I was taking a load of liquor off a German boat one time. I had my runner loaded up with cheap Scotch, and was about to run for the shore when the Captain pulled out a small capsule containing cocaine crystals. The price was twenty-five cents a capsule.

"I can give you the name of a man who'll take all you've got at five dollars apiece," said the Captain.

I told him nix; I felt I was breaking the law on that kind of stuff.

On another boat I was offered pound cans of opium at twenty dollars a can, retailing for $100, more profit than you can make on liquor.

I've refused to run diamonds and furs from Canada, and cigarettes from Florida. I could get $1,000 apiece for running Chinamen, but that's not my line. I'm an honest bootlegger. Ninety-nine out of 100 of the local officials of the law are with us. The hundredth one we usually get. We were taking Scotch into Newark in a truck. We had a pilot car in front and a trailer in back, full of defenders. Going through a snooty little town, a cop on a motorcycle ignored our pilot car, rode right up to the truck and shouted, "Hey, what you got in there?"

Naturally, the driver patted him on the head with his blackjack. The boys laid him out on the liquor. We broke a bottle of Scotch and poured half of it down the cop's throat by holding his nose. The rest we poured over his clothing. We stuffed the bottle into his back pocket, and then took his club and broke the bottle. We dragged him a little on his face to dirty his uniform. Then we started his motorcycle and ran it up against a tree. After that, we took the cop and left him draped on the ruins. That poor devil is driving a trolley today.

You can't get along without friendly cops. They can tip you off to raids coming from their superiors; they can ride your load through dangerous places. They are the greatest protection in the world against hijackers. They stand watch for you when you are unloading. They can turn their traffic signals for you to let you through in a hurry. They can always tell you where to get liquor. The fee is usually one dollar a case, but it varies from twenty-five cents to two dollars and a half, according to the job. But I'd hate to think what bootlegging would be without cops.

Manny is his real name. I didn't like his looks, in the first place. The gang warned me that he was a tough egg who would put it over if he could.

He wanted a load of Scotch and champagne, what is known as a big buy. I told him I'd sell. But before I delivered it to him, I made my preparations.

About ten o'clock at night, Manny showed up with his truck. On it were gunmen friends of his known as Mutsy and Pokey. Manny asked, "Where's the stuff?" I showed it to him.

"You here alone?" Manny asked. I said "Yup!" I had my coat off. All he had to do was look at me to see I wasn't heeled.

Pretty soon they had the truck all loaded with $4,200 worth of Scotch and Cordon Rouge. Then they got aboard.

"How about paying me?" I asked. "Try and get it," Manny said. Mutsy and Pokey began to laugh. They all had their hands in their pockets.

Well, I had to laugh, too. "All right, Manny, this isn't the first time I've been hijacked."

"Any guy that don't care for his stuff no better than you do ain't got anything coming to him," Manny said. Then he and his outfit drove off.

I put on my coat and started off down the road after them.

When I got about half a mile down, there was the truck drawn up alongside the road. Manny and Mutsy and Pokey were reaching up for the Milky Way. Two state cops had their guns poked halfway through 'em.

"Why, Manny," I said, "did you get into trouble? Now, isn't that too bad! Let's see: they got you for possession, transportation, and concealed weapons."

"Hey," Manny asked, "what the heck is this, anyway?"

"I told you I was all alone at the shack, but I didn't say anything about my friends down the road. Don't you think you'd better pay me?"

Manny peeled off the $4,200 I had coming to me. "Maybe you can do business with the boys now," I suggested. "About a couple of hundred apiece ought to make it square."

The boys allowed that was about right.

Manny pried himself loose from $400. Then Manny and Mutsy and Pokey got on their truck again and drove off.

When I walked on down to where the state road came in, there was the truck over on the side of the road, and Manny and Mutsy and Pokey were feeling for the stars again. Two local cops had them lined up.

"Why, Manny," I said, when I got to them, "this is most unfortunate."

"He had five hundred dollars," explained the cops.

"Well, I guess that will about square it, won't it, boys?"

Manny and Mutsy and Pokey got on their truck again.

"Now, Manny," I said, "you'd better take the back roads, because there may be a lot more fellows out looking for you. I'm going home now. If you get into trouble again, you will have to get yourself out of it. And next time, just because a feller is alone, don't think he hasn't got any friends."

It took Manny all the rest of the night to get to Newark, down every back road in Jersey.

By now, the stuff was coming in over the Canadian border just as if it were being poured. It stood offshore in the boats, and it came rolling up from the Bahamas.

Then I got my rum runner. Business was growing. At night, all over the Eastern seaboard the roads were choked with these big trucks, pounding along, loaded to the gunwales with liquor.

Once in awhile you'd read of where hijackers had swung out of a side road and boarded trucks, pitched the driver out, and driven off.

There weren't enough gunmen around for the convoys. And when you did send a bunch out, there was no telling whether they wouldn't turn on you and hijack you. For awhile the very men we hired for protection were getting to be more than we could handle. But when the Federal agents broke up the trucking game, they drove the gunmen out of the business, back to their cheap fifty-dollar spite killings. Mutsy, Pokey and their class were out of the big dough. The bootleggers took to the road in runabouts.

Even the old-time Cadillac touring cars that you'd load right up to the roof were no good anymore. The game called for concealment as well as speed. The boys began to use Packards, Cunninghams, Hudsons and Paiges of the runabout type — swell cars you could drive around in broad daylight. Each car carried from thirty-five to sixty cases of liquor.

But don't forget that the bootlegger never carries his stuff in cases. "Case" just means twelve bottles of something. When you load a car, you pack the bottles neck to neck as tight as they'll fit. You'd be surprised how many will go.

There were three methods of getting cars ready for liquor transportation. One of them was a piece of steel, shaped a good deal like a roasting pan, which hung under the car from a point aft the flywheel to just aft the running board.

Specialists who fixed cars for the trade drilled holes in the frame of the chassis and hung steel angle irons on which the pans rested. They were from twelve to eighteen inches deep, depending on the make of the car. You got at them from the floorboards in the front and back. Packing carefully neck to neck, and filling in the spaces with newspaper, to keep them from chinking, I've carried 732 bottles of Scotch, champagne, and Cointreau in a Packard I had fixed that way. Nobody is going to hijack a swell Packard that's moving along at seventy miles an hour, minding its own business.

But when John Law found out all about the pan, and began to look underneath cars, you could go to certain places and get your fast expensive sedan fixed up with false seats. The seats were taken out, compartments built in, and a steel shell shaped like the seat was made to fit over the compartment.

Publication Date: January 8, 1927

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