The Ghosts of Eden Park Read online

  One evening in the spring of 1919, that promise was tested. A local plumber knocked on Imogene’s door claiming he had found the girl’s watch and wanting a $15 reward for its return. Imogene thought that $5 would suffice. An argument ensued.

  Remus had always enjoyed confrontation, physical or mental. His stout stature—five foot six and 205 pounds—belied his agility and strength. He boasted of his history as a competitive swimmer and how, as a young man, he’d set an endurance record by spending nearly six hours in frigid Lake Michigan. During his stint as a pharmacist he once argued with a customer who complained that a certain liniment had scalded his chest; Remus dragged the man outside and settled the matter by slapping him in the face. When a group of women gathered at his drugstore to protest his “poisonous potions,” Remus doused them with ammonia. As a lawyer he had a history of attacking opposing counsel and throwing punches over witness testimony, sometimes ending up in a tangle of limbs on the courtroom floor. His hubris was equaled only by a concern that someone, someday, might get the best of him.

  Standing in Imogene’s doorway, Remus, wearing slippers, launched himself at the plumber, punched him in the eye, revamped his nose, knocked out a tooth, and chased him onto the lawn.

  The plumber pressed charges, and Remus represented himself.

  “I acted in self-defense as any red-blooded man with a spark of chivalry would have acted,” he argued. “This ruffian of a plumber was disturbing a lady. He was rough housing, loud mouthed, irrelevant, and immaterial about the premises, and I only forcibly applied a perfectly good and legal writ of ejectment.”

  After five minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

  His wife, Lillian, filed for divorce a second and final time. In her petition she once again accused Remus of cruelty, claiming that on several occasions he beat, punched, struck, choked, and kicked her. Remus agreed to a settlement reflective of his success: a lump sum of $50,000, $25 per week in alimony, and $30,000 in a trust for their daughter, Romola. He moved out of their home for good, allowing Imogene to defend him in the press.

  “He is a perfect gentleman,” she insisted, “and anything his wife says to the contrary is false. The trouble with modern wives is this: They don’t know how to treat their husbands. A husband should be given all the rope he wants…he will never hang himself.”

  In response, Lillian made another disturbing allegation. She claimed to the press that Remus, on several occasions, had ended his affair with Imogene, ordering her to stay away from his office and home. But Imogene persisted, following him down Clark Street during the day and lurking outside their windows at night, flashing a gun and insisting that they were meant to be together.

  * * *

  With a new fiancée, home, and stepdaughter-to-be, Remus once again sought to update his life, discarding any piece of his past that seemed ill fit for his future. He included his career in this evaluation and noticed that his docket had filled with a new type of defendant: men charged with violating the Volstead Act, ratified in January 1920 to enforce the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol to, from, or within the United States. Remus considered the law to be unreasonable and nearly impossible to enforce, and his clients were proving him right, making astonishing profits from what he called “petty, hip-pocket bootlegging.” They paid retainers in cash right away, fanning the bills across his desk, and never complained about fines imposed by the court, no matter how steep. He noticed that their customers were the “so-called best people,” whose primary gripe in life was the difficulty in getting good whiskey. It occurred to him that this demand must be spreading across the country, and that if his clients—“men without any brains at all”—were succeeding, then he himself had “a chance to clean up.”

  Seeking to launch a large-scale operation, he scoured the Volstead Act, finding a loophole in Title II, Section 6: With a physician’s prescription, it was legal to buy and use liquor for “medicinal purposes”—a provision he deemed, in a customary flourish of language, “the greatest comedy, the greatest perversion of justice, that I have ever known of in any civilized country in the world.” A plan took shape in his mind. As a licensed pharmacist, he had the knowledge necessary to exploit the law on a national scale. As a criminal defense attorney, he had significant insight into the mindset and machinations of the underworld. As a lifelong teetotaler, he could view the liquor business objectively. And as a risk-taker, he craved the thrill and excitement of outwitting not only his competitors but also the federal government.

  He devised his strategy, each step meticulously considered and potential hazards addressed:

  Close his Chicago law practice and move to Cincinnati, since 80 percent of the country’s pre-Prohibition bonded whiskey was stored within 300 miles of the city.

  Buy distilleries to gain possession of thousands of gallons of that whiskey.

  Acquire wholesale drug companies, always listing someone else as the owner.

  Under the guise of these drug companies, obtain withdrawal permits that would allow him to remove whiskey from his warehouses and, in theory, sell it on the medicinal market.

  Bribe state Prohibition directors to ignore abnormally large withdrawals.

  Organize a transportation company to provide for distribution and arrange for his own employees to hijack his own trucks—thereby diverting all of that technically legal, curative whiskey into the illicit market at any price he named. Essentially, he would be robbing Remus to pay Remus.

  He called this massive octopus of an enterprise “the Circle.”

  * * *

  Imogene had sold herself to Remus, too; she was malleable, receptive to his schemes, eager to mold herself into his ideal. She and her daughter, Ruth, would be his new family. She would keep his darkest secrets and uphold all of his lies. She would not tell anyone that Remus had always been terrified of ghosts. She would not divulge that his brother, Herman, had died in an insane asylum. She would not mention that Remus had never officially become an American citizen. She would never repeat the strange story behind his father’s death: Frank and Remus’s mother, Marie, had engaged in a barroom brawl, which culminated in a bash to his head; he died on the way to the hospital. To protect his mother and to keep her from speaking indiscriminately to the coroner, Remus locked her in the attic for three days, until the inquest was over.

  Remus chose to believe that his past was safe with Imogene, to entrust her with his future. En route to Cincinnati, on June 25, 1920, they stopped in Newport, Kentucky, to get married, with Ruth as their witness. Once in the Queen City he rented a suite at the Sinton Hotel, Cincinnati’s answer to New York’s Hotel Astor, featuring opera concerts, a writing room, and a Louis XVI candy shop. They would live there until renovations were complete on the Price Hill mansion, which had once belonged to Henry Lackman, proprietor of a now-shuttered brewery. “We must buy the Lackman place,” Imogene had urged; it would be a monument to their new start and status, a grandiose barrier to the past. Remus bought the home for $75,000, a record for a residential sale in Cincinnati and a fraction of the amount he’d stashed in a local bank under an alias.

  As a surprise for his new bride he put the deed in Imogene’s name, one of many decisions he would come to regret.

  Q. How long did George Remus live at home, and what did he do?

  A. Until he was about fourteen years old. Then I took him to the drugstore of my brother, as he always wanted to make money to assist the family.

  Q. Where was George confirmed?

  A. By Reverend Landrech, minister of the Lutheran Church on the West Side.

  Q. Did he continue to work in the drugstore until he married?

  A. My brother had another store and he sent George there. George ate his meals where he worked so as to save money and send the money to me.

  Q. What kind of a boy was George, with reference to looking after his mother and family?

  A. A fine boy. He always sent the money home. When his father would want money to buy beer, and I would not give it to him, George would always give his father the money.

  Q. Did he continue to help the family after he was married [to Imogene]?

  A. Yes, always. And his wife got mad.

  ONCE SETTLED IN CINCINNATI, Remus hustled to establish himself. With financing from the Lincoln National Bank, where he kept an account under the name “John P. Alexander,” he purchased a retail drugstore downtown and converted it into a wholesale drug company, a transformation that required an additional investment and an intricate sleight of hand. After stocking the shelves with $50,000 worth of drugs and toiletries, he secured a basic permit to withdraw and sell whiskey. As soon as that company had withdrawn as much liquor as it could without attracting suspicion, he closed that drug company, organized another one, and shipped over the initial supply of drugs and toiletries.

  He repeated this process and also bought existing wholesale drug companies: two in New York, a few more in Cincinnati, and the Kentucky Drug Company, just across the river in Covington. He also purchased his own distillery, H. E. Pogue in Maysville, Kentucky, and entered negotiations for several others. He observed that Cincinnati bootleggers conducted business brazenly, without interference from either city police or federal agents—even though Ohio was the headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League (the state conformed to the country-wide tendency for cities to be “wet” and rural counties “dry”). Discreet inquiries revealed the names and prices of local Prohibition officers willing to be “fixed,” an expenditure of ten dollars for every case of whiskey withdrawn.

  He assembled a divers
e group of associates to fulfill specific roles in his organization: “confidential men” to bait law enforcement into accepting bribes; a “traffic man” to assist with transportation; secretaries to falsify paperwork; a personal chauffeur; and a personal cook. George Conners, whom Remus called “the man, Friday,” would act as his fearless and savvy lieutenant. Remus met Conners, a lifelong resident of Cincinnati and a local real estate broker, while negotiating for distilleries, and the bootlegger liked him instantly. Finally, there were the “all-around man,” Harry Brown, who happened to be Imogene’s brother, and Imogene herself, upon whom Remus bestowed the unofficial title of “Prime Minister.”

  Remus promised she would be his “partner in everything.” She would oversee business records and plans that he could not share with anyone else. He would seek her input on potential deals. He would invite her to invest personal funds—meaning her allowance—in his enterprises. There was nobody in the world whom he trusted so fully, and he felt confident in placing both his livelihood and his heart in her lovely and clever hands.

  The Circle began to spin. Within the year, Remus would own 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.

  * * *

  Remus feared neither the police nor Prohibition officials but whiskey pirates, those bands of roving thieves who targeted bootleggers across the country, swooping down on warehouses, binding and gagging the watchmen, cutting telephone wires, and stealing every last barrel inside.

  As word of the Circle spread, Remus knew that he would be a target. His fear was realized one night when he and his driver were returning to Cincinnati from Covington, Kentucky, with cases of whiskey piled high in the back of the truck. They were halfway across the bridge when a touring car veered from its lane to block their path. Remus’s driver abandoned the truck and fled frantically in the direction of Cincinnati, leaving Remus to fend for himself. Four men leapt onto the running board of Remus’s truck, brandishing automatics and shouting a single command: “Stick ’em up high!” Each of them aimed his gun directly at Remus’s head.

  Remus’s driver carried a revolver, but he’d taken it with him when he ran. Remus himself was unarmed. His mind clicked into action, assessing the situation: The location of the holdup was to his advantage, since policemen were typically stationed at either end of the bridge. At the sound of gunfire, they would move to block the pirates’ escape.

  “Pull your triggers!” Remus dared them. “Shoot, you cowards, and if you do you’ll never live to tell the tale!”

  He knew he had just a fraction of a second to make a move. He catapulted himself forward with the force and form of a diver. He caught the men by surprise, windmilling his thick arms until he connected with a set of ribs, sending their owner tumbling backward. Then something crashed brutally against the top of his head, as if dropped from several stories above, an impact that folded his body in half and brought him to his knees. He righted himself and swung again, catching another pirate with his boulder of a fist. The butt of an automatic carved a second hole in his scalp, sending him back to the ground. Again he staggered to his feet, blood veiling his eyes. Whirling around, Remus trapped his assailant in his arms, hoisted him above his head, and stumbled to the side of the bridge, intending to heave the pirate into the water below. Instead he collided with the railing and crashed to the ground, stunned.

  An uninjured pirate slid behind the wheel of Remus’s truck and exhorted his comrades to hurry and join him. One retrieved the dazed pirate, dragging him away from the bridge and into the touring car. Remus battled with the last, swinging his arms wildly, his target barely visible through a sheen of blood. The pirate disengaged and climbed into Remus’s truck. Both vehicles started their engines.

  But Remus was not ready to yield the fight. He hauled himself up to the running board of his truck and tried to pry his rival from the driver’s seat. One last bash on the head hurled him back to the ground, and this time he knew he had lost.

  The truck pulled away, the touring car following close behind. Remus swiped the blood from his eyes, crossed the bridge into Cincinnati, and hailed a taxicab to the hospital to get stitches for his wounds. Lesson learned: In the future, all liquor shipments would be accompanied by a convoy of armed guards.

  The following week, Remus tracked down the pirates’ leader, who surprised him with a compliment: “You have more guts than twenty men and deserved to keep your liquor.” Remus laughed and hired a few of the leader’s men to drive his trucks, insurance against future attacks. As an extra precaution, he asked his main lieutenant, George Conners, to find him a safer, more secluded storage facility, one that could serve him for years to come.

  * * *

  Conners was Remus’s physical and psychological opposite—and therefore his perfect complement. He had a wiry, compact build, with bullet eyes and a reserved nature, as protective of his thoughts and speech as Remus was effusive with his. He was a devoted husband and the father of a baby girl. The son of poor Irish immigrants, Conners had worked for the Democratic State Committee before becoming a real estate agent. He maintained excellent connections with local officials and businessmen; if Remus needed a new facility, Conners could find it.

  He soon informed Remus of a perfect location—accessible by trucks and so easily defended that two men could ward off an entire army. Together they drove out toward the small town of Cheviot, ten miles west of the city. They turned down Lick Run Road, a long, twisty passage devoid of any other traffic that narrowed as they approached its end. Hundreds of pear trees touched branches to form a canopy of leaves above them, giving the impression that a forest awaited on the other side.

  Instead, a two-story, clapboard farmhouse came into view, accented by three adjacent barns and a scattering of outbuildings. Amidst this cluster of buildings stood a heavy, unshaven man who looked to be in his mid-fifties. He introduced himself as George Dater and said that he owned the place. He had a small business growing grapes and manufacturing wine, but his profits had plummeted since Prohibition, and he was hoping to rent out the farm for storage privileges. He had one condition: The renters had to be willing and able to remove the liquor at a moment’s notice. Remus offered $100 per week, and the deal was done.

  The following day Remus and Conners arrived with a truckload of whiskey and began unloading cases—250 in all. Dater grew unsettled as he watched. He did not live on the farm alone. His hired hand, Johnny Gehrum, occupied a few rooms with his wife and four small children.

  “We’re all going to get pinched,” Dater said, hopping from foot to foot.

  “Get out of the way and shut up,” Conners responded, and he and Remus continued their work until the space was full.

  They began remaking the property into an impregnable fortress. A company of marksmen stood guard at all hours. The property’s position at the bottom of the hill helped them monitor traffic; they could see anyone descending the slim path heading to the farm, yet they themselves could not be seen. Every imaginable means of protection—shotguns, pistols, automatics—was stashed at strategic points.

  An old voting booth was repurposed as a watchtower and stationed just outside of the entrance, where the guard assessed each potential customer. In the central barn, opposite Dater’s farmhouse, armed guards lay prone in the hayloft. The barn itself was connected by an electric buzzer to the second floor of the house, where another guard kept watch during the night. Approved customers proceeded to the yard and dimmed their headlights three times in quick succession. At this signal, the men in the barn pressed the buzzer, and from the second-story window flashed the bold globe of a floodlight, usurping the moon and illuminating everything below.