He developed a fastidiousness that bordered on phobia. He grew keenly attuned to dirt and disarray; to flaws in schemes not yet hatched; to any threat of restricted freedom in body or mind. Piece by piece he replaced his wardrobe with bespoke suits made of silk, so that it was the only material touching his skin. He could not tolerate the feel of a button at the back of his collar, pressing against his neck. He never wore underwear.
To underscore his importance, he began referring to himself in the third person. “Remus was in the whiskey business,” he’d say, “and Remus was the biggest man in the business. Cincinnati was the American mecca for good liquor, and America had to come to Remus to get it.” In this way, over time, he developed the ability to consider even the most personal of matters with an objective distance, as if a stranger had stolen his thoughts and fears and decided, unilaterally, how to act upon them.
* * *
Although Remus felt invincible, Prohibition officials in Washington had begun to take notice of suspicious activity in Ohio. In the fall of 1920, shortly before the election of President Warren G. Harding, the Treasury Department contacted William Mellin, a thirty-two-year-old professional wiretapper based in New York. They sent him to Cincinnati, where he rented the room in the Sinton Hotel next to Remus’s and secured a duplicate of his key.
One morning when Remus, Imogene, and Ruth were out, Mellin let himself in and noted that Remus’s telephone extension was 707. In the hotel cellar, he located the terminals for 707 and bridged that extension to the one in his own room. Whenever Remus’s phone rang, his would ring, too.
Over the course of one day, Mellin ascertained, a total of forty-four people visited Remus’s suite, many of them local Prohibition agents or deputy marshals. Remus paid graft money to each visitor, averaging $1,000 apiece, and coordinated his next shipment: Eighteen freight cars crammed with whiskey were on the way from Covington. After organizing his notes, Mellin contacted a federal official in Cincinnati.
“Here’s the dope on Remus,” he said. “What do I do now?”
Silently the official read through Mellin’s report. Finally, he said, “My boy, come back tomorrow.”
Mellin did so and reminded the official that he had information about Remus.
“Son, where is your home office?” the official asked.
“New York,” Mellin told him.
“Son,” the official said again, “there’s times when a man has to be practical in this business. It’s only a few weeks to election, and the information you’ve dug up is political dynamite. The men you spied on—the agents and marshals—are political appointees. Go back to New York and forget about it.”
Mellin thought it over and decided, instead, to report his findings to Washington, D.C. As the election results came in and the Harding administration took power, Mellin kept waiting for a response. It never came.
IN THE SPRING OF 1921, shortly after Harding’s inauguration, Remus received a call from an old Chicago law colleague named Elijah Zoline. Someone in the Department of Justice—a close friend of Attorney General Harry Daugherty, no less—had made it known that the government was willing, even eager, to conduct business with bootleggers. For a certain price, Remus could obtain an unlimited number of genuine government withdrawal permits. Should Remus be interested, Zoline could arrange a meeting on neutral territory, in New York City.
Given the ever-expanding scope of the Circle and its attendant hazards, Remus was interested. With each whiskey withdrawal he took the chance that an honest Prohibition director would discover that subordinates were selling permits. To mitigate this issue, Remus had obtained (for the paltry investment of $1.48) a rubber stamp facsimile of a local Prohibition director’s signature, which would allow him to circumvent the standard approval procedure. But large-scale forgery also posed obvious risks. Buying authentic permits directly from the federal government, as Zoline was suggesting, would both streamline the process and diminish its dangers.
On the appointed day Remus and Zoline waited in the lobby of the Commodore Hotel in midtown Manhattan, their table veiled by a phalanx of white marble pillars and cascading ferns. Remus watched the man swing through the doors and approach them. He was an odd-looking character, wide and squat, with a florid complexion and a coarse, bristled moustache that appeared unevenly trimmed. Black wire glasses imprinted on fleshy cheeks. He dressed with monochromatic precision, choosing the same neutral shade for his hat, tie, tweed suit, handkerchief, and silk socks. A diamond and ruby ring provided the lone spot of color.
Zoline made the introductions—George Remus, meet Jess Smith—and left them alone to talk, their words obscured by the soft hush of a nearby fountain.
Smith spoke first, each word launching flecks of spittle into the air between them. He had heard that Remus was a “reasonably large operator” in the whiskey industry. For a “consideration” he would provide Remus with all of the permits he would need to withdraw the pre-Prohibition booze from his warehouses. Moreover, these permits would bear the authentic signatures of various state Prohibition officials who reported to the Justice Department—a bit of insurance if Remus encountered any suspicious authorities. As they both knew, one permit allowed for the withdrawal of one case of liquor, comprised of three gallons. What cut could he expect from Remus?
Remus thought it over. For each permit he would pay Smith $1.50 to $2.50—a sliding scale, he explained, depending on the size of the shipment. The first permit would name the Central Drug Company in New York, which Remus already owned, and the Fleischmann Distillery in Cincinnati, which he planned to buy imminently.
With that settled, the men moved to the next topic of discussion. Smith offered to use his political clout—in particular, his relationship with Attorney General Daugherty—to protect Remus from legal trouble. If Remus found himself in a “showdown” and was prosecuted for bootlegging, Smith promised that no conviction would come of it. And if for some inexplicable reason Remus were convicted, Smith would arrange a deus ex machina in the form of a pardon from Daugherty. For this service, Smith would accept $50,000, for starters. Without hesitation, Remus reached into his pockets and produced $50,000, all in $1,000 bills.
The men shook hands, agreeing to meet again soon.
* * *
Down the hall from Jess Smith’s desk, in Room 501 of the Department of Justice Building, sat Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the assistant attorney general of the United States and the most powerful woman in the country. Just nine months earlier she, along with all other adult female citizens, had been granted the right to vote. She was thirty-two, only five years out of law school, and had yet to prosecute a single criminal case. That soon would change, as she was responsible for all Prohibition-related matters in the country, identifying top bootleggers and bringing them to justice.