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 diverse 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.