Downfall

Description

Chicago. Pete ""The Persuader"" Kalmisky, former bodyguard of Al Capone, accompanied by Syndicate business manager Alan Sitkin, have a meeting with Joey December, president of the debt-ridden Great Lakes Pacific Railroad. They form a crooked alliance; Joey agrees to transport their illegal liquor on his trains, in exchange for ""20% off the top."" After Kalmisky leaves, Sitkin talks privately with Joey. Sitkin gives Joey $100,000 for 10,000 shares of Canada Central stock, now worth $10 a share; Joey says they will be worth $50 a share in 3 weeks. Sitkin says he has incriminating evidence against Kalmisky, to ""keep him in line""; Sitkin carries a key to a safety deposit box with him wherever he goes. And so, within 2 weeks, Canadian whiskey (the good stuff) is loaded into boxcars in Manitoba, where it's later shunted onto the main routes by Lake Superior, to be distributed throughout 5 states; the boxcars are labeled Retail Milk Co. February 16, 1930. An elderly railroad man stumbles