◆ SpookStack

Ja The elimination of Racketeer Aloysius Kearney on the morning of June 9 was hot stuff and it sizzled on the front pages of all the newspapers } up until 1 o’clock—the hour when Alfred (Jake) Lingle, Big Shot police reporter for the Chicago Tribune, was assassinated in the midst of a crowd in a subway station, just off Michigan Boulevard. After this Racketeer Aloysius Kearney’s de- mise was relegated to the inside pages or even kicked out of the papers altogether. Compared to the murder of a newspaper reporter, the murder of a racketeer was absolutely insignificant. Are not racketeers knocked off every day in Chicago? Now who had ever heard of a newspaper reporter being put on the spot? Well here it was at last. City editors all over the land looked at the flashes and told themselves that Gangland had at last stepped over the dead- line. The underworld at last had tried to intimi- - date the upperworld! What would those cynics say now—those cynics who were always coolly pointing out that gangsters never killed any ex- cept gangsters? The murder of Reporter Jake Lingle, thought the city editors, would surely in- spire Chicago now! Well, there you are. It seemed obvicus—as obvious as a bill-board that debonair Jake Lingle } was murdered for only one reason—that he was a } Mewspaper reporter full of the low-down. It ; seemed to a tearful and ! Jake Lingle was just anot ordinary new: . ‘A good news hound of course, a first class one, but still just an ordinary police reporter—one of those seedy-looking chaps who plays cards up in the press room, and comes down to work every day with the ancient query—“What’s doing chief?” And so, with determination in their hearts to call this terrible threat from Gangland, they buried Jake Lingle—the martyr. It was a marvel- ous funeral. It was greater than the defiant ‘funeral the underworld had thrown for amaz- ing Dion O'Banion. It was greater than the laying away of “Little Hymie” Weiss or Schemer Drucci or Mike Genna or“Dingbat” Oberta. It was greater every way, but it was greater most of aii be- in ev cause it was a funeral on which the church did not turn thumbs down. In that one respect Gangland was terribly eclipsed. Jake Lingle, the reporter was buried by the Church. Gangland could not ignore that. ignore that. The funeral was held on June 12 from the homé of the “martyred reporter,” at 125 North Austin TFC TORRE RS TRL en es “UNOFFICIAL CHIEF OF POLICE OF CHICAGOI—This is ‘the way alfred (Jake) Lingle, reporter for th ‘Tribune for eighteen Fears, bas been described since bis assassination on June 9 in @ subway just of Bandolph Street and Michigan Avenue, Au investigation now under way may determine whether this sinister charge ts true or not. Avenue. One newspaperman who went there to weep as well as to write said that it was more befitting a field marshal than a modest newspaper man. Jake lay in a silver-bronze casket—better | than the caskets in which Frankie Yale and Schemer Drucci had reposed. it was flanked by floral crosses and lighted candles and draped with an American Flag. Flowers! Flowers! They were everywhere! Jake would have liked that, for he loved fiowers and when he lived always had them in his lapel \ and in his roo A, police reporter who loved flowers! But the most impressive touch of all—a touch which had never graced the funeral of an under- world king—was_the long, long procession_of policemen which marched i neral, There @ cops éverywhere, everywhere. They rode on horses, they marched solemnly in line, white- gloved, swinging their sticks. And behind them in beautiful symmetry came representatives from the fire department. Behind the fire department came the bands! What racketeer in heaven or in hell could boast that a band had marched behind his mortal remains? But Jake had four Great ‘Lakes Naval bands and three bands from as many iposts of the American Legion. And Jake, the eporter who had been murdered by Gangland, Iso had a military escort. 62] a By i