The Untouchables

It's Christmas eve 1930 and Eliot Ness and his men are investigating the murder of a close friend of his, Hap Levinson. The man had been playing Santa Claus at a children's orphanage and had just left when he was gunned down by a passing car. Levinson was the front man in a nightclub-speakeasy and he and Ness had spent many hours together laughing and passing the time of day. As Ness looks into his old friend's background, he learns that he may have had a girlfriend named Renée that he kept in a downtown apartment.

With their breweries being knocked off by the Feds, local mobsters bring in an outsider from New York, Joey Lassiter. Known as the best inside man in the business, he promises them a Ness-proof operation. Caught in the middle is Harry Gordon, the current inside man who now finds himself nothing more than an errand boy. Harry's wife Edna isn't too pleased and starts feeding information to Ness.

Having had major successes in eliminating the illegal trade in champagne, Eliot Ness and the Untouchables suddenly find that the expensive wine is finding its way onto the market again. During one raid, they find that a couple of the bottles are frozen solid and Ness speculates that they may have been shipped in a refrigerated car. They trace the illegal shipment to Ira Bauer, a blind fish and seafood wholesaler. For Bauer, his lack sight is anything but an impediment. He particularly likes to play chess as a way of keeping his mind sharp.

With the price of illicit liquor bottoming out, Vincent Tunis suggests to his fellow syndicate members that they store their liquor rather than sell it, thereby creating an artificial shortage and pushing up the price. Eliot Ness and his men become aware of what's going on when the syndicate also starts to put small moonshiners out of business. When the only mobster who knows the location of the liquor is killed, Ness and his men try to find the only remaining truck driver from the job before the syndicate does.

Herbie Catcher is a small-time nobody who really wants to improve his status in life. He tries to impress those around him, but without success. He's even tried to feed information to Eliot Ness hoping for praise, but he really has nothing to offer. He's a busboy at a posh restaurant run by Max Zenner and he's not very good at it. On the verge of being fired, he claims to have a recently killed employee's book naming names and other activities that have gone on at the restaurant., especially having to do with mobster Martin Rawlings.

Gangster Arnie Kurtz is moving into Chicago's South Side and Eliot Ness very much wants to nab him, putting a 24 hour watch and tapping his phones. The operation is put in danger however when Kurtz inadvertently becomes part of a public health emergency. Against his better judgment - but at his wife's insistence - he agrees to let her brother Benno Fisk deliver $100,000 to a New York mobster. Unknown to anyone, Benno has contracted Parrot Fever from a recently acquired pet and collapses soon after his arrival.

Bugs Moran, hiding out since Al Capone eliminated his gang in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, is visited by Eddie O'Gara, a man he thought had been killed by rival gangsters several years previously. Although he never cared for O'Gara in the first place, Moran is intrigued when Eddie lays out a plan to put Moran back in charge of the rackets again. Meanwhile, Elliot Ness is looking for Moran and O'Gara, figuring that both will want revenge on the gangsters who are responsible for their plight and that he can use that to destroy the Chicago syndicates permanently.

When mobster Charley Radick learns that he has leukemia and only a short time to live, he decides the time has come to visit his daughter, Margaret, now a young woman. When Charley had gone to prison for a 10 year stretch, he had left her with the Wilsons but when he got out, he decided to concentrate on moving up in the rackets and left the girl with them. When he visits the Wilsons however, he's told that Margaret left some three years before. When Eliot Ness learns that Radick is dying, he asks him to come clean and give him the organization's books.

After a mobster with valuable information is killed in broad daylight at the racetrack, Eliot Ness and his men try to identify the killer. No one will admit knowing him but by tracing his movements, they find he was a regular visitor to the home of Dexter Lloyd Bayless who lives in a well-to-do suburb of Chicago. Through surveillance, they note that he has regular visitors in the afternoon and Ness decides to break into the house to plant a listening device. Through that, they learn that Bayless is running a very special school out of his home: a school for assassins.

Mike Brannon is a tough cop but his two blocks of Chicago are among the safest there are. He has a tendency to be rough with hoodlums and when he beats up one of Tony Lamberto's boys he finds himself on indefinite suspension. Fed up with his corrupt superiors, he decides the time has come for him to make some money so he enlists his four brothers in a plot to kidnap Lamberto and hold him for $150,000 ransom.

When newspaper man Carlton Edmunds is gunned down on the street, the police and his friends initially think it's a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eliot Ness and his men soon determine that Edmunds was the target of a mob hit. His old friend, Floyd Gibbons, now a globe-trotting reporter, happens to be passing through Chicago and decides he's going to find the culprit. Working with Ness, they soon uncover that the hit was related to a series of articles Edmunds was planning on the takeover of the scrap metal business by the mob.

Mobster Jake Kuzik is a major liquor supplier in Chicago and he doesn't hesitate to use strong arm tactics to keep his network of distributors and retailers in check. He's been having trouble getting supply lately and he comes under pressure - helped along by Eliot Ness and his men - to find liquor for sale or else. He forms an alliance with an arch-rival, Bugs Moran, to import half a million gallons of whiskey by train and they set up a clever deception to keep Federal agents off the scent.

When a body if fished out of the river, Lt. Aggie Stewart of the Bureau of Missing Persons is put in charge of the case. After 10 days and having made little headway, the body is buried in a pauper's grave. As is her custom, she attends the funeral to see if anyone shows up. In this case, flowers are sent from a well-known mob-owned business. She manages to trace the woman who sent the flowers. Eliot Ness meanwhile is looking to stop the biggest shipment ever of illegal liquor worth well over $1 million. What they all soon realize is that the two cases are connected.

Leo Stazak is a small time con artist on the periphery of the mob and he decides to con Frank Nitti in a stock scam. Stazak is a fast talker and an expert liar who quickly gains Nitti's confidence. Soon, the big man has entrusted half a million dollars to Stazak who has been printing fake stock certificates. Ness is also on to Stazak's printer and it doesn't take long for Nitti to realize what is going on.

Jack Parker is an up and coming young hustler who wants to become part of Frank Nitti's organization. He thinks there's an untapped market on university and college campuses but Nitti thinks he's just a nickel and dimer and isn't interested. Parker has been making his own booze and selling it through Benny Angel, who hangs around the campus actually selling the stuff to the kids. Parker decides to get Nitti's interest by secretly arranging to sell wood alcohol to students and then convincing Nitti that he can make sure the stuff sold to students is clean.

When a large supply of hair tonic is stolen, Ness and the Untouchables are concerned that it may be used as a base for illegal - and deadly - liquor. Soon after, the stuff starts to appear flavored with ginger jake, a popular patent medicine. The result is a permanent neurological disorder that was first seen in a major outbreak in Kansas City. The first victim in Chicago is Mary Kay Spencer, a 17 year old who drank the stuff while out on a date with her boyfriend. Working with public health officials, Ness tries to track down the source of the deadly hooch.

Ray 'Goose' Gander runs a jazz club in Chicago and he's coming under pressure from mobster Lou Cagan to sell booze at the club. Gander is a former musician who is in the business for the love of the music and wants nothing to do with selling the mob's liquor, but he's being backed into a corner. His protégé, trumpeter Eddie Moon, urges him to pack it in and go on the road but when Gander refuses, Eddie also talks him out of signing up with Cagan.

Frank Nitti decides to import a large amount of heroin - $2 million worth. Eliot Ness is soon onto him and arrests the delivery man, Mr. Yang from Shanghai, but he no longer has the goods and they have no reason to detain him. Ness and one of his men travel to San Francisco to see if they can determine how the goods were smuggled into the country and determine that it entered on a passenger cruiser and was then shipped by air to Chicago enclosed in a large globe. 

A father's heartbreak at his son's death leads him to partner with Eliot Ness to bring in a major liquor distributor. Charles Tarasovich knows his son delivered liquor for Sol Girsch and Ness knows it as well, but without a witness who's actually done business with Girsch, there's no chance of getting a conviction. Charles offers to set a trap for Girsch and Ness agrees. Girsch meanwhile has seen his business grow to over 500 distributors and now wants a better deal from those who manufacture the illicit liquor.

Mobster Victor Salazar is out to steal a commercial shipment of morphine destined to a Chicago medical facility. Before he can do so however, it's snatched out from under him by one of his henchman, Steve Ballard. With Eliot Ness and his men have been keeping a close eye on Salazar, the drug kingpin desperately tries to find the junk. What he doesn't know is that another of his underlings, Barney Howe is actually Barney Retsick, a Federal narcotics Agent. Retsick and Ness work together to arrest all of the criminals before the narcotics, disguised as children's candy, hits the streets.

Ness arranges parole for convict Al Remp, in order for Remp to obtain information enough to convict his old boss, bootlegger Fat Augie Strom. Remp's wife is not informed about the fact that Remp is actually working for Ness, and begs Ness to put her husband back in jail where she feels he's safe from the temptation of power. As he works his way up in Strom's organization, will Remp be able to resist the idea of going back to his old way of life?

A World War I veteran runs one of the city's most vicious extortion rackets, tasked to protect Chicago's butchers from the mob. But a double-cross by one of his own gives Ness an opening to trap the thug.

Johnny Mizo has been on the lam for several years working as a seaman on cargo ships. He left the country after stealing $200,000 from mobster Vince Majesky who has been waiting patiently for his return. On Mizo's arrival in the U.S., Majesky has his hoods waiting for him but they kill the wrong man so both Majesky and Eliot Ness are now on the lookout for him in Chicago.

Eliot Ness knows that John "The Cropper" Cropsie killed Belle Alpine's husband and that she witnessed it but for reasons of her own, she won't identify him. Cropsie is a small-time hood who wants to get into the big-time and gets a job loan-sharking for Julie Flack. One of his marks tells him that a local company has manufactured 50,000 gallons of industrial alcohol. He manages to steal the precious liquid and tries to sell it to Flack. Ness is onto him quickly and Cropsie has made a serious error in including Belle Alpine's brother-in-law Murray in his plans.

A tipoff to Ness leads to the capture of mob boss Ed "The Duke" Monte, who is then convicted of possession of counterfeit money. However, with the assistance of his loyal henchman, the huge and powerfully built Yanos Dalker ("The Giant" referenced in the title), Monte escapes from prison and is hidden out. Monte then sends an offer to Ness to turn himself in, but only if Ness reveals to him the name of the person who tipped him off and led to his arrest.

Prohibition has come to an end and bootlegger Frank "The King" Argos has also come to the end of his life. He asks Ness to be the executor of his estate. Ness declines, for obvious reasons. Argos has left everything to his son Charlie, who was declared missing in action at the very end of World War I. When his former minions (Arno Beale and Marcy Devon, played by Christopher Dark and Patricia Owens) find that life without Argos's money is not to their liking, they recruit and train someone to pose as the long-lost Charlie.

When a police captain's son is arrested in a drug sweep, Eliot Ness decides to try and locate the source of the drugs. The pusher was someone known as Peepers but he dies before they can get much information from him. They do manage to trace him to Chicago nightclub owner Sal Rudin and believe the heroin originated in New Orleans. Ness travels to the Big Easy posing as a bass player and meets booking agent Russ Bogan, who is part of the distribution network. He also learns of their unique system of delivering the goods across the country.

Mobster Victor Kurtz makes peace with his main rival for illegal liquor distribution in Chicago's South Side, Monk Lyselle. All goes well for several months until Eliot Ness and his men begin to intervene. They begin to hijack Kurtz' trucks and he automatically assumes that Lyselle has broken their agreement. Over the several months there was peace, Kurtz' main gunman, Holly Kester, has lost his nerve and Ness focuses on him as a possible way to put both Kurtz and Lyselle out of business.

When one of Marty Pulaski's dance hall girls is shot by a sniper just outside his nightclub, he automatically assumes that his main rival, Vince Bogan, is responsible. Bogan controls most of the 10 cent dance halls in Chicago, but there has been peace between the two, mostly because of mobster Janos 'Jake' Szabo. Marty loses his temper and kills Bogan which Szabo is willing to forgive, if Bogan really ordered the killing. When a second girl is killed, it becomes obvious that someone else is behind the killing and Marty tries to protect himself and his brother Herbie.

When racketeer Danny Mundt decides the time has come to get rid of Eliot Ness, he hires hit man Elroy Daldran. During World War I, Elroy had developed a taste for killing and he saw no reason to stop doing what he liked just because the war was over. His first attempt to get Ness - he tosses a grenade into his passing car - isn't entirely successful. Ness manages to jump out of the car before the grenade explodes but when he regains consciousness, he finds that he is blind.