The Palmer House. There has been a hotel on this spot since eighteen seventy-one, which makes it the longest continuously operating hotel in the country — with an asterisk. The original burned to the ground thirteen days after it opened, in the Great Chicago Fire. So the owner rebuilt it bigger. This city treats a total loss as a renovation opportunity.
The hotel is lovely, but I'm here for a man who used to make deals in its bar. Big Bill Thompson, the mayor of Chicago through most of Capone's reign, and one of the most purely entertaining politicians this country has ever produced.
Thompson was corrupt, and — this is the part I admire — he did not pretend otherwise. He publicly opposed Prohibition while running a city drowning in illegal beer, and he described his own position by telling reporters, out loud: I'm wetter than the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Capone poured an estimated two hundred fifty thousand dollars into his campaigns, and in return the police developed a talent
for looking the other way. Everyone knew. It was corruption conducted at full volume, in the daylight, and there is something almost refreshing about a bribe nobody bothers to hide.
His campaigns ran on a kind of theater no consultant would greenlight today. In one race he built his whole pitch around King George the Fifth of England — who had no connection to Chicago whatsoever — and promised th
