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MOB COP

THESE ARE UNCORRECTED ADVANCE PROOFS BOUND FOR YOUR REVIEWING CONVENIENCE. In quoting from this book for reviews or any other purpose, please refer to the final printed book, as the publisher may make changes on these proofs before the book goes to press.

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MY LIFE OF CRIME IN THE CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT FRED PASCENTE WITH

SAM REAVES

Copyright © 2015 by Fred Pascente and Sam Reaves All rights reserved Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated 814 North Franklin Street Chicago, Illinois 60610 ISBN 978-1-61373-134-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pascente, Fred, 1942–2014.

Mob cop : my life of crime in the Chicago Police Department / Fred Pascente, Sam Reaves. pages cm Summary: “The tell-all memoir of a Chicago police officer and mafia associate who played both sides of the law”— Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-61373-134-5 (hardback) 1. Pascente, Fred, 1942–2014. 2. Chicago (Ill.). Police Department—Corrupt practices. 3. Police—Illinois—Chicago—Biography. 4. Police corruption— Illinois—Chicago. 5. Organized crime—Illinois—Chicago. I. Reaves, Sam, 1954– II. Title.

HV7911.P366A3 2015 364.1092—dc23 [B] 2015002298

Interior design: PerfecType, Nashville, TN Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1

To my father, who would not approve of this at all.

And I apologize, because I know you’re in heaven.

CONTENTS 1 There You Go.................................................................1 2 Paradise.........................................................................8 3 Trouble in Paradise.................................................... 21 4 The Machine............................................................... 28 5 Grand Avenue............................................................. 33 6 The Badlands...............................................................41 7 Tough Guys................................................................. 49 8 Connected.................................................................. 59 9 Rush Street Nights..................................................... 70 10 You’re in the Army Now.............................................. 79 11 Family Feuds............................................................... 90 12 This Is a Policeman?.................................................. 99 13 Street Smarts........................................................... 107 14 Fun and Games..........................................................113 15 Bad Company............................................................119 16 Card Games.............................................................. 127 17 Criminal Justice....................................................... 140 18 Thunderbolt.............................................................. 149 19 Shakespeare............................................................. 160 20 Working Both Sides................................................. 170 21 Gamblers................................................................... 178 22 Occupational Hazards............................................. 188 vii

23 Right-Hand Man....................................................... 195 24 The Bank Dick..........................................................203 25 Detective Pascente..................................................209 26 Found Money............................................................ 217 27 The Chief...................................................................223 28 Family Guy................................................................232 29 Rats...........................................................................239 30 Internal Affairs.........................................................250 31 Dorfman....................................................................255 32 Politics......................................................................260 33 The Sun Sets in the West........................................264 34 Crime Story............................................................... 270 35 Gone.......................................................................... 276 36 Gypsies..................................................................... 281 37 Crazy Horse..............................................................285 38 Trouble......................................................................293 39 Demise......................................................................300 40 An Oxford Man.........................................................305 41 The End..................................................................... 313 Afterword..................................................................325 Acknowledgments....................................................328

1 THERE YOU GO T

he calls came at three in the morning sometimes, the bleating of the phone tearing Fred Pascente out of a deep sleep. Those were the hard ones, the ones that got him out of his bed in a bungalow on a quiet street in Melrose Park, Illinois, a blue-collar town on the western fringe of Chicago. The hardest were the ones that took him out into the dead of a bitter winter night, a harsh wind in his face and hundreds of miles ahead of him.

Other times the calls interrupted dinner or deep-sixed plans for an evening on the town with May, his wife. They took him away from family celebrations and card games; they cut short shopping trips and movie outings. When the calls came it was drop-everything time, and the cell phone was always on.

When the calls came, it meant somebody somewhere needed something and needed it now. Fred Pascente climbed into his well-traveled Chevy Silverado and drove. Sometimes the first stop was O’Hare or Midway to meet a flight; he had Homeland Security clearance for 1

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access to secure parts of both airports. Often it was a hospital: Loyola Medical Center in Maywood, just down the road from his house, or one of the cluster of institutions in the Illinois Medical District, a massive hospital complex on Chicago’s Near West Side that looms over the old Italian neighborhood on Taylor Street.

Occasionally there was time to grab a cup of coffee or a sandwich; often there was no time to do anything but jump on the expressway and get there, fast. And sometimes it was hurry up and wait, stand around and banter with the security guard while a team of doctors packed up something that would save a patient’s life in Minneapolis or St. Louis.

The security guards liked him. Fred was good at the banter, the jokes and the jibes and the bullshit—he’d been doing it all his life.

Fred Pascente still moved like the athlete he‘d been in his youth, a big man and still robust, curly black hair gone mostly gray and face filled out, carrying the weight from a lifetime of good Italian cooking but carrying it well. He liked to laugh and to make other people laugh; make him wait by the door with the security guard and in two minutes he’d make a new friend.

Fred Pascente was an independent hauler of emergency freight.

Working mainly for a courier company based in Rosemont, Illinois, hard by O’Hare, he was on call from nine at night to six in the morning, six or sometimes seven days a week, to deliver medicines, freshly harvested organs, whatever needed to get from Chicago to somewhere else, usually in the Midwest but sometimes as far away as New Jersey.

He delivered vital parts to a Lear jet stranded on the tarmac in Cincinnati and isotopes for surgery to a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.

He got paid per job plus mileage and expenses; he made a good check. He needed it. At seventy-two Fred Pascente was still a 1099er, hustling to make the nut. His kids were grown, but there was a wife to support, a mortgage to pay, and repairs to make, grandkids to buy presents for, friends to buy drinks for. And there was no pension and never would be.

2

T h e r e Yo u G o

The pension was supposed to come after a twenty-six-year career as a Chicago police officer, but it went up in smoke when a pension board ruled that a man who did the things Fred did doesn’t deserve to retire on the taxpayer dime. If you asked Fred what those things were, he’d tell you. Fred wouldn’t give you excuses. What he did, he did, and that’s why he was out there on the road at seventy-two years old instead of in a beachside condo in Florida or a house on the edge of a golf course in Vegas.

Las Vegas was another thing that had gone up in smoke; Fred spent a lot of time in Vegas over the years, but that was all over.

The people that run Nevada have certain standards to maintain, and some years ago they were persuaded that Fred Pascente failed to meet them. Nevada officials keep something called the Black Book. You won’t find a copy at the library, but you can see it online. Its official name is the Excluded Person List of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board, and you can find it on the GCB’s website. If you went to the Excluded Persons page and scrolled down a few rows, you’d see Fred Pascente’s photo there. This is the list of people who are banned for life from entering any casino in the State of Nevada. They would commit a felony by doing so, and a casino that fails to report the presence of a listed individual on its premises will be sanctioned.

Out of all the wiseguys, card counters, and slot cheats in the country, the Black Book currently lists just over thirty people, making it a very exclusive club—more exclusive than the United States Senate, as Fred liked to point out. Past honorees, now deceased, include names a lot better known than Fred’s: Giancana, Caifano, Spilotro. Pride isn’t exactly the word for what Fred felt about his listing, but in the circles he moved in for much of his life, it was a mark of distinction.

It wasn’t the only one in Fred’s life. There were also the police department commendations: for breaking up a rape in progress or nabbing a prolific North Side burglar. There was the write-up in Gay Life magazine for collaring a predator who had been drugging and 3

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robbing gay men in Chicago and other cities across the country. Those awards tend to complicate a person’s attitude toward Fred Pascente just a little. We like to think that the line is sharp and clear between good guys and bad guys, white hats and black hats, cops and crooks.

Fred’s career says otherwise.

“He’s a scumbag,” said a veteran Chicago law enforcement figure, a longtime organized crime foe with no sympathy for wiseguys.

“He’s a nice guy,” said another retired copper, equally straight but perhaps a little more willing to separate professional from personal criteria. Comments posted on Second City Cop, a blog on Chicago police affairs, were split: “Fred was a good detective with a dogged determination to lock up bad guys,” read one comment. Another responded: “If we looked at those arrest reports of yore I’m sure the bad guys were just fellow hoods taking away business from the guys Freddie was looking out for.” Ambivalence reigned in Fred’s career: in the game of cops and robbers he was both a cop and a robber.

The ambivalence is a crucial part of Fred’s story. From its earliest days, Chicago was the kind of town where you couldn’t always tell the cops from the crooks. If people can’t quite make up their minds about Fred Pascente, it’s because Chicago couldn’t ever quite make up its mind about the mob.

Fred Pascente’s story tracks the waning years of the greatest criminal empire in American history. Fred had a role in that empire, and if it wasn’t a starring role it was an instructive one. Not everybody in the mob can be a boss, and not everybody needs to be a killer. The business of organized crime, like any other, requires role players and specialists and guys who are willing to put in the hours. You could say Fred was a specialist. One thing the mob can always use is a discreet copper or two.

But Fred’s story tracks more than developments in criminology and sociology. It’s a story about good and bad people and the good and bad choices one person can make. It’s a tale of moral failure, bad judgment, callousness, and greed. But there’s also loyalty, generosity, 4

T h e r e Yo u G o

and frequent outbreaks of goodwill. Fred’s ethical system had holes in it you could drive a truckload of stolen whiskey through, but if you didn’t hit the hole, you’d have a fight on your hands. It’s easy to disapprove of Fred, but it’s hard not to like him. Getting to know Fred Pascente means learning that people are complicated, even if the Ten Commandments are simple.

If passing judgment on Fred Pascente is easy, understanding him is a little tougher. To make a start, you could do worse than just listen to him as he rolls across the vast flat heartland, lights passing in the dark, talking about things that happened a long time ago in a very different Chicago.

,

The Feast of St. Rocco was big. It was a weeklong festival. St. Rocco’s statue would come around through the streets, and your dad would pick you up and you’d put money on it. The band would come around—they were always out of tune, but they would be marching. We loved it.

The feast was a moneymaker for the church. The people that wanted to put up concession stands had to pay, so much to the priest. The guy who put the roast beef sandwiches together, he had to pay. The pizza guy, the hot dogs, the stand to play cards or toss rings, the rides that come from the carnival, they had to pay.

And they couldn’t overcharge. The priest would tell them, “This is what you charge these people.”

Father Broccolo was a greaseball. When I say greaseball, that’s not to be offensive—it just means he was from the Old Country.

He was a handsome man, with a full head of black hair. He was a nicely built guy. He would sing at parties, and he thought he was Dean Martin, and who knows if he didn’t try to hit on any of the women. Everyone loved him.

5

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The priest would organize grease pole races. Louie DeMarco and his son were carpenters and handymen. They took two wooden poles and sanded them till they were almost white. And then they would set them up on an incline and grease them. And we would race to see who could climb up the poles the fastest.

Everybody that served a Mass, the altar boys, they were in the races if they wanted to be. But if you were flunking a grade, you were out. You had to have high marks in school to do this. Me and my friend Sammy Gambino would win most of the races. Sammy would race this guy, I’d race that guy; we’d do five races, and then they’d switch. We’d finish covered in grease. The clothes we threw away. I couldn’t get that smell off for months. My mother would scrub, but it got in there.

My uncle Sam gave me the trick. He says, “I’ll give you the shoes. They’re gonna be too big, but we’ll put paper in there, we’ll make ’em fit.” He had these shoes that were pointed. You could kill a cockroach in the corner. And those would stick, grab hold. “And your nails. From now, you don’t trim your nails.”

Guys would bet on the races. “All right, who do you want? I’ll take that skinny guy.” This was among the guys who wanted to bet—the church didn’t sanction it. And if you wanted to get into the betting circle, they had to know you. But they bet. Twenty, fifty, a hundred bucks on this guy.

Father Broccolo promised all the racers that after the feast broke up he would give us all five dollars each and a spaghetti dinner. So after the feast broke up we went and asked him for the money. He says, with that greaseball accent, “Now, boys. You boys did a good job for the parish, for the church. And this izza sad, but I gotta tell you, I can’t-a give you the five dollars.”

And I’m dying. I’m waiting for this five dollars.

“But we’ll make it up next year.”

6

T h e r e Yo u G o

Well, next year I ain’t gonna be in this. And where are you gonna make it up?

“We gonna have the spaghetti and the sausage and the meatball dinner, it’ll be nice fun, but we have many poor people . . .”

Who the hell is poorer than us?

“Oh, please-a forgive . . . I love you boys.”

Love you boys? What about the five dollars?

To me, he was a con man. He stiffed us. We’re talking about maybe a hundred bucks. What’s that to him? He made a lot of money. You don’t stiff the kids. Stiff anybody, but don’t stiff the kids. I was bitter.

So then we’re going around, complaining, making noise, and who comes over but Johnny Bananas. This was John DeBiase, my grandmother’s cousin. He was the boss of our neighborhood. He gave them all their jobs, the Outfit guys. They all worked for him.

Bananas comes over, he says, “What’s wrong with you guys?”

I says, “That m—” “Don’t talk that way about the priest. What’s wrong with you?”

“He didn’t give us the money he promised.”

“How much money?”

“Five dollars, each guy.”

“Leave the priest alone. I’ll take care of you guys.” So he gets Bosco. Bosco was his heavy guy, his runner. He says, “Bosco.” He takes three fifties, he says, “Go getta this changed, all five-dollar bills.” Gave him three fifties. I’ll never forget it. He took care of it.

And the priest was embarrassed. But he should have given it to us. And who gives it to us? These criminals gave us the money.

And there you go.

7

2 PARADISE I

n 1830 Chicago was a muddy nowhere of a frontier outpost in a swamp on the shore of a vast lake. At a time when the river towns of Cincinnati and St. Louis were thriving metropolises, Chicago had a population of about three hundred rogues and villains, not counting a few demoralized Indians.

The railroads changed all that. A scant thirty years later, the time it takes a man to lose his illusions and gain a paunch, Chicago hosted the convention that chose Abraham Lincoln as the Republican candidate for president. By that time it had metastasized into a city of about a hundred thousand. The rogues and villains had been joined by the land speculators and their hangers-on in one of the greatest boomtown explosions in history.

A city growing at that rate does not grow rationally or under any kind of administrative order. Things get done in a haphazard and ad hoc way, with many palms greased and no corner left uncut.

The rogues and villains tend to rise to the top. And boomtowns are 8

Pa r a d i s e

thriving markets for vice: Chicago’s saloons, gambling dens, and brothels were legendary.

Next came the Civil War, with the usual economic benefits for a city fortunate enough to lie far from the battlefields. Chicago prospered from the carnage. A few years later an apocalyptic fire wiped out the heart of the city, providing a clean slate for infrastructure upgrades and the biggest building boom yet. The political infrastructure for the necessary sweetheart deals and breakneck speculation was already in place.

As the nation lurched toward big-power status, Chicago’s gravitational pull on fortune seekers, refugees, and cheap labor increased. Immigrants fleeing the feudal society of southern Italy, with its patron-client relations, tight kinship bonds, and mistrust of remote authority, found Chicago’s political culture oddly familiar.

The ward heeler with his favors to dispense was somebody they had seen before.

The Italians settled in the “river wards” on the fringes of the central city, replacing the Irish, Germans, and Swedes who were moving up the economic ladder. On Taylor Street and Grand Avenue on the Near West Side and along Twenty-Sixth Street to the south, they created something approximating the village culture they had left behind: insular, closely knit neighborhoods held together by family ties and a common origin. Those neighborhoods came to be known collectively as “the Patch,” shorthand for the tough Italian districts where the writ of law did not always run.

The rule of law was never strong in Chicago, and the Italians had little experience of it in their past. They adapted to their surroundings and began, like all immigrant communities, to assimilate. Poor, Catholic, and clannish, they were not encouraged in the process. A minority of them inevitably prospered in the less legitimate sectors of the economy. By the time Prohibition made an outlaw of anybody from a wine-drinking culture and exponentially multiplied the returns 9

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on ruthlessness, the elements were in place for the establishment of the most enduring and politically best-connected crime syndicate in American history.

In Chicago they call it the Outfit.

,

I was born to Rocco and Edna Pascente in 1942. My mom and dad were born here, but their parents were born in the Old Country. They were from a region called Basilicata, which is south of Naples. It’s a mountain region near the Gulf of Salerno.

There were lots of Italians in Chicago at that time. Each neighborhood had its own parish. There was St. Callistus, there was Mother Cabrini, all Italian. Ours was the Most Precious Blood, on Congress Parkway where the expressway is now, and Western Avenue. We all went to Catholic schools. Immigrants were still coming. In our neighborhood, the Gismondos were from the Old Country. They were nice kids—we used to play with them. The brothers were Alfio, Italo, Mario . . . and Pete. We always used to say, “Pete, how did you get in this family?”

My dad was an educated guy. He went to Marshall High School, which back then was a great school, and he had a couple of years of college. He was an intelligent guy, an influential guy, a sharp dresser. My father was an accountant. He was a bank examiner who worked for the Auditor of Public Accounts. That was a big thing then, especially for our neighborhood. They called my dad “the Mayor.” He did books for everybody—did their taxes, took them to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, got their licenses. He did everything for people.

My mom loved her kids more than anything. This was a saint.

She also took care of her mother and father, who lived in our house. My grandfather worked on the railroad, which wasn’t far 10

Pa r a d i s e

from the neighborhood. He used to ride the streetcar to work. My grandfather was not educated, but he was smart. And cool—slow, calculating, I never heard him swear. He always sat at the table in the kitchen, his chair, and he had a hat on, one of those old fedoras, drinking wine and smoking his Parodis.

Let me tell you how good my grandmother was. There was a Mexican family that lived across the street, the only Mexican family in a neighborhood of Italians and some Irish. The husband went to jail; I never knew why. But my grandmother would make dinner for them every night. The wife was too proud to go collect aid, but my grandmother took them in.

My father had six brothers. My father’s brothers were not book smart like him, but they were successful. My favorite was Uncle Sam. He lived with my other grandmother only a block away. He was divorced, which was a no-no. But he had a heart of gold. He was a handsome guy, with black hair. He would flirt and flatter all the women, especially the good-looking ones. He’d tell stories, and he was funny. I would be excited to see him, listen to his war stories—Uncle Sam had been in the Pacific during World War II. He was always in trouble. He gambled, he played the horses. He’d come by the house and my father would give him money and holler at him.

Uncle Sam was a joker. One time my grandfather who lived with us was waiting for some wine. He had a friend who made wine at his house. The way my grandfather described it, nobody made it like him. He would brag to my uncle Sam, with that accent, “Goombah Luke, he’s make the best wine in the whole world.

There ain’t a better wine on Hurt.” Not “Earth,” “Hurt.” So he’s waiting for weeks for this wine. And that’s all he talked about: “The wine, the wine . . .”

Sam wanted to get my grandfather. But he wouldn’t do it without consulting with my dad, because my father was the head guy 11

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in the family. So Sam tells my father, “I’m gonna get him. Goombah Luke dropped the wine off by me. I got it stashed in the garage.”

And he tells him what he wants to do.

My dad was a joker, too. So he says, “OK, but if it gets serious, I’m not taking the rap.”

So my grandfather’s shopping with my gram and my mother.

And my father and Sam get to work. In place of the wine, they fill some bottles with grape juice.

My grandfather comes home. Sam says, “Goombah Luke dropped the wine off.”

“Oh, the wine is here! The wine, the wine is here!”

My uncle says, “I’ll get it.” He goes to the garage. And my grandfather was watching. He couldn’t wait. My uncle comes walking out on the path from the garage with the bottles, and then he just dropped them, both of them at once. They broke all over.

My grandfather is crying. “You . . .”

I said, “Tell him! Please, tell him!” If you saw his face when he broke the wine . . . I’m laughing and crying at the same time.

,

My father was not a tough guy. He was in a bowling league. Now, I want to see the mobster that bowls. They’ll use a bowling ball on a guy’s head, but they’re not bowlers. Still, the Outfit guys in the neighborhood respected my dad—they all came to him for favors from the ward committeeman or just to do their income taxes. Joe Pettit, the Caifano brothers . . . My dad loved the Caifano family.

They were really good to him, and he was good to them. They all loved my father.

, 12

Pa r a d i s e

The Caifano brothers were Taylor Street boys who had come up out of the old 42 Gang, a band of juvenile delinquents that had run riot in the Patch in the 1920s and ’30s. The 42ers were so precocious that an entire cohort was recruited into the Outfit and by the 1950s they had risen to leadership positions. Notable alumni of the 42 Gang included Sam Giancana, Milwaukee Phil Alderisio, and the Caifanos: Rocco, Leonard, and Marshall.

Rocco, or “Rocky,” was the eldest and perhaps the wisest; he managed not to leave much of a mark as a criminal. The same cannot be said of his younger brothers. Leonard “Fat Lenny” Caifano’s career was cut short in 1951, when he was shot dead by the bodyguard of a South Side “policy king” during the Outfit takeover, masterminded

by Sam Giancana, of the area’s black-run gambling racket. Marshall, a feared killer, would survive to become the Outfit’s principal overseer in Las Vegas.

,

When guys came over I would stay close, because they’d see me hanging around—they’d throw me money. One time I overheard my dad talking with Rocky Caifano, Marshall’s older brother. My dad was real close with Rocky. Marshall was the big guy, who made a name for himself in the Outfit. But Rocky was the fire. He was the toughest of all of them. I’m listening, and my dad’s telling Rocky, “Rock, you’re smarter than all them guys. I told your brother, I’m telling you. Don’t mess with the black people. Stay with your own. Don’t mess with them.”

Marshall Caifano was with Sam Giancana. Giancana was trying to muscle in on a black guy named Teddy Roe, because Giancana knew he and his guys were making big money with the policy racket. All they did was play the numbers, like the lottery.

They’d take a penny bet, a nickel bet. But they were making lots 13

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of money. So Giancana tried to wrap up the blacks. He took Fat Leonard Caifano with him, because Leonard was a shooter, and they tried to kidnap Teddy Roe. And Fat Lenny got killed by Roe’s bodyguard. The guy that killed him was a policeman, on the payroll working for Teddy Roe. My father knew: don’t mess with them. If they had listened to him, Lenny wouldn’t have got killed.

,

I also knew Joe Pettit through my dad. Joe was tight with the 42 Gang guys—that’s the neighborhood he was from. And he was a big bookmaker, a well-liked guy. My dad got him out of trouble once. There was a place on the West Side, the Paradise Ballroom. It was at Crawford, which is now Pulaski, and Madison. This was the place to go. It had dancing and the best bands. You didn’t want to miss that place, because this was where you met the girls, this was where it happened. Well, Joe and his brother Larry and Marshall and Rocky Caifano, they had a fight. A bad fight. The owners were nobody to mess with, either, and they barred these guys out. They can’t go there anymore. It’s all over.

They came crying by my dad. I was in the house. “Rocco, please. You gotta get us back in there.”

My dad says, “What the heck? You guys threw the joint up for grabs.”

“Rocco, please. You gotta get us back in there. Can’t you help us out? This is the place to go.”

My dad was almost crying, to beg these guys to leave him alone.

But he liked them. Finally he says, “OK, let me go talk to a guy.”

He went to a guy by the name of Sam “Teets” Battaglia, an old 42 guy. Our neighbor Chuckie Nicoletti took him. My dad tells Battaglia, “Sam, for me. I need the favor. These guys are good boys to me.”

14

Pa r a d i s e

And he got them in. He came back, he says to Joe Pettit, “That’s the end of it. Behave yourselves.”

And Joe never forgot. He told me once, “Here’s what they thought of your father: ‘Rocco was not a tough man, but the tough did not fuck with Rocco.’ ”

,

They didn’t fuck with him, but that didn’t mean they always saw eye-to-eye. My father always talked about one election that happened when I was little, in 1944. It showed him how these guys played hardball.

My father was a Republican. He worked for Bill Parrillo, the former head of the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Republican Party committeeman for our ward, the Twenty-Fifth.

Parrillo was a legitimate, straight-shooting guy. He had a dairy company, Meadowmoor Dairy, which was huge. My father did the books for them.

Parrillo wouldn’t go along and play ball with nobody. The Outfit couldn’t control him, because he had too much money—he didn’t need these Outfit guys. So they wanted Parrillo out. They wanted their guy, named Andy Flando, as ward committeeman.

Flando you could play ball with.

To keep Parrillo from winning, Outfit guys went to their own neighborhoods and made sure that all the precinct workers did what they wanted. Some got beatings; others were threatened. The Outfit knew all the precinct guys. They targeted a dozen of them, key guys. And my father was one of the targets. They leaned on him, told him to stay away from the polls. But the voters kept coming in, voting big anyway, because he’d already been promoting them for weeks. So Parrillo won my dad’s precincts, at least. But Flando won the seat.

15

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And when Parrillo got voted out, he lost control of a lot of jobs to Flando. So a lot of people switched over to the Democrats, because they controlled everything else in the ward. They weren’t bad guys—they just went with the strength. They tried to get my father to go with them, but my father was too loyal to Parrillo. He wouldn’t switch.

,

William Parrillo may have been a legitimate guy, but he owed much of his success to a client of his legal practice back in the 1930s, a hustling entrepreneur by the name of Al Capone. Meadowmoor Dairy was actually a Capone front operation designed to undercut the city’s reigning milk cartel and get cheaper Wisconsin milk into the city.

The milk drivers’ union cried foul and resorted to the standard union tactics of bombing and slugging to hamstring the new competitor, but that was playing to Capone’s strong suit; he had his own pet branch of the Teamsters to deliver Meadowmoor’s milk. In the ensuing milk wars, both sides claimed to be protecting the public against “racketeers,” while Depression-stricken housewives merely rooted for affordable milk.

As a reward for representing Meadowmoor in the legal battles that finally did in the opposing cartel, William Parrillo was granted ownership of the dairy by a grateful Capone.

As for Andrew Flando, the Chicago Tribune, in a February 8, 1952, article on mob involvement in ward politics, described him as “an intimate of the Accardo mansion” and reported that he had been installed and later deposed as Republican committeeman of the Twenty-Fifth Ward by Tony Accardo himself, “the No. 2 boss of the Mafia in Chicago.”

, 16

Pa r a d i s e

With my dad I would go to Little Jack’s out on the West Side at Madison and Kedzie. Little Jack’s was the best Jewish deli in the world. I don’t care about New York, Little Jack’s was the best. They had the best cheesecake anywhere. One time in Little Jack’s Mike Gargano was sitting with my father. Mike Gargano was the toughest guy you ever met. I was six, seven years old, and I was eating my cheesecake, loving it. A guy sat down nearby, a stranger. He was a scary guy with a scar on his face. And I stopped eating my cheesecake and shrank back, hiding behind my dad.

Gargano says, “Yo. What’s wrong, Fred?”

“I don’t want him to see me, that scary guy over there.”

And I’ll never forget it, this was a lesson. Gargano says, “Freddy”—making sure the guy heard it—“don’t worry about the guy with the scars. Worry about the guy that give him the scars.”

My father loved those guys, but he always told us kids to stay away from them. My uncle Sam would argue with him about it.

When my dad warned us to stay away from Chuck Nicoletti, Sam told him, “This is a neighborhood guy—he’s not going to bother the kids.”

I liked the bad guys more than the good guys.

,

Chicago of the 1940s versus today? It was night and day. To me it was paradise. No air conditioning, no television. At night the visitors were on the front porch, talking and laughing. My grandmother would send us to the watermelon stand for pieces of watermelon. There was no big monster supermarket. Every corner had a grocery store. We’d go all over—the barbershop, the florist, the glass man. The neighborhood was full of shops, and you knew all the owners.

17

MOB COP

We didn’t have a lot of money; we didn’t have expensive pleasures. A big score was going to see Buckingham Fountain. We’d go to the drive-in with whoever had a car, we’d pile in. It didn’t matter who went with who, it was just for fun, to watch the movie.

The lake was beautiful. To go down there was heaven. Grand Avenue beach was like an oasis. My father would buy up a catch of smelts from a fisherman. We’d bring the smelts home, my grandmother would cook them. And she’d make a cicoria salad, which is dandelion leaves, and we’d have pop. That was a treat.

At Halloween we’d come home with bags full of stuff. We didn’t go buy costumes. We made our own. We took the cork out of a Pepsi-Cola cap and burned it, to make our own makeup. We’d rip a shirt, we covered our faces up. Who’s a monster, who’s this?

Cheap.

I mentioned one of our neighbors was Chuck Nicoletti. Chuckie was a dapper guy, handsome. And he gave a quarter to all the kids.

You know what a quarter was in those days? I can’t tell you how many trips I made. I changed my costume, and he’d look at me . . .

After the fourth time he says, “You were here already.”

I says, “No, that was my brother.”

“Well how’d you know it was your brother that was here? It was you.”

He was an Outfit guy, Milwaukee Phil Alderisio’s partner. We didn’t know it when we were kids, but they were a hit squad.

They were feared. But we didn’t know any of that.

,

Alderisio and Nicoletti were a team, like Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin. But nobody laughed. In the 1950s and ’60s, Milwaukee Phil Alderisio and Chuck Nicoletti were the Outfit’s executioners.

18

Pa r a d i s e

“That was the front-office team,” says Chicago Crime Commission executive vice president Arthur Bilek, who tracked them as an investigator for the state’s attorney’s office at the time. “There were other hit men for crew bosses, but these guys were the heavy team.”

Sources vary and attributions are shaky, but both were certainly well into double figures in the business of sanctioned Outfit hits.

And business it was. Professionals don’t fire wildly into crowds or loose off shots from moving vehicles. They stalk their victims with patience and make careful arrangements for Judases to plant kisses on their cheeks. They don’t leave prints. They never get caught with the gun, and they never brag.

Professionals have the tools: in 1962 Alderisio and Nicoletti were arrested while staking out a victim in a specially modified Ford sedan. Registered to a fictitious name with an address that proved to be a vacant lot, the car featured switches under the dashboard to turn off the taillights and to open a hidden compartment with brackets for storing firearms. In the absence of a statute prohibiting such modifications, Alderisio and Nicoletti were released without charges.

Alderisio had wavy gray hair and eyebrows still fiercely black, a cleft chin with five o’clock shadow, a rough blue-collar look despite the fine suits he sported. Nicoletti was the handsome one, with squarejawed leading-man looks. A 1968 Chicago police mug shot shows him smiling urbanely into the camera; he could be a successful middleaged executive in a corporate prospectus.

He smiled because he knew nobody was going to send him to prison; in Outfit hits convictions were next to nonexistent. Intimidated witnesses, paid-off cops, and bought judges made for a congenial work environment. For Alderisio and Nicoletti, killing was just a business technique.

What does it take to produce a man for whom shotgunning another man to death means no more than signing a promissory note or hiring a new secretary? Ignored in the glamorization of organized 19

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CHAPTER XI THE PYRAMIDS REVISITED This is the third time that I have made lengthy visits to the Pyramids of Egypt. On my first trip I rode to them on a donkey. The next time I came out from Cairo in a comfortable carriage, and to-day I passed over the same route on an electric trolley, paying seven and a half cents for the trip. The street cars to the Pyramids start at the end of the bridge, opposite Cairo, and pass along the side of the wide avenue shaded by acacia trees. The cars are open so that one can look out over the Nile valley as he goes. We whizzed by caravans of donkeys, loaded with all sorts of farm products, and by camels, ridden by gowned men, bobbing up and down in the saddles as they went. There were men, women, and children on foot, and veiled women on donkeys.

The cars were filled with Egyptians. Two dark-faced men in black gowns and white turbans sat on the seat beside me. In front was a yellow-skinned Arab dandy in a red fez and long gown, while just behind me sat a woman with a black veil fastened to her head-dress by a brass spool. As we neared the Pyramids we stopped at a café where American drinks were sold, and a little farther on was a great modern hotel with telephones and electric lights.

When I previously visited Egypt, the sands about the Pyramids were almost as smooth as those of the seashore. I galloped on my donkey over them and had no idea that I was tramping down innumerable graves.

But now—what changes the excavators and archæologists have made! I n walking over the same ground to-day I had to pick my way in and out through a vast network of half-broken-down tombs, from which the sands had been shovelled, and climb across piles of sundried brick which were made by the Egyptians at the time old King

Cheops reigned. In one place I saw a gang of half-naked, brownskinned fellaheen shovelling the earth into the cars in which it is carried far out in the desert. When the work is in full play an endless chain of cars of sand moves across this cemetery. There is a double track with turntables at the ends, and the arrangements are such that the sand can be taken out at the rate of half a ton per minute. For a long time seventy-two men were employed, and the result is that some most interesting historical material has been collected.

Some of the most important archæological work now going on in Egypt is in the hands of the Americans. Our scientists are making explorations in Nubia, away up the Nile, and are opening up temples and tombs in the desert near Luxor. They have already discovered the burial places of several kings who reigned over four thousand years ago, and unearthed the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, whose sarcophagus is now on view in the museum at Cairo.

Right here two American institutions have a large force of natives at work and have uncovered a cemetery under the shadow of the Pyramids of the time when the greatest of them was built. This cemetery includes the tombs not only of the rich, but also of the poor, and the relics, statues, and other things found in it enable one to reconstruct the lives of those who were buried here forty centuries ago.

The excavations which are being made near the Great Pyramid are in the interest of Harvard College and the Boston Museum. They furnish the money and Dr. George Reisner, one of the most efficient archæologists of the day, has charge of the work. Dr. Reisner came to Egypt as the head of the Hearst Expedition. He worked for it several years, making valuable explorations far up the Nile. He discovered there the flint-working camps of the people of the prehistoric period, and he explored the quarries which date back to the time of the Ptolemies. He also unearthed the site of a large town which was in existence fifteen hundred years before Christ and excavated a mass of valuable material therefrom. He then came nearer Cairo and uncovered cemeteries of ancient times, which give us a new view of Egyptian civilization.

It was in connection with the Boston Museum that he began his work at the Pyramids. As it is now carried on, of the share which falls to the United States the museum gets the art discoveries, while Harvard receives everything found bearing upon history and ethnology. One half of all that is unearthed goes to the Egyptian government and the other half to the United States.

The story of the allotment of the archæological territory about the Pyramids is interesting. The Egyptian government was anxious to have the country excavated, and there were three nations ready to do the work. The three were Germany, Italy, and the United States.

Archæologists came here as representatives from each of these countries and the whole of the Gizeh Pyramid field was turned over to them with the understanding that Egypt was to have half of the discoveries. Then the question came up as to how the site should be divided. As it was then, it was a great area of sand not far from the banks of the Nile with the big Pyramid of Cheops and the smaller ones of Khefren and Mycerinus rising out of it, each being quite a distance apart from the others. Each nation wished to do independent work; so the archæologists finally agreed to divide the territory into three sections and cast lots for them. I am told that Mrs. Reisner held the straws. In the drawing, the United States got the tract just north of the Great Pyramid and Germany and Italy the tracts to the south of it. Our area was thought to be the best of all and Uncle Sam’s luck has been nowhere better evidenced than right here. We are making more finds than both the other nations put together and are bringing new life to the pages of history.

I went out to the Pyramids to-day and called upon the chief of the American excavation works. I find he has built himself a home under the shadow of old Cheops. He is beyond the greatest of the Pyramids, with the sands reaching out for miles away on the north, south, and west of him. His house is built of stones which probably came from these ancient monuments. It is a long, one-story structure, not over twelve feet in height, but large enough to contain a laboratory, a photographic establishment, and the necessary equipment of an archæologist.

One part of it is the living quarters of Dr. Reisner and his family. He has his wife and baby with him, and as we chatted together his little daughter, a bright-eyed infant not more than a year or so old, played about our feet. The baby was born here on the edge of the Libyan Desert, and her youth and the age of old Cheops, that great tomb of more than four thousand years ago, were striking in their contrast.

As I looked at the little one I thought of the tombs of the babies which her father is now excavating.

During my stay we examined some photographs of the recent discoveries. One represented three statues of a well-to-do couple who lived here in those bygone ages. They were Teti and his wife.

The faces were life-like and I doubt not that Mr. and Mrs. Teti sat for them.

There were other photographs of objects found in the cemetery of the rich, as well as of some found in the cemetery of the poor. The higher classes of that time were buried nearer the Pyramids, while beyond them, farther up the desert, were the burial places of the poor. Each poor person had a little coffin-like hole in the ground built round with stones. These holes were close together, making a great series of stone boxes that remind one of the compartments of an egg crate.

I took a donkey for my ride to the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and went clear around the huge mass, climbing again up the stones. As I sat on the top I could see the work going on in the sands below me, and I repeopled them with the men now being dug up under the superintendence of our Americans. In my mind’s eye I could see them as they toiled. I could see them dragging the great blocks over the road of polished stone, which had been made for the purpose, and observe the sweat rolling down their dusty faces in this blazing sun of Egypt as, under the lashes of their taskmasters, the great pile grew.

Most of the great stone blocks of which the Pyramid was built weigh at least two tons, while some of the larger ones which cover the King’s Chamber inside the structure weigh sixty tons. It is estimated that the Great Pyramid contains nearly ninety million cubic

feet of limestone. This is so much that if it could be split into flags four inches thick, it would furnish enough to make a pavement two feet wide reaching over sea and land clear around the globe.

When Cheops completed this great structure he faced the exterior with limestone and granite slabs. The sides were as smooth as glass and met in a point at the top. The length of each side was eighteen feet greater than it is now. Indeed, as the bright sun played upon its polished surface the Pyramid must have formed a magnificent sight.

As it is to-day, when one views it from afar, the Great Pyramid still looks like one smooth block of stone. It is only when he comes closer that he sees it is made of many blocks. The Pyramid is built of yellow limestone and conglomerate. The stones are piled one on the other in regular layers. There is no cement between them, but they are chinked with a rough mortar which has withstood the weather for all these ages. I dug at some of this mortar with my knife, but could not loosen it, and went from block to block along the great structure on the side facing the western desert, finding the mortar everywhere solid.

And this huge pile was built over forty centuries ago. It seems a long time, but when you figure out how many lives it means it is not so old after all. Every one of us knows one hundred men who have reached forty years. Their aggregate lives, if patched together, would go back to the beginning of this monument. In other words, if a man at forty should have a child and that child should live to be forty and then have a child, and the programme of life should so continue, it would take only one hundred such generations to reach to the days when the breath from the garlic and onions eaten by those one hundred thousand men polluted this desert air.

Indeed, the world is not old, and it is not hard to realize that those people of the past had the same troubles, the same worries, and the same tastes as we have. I can take you through tombs not far from Cairo upon the walls of which are portrayed the life work of the men of ancient Egypt. You may see them using the same farm tools that the fellaheen use now. They plough, they reap, and thresh. They drink wine and gorge themselves with food. In one of the tombs I

saw the picture of a woman milking a cow while her daughter held the calf back by the knees to prevent it from sucking. In another painting I saw the method of cooking, and in another observed those old Egyptians stuffing live geese with food to enlarge their livers.

They were making pâté de foie gras, just as the Germans stuff geese for the same purpose to-day.

Leaving the Pyramid of Cheops, I crossed over to take a look at the other two which form the rest of the great trio of Gizeh, and I have since been up to the site of old Memphis, where are the Pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. Along this plateau, running up the Nile, are to be found the remains of a large number of Pyramids. There are also some in the Faiyum, and others far up the river in ancient Ethiopia. The latter are taller in proportion to their bases than the Egyptian Pyramids, and they generally have a hall with sculptures facing the east to commemorate the dead.

Most of the stones of the Pyramids here came from the plateau upon which they stand or from the Mokattam hills about twelve miles away on the other side of the Nile. There was an inclined plane leading to the river, on which are still to be seen the ruts in the stone road cut out by the runners of the sledges carrying these great blocks. There are pictures on some of the monuments which show how the stones were drawn on sledges by oxen and men. In one of the pictures a man is pouring oil on the roadbed. On the Island of Madeira, where the natives drag sleds by hand up and down the hills, they grease their sled runners, but the ancient Egyptians greased not only the runners but the roads as well.

I was much interested in the interior of the Great Pyramid. The mighty structure is supposed to be solid, with the exception of three chambers, connected with the outside by passageways and ventilated by air-shafts. These chambers undoubtedly once contained great treasures of gold and silver, but they were robbed in the first instance over three thousand years ago and it is known that the Persians, the Romans, and the Arabs all tried to dig into them to find the valuables they were supposed to hold.

It was with three half-naked Bedouins that I climbed up to the entrance which leads into old Cheops. There is a hole about fortyfive feet above the desert on the north side. Going in here, we came into a narrow stone passage so low that I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The passage first sloped downward and then up, and finally, pushed and pulled by my dark guides, I got into a great narrow hall. After passing through this, I entered again the room where old Cheops, the king, rested undisturbed for a thousand years or so before the looters came.

The Alabaster Sphinx is one of the evidences of splendour of the ancient city of Memphis, seat of kings, with streets so long that to walk from end to end was said to be half a day’s journey.

Inside the great museum at Cairo are the mummies of Egyptian royalty, which, with countless relics and records and the new discoveries of the archæologists, reveal in intimate detail the life of these people of thousands of years ago.

By going back through the hall one reaches another passageway which slopes downward to the Queen’s Chamber. Below this, reached by another passage connecting with that I first entered,

there is a subterranean chamber far under the base of the Pyramid itself. The whole structure is intensely interesting, and if it could be explored by diamond drills or in some other way, other chambers might possibly be found in the parts now looked upon as solid.

CHAPTER XII FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS How would you like to own an Egyptian mummy princess, perhaps two thousand years old? On my second visit to Egypt I was offered one at the museum. The price was just one hundred dollars in cash, and accompanying it was a certificate showing that it had not been made in Germany. The excavations going on in the valley of the Nile had unearthed so many relics that the museum at Cairo had mummies and other antiques to sell. Hundreds of the ancient dead were being shipped to all parts of the world, and the ghoul-like officials added to their revenues by disposing of the surplus bodies of nobles who lived and ruled ages ago. The lady who was offered to me, with the usual accompaniment of a certificate of age, lay in the clothes in which she was buried. She was wrapped around with linen as yellow as saffron and her black face appeared to smile as I looked at her. She had been put up in spices, and I could almost smell the perfumes with which she was embalmed.

There is no place like this Museum of Cairo in which to study the Egypt of the past. Room after room is walled with the coffins of monarchs who reigned thousands of years ago, and in other caskets the bodies embalmed are exposed to view. I looked a long time upon the face of King Rameses who is supposed to have gone to school with Moses. The king who built Thebes, Karnak, and other great cities, was the man who oppressed the Israelites, although not the one whom the Lord afflicted with plagues thereby causing the Exodus. He was the Alexander of Egypt, the Napoleon of the Nile valley three thousand odd years ago. He conquered the countries about him and was rolling in wealth. “... now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence.”

Rameses is remarkably well preserved. His iron jaw is as firm as when he uttered commands in his capital, the hundred-gated city of

Thebes. His enormous nose is still prominent. The face, though black, is wonderfully life-like and the teeth shine out as white as when he brushed them after his morning tub, something like four thousand years ago. I noted the silky, fuzzy hair over his black ears and longed for a lock of it for my collection of relics.

Then I looked up and saw a great curled wig of black hair which the records state was made for King Rameses, and wondered why the spiced old gentleman below did not match his wig to his natural flaxen hair.

Near this casket is one containing Seti I, the Pharaoh who preceded Rameses, another great warrior and conqueror, who is said to have made a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. Not so far away is the mummy of Meneptah, the tyrant who hardened his heart against the Israelites and would not let them go. Seti lies in his coffin with his black arms crossed and his black head cushioned on yellow grave clothes. His features are as peaceful as perhaps they seldom were in life and he appears to sleep well.

The dead past became marvellously real when I looked at another box in which lay a mummied princess with the body of her tiny baby, not many days old, in the coffin beside her, and when I saw gold bracelets of the same patterns that our belles wear to-day and earrings quite as beautiful as those made by Tiffany, I felt that human nature was the same six thousand years ago as it is now, and that these people of the past had the loves and hates, the cares and the vanities of the world of to-day. I wondered what Rameses took for the colic and whether Queen Akhotupu, who lived before Moses, and who now lies here, had hysterics. I noted the flowers which were put in another mummy case beside a king and I could not reconcile the beautiful teeth and the fine intellectual face of King Seti, whose daughter is supposed to have found Moses in the bulrushes, with the fat, bloated fingers, showing that he had the gout. There was as good living in the days of the Israelites as there is in Egypt to-day, but then as now, only the rich had fancy cooks and the poor ate scraps. In the tomb of Ti near Memphis I saw in chambers of granite down under the sands of the desert, wall after wall covered with

painted pictures of the life of the time when the tomb was made thousands of years before Christ.

I saw the body of a princess standing upright against the side of the wall. Her face was plated with gold, and the mummy cloths which wrapped her round and round were embroidered. One might make a similar bundle of any modern girl. Another of these ladies had hair which appeared to have been done up in curl papers, and its colour was as red as my own.

Many of the mummy caskets are splendid. They are made of fine woods, painted inside and out with pictures describing the life of the occupants. Some are covered with carvings and some with heads which may have been likenesses of those who lay within.

It costs much to die now. It must have cost more then. The expense of making a first-class mummy was twelve hundred dollars, and the money of that day was worth ten times what it is now. The caskets, which were more expensive than any of the coffins we have to-day, were incased in great sarcophagi of stone or wood, a single one of which must have cost a fortune.

I have asked the archæologists why the Egyptians made their mummies. Their reply is that the desire for mummification came from the religion of the ancient Egyptians, who believed in the transmigration of souls. They thought that the spirit wandered about for several thousand years after death and then came back to the home it had upon earth. For this reason it was desirable to keep the body intact, for every one looked to his mummihood as his only chance of re-creation hereafter.

When the art of embalming began no one knows, but it certainly dates back to the building of the Pyramids. We know that when Jacob died in Egypt, his son Joseph had him embalmed and the Bible says it took forty days to do the job properly. It also relates that when Joseph died the Egyptians embalmed him and put him away in a coffin. Herodotus, who was one of the best travel writers of all times, describes how embalming was done and tells the details of mummy-making. He says the art was carried on by a special guild, whose members were appointed by the government and who had to

work at fixed prices. The bodies were mummified in three different ways. By the first and most costly method, the brains were extracted through the nose by means of an iron probe, and the intestines were taken out through an incision made in the side. The intestines were cleaned and washed in palm wine, covered with aromatic gum, and set aside in jars. The cavity of the body was next filled with spices, including myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant substances, and it was then sewn up. After this it was soaked in a solution of natron, a kind of carbonate of soda, being allowed to lie in it for a couple of months or more. When it had been taken out and wrapped in fine linen so smeared over with gum that it stuck to the skin, the mummy was ready for burial.

The second process, though cheaper, took about the same time.

In this the brains were not extracted and the body was so treated in a solution that everything except the skin and bones was dissolved.

There was a third process which consisted of cleaning the corpse and laying it down in salt for seventy days. The first process cost about twelve hundred dollars; the second, one hundred dollars; and the third, considerably less.

Other authorities describe different methods of mummification.

Most of the mummies discovered, however, have been preserved by means of gums of some kind and by pitch and carbonate of soda.

The mummies prepared with gums are usually green in colour with skins which look as though they were tanned. They often break when they are unrolled. The bodies preserved with pitch are black and hard, but the features are intact, and it is said that such mummies will last forever. In those treated with soda the skin is hard and rather loose, and the hair falls off when it is touched. The pitch mummy ordinarily keeps its hair and teeth.

There are mummies of children in this Egyptian museum. There are some also in London, but I know of none anywhere else. The children were embalmed for the same reason as the grown-ups, the parents believing that they could have no union with their little ones unless they met them in their original bodies after the resurrection.

The faces on some of these are gilded, while the pictures on the bandages represent the children offering sacrifices to the gods.

Above the feet is sometimes seen the funeral boat, showing the little child lying upon its bier, and upon other parts of the coffin are tiny people who seem to be engaged in propelling the boat. This probably represents the ferry of the dead to their tombs in the mountains on the banks of the Nile. In other cases the caskets of the children are beautifully decorated and some are even plated with gold.

I mused long over two statues as old as any in the world. These are life-size sitting figures, representing Prince Ra-Hotep and his wife, the Princess Nefert, who lived something like four thousand years before Christ, and whose statues are as perfect now as when they were made, before the Pyramids were built. The Prince has African features, and his light attire reminds one of the inhabitants of the valley of the Congo. The Princess is dressed in a sheet, and looks as though she were just out of her bath. Her husband evidently cut her hair, and it takes considerable imagination to believe that she can be so old and still look so young. There is no doubt of her age, however, for the scientists say that she has seen over six thousand years, and the scientists know.

One of the most important records of the customs and beliefs of the Pharaohs concerning the dead has been taken away from Egypt.

This is a papyrus manuscript which is now in the British Museum. It is known as the Book of the Dead and contains two hundred chapters. It is written in hieroglyphics, but many of the passages have been translated. It sets forth that every man was believed to consist of seven different parts of which the actual body was only one and the other parts related to the soul and its transmigration.

Upon the preservation of the body depended the bringing together of these seven parts in the after life. On this account corpses were mummified, and for the same reason they were hidden away in tombs under the desert and in the great Pyramids, which their owners believed would be inaccessible to the men of the future.

This Book of the Dead contains, also, some of the Egyptian ideals of right living, reminding one of the Psalm which, in Rouse’s version, begins:

That man hath perfect blessedness Who walketh not astray In counsel of ungodly men, Nor stands in sinner’s way.

Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair, But placeth his delight Upon God’s law, and meditates On that law day and night.

The Book of the Dead reads: I am not a plunderer; nor a niggard; nor the cause of others’ tears. I am not unchaste; nor hot in speech. I am not fraudulent. I do not take away the cakes of a child, or profane the gods of my locality.

Some of the boys at the Asyut college bring enough bread baked in big, hard cakes to last several months. When they go in to their meals they take this bread along with them, softening it in buckets of water furnished for the purpose.

The American College founded at Asyut by the Presbyterians has become an important training school for young Egypt. Many of its graduates go into government service as well as business and professional life.

Boys from all parts and classes of Egypt, Moslems and Christian Copts, come by the hundreds to the American College, most of them paying for their tuition, some in cash and some in work.

There is no doubt that the Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul. They thought man would live again, and gave the soul the name of Bai, representing it in the form of a human-headed hawk.

They had their own ideas of heaven which one of their pictures of the future state represents as follows: In heaven the dead eat bread which never grows stale and drink wine which is never musty. They wear white apparel and sit upon thrones among the gods, who cluster around the tree of life near the lake in the field of peace. They wear the crowns which the gods give them, and no evil being or thing has any power to harm them in their new abode, where they will live with God forever.

According to one opinion, the Egyptian heaven was situated above the sky. It was separated from the earth by a great iron plate, to which lamps were fastened, these lamps being the stars. According to another theory, the heaven was in the delta, or in one of the oases. The sky was thought to be a cow, Hathor, whose four feet stood firm upon the soil; or else a vast face, in which the right eye was the sun and the left eye the moon. Some thought that the sky was the goddess Nut, whom the god of the atmosphere, Show, held aloof from her husband Keb, the earth, on whose back grew the plants and trees.

The ancient Egyptian idea of creation was that it began with the rising of the sun, which was brought about by a god, and men and women came from the tears which dropped from the eyes of that god. This is somewhat better than the old Chinese tradition of the world’s making. According to the latter, the god Pwanku chiselled out the universe, putting eighteen thousand years on the job. At the end of that time he died, and his head turned into mountains, his breath became the wind, and his voice the thunder. From his flesh came the fields, from his beard the stars, and from his skin and hair the trees.

All minerals originated from his teeth and bones. The rain is his sweat, and, lastly, man was created from the insects that stuck to his body!

In examining these gods of the ancient Egyptians as shown in the relics from the tombs, it is easy to see where the Israelites got their ideas of the golden calf. The oppressors from whom they were fleeing revered certain animals. They looked upon hawks as emblems of the sun, moon, and stars, and at their death often turned them to mummies. The cat was sacred to one of their gods. They had also statues of cows, the cow being considered emblematic of Hathor, the goddess of beauty, love, and joy. You may see her statues scattered up and down the Nile valley. Sometimes she is depicted as a cow and at others as a woman wearing cow horns with the sun hung between them. There is a carving of Queen Cleopatra decked out in that way.

But the jewels of which the Israelites made that calf! If you will look up the Bible record in Exodus you will see that Moses advised the Israelites that every man should borrow of his Egyptian neighbour jewels of silver and jewels of gold. A little farther on it is stated that they did so, the paragraph concluding as follows: And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them. And they spoiled the Egyptians.

In the museums here in Cairo you may see pints and quarts of jewellery such as the Israelites borrowed and took with them into the wilderness to melt down to make that golden calf. The place is filled with great cases containing ornaments of gold and silver taken from the tombs. Some date back almost to the early days of the Pyramids, and many were in use before the Israelites left Egypt. Some are golden snakes with spring coils so that they will fit any arm; others are solid rings of massive gold. I saw armlets to be worn above the elbow, golden girdles for the waist, and a chain of gold with a goose head at each end. Among the finest of these ornaments are those owned by a queen who lived 600 b.c. and whose mummy came from a tomb not far from Thebes.