to get me.

The female owner, a large, gypsy-looking woman, drew the curtain aside and said, Come. Step in here. Peeking from behind the curtain, I saw her waddle to the door, lock it, and come back to me.

May I use your phone to call my father?

Oh, yes, she replied.

I was weak with gratitude and dialed my number, Spring 7-0656.

After a couple of rings I heard my father’s voice answer: Hello.

Still shaking, I sobbed, Daddy, will you come and get me? Some man just tried to grab me and pull me into his car.

Where are you?

By the tone of his voice, I immediately thought, I’ll die here in this store if he says he won’t come to pick me up. In those days, parents didn’t just jump at each and every request their child presented. I’m at the little store across from school.

I’ll be there, he said as he hung up.

Thank you so much, I said as I turned to the store owner. May I stay here until my father comes to get me?

Certainly, she said, smiling.

I waited at the front window of the store, hiding behind some signs, straining to catch a glimpse of