*The agency was known as the Bureau of Investigation until 1935, when “Federal” was added to the title. For the sake of simplicity, I shall refer to the agency later in this book as the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI.
**The federal government was, of course, much smaller at that time, in terms of numbers of employees and agencies. There was not even a federal income tax until 1913.
***Bonaparte’s grandfather, Jérôme Bonaparte, was the brother of Emperor Napoleon of France.
****In 1968, the Supreme Court struck down the section of the Lindbergh Law that allowed for the death penalty if a jury so recommended. The court reasoned that the provision denied a defendant his right to a fair trial, since he would be tempted to plead guilty rather than risk having jurors condemn him to death. In any event, only a relatively few crimes other than murder—treason or espionage, for instance—are punishable by death at present under federal or state law. And a defendant cannot be executed for kidnapping in and of itself.
*****For this vignette and numerous others about the FBI head, I am indebted to the late Curt Gentry, whose book J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Hoover’s place in American history.
******Various reasons have been offered for Hoover’s willful myopia and semantic contradictions, including his preoccupation with choosing enemies whose defeat could be demonstrated by displaying scalps and statistics. Since organized crime could never be entirely eradicated, no ultimate victory was possible.
CHAPTER TWO
FATHERS AND SONS
St. Louis
Wednesday, December 31, 1930
On New Year’s Eve, 1930, Adolphus Busch Orthwein, a thirteen-year-old heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer empire, suddenly seemed too old for his nickname, “Buppie.” For he was putting on a new blue serge suit for a dinner at his grandparents’ estate just outside St. Louis, and the suit had long trousers instead of the knickers obligatory for preadolescent boys in that era.
Buppie’s parents, Percy and Clara Orthwein, were going to a New Year’s Eve party at the Bridlespur Hunt Club, made up of riding and fox-hunting devotees, so young Adolphus was to be driven by the Orthweins’ chauffeur, Roy Yowell, to his grandparents’ estate. The 281-acre tract was known as Grant’s Farm because it was once owned by Ulysses S. Grant. It was anchored by a twenty-five-room mansion.
Percy Orthwein was an advertising executive, earning enough to make his family quite well off, and Clara was the second of three daughters of August Anheuser Busch Sr., the chief of the Anheuser-Busch beer empire, so the Orthweins were very rich indeed. The previous summer, they had moved into a two-story stone chateau built for them in the fashionable Huntleigh Village neighborhood. They were at ease in the world of country clubs and horse farms. (Clara’s father had been a founder of the Bridlespur club in 1927.)
Buppie had already won several prizes at riding shows. He went to a private school. Yet he and his younger brother, Jimmie, were neither snobbish nor spoiled. They were beloved by the household help at Grant’s Farm, where they were frequent guests. They seemed to be normal boys despite having been born to privilege—great privilege.
Adolphus Busch had come to the United States from Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, settled in St. Louis, which had a large German population, and began selling beer-brewing supplies. One of Adolphus’s best customers was a brewing company owned by another German-American, Eberhard Anheuser. Eberhard and his wife, Dorothea, had six children, including a daughter named Lilly, a lovely blonde.
Adolphus courted Lilly, and they married in 1861. They would have eight sons and five daughters. Adolphus and his father-in-law got along well, and they decided to go into business together. And so was born the Anheuser-Busch brewing empire. Adolphus Busch was an innovator; he had his beer pasteurized and shipped in refrigerated train cars from the St. Louis brewery to beer lovers far away. The beer, Budweiser, became an American institution.
Adolphus died in 1913 while visiting Germany. It fell to his son August—whose daughter Clara would marry Percy Orthwein—not just to run Anheuser-Busch as president and chief executive but to save it. When the Great War broke out in 1914, there was considerable anti-German sentiment in the United States, especially after America entered the conflict in 1917. August combatted this bigotry by flaunting his red, white, and blue American patriotism and promoting the city of St. Louis. His mother helped by opening a family estate in Pasadena, California, to disabled soldiers.
But there was a more existential threat to Anheuser-Busch: Prohibition. How to survive when your product is verboten? By diversifying: selling syrup for beer lovers to make beer in the sanctity of their homes, selling soft drinks, yeast, corn products. If Adolphus Busch and Eberhard Anheuser were creative entrepreneurs, August was the coolheaded yet imaginative businessman who kept it prospering.
The headlights pierced the darkness as the Lincoln limo carrying Buppie reached the outskirts of his parents’ property and approached Lindbergh Boulevard, which had once been known as Denny Road. The name had been changed in honor of the famed aviator, who lived for a time in the city and named his famous monoplane the Spirit of St. Louis.
Buppie was in the front passenger seat. He was holding a gift for his grandfather: a new matchbox with a horse’s head painted on the cover. The chauffeur was navigating the limo up a steep incline, getting ready to turn onto Lindbergh Boulevard, when a black man emerged from the trees. He ran to the rear of the limo and jumped onto the bumper.
Buppie was afraid. “Roy? Roy!”
The limo stopped. The man jumped off the bumper, opened the passenger side door, and pointed a revolver at the stunned chauffeur.
“Here, here’s everything,” Yowell said, fishing several dollars from a pocket and handing it over.
“You can take this too,” Buppie said, offering the gunman the new matchbox.
The
