It was a dark and stormy night. The cold nor’wester coming in off the Great Lakes, brought the chill to a minus 40 degrees, keeping those with any brain in their heads indoors. It was the worst February in anyone’s memory, and everyone complained bitterly, though to no avail.

The cold wintry streets of Chicago, carrying the lifeblood of the city, also openly carried the liquid gold of the mob in the form of moonshine whiskey. Hundreds of speakeasies throughout the city continued to do a thriving business in the fruits of the second forbidden fruit, in spite of prohibition and the spirited efforts of the Federal Government to eliminate alcohol for sale. Local politicians and police alike turned a deaf eye to the goings on in the darker sections of the city, receiving in their eager hands a portion of the wealth of nations. Albatross Capon, Al Capon for short, a.k.a. Jules Gaelordini, head of the Chicago syndicate, ran a ruthless operation, stopping at nothing to increase the reach of his power and influence. Word was that he had given his sister a new pair of cement high-heeled boots, because she had overcooked an omelet for his breakfast.

Capon’s second in command was Tommy-Gun Nesslon, a.k.a. Tommy The Buzzard, an introverted and cantankerous loner, whose tongue cut any who opposed him to pieces with machine-gun like precision and incisiveness. Ruthless he was, and nasty to a fault. He delighted in causing pain whenever possible, whether physical or psychological, and slept soundly at night without a thought of it. It was rumored his mother, to toughen his hide, used to bathe him by dunking him in a tub of vinegar, holding him by his left ankle. Most everyone rejected this as urban myth, though any experience of his unbridled anger proved he was indeed full of piss-and-vinegar. Such irony.

Capon’s syndicate was held together and fed in part by the austere and strangle-hold business sense of Gimpy Jimmy Bortun, a.k.a. Jimmy The Beak, a squint-eyed keeper of the books, whose heart it was said had been left in San Francisco – along with various body parts of bird-brained idiots who had crossed him. He could stop a Falcon at 40 paces with the glance of his one good eye; it chilled one to the bone, and many were they who crossed that one eye and died to regret it.

Jimmy The Beak was a perfect match for Tommy The Buzzard, for they both held true to the first principle of their dark profession – never give a sucker an even break. And they didn’t. The streets of Chicago ran red with the blood of their enemies, and the local police commissioner turned a blind ear to these goings on, and was richly rewarded for his selective inattention. Nary a week went by without local newspaper headlines crying out the news of the death of a gangster who crossed Al Capon, or the accident that wasn’t quite an accident of an out-of-work steel worker who failed to make the weekly payment on his loan to Jimmy The Beak, or the Finch whose jaw was broken because she flinched when Tommy-Gun Nesslon walked into the dining room at the Astoria. The press of such deadly games played heavily on the windy city, and the war between the gangland families began to wear pretty thin on all but the local police.

The Director of the FBI – the Federal Bird Investigators – was J. Edgar Hoopoe. Now, he was one strange bird – a loner by disposition, mean-spirited by choice, and given to strange tastes in clothing with a fetish involving feathers and silk panties – but that’s another story. J. Edgar Hoopoe was also a very angry bird, feared by those on the darker side of the law, and loathed equally by those in his service who failed to meet his expectations in the execution of their duties. He was a short stout bird, with a big beak – the better for poking into other people’s business, he said. He said this often, believing himself funny in those instances, but he was short-changed in the sense of humor department, and people laughed at him, not with him. J. Edgar Hoopoe was utterly ruthless in his pursuit of the criminal mind, a stickler for following even the most obscure of regulations, except when it served him not to, which was often, and a workaholic given to 20-hour workdays. He was mindful of those minute and often disparate details that led eventually, under his intense scrutiny, to the failure of the criminal mind, and he carried his war to the likes of Al Capon with a decided vengeance.

Edgar Hoopoe’s top agent, Elliot Nest, had come up through the ranks and established the reputation of being seagull tenacious, deadly serious with an aggressive streak, and thoroughly knowledgeable of the underworld and the ways of wise guys. Elliot Nest’s assistants, Tony Robinni – Antonio to his family – an Italian-American boxer who’d grown up in the streets of the Bronx, and Johnny Sparrowski, an old-world Polish immigrant who had come to Chicago by way of the northern migration flyways. Sparrowski was of the old school – you work damned hard – harder than the bad guys – and you treat them with the same shit and muck as they dish out, and if you get up early enough you get the worm before he gets you. If you bend the law in the process, as long as you get the bad guy in the end, you’re doing the right thing. Elliot Nest was aware of Sparrowski’s reputation and his way of thinking, and held him in high regard. For his own part, he had learned quickly that hesitation meant death, a lesson learned as he watched his partner die in the line of action, and he chose then wisely to shoot first and ask questions in the cleanup.

One of the things that Elliot Nest relished, which irritated the hell out of Capon, was to raid his speakeasies and smash his beer kegs and beer steins. During one stretch of 15 days in late November, Elliot Nest hit 24 of Capon’s businesses, damaging property and dumping thousands of gallons of liquid gold, costing Capon hundreds of thousands of dollars in fun and revenue. In addition, Capon’s reputation was being besmirched by the likes of a punk like Elliot Nest, and this didn’t sit well with the Chicago kingpin in the least.

Johnny Sparrowski brought a legendary reputation to the Bureau based on the fact that he had killed three of Capon’s gang in a wild shoot-out behind one of Capon’s speakeasies on the West Side. Capon was pissed as hell. It’s a dangerous thing to anger your enemy; revenge is a powerful motivator, and it gives one an edge in power. But Elliot Nest always assigned Johnny to any case involving suspected links with Capon, in part because Johnny was his best agent, but also because it stuck it in the face of the surly gangster. Capon had lost his second in command on that bleak Sunday, one Blackie Byrd, a wild psychopathic hitbird with a suspected kill list of thirteen, and two mindless Crow-nies from Philadelphia. Capon was furious and totally beside himself that his men were unable to get these federal agents off his back. He cursed the day Elliot Nest was hatched, and with a vow to even the score with his old nemesis, began secretly plotting his revenge.

It was early on a Sunday evening, and Johnny Sparrowski was driving down Fifth Avenue when he noticed a sleek black sedan behind him. When he turned, the sleek black sedan followed; when he stopped for a signal, the sleek black sedan stopped well behind him, and tried, it seemed, to blend in with the flow of traffic. Johnny caught on quickly, and radioed headquarters that he was being tailed. He was sure it was Capon’s men, although he couldn’t see their faces. He suspected Tommy The Buzzard was behind the wheel because of the erratic driving, and Jimmy The Beak was likely riding shotgun. Elliot Nest’s voice came over the radio speaker: “Johnny – keep driving as though nothing’s the matter….take a left on Lakeside Drive, and drive past the Harbor Master’s station toward the landing at Moss Beach.” Elliot Nest’s voice began to crackle and was getting lost in the canyon of tall buildings. Johnny tapped the radio, and turned the squelch dial, trying to clear up the reception, but he was getting out of range of the headquarters’ transmitters. “Oh, shit!” muttered Johnny, half to himself. Elliot Nest stood over his radioman as the crackling sounded at headquarters. “Oh, shit!” he muttered, half to himself. “Robinni!” chirped Elliot Nest; “Get down to Moss Beach right away and give Sparrowski backup – and take the big guns!” Tony Robinni quickly left the headquarters building, and taking the sleek tan sedan, headed on the expressway toward the south side and Moss Beach.

Johnny turned left past the last warehouse building just south of the Harbormaster’s station, and headed out the dirt road toward the beach. The sleek black sedan following him kept a slight distance behind him, but there was no denying what was happening now. The other car wouldn’t be on this road at this time of night, except that it was following him, that was pretty clear. Johnny slowed his sleek tan sedan as he neared the gravel landing that led to the water’s edge. He stopped just short of the lapping waves, and left the engine running and the lights on. The car following him stopped, and Johnny could hear its engine idling, its lights still on. The two figures in the car didn’t move. Johnny reached in his jacket, and unlatched the strap holding his 9mm Baretta. It felt warm to the touch as his hand slowly grasped the handle, his finger sliding into the trigger housing. His hand came to rest lightly on the handle as the gun nestled in his shoulder holster. Still no movement in the car behind. His eyes were open wide, unblinking, locked on the car behind him.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Johnny saw the passenger open his door, and step out, still protected by the car door. Johnny tensed, and slowly drew his automatic out of its holster, and rested it lightly on his thigh, his eyes still scanning the scene behind. All of a sudden, the figure ducked down, making full use of the car door for protection, and Johnny could see him draw his large gun and level it at the back of his head. Johnny tensed, and in a movement of split timing, hit the door handle, shoved against the door with his shoulder, and lunged out and onto his shoulder and back, rolling in a ball to the water’s edge. At the same moment, shots rang out, and Johnny could hear metal tearing into metal and glass where he had just been sitting. Johnny came up with his 9mm Baretta blazing, spitting out hot special delivery messages. He could hear his shots hitting the other car, again, metal tearing into metal and glass, but this time, also into feathers and flesh. A scream came from the second car, as Johnny emptied his automatic with deadly accuracy. Then, a sudden pain shot through his shoulder, and he dropped his weapon, and grabbing his shoulder rolled over behind his car. He struggled to get up, but found the pain pinned him down. He could feel blood oozing out of the wound. In the semi-darkness he heard footsteps coming towards him. There in the light of his headlights stood Jimmy the Beak, blood soaking the feathers at his shoulder, a thin trickle flowing down his left side. He was holding a very large gun in his right wing, and pointed its long barrel at him. Johnny Sparrowski struggled to reach for his 9mm automatic, but remembered he had just emptied his clip, and the pain in his shoulder stopped him – he winced, and fell back. Jimmy the Beak smiled as he raised the very big gun and leveled it at Johnny’s head. Then, standing next to Jimmy the Beak, Johnny saw Tommy the Buzzard, and he, too, had a very large gun leveled at his head. “Say your prayers, punk,” sneered Tommy the Buzzard, and Johnny could see him begin to squeeze the trigger.

A loud explosion ripped through the air, and Tommy the Buzzard’s body lurched to the side, his very big gun flying over his head. A second explosion, and Jimmy the Beak grabbed at his neck, and the force of the bullet threw him off his feet and onto the hood of Johnny’s car. As Jimmy the Beak’s body slid off the hood and onto the gravel, Johnny saw coming out of the shadows into the light of the headlights the familiar face of his partner, Tony Robinni. Tony held a very large gun in his wing, its barrel still smoking. He smiled, and holstered his piece, and knelt down behind the car where Johnny lay. “You all right?” Tony asked. “I would be, if you’d get your ass in gear and get me to a hospital!” he chirped. “Yeah, yeah!” Robinni replied, a gleam in his eyes and a smile on his lips. “Just like you to bitch when I’ve just saved your ass!”

Elliot Nest came by the hospital late one afternoon, and found Johnny sitting on the side of his bed, his head still bandaged, his arm in a sling. He had dressed, and was waiting for the doctor to sign his release. He was anxious to get back to work. Elliot Nest congratulated him and his partner for taking out Capon’s top two henchmen. “You done good! Ole J. Edgar Hoopoe is putting you up for the Freedom Medal, Johnny. That’s the highest honor that can be bestowed for heroism beyond the call of duty.” Johnny blinked his eyes, and was embarrassed. “And, just so’s you know, Capon’s lawyers are working overtime to keep him out of prison. The Treasury Department attorneys have him nailed for not filing income tax returns for the past six years.” He smiled, and winked. Johnny Sparrowski shook his head, and smiled, too. Elliot Nest turned to leave, and stopping at the door, said “Looks like Capon is going up the river for a long time, Johnny. He’ll be spending time with all his jailbird friends…!”