“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.
The compound soon earned the moniker “Death Valley Farm,” in honor of the pirates who tried to trespass and were never seen again.
* * *
—
The Circle never once paused. Twenty-four hours, seven days per week, Remus’s fleet of 147 trucks blackened the roads. Children playing on Queen City Avenue, along the route to Death Valley, halted their games long enough to cry, “There go the whiskey trucks!” Prohibition had cost thousands of jobs in liquor-related industries, affecting bartenders, waitstaff, truckers, barrel makers, and glass workers. Remus welcomed three thousand men to his payroll, becoming one of the largest employers in the city and a de facto hero—providing not only quality whiskey but also the money to buy it.
Operations grew so complicated that he bought a six-story office building in downtown Cincinnati and spent $74,000 in renovations, complete with custom furniture and mosaic tiles that wove the name “Remus” throughout the lobby floor. Here he held meetings with his depot men and other subordinates, plotting ways to reach his ultimate goal: to gain possession of all of America’s whiskey and become the country’s sole bootlegger.
Remus embraced his new persona, adding and subtracting traits and nuances, shading and sharpening his lines. He stuffed each sentence until it was filled to bursting, never using one word where a half dozen might do: “I must corral myself together”; “the egregious and excruciating principle at stake”; “from the teeming fullness of my grateful heart.” When his temper was cowed he was excessively polite, lacing his speech with such entreaties as “if you please” and “if I may” and “will you pardon my saying” and “may I observe here,” certain words tinged with a German accent. He smiled less often than he laughed, a startling, aggressive clatter that invaded both silence and conversation at inopportune times.